The Brew Blog

Beer Gardening II, the Sequel

2008-04-29T08:39:00.010-05:00

Most sequels aren't as good as the original. There are, of course, a couple exceptions. Aliens, the 1986 sequel, was at least as good as the original 1979 movie, Alien. With that in mind, I'll try to make this blog entry at least as interesting as the first "Beer Gardening" entry. The previous one dealt with me watching the (barley) grass grow, so I think I've got a good shot here.

My hops are doing well. The Mt. Hood and Cascade plants have both grown to around four feet (1.2 m) tall, and the others are right behind them. The Mt. Hood and Cascade are in the best position to catch the most sun, which probably explains most of the difference in growth. I trellised the hops by sinking hook and eyes into the side of my house, right up near the roof line. I ran two lines down from each hook and eye and, when possible, trained two shoots to each line. (A couple of the rhizomes only sent up a few shoots, so I may plant some pole beans to run up the few empty lines.)

The hops I have growing in containers are also coming along well, although I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them next year. They get better sun than the one's planted at the side of the house, but I haven't found a good way to trellis them in their location. I have found a few mediocre ways.

The barley and wheat are coming along nicely. In both crops, there are a few leaves extending from the central stalk and the plants are about 12 in. (30 cm) tall. There may also be a tiller on some of the plants. (A tiller is a stalk other than the central stalk. In barley, one seed may produce a plant that forms more than one seed head -- one at the end of the central stalk and others at the end of tillers.)

Here are a couple random facts about barley:

Barley is the fourth most widely grown crop in the world. Most of it is used as animal feed.

Barley (Hordeum vulgare) and it's wild progenitor Hordeum spontaneum are both diploid and can freely interbreed. The biggest difference in the two species (some sources call them subspecies) is that the rachis holds the seeds together in modern barley, even after maturity. In wild barley, the rachis shatters when the plant is mature, scattering the seeds. (The rachis is basically the structure surrounding the seeds in the spike.)

I'll have more Beer Gardening blog entries as the season progresses, but I also hope to brew something soon.

Beer Gardening

2008-03-31T08:51:00.006-05:00

In my last blog, I mentioned growing and malting my own barley as a project for 2008. And, thanks to a run of nice weather, I had the time to plant two 5' by 9' (1.5 x 2.7 m) blocks of barley. I also got one 5' by 9' block of spring wheat planted. I planted the first blocks of barley and wheat on Thursday and the second block of barley on Saturday -- and the first two blocks are already up! (Yes, I am excited about watching grass grow.)

I also planted a row of hops next to my house. I planted a big Mt Hood rhizome, two big Cascade rhizomes and "regular-sized" Centennial, Chinook, Zeus and Newport rhizomes. These sprouted within a few days and I now need to get the trellis strings to them in the next couple days. I also have my hops in containers that I've had for a few years now.

I'll update my blog regularly to update you on my progress through growing, harvesting, winnowing, malting and mashing the grains I grow. And, hopefully, by this fall I'll have a beer brewed "from scratch" (although I will be using commercial yeast).

Resolutions and Resolve

2008-01-16T14:52:00.001-06:00

I don't make New Year's resolutions. As with most people, when I do, I end up dropping them before February. However, many times during the year I will make plans, or what I call "overplans." An overplan is a purposely overly-ambitious plan, meant to inspire me to get the core of my plan done. For example, back when I was in graduate school, I injured my knee. Once I was up and walking again, I set a goal to run in the next Boston Marathon. I never did run the marathon, but I did log a lot of time on the jogging trails that year. As a consequence, I lost some weight and generally got into pretty good shape, which was my "real" goal.

Here's my 2008 Overplan:

Develop the "Beer-GUT" — the Grand Unified Theory of Brewing. Or at least, read as much as I can about brewing science and get one solid homebrew experiment finished.

Form the metal band Böiled Wört and rock the known world. Or at least, pick up my guitar often enough to be able to play a few of my favorite rock anthems proficiently.

Solve the problem of making insanely malty beers at home. I think it has something to do with water chemistry (along with, of course, proper malt selection). At a minimum, do some important "research" (glug, glug) with some tasty German lagers and Scottish ales.

Write the Great American Novel, or at least a Pretty Good American Short Story. Maybe the homebrewing protagonist saves the world when he finds out that his Amarillo IPA kills the space virus causing the zombie plague. (Each your heart out Cormac McCarthy.)

Forget the hop crisis and brew some serious hop monsters.

Figure out how to grow big watermelons that don't develop blossom end rot.

Grow and malt my own barley. Brew beer with this homemade malt and some of my homegrown hops. (This is left over from last year's overplan. However, I now have some Robust barley seed — and also some spring wheat — and am looking at a big home food dehydrator to dry, and maybe even kiln, the grain.)

Run in the Boston . . . OK, just eat better, exercise regularly and lose a little weight.

Brew the biggest, lightest-colored all-grain beer in history. Oh wait, I did that last year. (See my article on reiterated mashing in the December '07 issue of BYO for more.)

Two Big Brews

2007-12-17T14:24:00.000-06:00

Well, my 15-gallon (57-L) batch of pale ale is brewed, fermented and kegged. Everything went well, though I did worry a bit during the fermentation. I fermented the beer in a 20-gallon (76-L) garbage can. The lid closes, but doesn't seal tightly, so it was a quasi-open fermentation. The open part didn't bother me much, but not being able to see or hear an airlock bubble as a confirmation that fermentation had started was a little disquieting. I didn't want to open the lid to look until I was sure things had kicked off and there was a protective layer of kräusen.

I ended up not peeking at all until the fourth day. I figured that I had cooled and aerated the wort adequately, pitched the proper amount of yeast and kept the fermenter in a place where the ambient temperature should have been fine for an ale fermentation (even after the fermenting wort heated itself up a few degrees). So, everything should have gone well. And, when I peeked on day four, it was obvious that it did. There was still kräusen on top of the wort, but the fermentation had clearly just about run its course.

