Dark given that it’s black as night, forest given that I’ve used a rather healthy serving of Northern Brewer hops (for a stout) which are purported to have a piney resinous flavor and/or aroma, and stout because it doesn’t seem (after consulting BJCP) that it’s any form of porter, even though that’s what I originally had in mind when I started choosing grain. After looking around some, I’m starting to wonder if this is more in the direction of a roasty and not over-hopped black IPA?
I used Brew Pal (iOS 5) to calculate my stats (IBU, SRM, etc), here they are:
Recipe Type: All Grain/BIAB
Yeast: WLP001
Yeast Starter: None
Batch Size (Gallons): 3
Original Gravity: 1.069 measured (1.057-1.069 predicted)
Final Gravity: 1.023 measured (1.013-1.016 predicted)
IBU: 68 est
Boiling Time (Minutes): 60
Color: est > 50
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): at least 14 @ 68-70*
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): not sure
5# 2row
0.5# black patent
0.5# special b
0.5# Belgian biscuit
0.25# carafa II
1oz Northern Brewer (8.6% – 60min)
1oz Northern Brewre (8.6% – 10min)
1 Whirlfloc (10 min)
WLP001 washed from batch 7
1 step thick mash of 1.25 qt/lb giving ~2.25 gal mash at 155* target, ended up closer to 160* for the first 30 minutes, dunk sparged with ~2gal at 170*
The first and a half runnings went to the first pot, the second half of the second runnings went to the second pot. I boiled in two pots at once, with 3 gal to start in one, 1 gal to start in the other, and this all boiled down to just about 3 gallons total. Hop additions were made in a 3:1 ratio for the first and second pots (matching the initial boil sizes).
First 3G: 142*, 1.038 OG (1.054)
Next 1g: 160*? 1.020 OG (1.036)
FG: 1.068 at 70* (1.069)
looks like ~70% efficiency 🙂 not bad, considering my inefficient history.
(brewed on Sunday, Oct 7th)
UPDATE (Nov 4th): The brew has been fermenting for ~1 month at ~68*F, with a slightly-longer-than-usual lag in fermentation (1-1.5 days) that wasn’t particularly vigorous for much of the time. Bottled with 1.2oz sugar, yielded 3 flip-top growlers, and 1.9 22oz bombers. I kept the 0.9-filled bomber to taste and measure FG. FG was 1.023 (~6% ABV), which was puzzling. This yields 6% alcohol, which you can’t taste AT ALL in the beer. It tastes a bit sweet, is as dark as death is final, but has a bit of complexity lurking beneath. Given that it’s been fermenting for about 1 month, I think I’m seeing the fruits of a few errors in process: 1) I likely got a bunch more unfermentables than expected given the high temps during the mash, and 2) I bet I underpitched the yeast, which can lead to high FG.
UPDATE (Nov 25th): I cracked open the 22, and I must say I am intrigued. The funky flavor is still on the nose, and I can still detect the funky flavor in taste, but it is absolutely muted compared to what it used to be. The mouthfeel is quite unique: almost like a milkshake, but not quite. I’d say it’s in the vicinity of thick chocolate milk. There is a rich dark head, and lots of roasty complexity. I have to try this again. No hint whatsoever of alcohol. Minus the funk, this will promise to be quite delicious. I have a strong feeling that some milk sugar would do well here, but I believe I’ve stumbled upon a sweet stout without using milk sugar. NEAT!
UPDATE (12/10): dumped it. After input from a few home-brewing friends, it was irredeemable, with the funky flavor prominent and not promising to abate. I think I just used way too much dark malt. Seeing as the porter in batch 14 used only a fraction of this dark malt percentage and turned out quite toasty and complex, I think this current recipe was doomed to failure. Here’s to learning 🙂
Doing a second batch of jmo88’s holly ale from homebrewtalk.com. This time, I’m going to use a belgian yeast (WLP530), and I’m using the original grain bill proposed (instead of doing an extract batch), with slightly different quantities (probably negligible) due to the portions that my LHBS sells in:
13# pale 2-row
0.5# crystal 60
0.5# Special B (c120)
0.25# wheat malt
0.25# chocolate malt (C350)
2# orange blossom honey
half the bill was double-crushed
mashed in at 163* with 4.5 gallons, 14.5 lbs grain, settled out to 154.5* mash temp to start as 11:20a, 153.7* at 11:25a, 149.5* at 11:50a, 149 at 12:15p, 148.75 at 12:30p when I began vorlauf, second batch for sparge was 2 gallons added at 172*
first 1.5 gal weighed in at 1.065 OG at 148* (corrected: 1.082), second 3 gal weighed in at 1.032 OG at 148* (corrected: 1.049)
boiled 1 hour, 1oz centennial at 60min, 0.5oz at 30 min, whirlfloc at 10min, 0.5oz at 5 minutes, 2lb orange blossom honey at flameout, topped off with 2.5 gal spring water, FG 1.085 at 70* (corrected: 1.086)
65% efficiency, calculated by http://www.brewersfriend.com/brewhouse-efficiency/. There was some honey left over in the jar after I poured it (stuck to the sides, and I didn’t wait for it all to fully drain). I’m thinking that my efficiency would be somewhere closer to 70% or 75% than 65% if I had done a full boil and/or gotten all of the honey out.
UPDATE 10/21/12 – bottling day. Tea made using candied ginger, and the vanilla bean was split and scraped. Vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, and bitter orange peel were boiled in 1qt water with 5 oz bottling sugar for 10 minutes, then cooled, strained, and added to the bottling bucket. Beer racked to bucked then bottled.
UPDATE 11/18/12 – after I bottled, I placed all of the bottles in my coleman cooler, some on their side, and some top-down. Somehow, unfortunately, some of these bottles leaked through the cap, and this led to an odd funky swamp-monster in the cooler. Some of the caps seem like they’re rusting, and the bottles that are leaking are gone. Real bummer. I tried a bottle that was still good, and at room temp (well … chilly room temp, probably about 60*), it was incredible. Caramel, complex spicy phenolics from the yeast, and the spices from the tea really blended for a layered experience. When I chilled another bottle, it was dull. I’m thinking both this and the first winter warmer need to be a bit warmer than fridge-cold to hit their peak. On to washing and bleach-wiping the cooler (::sadtrombone::)
UPDATE 1/1/13 – the ‘fruity’ plummy-ester stuff has mellowed a little bit, but it is still prominent. A few people tasted it last night and said they really liked it. I think I am going to sit on this beer for a few more months to see how it goes.
variation on this recipe: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/dogfish-pumpkin-clone-questions-349561/
brewed Saturday 9/1/2012
carmelized canned pumpkin – spread into a baking pan, cooked at 350* for 1 hour
SG (first 2.5 gallons): 1.059 (corrected from 1.042 at 148*)
SG (second 1.5 gallons): 1.044 (corrected from 1.026 at 150*)
OG: 1.071 !? (after cooling, measured before pitching yeast, suspecting it’s artifically high somehow)
yeast: 1quart starter from WLP001 washed from batch 4 (1 quart of water, 1 cup of DME, boiled 10 minutes then cooled in the fridge, added washed WLP001, let sit in air-locked growler overnight, approx. 20 hours)
10# 2-row
1# Special B
1# Crystal 60
1# brown sugar (60 minutes)
60 oz carmelized pumpkin (60 minutes)
1 oz Saaz (~5% – substitution for recommended Hallertau; 60 minutes)
1.5 tbsp Pumpkin Spice (15 minutes)
whirlfloc (15 minutes)
1 oz Saaz (5 minutes)
double-crushed at Black Dragon, mashed in 4gal of water (~1.33 lb/qt ratio) at 152 (strike temp 162, grain temp ~80) at 5:47p
keeping track of the temperature with my new USB temperature probe (TEMPer1)
152 at 5:47 and 5:55 – 151 at 6:13 and 6:20 – 152? at 6:28 at 6:47
added 1.5 gallon water at 180 to mash out
149 after i pulled 2.5 gallons off for the first boil
added 1.5 gallons for the second boil pot, brought it back to 152
Boiled both pots for 60 minutes, split the pumpkin, spice, whirlfloc, and hop additions (5/8 pumpkin and hops into the 2.5 gallon pot, 3/8 into the 1.5 gallon pot; ~1/2 whirlfloc tab in each; 1 tbsp spice in the 2.5 gallon pot, 0.5 tbsp spice in the 1.5 gallon pot)
strong fermentation, short lag, blowout during the second night, and I REALLY hope it didn’t get infected because it smells AMAZING.
9/23 – racked to secondary, gravity 1.006, estimated ABV is 8.5%??
10/6 – bottled!! Added 2/3 c brown sugar to 2c water, boiled for 10m and cooled before adding to the bottling bucket. Yielded 40 bottles. 1.007ish after adding sugar. beautiful spice, subtle squash & brown ale notes. Dark amber hue, clear as a bell, likely to benefit from some additional mouthfeely texture/character with carbonation
first beer with the new cooler mash tun! I have a sub-optimal mash tun manifold, made of a single tube of 1/2″ PEX with 1/8″ slits cut every 1/2″ by a dremel with a high-speed cutter. Next time, I will have a more complex and appropriate manifold.
Recipe: http://hopville.com/recipe/1600762/american-ipa-recipes/shinken-shobu
Boiled 1.5gal 15 min, added to fermenter
Mash avg 148* for 90 min 4 gal water strike at 164 for 12.5 lb grain
Batch sparge 180* water, 2gal added
Pulled 3gal off for main boil, 1.5 gal pulled off for a second boil
Ipa og 1.043?
Boiled 3 gal 60 min
1oz citra 15min
1oz cascade 15min
1oz citra 10min
1 whirlfloc tab 10 min
1oz cascade 5min
1oz citra flameout
Main boil lost .5 gal
Topped off with water to 5gal
Used 1/3 WLP001 yeast cake from holly ale (basically an imperial honey brown ale)
UPDATE: 8/9/2012 – racked to secondary, dry hopped with 1 ounce of whole-cone citra hops (est. ~4gal of wort)
UPDATE: 8/15/2012 – bottled with 4oz of priming sugar. the beer had a funky taste, yielded 39 bottles.
UPDATE: 8/31/2012 – chilled and popped a few bottles, and it is TASTY. The funky taste is almost all gone. It’s kindof a grapefruit bomb, but I like it. From readings, I expect this to mellow down a bit as it ages. It’s also cloudy, despite a whirlfloc tab at 10 minutes. Woot!! I’ll call this a delicious success, esp since Sarah smiled and said it was delicious 🙂
At the behest of Sarah, and certainly not begrudgingly, this batch is a winter warmer 🙂 Sarah asked for orange, ginger, cinnamon, and vanilla, and I happened upon this recipe:
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f78/holly-christmas-ale-145580/
Just in case that post or the site ever goes away, here’s the recipe (with minor changes that I made):
Recipe Type: Partial Mash (the author specified all-grain)
Yeast: WLP001, (2) 3-week-old half-pints washed from Batch 5 (the author specified Safale-05)
Yeast Starter: No (unless you consider Batch 5 to be a starter 😉 )
Batch Size (Gallons): 5
Original Gravity: 1.077 (author spec’d 1.077, also here 1.077, which is corrected from 1.073 at 90 degrees)
Final Gravity: 1.01
IBU: 36 (original spec)
Boiling Time (Minutes): 60
Color: 17 (original spec; my beer is significantly darker)
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 3 weeks
Mash Efficiency: 65% (rough guesstimate). I had ~1 gallon of sweet wort after BIAB, then I added 1.5 gal to get to my boil volume, then realized I hadn’t measured my gravity to check for efficiency. At that point I measured 1.023, but the mash was at 150*. 1.023 corrected for 150* is 1.042, which yields a 65% efficiency for the grain bill and 2.5 gallons of wort.
Fermentation Temperature: started high (77-79). I placed the carboy in a tub of water and added 2 frozen water bottles every 12 hours for the first 2 days to bring it down into the low 70s (72-73)
Original Recipe Fermentables
US 2-Row Malt 13lb 0oz (84.1 %) In Mash/Steeped
UK Medium Crystal 8.00 oz (3.2 %) In Mash/Steeped
Belgian Special B 8.00 oz (3.2 %) In Mash/Steeped
German Wheat Malt 4.00 oz (1.6 %) In Mash/Steeped
US Chocolate Malt (350L) 3.20 oz (1.3 %) In Mash/Steeped
Sugar – Honey 1lb 0oz (6.5 %) End Of Boil
What I used:
3# Pale 2-Row Malt (mash)
8oz Crystal 60L (mash)
8oz Belgian Special B (mash)
4oz White Wheat Malt (mash)
4oz Chocolate Malt (mash)
6# Black Dragon Pale Liquid Male Extract (60 min boil)
2# Honey (flameout)
Hops:
Centennial (8.7 % alpha) 1.00 oz Pellet Hops 60 Min From End
Centennial (8.7 % alpha) 0.50 oz Pellet Hops 30 Min From End
Centennial (8.7 % alpha) 0.50 oz Pellet Hops 10 Min From End
Other Ingredients:
Whirlfloc 10min
Tea to add during bottling:
Vanilla Beans 1
Orange Peel, Bitter 1 Tbs
Cinnamon Stick 1
Ginger Root 1Tbs (dehydrated or fresh)
Single Step Infusion (67C/152F)
Recipe Notes
Make a tea prior to bottling by boiling a quart of the beer with the above spices and priming sugar for about a minute to combine. Add the mixture to a french press and let sit for 15 minutes. