Bottling Update

It looks like I need to brush up on my bottle conditioning.

I have recently bottled four batches:  Maggie, Benedict, Jobe, and Simcoemech.  At bottling, these all were easily my top four best beers ever brewed.  However, something's gone a bit awry in the few weeks since then.

Maggie and Benedict appear to be fine.  Every bottle I've opened of these two has been consistently carbed with one another, with no off flavors.  Jobe and Simcoemech, however, not so much.

Jobe:  This is my Citra Nelson Cream Ale.  4.8% abv at 1.008 FG.  This beer was very slow to carbonate--something that was not expected, but was also not particularly surprising.  I hit this beer pretty hard in secondary with gelatin and a 2 week cold crash, trying to get it as clear as possible.  Not sure how much yeast made it into the bottling bucket.  This could certainly be a cause of the slow carb time.  That's not really a big deal, but what is alarming is the subtle phenolic bite in some (not all) of the bottles--the kind of off flavor that's usually associated with stressed out yeast from underpitching.  This batch was definitely not underpitched, and there was no sign of this off flavor up to and including bottling.  And it's not every bottle.  Some bottles are fantastic!  Perfectly carbonated, crisp and quenching, with a slight fruity nuance from the late Nelson Sauvin addition.  And clear.  Others have failed to carb completely and present this phenolic bite.  I'm thinking I should have added a bit of dry yeast to the bottling bucket, and may not have gotten the priming solution to mix fully with the beer.

Simcoemech:  This is my all-Simcoe APA modeled after Russian River's R2H56.  4.7% abv at 1.012 FG.  Unbelievable Simcoe flavor and aroma.  This one's going down quick.  Problem is, not all bottles are equal.  As with Jobe, some of the bottles are carbing much slower than others.  Luckily there's none of that phenolic off flavor that Jobe has--either the hops are masking it, or more likely it's just not there.  This beer did not undergo the rigors of fining that Jobe did.

Pictured is a perfectly carbed Simcoemech.  Most of the bottles I've opened have been like this.  Unfortunately, not all.  One or two has been severely undercarbed, and yesterday I opened one that was a gusher.  When I pried off the cap, it popped with pronounced force.  First pour was hazy and chunky with hop "flavor crystals."  There is a fine layer of hop matter at the bottom of each bottle, and I'm fine with that.  Honestly it gives me the option to have a clearer version or choose a more hazy, "Vermont-style" hoppy beer (second option by gently rolling the bottle on the counter Hefeweisen style before opening).  This bottle was neither rolled or shaken in any way.  the hops being roused from the bottom of the bottle was related to the carbonation level, I'm sure.  It did not show any signs of infection; bit too early for that to take hold anyway.  The only thing I can think of is that I didn't fully mix the priming solution in the batch, resulting in some undercarbed, some overcarbed, and some perfectly carbed bottles.

I just hope the bottles I've recently shared with others have been good ones.

I used the basic technique of dropping the priming solution in the bucket first, then gently syphoning the beer on top of the solution.  This is the technique I've always used, and I guess it's always worked ok for me.  With future batches, however, I will use a sanitized spoon to gently stir the concoction for a few minutes before proceeding with bottling.  Hopefully that will take care of the problem.  And with my excessively "cleared" beers, I'll look into dosing the bottling bucket with a small amount of fresh yeast.  Might be counterproductive after all the fining and cold crashing, but maybe the only way to get really really clear beer without adverse side effects is to force carb.

Cheers!

The Dilema of Scale--to brew 12 gallons or 6

In a previous post, I made the assertion that some beers should be brewed in 12 gallon batches and others should be brewed in 6.  That was at a time when I brewed exclusively 6 gallon batches.  I thought of them as "half batches" on my equipment, and brewed half batches by choice.  Who needs more than two cases of beer from a batch?  Not me, I thought.  But the 12 gallon batch thing was prompted by the discovery that the less headspace I left in the mash tun, the better the mash held temp.  Since that realization, brewing 12 gallon batches has helped a lot with my sub-1045 beers--Blonde Ale, Cream Ale, 70/-, and Patersbier--holding them to the degree for the entire 90 minutes.

I should probably be honest with myself and accept the fact that brewing 6 gallon batches of most of my brews is plenty.  However, after bottling two 12 gallon batches recently (about 4 cs each of Cream Ale and Patersbier), on Thursday I bottled a six gallon batch of Simcoemech (a Simcoelicious APA modeled after Russian River's Row 2 Hill 56).  It smelled so freaking good.  I found myself standing over two full cases of this obviously amazing beer and regretting not having more.  Not a single bottle had been consumed--won't even be ready for at least two weeks--and already I was lamenting the fact that they will be gone far too quickly.

It got me thinking.  Could I brew a 12 gallon batch of Simcoemech?  Problem is, this is a 1.048 OG beer, and I have always considered 1.045 to be the upper limit for 12 gallon batches.  This is because, a 1.045 beer requires about 17.5 lbs of grain for 12 gallons, and that amount of grain plus 22 quarts of water (1.25 qts/lb) fills the cooler all the way to the top.  So how can I fit this 18.5 pound grain bill in my 10 gallon cooler?  I really really want to.  But at 1.25 qts per gallon, the infusion of water with the grain would overflow the mash tun.

Why does the water:grain ratio need to be 1.25?  This is what all my recipes are formulated to.  But it's not an absolute.  The only absolute is that my cooler holds 10 gallons and no more.  What if I play with this ratio a little?  General guidance is that it should be between 1.10 and 1.25 quarts per pound.  So with this in mind, and with Beersmith's "mash volume needed" calculation, I did a little exploring and came up with some theoretical limits.

Turns out, at a water to grain ratio of 1.10 qts/lb, I can brew 12 gallons of up to a 1.051 OG beer.  This assumes 87% efficiency, which is usually what I get on my 12 gallon batches.  That's 19.5 pounds of grain and 21.5 quarts of water, which according to Beersmith will produce a mash volume of 9.95 gallons and fill the cooler.  Pretty tight, but it can be done.

 This includes a mash out at 168, also not an absolute.  If we drop the mashout infusion, looks like we can go up to a 24 pound grain bill at 1.1 qts/lb before overflowing.  That's a 12 gallon batch at up to 1.063 without a mash out!  Wow!

I don't think I'll test any of these limits in reality, but the good news here is that I should be able to brew a 12 gallon batch of Simcoemech with relative ease, just by adjusting my water to grain ratio.

Here are some stats on the brew:

Batch size:  12 gallons
Original Gravity:  1.048
Total grain:  18.5 pounds
Total water in mash:  34 quarts
Ratio:  1.1 qts/lb mash in; 1.84 qts/lb mash out
Mash volume:  9.95 gallons

Of course this is all hypothetical until I actually brew it.  Wish me luck!

Maggie--Berliner Weisse 1.0

Maggie is almost fully carbed and looking sexy as hell in my Konings Hoeven goblet.  Smells and tastes phenomenal.  Noticeably tart on the nose with a bit of malty sweetness confessing the fact that it did not attenuate fully.  Nice refreshing tartness on the palate, again with some residual sweetness.  Very crushable on a hot afternoon in spite of a mouthfeel that's slightly too heavy for the style.  Color is also off--way too "golden."  A proper Berliner Weisse needs to be much more light and much more white.

So this beer is far from perfect, but as perfect rarely wins the day, I'm declaring this a huge success.

My next go at this beer will be drier, lighter, and hopefully much more sour. Version 2.0 is already on the drawing board, and hopefully I will get a chance to brew it soon. Just a few changes:

1. Increasing white wheat to 50% of grain bill. This should hopefully lighten the color a bit.
2. Cooling only to 120 before pitching unmilled grains. This should give the mash more time in the lacto temp zone, and I should be able to extend the souring rest to 72-96 hours for a hopefully more puckering tartness.
3. Pitching a slurry of Kolsch yeast instead of Cal ale. Also over-pitching slightly. I used an appropriately sized slurry for a 1.032 wort, but based on multiple comments on HBT, that may not have been enough in this acidic wort.
4. I've also dialed in the recipe as much as I could in Beersmith. In particular, if the software is accurate, then the second temperature infusion should take the temperature of the mash directly from 149 all the way down to 120 in a matter of minutes.

Hopefully Maggie 2.0 will be sour enough to warrant some fruit syrup additions in the glass. Only time will tell.

Packaging my Beers--A Journey of Iterations

I've put a hold on kegging until I have a proper setup, so last week, I bottled fifteen gallons of beer.  That's roughly six cases.

Packaging, for me, has been a journey of iterations.  Like most homebrewers, in the beginning I bottled.  It was a chore.  Tedious.  Laborious.  Messy.  I actually preferred the task of cleaning over that of bottling.  After a few years, I purchased a kegging setup (tank, regulator, picnic tap and one Cornelius keg).  A few batches later, I made the decision to keg exclusively.  The more I listened to Jamil Zainasheff on the Brewing Network, the more I heard the message repeated that kegging was necessary if I wanted to improve my beer, dial in carbonation, clarity, etc. If I wanted, I could always fill a few bottles off the tap, but no more mass bottling of 48-96 bottles at a time.  Already predisposed to abandon the dreaded chore of bottling, all I heard was:

"kegging > bottling"

And I bit.  Hook, line, and sinker.  Every batch I brewed in the past 18 months went into kegs.  The vision was to build a four tap keezer with chrome faucets.  A proper way to store and dispense my beers.  That will happen some day, but it hasn't yet.  The 7 cubic foot chest freezer that was originally purchased for that project has been promoted to the much more important role of fermentation control.  Kegs of homebrew went into our basement side-by-side fridge (a few shelves and drawers removed) to be dispensed via picnic tap.  Functional enough, but I know it was an eye-sore for my wife.  Add that to the fact that I didn't have any bottled beers to share outside the house.  Wasn't happy with the carb level from the DIY beer gun, and growler fills were the same story.

Turns out it's not quite as simple as the formula above.  Kegging may be better than bottling in some cases, but bottling may be better in others.  I realize that when Jamil says "kegging > bottling" (you do know I'm paraphrasing), that's really part of his "how to win at competitions" theme.  If you have the proper equipment and master the technique, you can bottle already-carbonated beer from the keg and send it off to comps without fear of yeast sediment being shaken into suspension from poor handling by others.  Sounds great, but I don't need to worry about that right now.

Truth is, some styles should be bottle conditioned, and many styles actually benefit from it.  Don't get me wrong; I don't like a ton of yeast sludge in the bottom of any beer, but that is easily dismissed with proper patience in the fermenter, cold crashing, possibly even fining, and good racking technique.

So I'm bottling again.  The day will come when I will package my beers both ways:  bottle conditioned and force carbed in kegs.  But until I have a basement bar with a 4 tap keezer, I'll have to be content with bottle conditioning all of my beers.

Brewing a Berliner Weisse

I really have no idea what I'm doing, so let's call this an experiment.

Berliner Weisse is an ancient German style that predates the Reinheitsgebot and an official regional exception to the law.  It is basically a light bodied, low abv sour wheat beer.  Berliner Weisse was almost extinct a few years ago, with just one or two breweries in or around Berlin still brewing the style, only for very local consumption.  Recently, however, the style has experienced a reboot as American craft breweries took an interest in it, and there are now several commercial examples on the market.

There are several techniques that a modern homebrewer can use to achieve sourness in a Berliner Weisse, but authentically the sourness should come from a Lactobacillus Delbruckii (lacto) bacterial fermentation.

My attempt employs a sour mash.  I chose this technique for two reasons:  1.  It is likely the most historically accurate technique, and 2.  According to people who know more than I do, this technique should yield a more complex and nuanced flavor profile than other techniques.

Other techniques would include anything from simply adding lactic acid into a clean fermented beer before bottling, to adding a commercial lacto culture in primary with or without a clean ale yeast (saccharomyces cervacae) or wild ale yeast (brettanomyces), to souring the wort with lacto in the boil kettle for 12-72 hours before boiling.

I chose a full sour mash.  After mashing my grist (60% German pilsner malt, 40% wheat malt) at 149f for 90 minutes, I allowed the temperature of the mash to drop to 110 (top of the optimal temperature range for lacto growth).  Once it hit 110, I added a few cups of uncrushed 2-row malt.  Dormant Lactobacillus naturally exists on the outer surface of all brewers malt, and it will become active, reproduce, ferment, etc if given the right environment.  A 104-111f gruel of sugary goodness just happens to be the right environment.  However, all of the lacto present in our grist was likely killed off in the 149 degree mash, so it was necessary for me to add fresh grain into the mash once it cooled to 110.  A few cups into this 5 gallon batch should be enough to get this party started.

Currently, I am 24 hours into the souring phase of this project, and things appear to be going well.  The mash is sitting at 100f, with a pronounced funky sour aroma.  I can't claim the smell is exactly pleasant, but it's also not really unpleasant in any way.  The grist has dropped ten degrees in 24 hours, so if it continues to drop at that rate, tomorrow around 8pm will be as good a time as any to complete the runoff, sparge, and boil the sour wort.

Below, I'll detail the steps of the process so far, and I will continue to add to this post as the process moves forward.

The First 24 Hours

The Mash

I picked up a cheap five gallon cooler and converted it into a crude mash tun.  I replaced the spigot with an old 1/4" stainless steel spigot I had lying around.  I then inserted a five gallon paint strainer bag into the cooler, wrapping the opening of the bag around the rim of the cooler and securing with a large rubber band.  Like I said, crude.  But this should work just fine as a false bottom for the time being.  If this works well, I will probably dedicate this piece of equipment to sour mashes.

Mashing in.  pilsner malt, wheat malt,
some acid malt and a handful of rice hulls
in about 2 gallons of water to settle
at 149.

Resting at 149 for 90 minutes.

The Pitch

An unmeasured amount of fresh 2 row
(let's call it a bunch) waiting to be stirred
into a 110f mash.

Almost there.

The Souring

Blankets keep my kids warm; why wouldn't
a blanket help keep this cooler warm? Here's
where it will rest for the next 48ish hours.

The lacto laden grains have been stirred into
the mash.  I wrapped the entire cooler in
plastic, partly hoping to hold in heat, mostly
in the superstitious hope of preventing the lid
from blowing off as fermentation picks up

24 hours in, the mash has a distinct
funky sour aroma.

48 Hour Sour

Tuesday, April 22.  Currently my Berliner is in the fermenter, happily bubbling away with a nice healthy pitch of Cal Ale yeast in the low 60's.  Things seem to be going smoothly, and I am excited at the prospect that I will soon have a nice, light, clean Berliner Weisse.

Yesterday I arrived home from work around 8pm, perfect timing to move this beer along to the next step in its evolution.  I removed the cooler lid to find the mash holding at 90f with a pleasantly sour aroma.  In 48 hours time, it had only dropped 20 degrees.  That's great news.

On advice from another member on HBT, I conducted a double decoction to raise the mash temp up to 170 for a proper mash out.  This temperature rise accomplished two things:  it stopped the lacto fermentation, and more importantly, it reduced the viscosity of the sugary wort for a more efficient runoff.

Bringing the first decoction to a boil.

After the second infusion, the entire mash was up to 170, which meant it was time to begin running the sweet wort off the grist.  There were several "firsts" for me during this mash.  

1. This was my first sour mash.  Seems to have gone well, still holding at 90 after 48 hours.  Nice bready sauerkraut aroma with no off smells (vomit, baby diaper, roadkill, etc) that would be indicators of undesirable bacteria other than lacto.  I learned that lacto actually likes temps up to 122 as the top of its range, so next time I will pitch my unmilled grains and begin the souring rest at this temp.  I could probably get another 24 hours out of the souring rest, yielding a much more puckering tartness in the finished beer.
2. This was my first decoction mash.  Necessity pushed me to attempt a technique I had admired from afar for quite some time.  Turns out it's not nearly as difficult or cumbersome as I'd imagined, and now that the intimidation factor is out of the way, I will probably use a decoction mash in the near future for a nice complex, malty German lager with a drying finish (I'm lookin' at you, Helles Bock).
3. Finally, this was also my first batch sparge.  Not a big deal, but it was my first.  I had the ability to fly sparge, but it would have meant getting out extra equipment at 10:30 at night.  It also would have meant sparging with the lid off and massive heat loss.  Why bother with that when it was just as easy to do a two step batch sparge and end up with the same volume and gravity of wort into the kettle...

The cloudy, sweet/ sour wort slowly
fills the kettle.

Not everything went as planned last night, however.  Just as I sat my 5.5 gallons of sour wort on the Blichmann floor burner to boil, I ran out of propane.  Checked the other tank:  empty.  Ugh.  To the stovetop I went, with my 15 gallon kettle.  Luckily it was only a five gallon batch, even luckier it was only a 15 minute boil.  The stove struggled just a bit, even though I covered the kettle with foil while ramping up the boil.  Once boiling, foil removed, I never did achieve the strong rolling boil I get with the Blichmann, but it was definitely boiling and I did get a measurable boil off, even in that short 15 minutes.

Ran it through my plate chiller and managed to knock out about 5 gallons into the fermenter at 64 degrees.  Perfect.  Pitched some Cal Ale slurry and moved it into my fermentation chamber for the next phase of its life.

Bottling Day

Wednesday, May 7.  Looks like my Berliner Weisse has finished at around 1.010.  That's a bit high for the style, but the ale yeast is definitely finished.  It's been in primary for fifteen days, and the hydrometer reading has not moved in over a week.  With that knowledge, and confident that there's no live lacto left in the beer since boiling, I went ahead and bottled.

I managed to get twenty 500ml and thirteen standard 12oz bottles out of the batch.  Couldn't be more psyched about this beer.  Taste of the bottling sample was phenomenal!  Not sure why it only dropped to 1.010, but I'm not sweating it at all.  Plenty of unknowns with this batch.  I didn't take any pre-fermentation gravity readings, have no idea what my mash efficiency was or what my abv is.None of that is important.  The most important--the only truly important--thing about this batch is that I had a successful lacto sour mash which yielded a freaking delicious sour ale that will not last long.

I will need to do this again very soon.  

There will be no more edits to this post.  The next time this beer will be featured on this blog will be in an inevitable write-up on the finished beer in a few weeks.

Prost!

New Brew, New Mod

I need to stop saying this, but it's been way too long since I've posted.  Of course there hasn't really been any action in the past few months, until this week.

When finished, it will be as clear, crisp
and light as a Miller Lite.  And smell like a
NZ Sauvignon Blanc.

Had a great brew day with my sister last Sunday.  We brewed a 12 gallon batch of Citra Nelson Cream Ale, pitched half with Cal Ale yeast, the other with Kolsch.

I drew a sample today for a 7 day gravity reading.  Both sides are sitting around 1010-1012, but the Kolsch side is the clear winner in flavor and aroma--so clean, and the Nelson really shines--but that may change in time.  My intention is to blend the two at bottling.  Hoping to shave off a few more gravity points, so I gently rocked both carboys to rouse the yeast back into suspension and I'll take another reading on Tuesday.




Today I also hit my brew kettle with a little science... and ended up with this:

Volume markings, permanently etched into the stainless steel.  This little project, like all my best homebrew related inspirations, came from a thread on homebrewtalk.com.  So easy to do, and a permanent solution that I actually prefer over the more expensive option of installing a sight glass.

I followed the steps laid out in post one of the thread.  Here is my mod step by step in pictures:

STEP 1: How high is a gallon in this kettle?

A gallon jug is flimsy and imprecise, but a gallon of
water weighs 8.34 pounds all day long...

Kettle is on a level surface,
so markings are dead on.

 

One gallon = 34 cm in my kettle.  So I
made a Sharpie mark every 34 cm.  YMMV.

STEP 2:  Taped off gallon marks, added stencil numbers

This kettle is ready for some science to be
perpetrated upon it.

STEP 3:  Prepared the Etching Tool

This entire project is based on a 9v battery,
two lengths of copper wire, a Qtip, and
a solution of vinegar and salt.

Positive lead attaches to
the kettle.

Negative lead goes to the swab;
wire needs to contact the
electrolyte acid solution
(salty vinegar)

STEP 4:  Etched this thing!

The etching tool, dipped in the electrolyte solution,
completes the circuit when in contact with the kettle,
and actually removes metal when in contact.
The sizzle says it's working.