The next day, around noon, I decided to peek again and saw that the kräusen had fallen into the beer, leaving the top of the beer exposed to oxygen. I quickly grabbed the demi-john and racking cane (which I had already sanitized) and racked the beer to a closed secondary.

Once the beer was carbonated and ready to go, I was psyched — it was probably the best hoppy pale ale I've ever made. (I upped the amount of gypsum I brewed with this time and it gave me that great hop character I was looking for.) And, I had 15 gallons of it! I still may dry hop the beer, but it tastes fine as it is.

I also brewed a reiterated mash beer at Joe Walton's house. Joe, Jim Michalk and I brewed the beer and decided to name it Mongo, after the character in Blazing Saddles. The recipe was 100% Belgian Pilsner malt hopped with a mixture of high-alpha hops (Summit and Magnum). We did three mashes of 10 lbs. (4.5 kg) of grain each, then boiled the wort for 90 minutes. The wort was racked onto a yeast cake of Trappist ale yeast from a previous beer of Joe's. It's fermenting now.

I've got ingredients for yet another one of these, and a few ideas on how to shorten the brewday slightly and also improve the extract efficiency.

For the past couple weeks, I've been soaking some oak cubes in red wine (a Zinfandel I made from a kit awhile back). I've changed the wine a couple times because I'm tring to get most of the aggressive, new oak flavor out of them. In the next couple days, I am going to rack my Flanders Red to a carboy and add the cubes. I'll keg the beer after a week or two of contact time. I just want a hint of barrel in the beer, not to a Lümberbräu.

I still haven't racked my Vienna lager to keg yet. But it's sitting in my stainless conical and the yeast has been dumped, so it should be doing fine.

Finally, I need to add some kräusen beer to a couple of my big lagers one more time to get them down to a reasonable FG — this would be a great thing to do before the holidays, except I've already got some other brewing stuff planned.

Start Me Up

2007-11-26T00:46:00.000-06:00

I'm always busy when we put together the September, October, November, December and January-February issues of BYO. Most years, the once-a-month schedule means that my brewing gets scaled back a bit, compared to when we put out an issue every other month. This year, we were busier than usual and now I'm almost out of beer.

So now that editorial on the Jan-Feb issue is wrapped up, it's time to get brewing. I decided to get things started by making a big batch. I normally brew either 5-gallon (19-L) batches for my "regular" beers or 3-gallon (11-L) batches for experimental brews. In the past, I've shied away from making larger volumes of beer because I don't like cleaning and sanitizing multiple carboys and kegs for a single batch. This time around, however, I've (mostly) corrected for that with a few extra pieces of equipment I've picked up over the last few months.

My new pieces of equipment are a food-grade 20-gallon (76-L) Rubbermaid Brute garbage can to use as a primary fermenter, a 15-gallon (57-L) demijohn for a secondary fermenter and a 10-gallon (38-L) Corny keg for serving. (A demijohn is like a big carboy; home winemakers frequently ferment in them.)

I plan to make 15 gallons (57-L) of wort, ferment it in the garbage can, rack it to the demijohn for secondary and package it in two kegs -- my new 10-gallon (38-L) Corny and an old 5-gallon (19-L) keg.

Tonight, I made the yeast starter. I dissolved 14 oz. (0.40 kg) of dried malt extract in 1.5 gallons (5.7 L) of water, heated it to 180 degrees F (82 degrees C) and let it sit for 15 minutes to let the heat sanitize the wort. I usually boil the starter for 15 minutes, but decided to cut my heating and (especially) cooling time by shaving about 30 degrees F (~18 degrees C) off the top. Malt extract has already been boiled, so why boil it again if you're not boiling hops?

After cooling the wort in my sink, I transferred it to a 3-gallon (11-L) carboy, aerated (with a one-minute shot of oxygen) and pitched the yeast (an XL smack pack of Wyeast 1056).

I plan to brew on either Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on how the starter does and will post a blog entry when I do. I also have a few other brewing projects to start (or finish) in the next few weeks, so I should have updates to this blog every few days for next week or so.

Top 10 Recipes

2007-10-02T20:07:00.000-05:00

Ask any editor to name the greatest editorial invention of all time and he or she will likely say the Top 10 List. Top 10 lists are easy to compile and, since they're just someone's opinion, you don't need to fact-check them. They take virtually no work at all to get on the page. Plus, readers love them. (Even knowing they're just a way for editors to escape work, I'm still curious to read about the "10 Ugliest Sports Uniforms," the "10 Worst Automobiles Ever" or the "10 Most Influential Alternative History Novels of All Time.")

Plus, Top 10 lists are the gift that keeps on giving. After publishing the list, you're certain to get at least a few "I can't believe you forgot 'X.'" or "How could you possibily include 'Y' on your list?" letters to fill up your mail page. Top 10 lists do everything but write themselves.

With that in mind, I present the Top 10 BYO Recipes. This list exhibits all the editorial laziness that Top 10 lists are known for. Plus I turn it up a notch - I haven't even put them in any order, I've only included recent recipes that I'm familiar with and there are actually 13 recipes! (Take that Rolling Stone editors! I can't believe you imbeciles left "Van Halen" off the "Top 100 Influential Albums of All Time" list. Duh, I can't think of any guitar players that were influenced by Eddie's guitar work on that album.) I have excluded clone recipes from this list.

Top 10 BYO Recipes
Standard Robust Porter (Jan-Feb '03)
Terry Foster obviously didn't waste any time thinking up a fancy name for this beer, but his porter recipe is fantastic.

Black Pearl Oyster Stout (Jan-Feb '04 -- and Mar-Apr '05, in our "10 Wildest Recipes" article)
An awesome stout with real oysters in it. Sounds like a gimmick, but it's an awesome stout. Joe Walton and Jim Michalk (both Austin ZEALOTS) brew a batch every year and bring it to one of our meetings.

Grab My Heinie (Jul-Aug '05)
Want to brew a light "international lager" like Heineken, Becks or a zillion other beers? This recipe will get you there. The neat quirk here is that your mash pH is established by using very soft water and adding acidulated malt, rather than adding calcium to your brewing liquor. Gives an authentic "rounded" taste to the beer.

