Wheat Beer: One for the ladies

  Generally speaking my test for whether or not I have made a good beer is to give it to my female friends.  When the look on their face is utter distaste, I know I have a winner.  Unfortunately that is not necessarily a good thing when you are trying to create a beer list for a brew pub (remember that is the main inspiration for brewing. That, and because beer is delicious).  In order to appeal to the fairer sex I decided to make a wheat beer. The concept is a mix between an american wheat and a belgian witbier.

Ingredients:
Grains:
Wheat Malt
2-row
Flaked Wheat
Flaked Oats

Hops:
Hallertauer
Saaz

Yeast:

Wyeast Belgian Witbier 

Misc:

Orange Peel

Irish  Moss

Mashed at 156 for a sweeter, maltier taste.  

The color after mashing was opaque and very light.

5 minutes before the end of the boil I added the rind of 6 oranges.

The color after the boils is a darker, opaque white.

After a week of fermentation I bottled 1/4 of the batch (~12 bottles).  The beer tastes a lot like a blue moon AFTER you already added the orange.

Why only 12 bottles you ask? Well, that's when things got crazy.  I decided to split the batch a total of 4 ways.  I am not a huge fan of wheat beers (even delicious ones that this one obviously will be), so I figured if there were only 12 bottles of each kind then I could conceivably drink it all.  To each batch I added something different.  To one: raspberries, to the second: pineapple, and the third I dry hopped with centennial hops.

After a week the beers took on the characteristics of the fruit that was added.  In the case of the raspberry, the beer literally sucked the color right out of the fruit, leaving the beer pink and the berries white.

Bottling the separate batches was a little more tedious than I realized. Well, than I realized before it was too late. About three days after added the fruit, when I was planning the bottling, I came to understand the added work I had created for myself.  Because the beer was coming from three separate vessels I had to re-clean and re-santize everything between each batch. That includes the bottling bucket, the siphoning tube, and the bottling tubes.  Not to mention re-starting a siphon every time.  To add to the work the fruit kept getting stuck in the tubing.  That being said, the final result was 12 bottles of 4 different wheat beers, not bad for a days work.

1. Standard wheat (orangey)
2. Raspberry wheat
3. Pineapple wheat
4. Dry hopped wheat

In the future I will not split a batch of beer so many ways.  The added work is not exactly worth it.  Splitting a batch 2 (maybe 3) ways is more than enough.


In bottles: coffee porter, ipa, brown ale, wheat (all 4)
Fermenting: blonde ale (behind on the posting)
On deck: IPA take 2 with some improvements

 

Bottling 101

Bottling is far and away the most labor intensive part of the homebrewing process.  As with every aspect of the brewing, sanitation is the key to success when bottling.  The same environment that yeast thrive in happens to be the same environment that every other organism that could ruin your beer thrives in.  The hard part of bottling is sanitizing every bottle.  If you are re-using bottles and find one with mold, I recommend throwing it out. Although you can feasibly clean and sanitize the bottle, is it really worth the risk? You need to wash and then sanitize every bottle (these days I use star-san rinse free sanitizer).  Although it is rinse free, I rinse each bottle right before I fill it with beer to make sure that the bottle is clean. In addition to sanitizing the bottles you need to boil the bottle caps for at least 15 minutes.

Once the bottles are all sanitized you must boil the priming sugar for 10-15 minutes.  I use a cup of priming sugar and a cup of water.  The yeast convert the priming sugar into carbon dioxide and the pressure inside the bottle that is created carbonates the beer. It's science.

In order to bottle, you need to siphon the beer from the fermenter to the bottling bucket.  This is the point in which the priming sugar mixture is added to the beer.  The force of the siphoning beer is sufficient enough to mix the two.

Two necessary tools for the job include a bottling attachment and a bottle capper (big red thing).  The bottling attachment is a spring loaded tip that attaches to the bottling hose.  It only dispenses beer when the tip is pressed to the bottom of the bottle. When the bottle is filled you pull out the tube and a perfect amount of head space is left in the bottle.

Once you fill a bottle it is best to immediately place a cap loosely on the top of the bottle and continue filling all of the bottles.  Only after all the bottles are filled should you seal the bottles tight with the capper.  The purpose of this step is to allow the yeast to create enough CO2 to push the oxygen out of the top of the bottle.  Oxygen in beer can contribute off flavors, so this is one extra step to help improve the taste of your beer.  When the bottles are filled seal them all with capper and you're done! (well sort of)   It takes 2-4 weeks for the beer to condition.  After 3 weeks you can finally drink.  I have read that you should put the beer in the fridge for 2-3 days before drinking for best results, but let's be honest, after waiting 5 weeks, I pop one in the freezer and drink it 30 minutes later.

