Brew Dudes Homebrewing Blog

2008 Maine Brewers Festival

On October 16, 2008

It’s coming up in a few weeks…the 2008 Main Brewers Festival. The Brew Dudes have been going to it since 1999. It’s a great time. I think it might be sold out, but you can check here to be sure.

Maine Brewers Festival

Last year, we had a good time. Take a look at the recap we made last year.

This year, we plan to twitter from the event. That should be fun (ultra-geeky fun). We will be posting stuff from the fest, so if you can’t go…we’ll let you know how it is.

I am sure the typing will get less intelligible as time goes on. 🙂

2008 Maine Brewers Festival

Growing Hops

By John Krochune

On October 14, 2008

In Hops

Harvest time brings thoughts of what to plant next year. I hope to be growing hops when the time is right.

When clicking around the ol’ homebrewing blogosphere, I saw posts from other homebrewers who were harvesting the hops that they had grown on their own. I have to say I was a bit envious. The photos revealed what seemed to be bushels of light green beauties all ready for brewing. Take a look as some posts out there:

Jason’s Hops

Travis’ Hops

Man, I gotta get to growing hops this coming spring. Now that I have a back yard (my family and I just moved to the ‘burbs*), I feel like I have no excuses to not grow hops. The one thing I would like to have before I buy and plant some rhizomes is to get tips from people who have done it before.

BYO and BeerSmith have good primers but if you have some tips or would like to share anything about your experiences growing hops, please leave a comment.

Now I need to choose what hop variety to grow.

I would like to take pictures of my harvest next year…like this one!

Growing Hops

*We are not looking for a bailout.

If you need more information about gardening in general, check out this guide for gardening for beginners.

Getting Beer to Carbonate Faster

By Mike

On October 7, 2008

In Beginner

Cooler temps are great for fermentation at home, but it can pose a problem when you bottle.

At my house we delay turning the heat on for as long as possible, so during the day the house may only be 60-65F. This can lead to slow carbonation times in the bottle. Here are some quick ideas for finding warmer places in your house to get bottles to “carb” up in the time you are used to.

Get bottles off the floor. You’d be surprised to realize that the floor may be 10 degrees cooler than chest height in some places in the house. Also, a cold floor acts as a heat sink and can suck warmth out of the cases if they sit on the floor. Either get them up on a shelf or use a few old towels or blankets to get the bottles off the colder floor.
Where is your furnace? Maybe set up some shelving nearby to take advantage of the heat given off from your furnace. If you have forced hot air in your home, set the boxes near a vent in a spare room and drape a towel or blanket over the vent and cases to trap some hot air with the cases. Rotate the cases daily to prevent uneven warming and carbing. If you have radiators you can just place the cases in front of one rotating daily. Just don’t lay them up agains tthe radiator as they can get too warm. A 1ft distance should be fine. Of course, none of these things work if you aren’t regularly heating your house yet.
Ever notice how much heat is coming out from behind your kitchen fridge? Placing cases on top of the fridge with a blanket to make a “hood” will trap warm air rising up from behind the fridge and increase the ambient temp of the beer cases. If space allows pull the fridge out enough to put the cases behind the fridge. Set them up on a small bench to get them off the floor. Push the fridge back against the cases for a week or so. (Of course, clear this one with your spouse or roommates first.)
Use a heating pad as a heat source. Sandwich a heating pad between two cases of bottles, set to low, with a blanket of the top is a great way to increase ambient temps. Rotate the cases 90 degrees each day to ensure even warming. You could even put two cases of bottled beer in the oven with a heating pad in there too…. just don’t forget to remove them before preheating the oven to make pizza.
Sit on the cases like an ostrich on an egg. Of course this may require some time off from work and someone to fetch you food and water (or beer).

When to Start All-Grain Brewing

By Mike

On October 3, 2008

In All Grain, Beginner

How soon is too soon to make the jump from extract to all-grain brewing?
This is my checklist for this you should be comfortable with before making the big move.

Full wort boils
Capability to chill that wort using a chiller of some sort
Handle some basic math for calculating mash-in volumes, wort dilution, and concentration to hit final gravities and mash efficiency
Confidence in your sanitation practices
You can afford the addictive nature of adding more toys to your brewhouse as you get more and more involved in the all-grain process (like larger kettle and propane burners)
You’ve read some of the popular texts and websites about sparging and mashing and have a good mental picture of how the process is going to go.

Moving up to a few mini/partial mash batches is a helpful way to get a good idea of what the issues are with trying to mash-in, hit strike temps, and sparge. If you’ve mastered those things and feel pretty confident in your skills, then moving to all-grain should be an easy transition. Always remember that brewing all-grain is just making really fresh diluted wort extract, but you have much more control over the final product.

BREW ON!

Improving Mash Efficiency

By Mike

On October 1, 2008

In All Grain

“I get 80% efficiency in my system, how about you????”

Don’t be discouraged if your efficiency doesn’t measure up with the next guy… it’s how you use it that matters. The most important thing about starting out in all-grain is that you are getting consistent efficiency. That is the only way to at least be able to reliably test your recipes and process. You should be concerned about initial efficiency if it’s below say….65%. I would consider less than that poor efficiency. Getting 80% or greater is amazing efficiency, and I would say 75% is acceptable average efficiency. 75% is where most brewers should be shooting for (although more is better).

Here is a short list of things to consider when trying to improve poor efficiency.

1. Check your crush! This is the most popular item to investigate when concerned about poor efficiency, with good reason. If your crush doesn’t expose enough actual grain kernels to the water in the mash, then you’ll never get the sugar in them into the wort. Your crush should expose all the internal kernels. You should have lots of little barley bits in the crush. Having 5-10% “flour” is OK. Be sure that in your effort to improve crush that you still see a lot of husk material. The husk shouldn’t be getting pulverized into powder.
But as the first order of attacking poor efficiency the mantra goes….“Crush till your scared!” It’d be better to get 90% efficiency and a really astringent beer in one batch and make corrections than spending several batches slowly inching up the crush scale.

2. If you are a fly sparger…slow down the sparge. Your sparge should easily take 45-60 minutes to complete. Play with your in and out valve with just water until it takes 60 minutes to drain your HLT through your tun and into the kettle (simulated mash). Check the flow rate buy counting how long it takes to fill a pint glass with water. Then you can use that as a measure every-time. If you know it takes 44 seconds to fill the glass, next time you sparge set the valves to be 44 seconds then you’ll know you have the valves set to the optimum flow rate.

3. Mash out temps improve viscosity. This seems to help on my system, but maybe it’s not critical for everyone. If I get my wort up to 168°F before I sparge, I tend to get a 2-5 point increase in my efficiency. Getting to mash out is sometimes seems to loosen the flow of the sugars out of the wort. If all else fails, try increasing the temp to mash out before running off.

There are a handful of other tricks too, but chime in if you have something to add.

BREW ON!