BYO's 10th Anniversary Ale (Sep '05)
A big, dark, stout-like ale that clocks in at 10% alcohol. Surprisingly -- almost dangerously -- drinkable, given the strength. Jim Haller (a ZEALOT) and I brewed the official batch of this one day when it was 110 degrees Fahreheit outside. Come to think of it, I don't think I ever saw him again. I also brewed a batch with Trent Johnson (another ZEALOT) one day and then I brewed it once on my own. My father-in-law really likes this one, so I might be brewing this again soon.

Cranberry Zinger (Oct '05)
Super easy to make, but it turns out great every time. I serve it on Thanksgiving every year.

Red Ball Express (Jan-Feb '06)
My version of a Vienna lager. (My older Vienna lager recipe, which won a silver medal at the NHC one year, was in the Jul-Aug '05 issue. I called that one Wiener Blut.)

Patrick Henry Pale Ale (Mar-Apr '06)
I won 1st place in the balanced beer division with a non-dry-hopped version this recipe at the most recent ZEALOTS Homebrew Inquisition. (I renamed the beer Pretzel vs. President Pale Ale for the contest because the recipe changed slightly.) Brew this with water low in carbonates and high in calcium sulfate (add gypsum). The hop character actually improves with age for a couple months.

Kelheim Weissbier (Jul-Aug '06)
This is Horst Dornbusch's homage to Schneider Weisse, which I love. (I said clone recipes were excluded. This is a homage.) Keith Bradley, from the ZEALOTS, brewed a batch and it turned out great, except for the fact that it was overcarbonated. In true ZEALOTS fashion, he complained about it every time he saw me rather than simply venting the keg a few times. Still, the beer was yummy beyond belief.

Colby House Porter (Oct '06)
I've brewed this beer roughly twice a year for the past 16 years. Add carbonate to your water if it turns out thin and acidic tasting.

Cause of Death (Dec '06)
Thanks for the hangover, Johnny Max.

DewBrew Flanders Red (Jan-Feb '07)
Great sour beer made by Dan and Joelle Dewberry (both ZEALOTS). It won Best of Show at the Homebrew Inquistion a year or so ago. My wife and I went and brewed this beer with them earlier this year and I have a bucket full of it sitting in a back room. Should be ready to bottle fairly soon.

Copper Ale (Mar-Apr '07)
A balanced, crowd-pleasing beer that isn't any recognizable beer style.

Beelzeboss (Oct '07)
I've been known to brew some odd beers -- Jolly Apple Rancher Lambic (May-Jun '03 and Mar-Apr '05) and Tubers for Victory (Mar-Apr '04) come to mind -- but my current favorite oddball beer is Beelzeboss, a "wheat beer" made using Mt. Dew (the sodapop) as brewing liquor.

Back to Blogging

2007-09-10T19:00:00.000-05:00

Yikes! It's been awhile since I've blogged about what I've been up to.

What have I been up to? Well, my wife and I drove to the National Homebrew Conference in Denver. My club, the Austin ZEALOTS, had a booth there on club night. The ZEALOTS brought the most beer of any out-of-state club and had more members in attendance than all the other clubs in Texas combined -- and we're just a little, unorganized club from Austin, not one of those mega-clubs from Dallas or Houston. Most importantly, we all wore spiffy Viking helmets to the event.

Nobody expected it, but the ZEALOTS held our competition -- The Homebrew Inquisition -- again this year. The number of entries we received stayed about the same (in the ballpark of 150, mostly from the Austin area). Judging was a blast and I was psyched that my pale ale -- basically the Patrick Henry Pale Ale recipe from the March-April 2006 issue -- got a 1st in the Balanced Beer category.

I've brewed a couple batches in the meanwhile, one with an interesting mash schedule that I am going to write about in the December 2007 issue and another made with Mt. Dew as the brewing liquor. (The recipe for this "beer," which I called Beelzeboss, ended up in the October 2007 issue.)

Unfortunately, I injured my shoulder last month sometime and haven't had any brew days in the recent past. I hope to get a batch of something going in the next few weeks, though. I've got the ingredients for another batch of my IPA. (Both my wife and I have been on a bit of an IPA kick recently. She's starting to say "where's the hops" whenever she tries any beer under about 50 IBUs.)

Pre-NHC

2007-06-18T00:03:00.000-05:00

OK, so the week after brewing the IPA and porter, I brewed my pale ale and a dry stout.

My pale ale recipe changes a little bit every time I brew it, but modern incarnations have been pretty close to the recipe I published as Patrick Henry Pale Ale in the March-April 2006 issue of BYO. For this round of brewing, I decided not to make any tweaks and brew it exactly as it appeared in the magazine. The brew day was very straightforward — it was the third 5-gallon (19-L) batch of moderate-strength ale I'd made in two weeks, so everything went according to plan. (Man, I love it when that happens.)

A couple days after that, I brewed my favorite dry stout recipe. This is, essentially, the Murphy's Stout clone that appears in the 150 Classic Clone Recipes book that we put out last year. Again, I stuck pretty close to what I had published because I planned on bringing a couple beers from this round of brewing with me to the NHC (National Homebrew Conference, this year in Denver). So, I wanted to brew "production" batches of beer, not experiments.

After brewing three batches of beer in a row without any problems, I was feeling pretty confident that everything would turn out fine with the stout. Brewday went according to plan until it came time to rack the chilled wort over to the fermenter. Somehow, I was three quarts over my target volume. Now, this isn't exactly the end of the world, but I was a little curious how I ended up being over volume when my last three batches had been right on. I may try to "kick save" this beer by adding some specially-engineered "kräusen" beer when I rack it to secondary. If I make the "k-beer" a little darker and a little heavier, it should balance out the slightly diluted dry stout I now have. Or maybe I'll just keg it and drink it as is. (How bad could it be?)

So, right now I have the IPA, porter and pale ale kegged and carbonated in my fridge. (The dry stout is still in the fermenter and the Vienna lagers are still lagering. )

The porter turned out great. It has a nice roast-y, chocolate-y nose to it and is nicely balanced overall — a very drinkable beer. I really think I got the water chemistry right on this one as it is not overly acidic — as some dark beers can be — nor overly flabby, which can happen if too much chalk is added to the brewing liquor. Although I briefly thought of keeping this beer all to myself, I decided it that I'll be bringing it to the NHC for club night (look for it at the Austin ZEALOTS booth, if you are going to be attending).

My pale ale also turned out great, a very quaffable brew. It has a nice hop flavor and aroma, but there's just enough malt to balance it out. And, it has just the right amount of "zing" to it, for my tastes at least. I'll also be bringing this to club night at NHC (although I also thought of squirreling this one away for my private consumption).

I was a little less happy about how my IPA turned out. There's nothing really wrong with it — it's hoppy with solid malt backbone — it just seems a little "flabby" to me. I am going to bring this with me to the NHC and decide on club night whether to serve it. Maybe it will "condition up" nicely within the next few days.

I haven't dry hopped either the pale ale or the IPA and I may not have time before I hit the road for Denver. Neither one really "needs" it, but if I have time tomorrow, I might throw some hops in both kegs.

Memories of Beer

2007-05-30T13:19:00.000-05:00

I had a beer-intensive extended Memorial Day weekend. (Is there any other kind?) On Thursday, I made two yeast starters (for an IPA and a porter) and a gallon of kräusen beer. Friday morning, I added the fermenting kräusen beer to my Vienna lager. That beer should be just about ready to keg and I hope to get that done later this week.

On Saturday, I went to Austin Homebrew Supply and picked up ingredients for two batches of beer (pale ale and stout). While there, my wife and I heard that some of the Austin ZEALOTS were checking out the new brewpub in Austin (Uncle Billy's BBQ) that evening. So, we headed there after we ran all our errands.

Brian Peters, who formerly brewed for the Bitter End (the Austin brewpub that burned down last year), is Billy's brewer and he had five beers on tap — a blonde ale, a pale ale, an amber ale, an IPA and a hefe-weizen. My favorites were the blonde (nice grainy taste and good balance), the pale ale (good hop bitterness, flavor and aroma — from Simcoe hops, I think — nicely balanced with some crystal malt) and the hefe-weizen (yummy German wheat beer flavor, aroma and "zip"). Brian was there and gave a tour of the brewhouse and dispensing room. He said he was smoking some malt soon to make a smoked beer to go with the barbecue. I'll definitely want to check that out.

I had planned to brew my IPA on Sunday and my porter on Monday, but I pushed that back by one day. So, on Monday I brewed the IPA (which appeared as Roswell IPA in the May-June 2007 issue of BYO). I bitter this beer with big dose of Magnum hops, then add Centennial and Cascade hops near the end of the boil. (I'll dry hop it with Cascade and Amarillo in the keg.) I got big, fluffy hot-break during the boil and that made me happy. (Yeah, I'm a simpleton.) I pitched the yeast around midnight and the beer was fermenting the next morning when I got up. You can smell the hops coming out of the fermentation lock.

On Tuesday, I brewed my porter (a partial-mash version of which appeared in the October 2006 issue of BYO). For me, one nice thing about brewing a dark beer is that I don't have to dilute my water — which is very carbonate-rich — with distilled water. Since I have been brewing frequently, my brewday went very smoothly. The only hitch was that a thunderstorm blew through midway through wort collection. I brew out on my carport and for 20 minutes or so, the wind was blowing fairly hard and — even though I was in the middle of the carport, under the roof — I was getting misted by rain. But soon enough, the sun came out and the rest of the day went by smoothly — so smoothly that I kept wondering if I had forgotten something. This one is fermenting nicely, side-by-side with the IPA.

So, now I have a bunch of different batches of beer in progress, but only one on tap — the "speed brew." It's maturing very nicely, and — of course — the keg is almost gone. I brought this beer to the ZEALOTS meeting six days after I brewed it and it tasted pretty good. It did show some diacetyl then, but this matured out in the next few days. Overall, it was a very thirst-quenching summer bitter with a nice malt presence (from a 2-row pale ale malt made from Maris Otter barley) and just enough hops for balance.

Later this week, I need to add my reserved kräusen beer to my high-gravity lager, keg my Vienna lagers, make two yeast starters and brew my pale ale and stout. (Oh yeah, I also have an "oddball" beer I'm going to brew. More on that later.) My club (the Austin ZEALOTS) has a booth at the upcoming club night at the NHC and hopefully one or two of the beers I have been blathering about will be on tap there.

Big Brew Time Two

2007-05-10T15:57:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday, I made my second attempt at brewing a "super lager" (like the one I blogged about in March) by using wort from one mash as mash liquor and sparge water for another.

I reviewed my notes from the last big brew, thought about it for a little while and made a few changes. For this beer, I made the weight of the two grain bills equal. I also took a "no sparge" approach to the mashing. I added my full pre-boil volume of water to the first mash, ran it off and used this wort as mash liquor for a second "no sparge" mash. (I had to make a few minor volume corrections on the fly as the grains in each mash absorbed some liquid.)

The big advantages of this method are you can collect high gravity wort, all from grains, and not have to boil forever to get a very high gravity wort. (I hit the same original gravity on this beer as with my first try, but I only boiled the wort for one hour, as opposed to the 2.5 hours it took before.) Shorter boil times means you can make lighter colored beers, or at least control the color of your beer more through ingredient choice than color pickup during the boil. The method is also fairly efficient in terms of how much extract you get from your grains (unlike some other all-grain methods of big beer production). The downside, of course, is that it takes time to do an extra mash in a brew session (but not really that much, as I found.)

I pitched the wort with German Bock Yeast (White Labs WLP833), aerated it heavily with oxygen and it's fermenting away right now. (Last time I used an Octoberfest strain and it didn't get very far in the primary fermentation.) As I did last time, I reserved 1 L of wort for kräusen, to pitch with White Labs Zurich Lager yeast (WLP885) and add to the main batch once primary fermentation winds down.

I took good notes and expect to write about this method of wort collection in the December issue of BYO. But first, I'll be brewing one more big beer - this time with three mashes. Just think, I'll be mashing the third grain bed with barleywine-strength wort as mash liquor.

In smaller beer news, I racked my "speed brew" to a keg and started force carbonating it today. It smelled and tasted promising -- a nice hop aroma (from First Gold hops), restrained fruitiness from the yeast (Safale S-04 dried) and a decent amount of malt character, given the strength of the beer. It looks like it will be a nice "summer bitter."

So, now I've got two "super lagers" fermenting, two Vienna lagers fermenting, a sour red ale conditioning and a "summer bitter/speed brew" carbonating. Next up on the brewing schedule (probably Sunday), an IPA. Mmmmm . . . IPA.

Back in Black

2007-05-07T20:24:00.000-05:00

I've been fairly busy for the first few months of this year, but my schedule for the next few months looks like it should be pretty normal. So, of course, I've decided to fill my "extra" time with brewing.

On Thursday of last week, I brewed a double batch of Vienna lager -- one carboy pitched with White Labs WLP920 (Old Bavarian Lager) yeast and the other pitched with Wyeast 2124 (Bohemian Lager) yeast. I tried 2124 on another Vienna lager I made recently and liked it, so I thought I'd try it on my "standard" Vienna recipe (which appeared in the January 2006 issue of BYO under the name Red Ball Express).

I bought a refractometer recently and the Vienna lager was the first full batch of beer that I got to use it on. Using the refractometer was very simple and I could get gravity readings in a couple seconds from a couple drops of wort -- a very cool brewing tool. I wish I had gotten one years ago.

At the last Austin ZEALOTS homebrew club meeting, we talked about doing a "speed brew." The idea was, I would post a beer recipe to our Yahoo email group the Friday before the meeting. Interested club members would brew it and bring it to the next meeting, just 8 days away. The recipe I posted on Friday was a low-gravity English ale, very similar to the Bonneville Flats Bitter recipe of mine in the May 2006 issue of BYO. The new recipe was a little lower in original gravity (1.036) and had a little dab of biscuit malt thrown in; otherwise, it was pretty much the same thing.

So Sunday night (6 days before the meeting), I brewed my batch of "speed brew," It's bubbling along nicely now. I'm hoping that it finishes fermenting by Wednesday. If so, I'll rack it to a keg on Thursday and carbonate it until Saturday, then bottle off a couple bottles and take it to the meeting. (I'm letting the beer force carbonate under pressure for three days rather than "shake carbonating" it at the last minute because I think you lose foam when you shake up a keg to carbonate it.)

So, in the not-too-distant future, I should have some homebrew ready to drink. My first "super lager" should be ready one of these weeks. The sour Flanders red is conditioning happily (I hope). The Viennas are doing nicely and the "speed brew" is sitting right behind me right now and I can hear the airlock blurping away. In the next few weeks, I should be brewing at least a beer a week and I'll keep this blog updated as I go.

Remembered Red, Forgotten Framboise

2007-03-06T20:17:00.000-06:00

Somewhere in the midst of the two months during which I didn't post any blog entries, I actually brewed a beer. A sour red beer.

In the Jan-Feb 2007 issue of BYO, there was an article on Flander's Red Ale. Among the recipes included in the story was one by Dan and Joelle Dewberry, two members of my homebrew club, the Austin ZEALOTS. Their beer had won Best of Show at the Homebrew Inquisition (the ZEALOTS annual homebrew contest) and I had discussed brewing a sour beer with them many times.

Well, we finally got together and brewed a sour beer -- the DewBrew Flanders Red recipefrom the story. We followed the recipe closely, with a slight adjustment of the amount of 2-row to account for extract efficiency. Dan and Joelle had a leftover package of Roeselare sour blend that they made two starters from. We made 10 gallons of wort and each got 5 gallons from the brewday. My bucket has been sitting behind my desk at home for weeks now. When I went to take it to my "sour beer conditioning room" -- an unused bathroom in our house -- I found a bucket containing a lambic I had made four years ago and had completely forgotten about.

I won't know how the red beer turned out until this fall, but I'll post an update when it's done -- or a month or so after.

I'll probably hold my breath and open the lambic bucket pretty soon now. If it's at all good, I'll probably add raspberries and make a "forgotten framboise."

Big Lager

2007-03-02T17:45:00.000-06:00

I brewed a big beer recently. My goal was to make a very big lager using an unusual technique -- using wort as my mash liquor and sparge water. And . . . it worked!

Here are the highlights of my brew day:

I mashed 12 lbs. of grains and flaked maize in my mash/lauter tun and collected 6 gallons of "light lager" wort in my kettle. This wort then became my mashing and sparging water, or mash liquor. My mash temperature was 151 °F, held for 20 minutes, yielding an OG of 1.044. I used a 5:1 mash thickness. I recirculated very briefly, then ran off the wort. I held the temperature at 151 °F, as best I could, the whole time (so the mash liquor would also be contributing enzymes to the main mash).

For the main mash, I scooped some of the mash liquor over to my HLT, leaving enough in my kettle to mash in around 6 lbs. of grain. The grains were Vienna, Pilsner and flaked maize, at a 5:1 mash thickness again. I mashed at 140 °F for an hour, 154 °F for 20 minutes, then mashed out to 170 °F. I then transferred the mash to my lauter tun, recirculated and ran off 5.5 gallons of wort, using wort as my sparge water (with 1.5 gallons of hot water used at the tail end of the sparge process). I boiled this down to 3 gallons in about 2.5 hours and had a wort around SG 1.120. I saved 1 liter of this wort in a sanitized media bottle to use as kräusen later.

The main thing I noticed about this process was that my boil time was greatly reduced. With the total grain bill of around 18 lbs., my normal procedure to hit a high gravity would have been to collect around 9-10 gallons of wort and boil this down to 3. This mostly likely would have taken 5-6 hours. The time spent in my brewday was, of course, at least partially offset by the added time mashing, but a shorter boil had one major benefit -- less color pickup. My 1.120 lager is several shades lighter than the equivalent 5-6 hour boil wort would have been.

I am very excited about the potential for this technique and will be experimenting with it further. When I get a decent amount of information, I will be writing about in BYO.

BTW, my Vienna/Pilsner lager turned out great -- one of the best lagers I've ever made. Too bad I've almost kicked the keg already.

Brewing Beer and Making Podcasts

2006-12-08T08:33:00.000-06:00

I decided not to brew my dry stout, but instead made a big starter and made a lager beer with a 50:50 blend of Vienna malt and Pilsner malt. No specialty malts.

I got a whole sack of Weyermann Vienna malt on my last trip to Austin Homebrew and I still have about a third of a sack of Briess Vienna left. I'm curious to see how much different they are. (My "Vienna malt liquor," by the way, is aging quite nicely. I should probably be letting it condition more, but I've been snagging a pint every day or so. It had a bit more diacetyl early on than I would have liked, but that is mellowing slightly. The level was never high enough to suggest a butterscotch flavor, but there was a certain "fullness" to the beer that can come at levels right on the edge of detection (for me, at least).)

For my Vienna/Pilsner lager, I step mashed with rests at 133 °F (56 °C), 140 °F (60 °C) and 154 °F (68 °C), then mashed out to 168 °F (76 °C). I collected enough wort for a 90-minute boil and went with a single addition of Tettnang hops, shooting for an IBU level of just below 20.

My brewing water was mostly distilled, with about 20% being my local water (charcoal filtered). I added a Campden tablet to the tap water the night before. The numbers were roughly 50 ppm carbonates and slightly more calcium. I also added some calcium chloride during the boil (1/4 tsp for this 6-gallon batch.)

I fermented the "V/P" lager at 50 °F (10 °C) -- the lowest I've ever gone on a lager; I usually shoot for mid 50's, sometimes higher, depending on the yeast strain. (I used Wyeast 2124 for this beer.) Right now, it's undergoing a diacetyl rest at 60 °F (16 °C). Once that’s done, I'll dump the "junk" out the bottom of the cone a couple times over a couple days and let it lager.

My porter turned out well. The FG was fairly high (around 1.020), but then, I expected it to be high given my mash schedule -- a single infusion for 30 minutes at 162 °F (72 °C) -- and the fact that I got a little higher OG (1.068) than I was shooting for.

My Cranberry Zinger turned out well. This year, I also added the zest from an orange - along with the two whole oranges already in the recipe - a couple days after racking the beer onto the fruit. Took the keg to Thanksgiving dinner and everyone seemed to enjoy it. I really like the nose on this beer - the orange came out very nicely.

In addition to brewing, drinking, writing about and editing manuscripts on the topic of beer, I've also been talking about beer. I've done a couple of podcasts interviews recently and have a couple planned for the near future. I'm going to be on the Brewing Network this Sunday night, discussing sour beers. I'm also going to be on an installment of Johnny Max's Brew CrAzY podcast fairly soon. We recorded the interview, on brewing very big beers, a week or so ago, I think the show comes out Dec 15^th. And of course, I've been a guest on James Spencer's Basic Brewing Radio podcast many times over the past year or so. In my latest interview, we talked about decoction mashing.

Finally, the Austin ZEALOTS Christmas party (and chili cook-off) is coming up. That's always a good time. We usually have a bunch of kegs and I'll probably bring a couple of mine, depending on what has conditioned (and I haven't sampled nearly to death).

Three Days, Two Beers

2006-11-10T16:05:00.000-06:00

On Tuesday, I brewed my porter. I usually brew this beer twice a year, so I've had the experience of brewing this recipe - more or less - over 20 times. Still, I usually fiddle with something every time I brew it, and this time it was mash temperature.

I have always gone with a one-hour single-infusion mash, but in recent years the temperature has been creeping up. When I first started, I would mash at around 150 °F (66 °C), but that has crept up to around 156 °F (69 °C) in recent years. On Tuesday, I went with a "short high" mash of 30 minutes at 162 °F (72 °C). It took me a little longer to recirculate than usual, but other than that, almost everything went as it always does. I collected enough wort for a 90-minute boil, boiled the wort, cooled it and ran it off to my fermenter.

One little surprise was my OG. I had bought the ingredients for this batch before I got my new mill. My efficiency has been a little better with the new mill and, with my porter, I got the best I've ever had yet - about 8% above my old average. I worry much more about beer quality than extraction efficiency, but I did get a kick out of getting a little more from my grains. I pitched the wort with a 2-qt. (~ 2 L) starter of Wyeast 1968 and it's bubbling away happily at 72 °F (22 °C) in an Igloo Ice Cube "swamp cooler."

I've been an all-grain brewer for 6 or 7 years now, and I brew most of my beers all-grain. Still, I have a couple I do with extract. One I've brewed for a couple years now is my Cranberry Zinger, which I make in preparation for Thanksgiving. This year, I went with a very simple formulation.

Thursday night, I heated 2.0 gallons (7.6 L) of distilled water to 180 °F (82 °C) and stirred in a can of hopped wheat malt extract syrup. I let the mixture steep (at around 170 °F/77 °C) for 15 minutes, then added 2.0 lbs. (0.91 kg) of honey and cooled the wort in my sink. When it was cool, I siphoned it to a carboy, added water, aerated and pitched two packets of dried yeast (US-56). The total amount of "hands-on" brewing time was minimal; I was actually mostly doing other things at the same time. I only went into the kitchen to do the next brewing step when I heard my timer go off.

When the honey-wheat base is done fermenting, I will make about 4.0 lbs. (1.8 kg) of cranberry relish - from cranberries, Granny Smith apples and whole oranges - and rack the beer on top of that. It should be ready for turkey day.

I'm not sure if I'm going to brew this weekend. I have a starter of White Labs WLP005 yeast made for my dry stout. (This is the strain White Labs used to call "Dry English Ale" and I think it works great in dry stouts. A nice option for those interested in trying something other than the Irish strains for a dry stout.) Then again, I've got three beers in primary and may wait until I've got those kegged before I brew again. (I can always revive the starter with a shot of fresh wort.)

40 oz. of Freedom

2006-11-07T13:05:00.000-06:00

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the Dixie Cup (the long-running homebrew competition held by the Foam Rangers, a homebrew club in Houston). Ashton Lewis - BYO's technical editor and Mr. Wizard columnist - was one of the speakers at their "milli-conference." He spoke on how stainless steel was manufactured and issues that would effect homebrewers, especially how to clean and otherwise take care of stainless vessels.

Ralph Olson of Hopunion was also there and spoke about trends in hop growing around the world. He also had photos of the hop warehouse that burned recently. His office, and four of his hop warehouses, was right next door. Bill Covaleski, one of the founders and brewers from Victory, also spoke. The speakers were great, and I really admire guys who can get up in front of a bunch of homebrewers that have been drinking barleywine since 8:30 in the morning.

I judged one flight of beers for the competition - dry stouts. There were some very nice dry stouts in the mix, but also a couple beers that I thought were clearly too big for the style. Inspired by a great homebrew conference, I got off my duff and brewed last week. You could call the beer I made an American Octoberfest, I guess, although I gave it a little more downscale moniker - Vienna malt liquor. It's basically a roughly SG 1.060 beer made with 20% flaked maize and the remainder of the grain bill split between 3.5 lbs. (1.6 kg) Pilsner and 5.25 lbs. (2.4 kg) Vienna malt. The bitterness target was only 13 IBUs, from Cluster hops, and lager yeast (Wyeast's 2007) for fermentation.

The brewday went well, I mashed in at a thickness of about 3:1 (1.5 qts./lb.) at 131 °F (55 °C) in my kettle. I immediately began ramping the temperature to 140 °F (60 °C). After 15 minutes, I ramped up to 153 °F (67 °C). After 20 minutes at this temperature, an iodine test showed that the starches were converted, so I went to mash out, transferred my mash to my lauter tun and wort collection.

At the beginning of the 90-minute boil, I added a pinch of calcium (calcium chloride). This is something I do with most of my lagers to help the wort drop to an appropriately low pH during the boil. One hop addition with an hour to go and 1 tsp. of Irish moss with 15 minutes were the only other kettle additions. I wasn't quite sure what my gravity would be, as this was only the second full all-grain beer I had brewed using my new grain mill. I guessed I would fall between OG 1.055 and 1.060 and the actual OG was 1.057.

This is also only the second time I've used my new conical fermenter. One thing I learned from my first use (a Vienna lager) was that I will need to dump the yeast a couple times during conditioning, to get it away from the beer. My American Octoberfest/Vienna malt liquor is bubbling away nicely at 50 °F (10 °C). I'm curious to see how it turns out.

Today, election day, I am going to brew my "house ale," a robust porter (OG 1.064; 51 IBUs) The starter is ready, I cleaned a bunch of carboys last night, so...it's time to brew!

Brew Weekend Update

2006-10-03T15:32:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday was the September meeting of the Austin ZEALOTS. My wife and I arrived a little early because we weren't sure if the meeting was at 6:30 or 7:00. Turns out the meeting was at 7:00, but by arriving early we did run into a group of pub crawlers from the Foam Rangers (from Houston). The Rangers had been drinking since about 9 AM and were living up to their "Drunks on a Bus" (á la Snakes on a Plane) T-shirts. They took off (to NXNW, an Austin brewpub) about 6:45 and by 7:00 or so, enough ZEALOTS arrived that we started the meeting.

I brought my Nelson Sauvin pale ale (mentioned in previous blogs). Most everyone seemed to like the hop variety, especially those who already liked Amarillo. I still have quite a few pellets left - enough for 2 to 3 more 5-gallon (19-L) batches - and will probably make some American pale ales with this and some C" hops sometime soon. (Or "soon.")

My Vienna lager is still lagering in my conical. I'll push it over to a Corny pretty soon, but I'm not in any rush now as I'm not sure when I'll be brewing next - hopefully in a week or so.

Busy Brewing Weekend

2006-09-18T13:08:00.000-05:00

OK, so I brewed both the Nelson Sauvin pale ale and the Vienna lager.

For the pale ale, I did a partial mash - 4 pounds (1.8 kg) of grain in my 2-gallon (7.6-L) cooler - and added 3 pounds (1.4 kg) of dried malt extract to make the wort. The partial mash was a mix of crystal malt (40 °L), crystal malt (60 °L) and Maris Otter. I boiled the full wort with my propane cooker, cooled with my immersion chiller and fermented in my swamp cooler.

The Vienna lager ended up being 100% Vienna malt. I mashed in at 131 °F (55 °C) in my kettle, with a fairly thin mash - around 2.0 qts/lb. (4.2 L/kg) - to bring out some of the malty/grainy notes from the Vienna malt. I started heating the mash immediately and ramped the temperature up by about 2 °F (~1 °C) per minute until I reached 154 °F (68 °C). I rested there for about 45 minutes, then heated the mash to 168 °F (76 °C). I took a bit of time to cool the wort down to near lager fermentation temperatures, but when I got it in the ballpark, I racked the wort to my new 7-gallon (26-L) stainless steel cylindro-conical fermenter. Normally, I stop siphoning from the kettle when I start getting "gunk" from the bottom, but this time I racked as much as I could into the fermenter and just dumped the crud out the bottom the next day. Very slick.

I ended up "kräusening" the pale ale once primary fermentation ended. I cooked up 1 quart (~1 L) of wort with a bunch of Nelson Sauvin hop added and added that when I racked to secondary. My idea was to get some more hop flavor and aroma into the beer that wouldn't blow off with a vigourous fermentation. The renewed fermentatin from the "kräusen" (it's not really called kräusen since it's an ale) was steady, but nowhere near as vigorous as a primary fermentation.

I fermented the Vienna at 53 °F (12 °C) in my chest freezer (with override thermostat). Once the fermentation wound down, I let the temperature rise to 60 °F (16 °C) for two days for a diacetyl rest.

Sunday night (last night), I racked the pale ale to keg. I also dumped the yeast from the Vienna lager and dialed the temperature in my chest freezer down to 40 °F (4.4 °C). The pale ale tasted very promising. The lager, like all green lagers, tasted like crap - but that should improve with time.

Back At It

2006-09-01T13:07:00.000-05:00

OK, so I haven't brewed in awhile. It's a long story, but the short version is this - once you buy a rototiller, every available patch of your lawn that gets sun during the day looks like it needs to be turned into a garden patch. Gardens, in turn, need to be tended. Hence, I haven't brewed in awhile. But, with Labor Day on Monday, it's a three-day weekend. Time to knock out a couple batches of beer.

First off, I'm brewing a pale ale with a new variety of hops - Nelson Sauvin. This is a New Zealand hop I first tasted recently on a press tour of Anheuser-Busch's Elk Mountain Farm, which grows Saaz and Hallertau hops. At a dinner during the event, the brewer at their R and D plant in St. Louis served some pale ales. Each was made with the same malt bill, but hopped with a different single hop, including Santiam, Safir and Nelson Sauvin. I really liked the Nelson Sauvin and the brewer (Florian Kuplent) gave me a bag of pellets (and also some whole Safir and Santiam).

To me, Nelson Sauvin was very reminiscent of Amarillo, which I love. I hope to have this beer ready to serve at the next Austin ZEALOTS meeting. (By the way, in a similar vein, I thought John Brack's (JB's) Newahtarillo Pale Ale - which he brewed with Newport, Ahtanum and Amarillo hops and brought to one of the last ZEALOTS meetings - was great. I also liked Kerry Martin's watermelon ale that he brought to the picnic. It actually gave me an idea that I'll blog about later if I actually do it. The basic idea is this: in the spring, I'll be growing a variety of watermelon (Black Diamond) that can reach 70 pounds (32 kg). In a recent BYO, we featured a guy who fermented some beer in a pumpkin. From the size of the pumpkin, he must have fermented about a gallon of beer; I'm wondering if I can't ferment 5 gallons inside a giant hollowed-out watermelon. (Also, I wonder if I could mash inside a melon? Hmm. But I digress.)

For the pale ale, I'm going with the malt bill from my APA (which appeared in the March-April 2006 BYO as Patrick Henry Pale Ale) and Nelson Sauvin at 60 minutes, 15 minutes and at knockout. I'm going to shoot for around 40 IBUs, and use around 0.75 ounces (21 g) for the 15-minute and 0-minute additions. Nice and hoppy, but not over-the-top. I also want to see how the hop works with the malt.

I'll probably brew the pale ale on Sunday. On Monday, I'm thinking Vienna lager. For one thing, I love Vienna lager. For another, I want to impress Ashton Lewis, our technical editor and Mr. Wizard columnist, who will be speaking at the Dixie Cup this year. Last time he was in Texas, I didn't have any homebrews bottled up to give him.

And, I think Vienna lager is a style that is not only awesome, but one for which you can really show your skill as a brewer. I'll also be bringing some BYO's 10^th Anniversary Ale, which I brewed last year around this time and turned out great, to the Cup.

So, I'll need to make a yeast starter tonight for the Vienna lager. I'm making 5 gallons, so I'll probably go with a 3 quart (~3 L) starter at a specific gravity around 1.030-1.040. For the pale ale, I'm going for a quick brewday. I'm doing a 2-gallon (7.6-L) partial mash and using DME for the rest of the extract. I'll do a full-wort boil out on my porch, cool it down and pitch a couple packets of dried yeast (US-56). For the pale ale, I'll just use my swamp cooler; the lager will go in my chest freezer. (I'll also be using my new 7-gallon (26-L) stainless steel cylindro-conical fermenter for the first time. I'm psyched.)

This afternoon, I'm going to run into Austin to get my CO² tanks filled, then back to Bastrop to get my wife, then back into Austin later to watch the movie Beerfest with some of the ZEALOTS. And OK, maybe I'll sneak a little gardening in this weekend as well.

A Little Bit About Yeast Starters

2006-07-31T10:50:00.000-05:00

OK, so I'll start my weblog with a blog about yeast starters. I made four yeast starters last night, but in an unusual way - I made all-grain yeast starters. Why would I take the extra time to mash some grains just to make a yeast starter?

Well, I'm writing a story on partial mashing for an upcoming issue of BYO and was trying out a couple partial mashes with some pale malt. After trying out the options I wanted to try out and taking the temperature measurements I wanted to take, I ended up with a couple gallons of wort. Not wanting to waste it, I brought the wort to a boil, added some old Willamette hops and made some starter wort. I've got the ingredients for a few batches of beer, so hopefully I'll be using these starters soon.
If I can editorialize a bit here - and, given that this is my blog, I think I can - I'd just like say that running a good fermentation is the aspect that most often separates good homebrew from bad homebrew. And, pitching an adequate amount of yeast is one of the biggest keys to conducting a good fermentation (especially for big beers). So, I always make a yeast starter whenever I brew. It takes a little more time and energy, but - for me - it's totally worth it.

Welcome To The Brew Blog

2006-06-28T09:51:00.000-05:00

In college in South Dakota, my favorite beer was Old Milwaukee - mostly because it was five bucks a case. When I moved to Boston, I discovered beers such as Harpoon Ale, Sam Adams Boston Ale, and Dock Street Amber Ale. The hop flavor and aroma of these beers were awesome and the first thing I tried to brew was something with a big hop nose.

Now I live in Texas and still brew hoppy pale ales, but I also make porters, dry stouts, amber lagers, sour beers, and other weird, unique creations. I'm going to talk about them all right here at Brew Your Own's Brew Blog, so check back in from time to time and see what I've been brewing.