Brown Ale

I have been very busy over the last month, both in life, and with brewing. So busy, in fact, that I have fallen way behind on writing these posts.  This begins the first of a few rapid fire posts re-capping the last month (in which I brewed three beers).

A week after the IPA I brewed a brown ale.  Shout out to Clemente for doing the brunt work on the recipe.  As you probably noticed the majority of the beers I have made up until the now are leaning more towards the 'extreme' side.  Double IPAs, coffee porters, and jalapeno chocolate stouts, while delicious, are not exactly beers for newcomers to the craft beer world.  With that I wanted to make a beer that could be enjoyed by even the newest member of the craft beer club (a first time customer to my theoretical brew pub perhaps?).  This brown ale is meant to be a good session ale.  BeerAdvocate defines a session beer:

session beer (noun)

Any beer that contains no higher than 5 percent ABV, featuring a balance between malt and hop characters (ingredients) and, typically, a clean finish - a combination of which creates a beer with high drinkability. The purpose of a session beer is to allow a beer drinker to have multiple beers, within a reasonable time period or session, without overwhelming the senses or reaching inappropriate levels of intoxication. (Yes, you can drink and enjoy beer without getting drunk.) 


Brewing Details:


Ingredients:
Grains:
2-row malt
Crystal malt
Amber malt
Chocolate malt

Hops:
East Kent Goldings
Hallertau
Willamette

Yeast:
American Ale

Misc:
Brown Sugar

OG: 1.050
FG: 1.016
ABV: 4.5%


After the coffee porter coming in too light in terms of mouth feel I wanted to make sure this brown ale was a little fuller bodied and that the malt character would shine through.  In order to make that happen I mashed at a higher temperature (155-156).  

Here is a photo of the wort during lautering/sparging.  Lautering is the process of removing the wort form the spent grains.  Sparging is the act of pouring hot water (~180 degrees) over the spent grains to rinse the remaining sugars from the grains.

I boiled for the usual 1 hr. I used whole Kent Goldings hops (because I had them leftover from a previous beer) for bittering, Hallertau (pellet hops) for finishing, and Willamette (pellet as well) for aroma.  A pound of brown sugar was also added to enhance the flavor. After boiling the wort was cooled and the yeast was pitched.  The brown ale then joined the IPA in the closet to ferment.

To my surprise this was the first time that I had two fermenters full with beer at the same time.  I actually had to postpone brewing the brown ale in order to go buy a second air lock.

The brown ale was bottled in the same weekend as the IPA (there will be a separate post for that), and today I had the first taste.

This is a delicious beer!  It fits all the requirements laid out for a session ale:  malty, well balanced, low alcohol, clean finish, and easy to drink.   The color is a very nice dark brown. The aroma is malty and subtle.  You can taste the maltiness, the brown sugar,  and there is a nice coffee note that compliments the overall flavor. The finish leaves you reaching for another sip before you even put down the glass.  I am very pleased with this beer. When I brew it again I won't change a thing.

first all-grain IPA

Last Thursday I brewed an original recipe all-grain IPA.  After two days of heated back and forth between myself and now west coast living brew partner Clemente we finally decided upon a recipe.

Ingredients:

2 row malt
Crystal 60L malt
Flaked Barley

Centennial Hops
Amarillo Hops
Cascade Hops

Safale 05 yeast

Irish moss

The grains are simple. A little crystal for color and flaked barley for head retention.  In my opinion IPA's should be about the hops.  Deciding which hops, how many, and when to add them to the boil was a tedious task and the center of discussion.  Hopefully we got it right.

This time around I wasn't distracted by making a wort chiller, so I did a much better job at maintaining the mash temperature that I wanted.

The color coming out of the mash tun was a nice light golden color.  After the boil it darkened a bit to golden/copper.

Another process improvement: I made an attachment for the wort chiller so that I do not have to hold the hose to the faucet for 45 minutes.  This was fantastic and I wish I had done it last time.  The added water pressure being hooked up to the sink as opposed to being shot through with the bottle washer cut the cooling time in half.

The IPA is now in the glass carboy for secondary fermentation.  I had a taste of it before I put it in the secondary and I have high hopes for this one.   The aroma is a little weak, so next time I will definitely increase the last bit of cascade hops a little.  Other than that it promises to be very delicious!

OG: 1.048*
FG: 1.017
ABV: ??%

In order to take the initial gravity you need to take a sample of the wort.  My method for doing this was to collect some in a cup as it poured out of the kettle and into the fermentor.  I did this because I felt it was slightly more sanitary than sticking a tube into the fermentor and extracting some of the wort (although I don't know why I was concerned considering that's how I did it 20 times before and never had a problem).  I think the issue with this is that the wort was not mixed completely when I took the sample, and I got a gravity reading far below what it should have been.  There are three possible causes for this low reading: 1. I did something horrible wrong and the actual gravity is 1.048. 2. The hydrometer is broken. 3. The reason stated above, that the wort was not mixed.  I checked the hydrometer and it is not broken, and the final gravity of 1.017 suggests that the starting gravity was actually closer to 1.063.  So I am leaning towards believing that the reading was wrong and the actual starting gravity was 1.060+.  That brings the ABV to somewhere around 6.0%.

As I am writing this I am brewing a Brown Ale and an all-grain version of the Double IPA is in progress and will be brewed next weekend.  Bottling for the IPA and the Brown will both take place next weekend as well.

Coffee Porter Tasting Notes

After 4 weeks conditioning the Coffee Porter is ready to drink!  That being said, I think this one is going to age very well, so I may lose a couple in the bottom of my closet for a while for a nice surprise when I'm looking for bottles in a month or two.

ABV: 5.1% (the original 6% didn't account for the coffee, beer math is hard)
Color: Deep, rich brown
Aroma: Coffee. Delicious, delicious coffee.
Mouth feel: Medium to light.  The color is deceiving, this is not heavy at all. You can definitely drink more than one of these if you are so inclined.
Taste: It is a nice blend of coffee and the caramel, malty flavor you expect from a porter.
Finish: Dry and crisp with lingering coffee notes.

It is not quite as full bodied as I had planned, but that has been received by many as less of a bad thing and more of a good thing (who doesn't like a beer you can drink a lot of?).   Next time around I think I will shoot for a little fuller body and malty sweetness, with an addition of a little more hops to balance the extra sweetness.  All in all I'm happy with it!


Up next: First all-grain attempt at an IPA. Hopefully brewing on Thursday.


 

Coffee Porter Bottling/First Taste

    On Thursday the Coffee Porter made it's way from the secondary fermenter into bottles.  Total yield was 657 ounces (5.13 gallons) divided amongst 26 x 12oz bottles and 15 x 23oz bottles. 

   OG: 1.061
   FG: 1.016
   ABV: 6.0%

I used light brown sugar as the priming sugar.

First taste:
The color is a dark brown almost the exact color of a pot of coffee. The immediate aroma that you get is of coffee followed by the subtle reminder than you are indeed holding a beer. The taste of the beer is very coffee-y.  There is definitely no doubt when you are drinking this that it is a coffee porter. The finish is less of coffee and more of the beer.

I am hoping that while in the bottle the coffee blends even more with the overall taste.  Right now the two flavors are a little distinct i.e. you taste coffee and then porter.  But it's definitely going to be a good one! 

 I'll crack open another bottle on the 26th, but my guess is this one is going to need an extra week (or 4) of conditioning.  Just in time for extreme beer fest!

Coffee Porter

   Last Thursday was a crazy day.  Normally when I plan to brew a beer I plan ahead at least a few days.  This time I decided that morning that I was going to brew.  Not only did I decide that I was going to brew, but I also chose the recipe, decided to make a wort chiller, and did I mention it was my first attempt at all-grain?  Nonetheless, I thought that I could make it happen that night.  After work I went to the Home Depot to get the wort chiller supplies and then ran to the homebrew store to grab the ingredients.

  The beer I made is a Coffee Porter.  

Ingredients: 

grain: 2-row malt

specialty grains: chocolate, munich dark, caramel 120L

hops: mt. hood (finishing and aroma), perle (bittering),

yeast: wyeast irish ale yeast

priming: light brown sugar

miscellaneous: coffee (sweet puppy love from wired puppy)

When I got home from work I threw 6 gallons of water on the stove and waited for the small stove burner to bring it to a strike temperature of 171.

  When the water reached 171 I added the grains.  I was hoping for a mash temperature of 159, but when I added the grains it only brought the temperature down to 163, so I added cold water to the mash until it reached 161.  I left the mash to do its business and proceeded to start on the wort chiller. 

 My original intention was to check on the mash every 15 minutes (total mash time one hour), but I got distracted making the wort chiller.  Looking back I should have made the wort chiller while the water was heating up, but I was hungry and used that time to make dinner.  Oh well, hindsight is 20/20.  When I checked the mash temp the first time 30 minutes in I found that it had dropped significantly to 140.  It took about 20 minutes to get it back up to 156.  To compensate I added 15 minutes to mash (truthfully I have no idea if this will actually change anything. With the higher mashing temp I was hoping for a fuller bodied beer.  The lower temp will result in more fermentable sugars leading to a thinner beer, but it will be more alcoholic, and that's not the worst thing in the world.  My understanding is that the difference is not huge, so I'm hopeful.

After mashing comes sparging. This is the act of pouring hot (~175 degree) water over the grains to rinse all the sugars from the spent grain and collecting the sweet, sweet wort for boiling.

Lautering/sparging took about 25 minutes.  In the future I may save the spent grains to make bread or something along those lines, but not this time.

It took an hour to bring the wort to a boil.  I boiled the wort for an hour.  The perle hops boiled for an hour, half the mt. hood for 15 minutes, and the rest of the mt. hood went in at flame out.

15 minutes before the end of the boil I put in the wort chiller to sanitize it.  When the boil was complete I started cooling the wort.  The faster the wort is cooled and the yeast is added the less chance there is for bacterial contamination.  Cooling took 25 minutes.

Initial gravity: 1.061
Estimated ABV: 7%
Primary Fermentation: 7 days

After the primary fermentation was complete I transferred the beer to the secondary fermenter and added a pot of strongly brewed coffee.  The beer is a nice dark brown color and smells delicious. There is a strong hoppy aroma that will fade and I am looking forward to seeing what the coffee adds to the aroma.  I did not taste it at this stage. Secondary fermentation will last for another week.  Bottling will take place next thursday.

I am definitely looking forward to having a closet full of homebrew again!  Up next is either an all-grain revisit to the extract double ipa or an attempt at an original ipa.

   Friday was one of the most spontaneous days I have ever had, in terms of brewing anyway.  I have just returned from a long weekend and am too tired to write all about it.  The next post will give you all the details of the day's brewing.  That being said, through the course of the day I did decide to make a wort chiller, and I thought I'd share how to do it.

   I discovered via some web surfing during work that it is highly encouraged to use a wort chiller.  (Wort is essentially beer before the yeast are added.  A boiled concoction of water, grains, and hops.  Once you add the yeast the wort becomes alcoholic and is then, and only then, called beer).  Without a wort chiller you could literally watch a 5 gallon pot of wort cool for close to two hours!  So Thursday I went about searching for a chiller.  My local homebrew store was getting some in stock after the weeked, but they were $80.  I also checked on-line and the best price I found was $45 with shipping.  That seemed like a good deal except that I wanted to brew that day.  So after further web browsing I came to the conclusion that making a wort chiller seemed easy enough, it was cheap, and it was the only feasible way to have a full fermenter by night's end.

  I went to home depot and picked up the necessary supplies:

20' long 3/8'' diameter copper tubing
4 hose clamps
2 3' lengths of vinyl tubing
a tube bender

Total came to $42, and I had to buy a 4 pc tube bending set, because they didn't sell individual ones.

The assembly is pretty simple.  It took about 40 minutes.  I did it during the mashing process (not recommended, I got slightly distracted.  More on that tomorrow).

Step 1.  You can either free hand or use a cylindrical object like a pot to bend the tubing into a spiral.  Slowly work your way around with the tube bender.

Step 2. When you are finished coiling, bend a straight piece to extend from the bottom of the brew kettle up past the top of your kettle.  It should look like this.

Step 3.  Bend a 90 degree angle at the end of the straight pieces and extend another straight piece at the end of the coil.  Both ends should be relatively close together.

Step 4. Attach a length of tubing to each end using 2 hose clamps on each end.

Step 5.  Attach a faucet adapter to one end of the tubing.  (I could not find the right adapter so I omitted this step and just held the tube up to my bottle washer which shot the water through the tubes.  It got the job done, but holding it for 25 minutes is less than fun.  I will definitely purchase a faucet adapter before I brew again.)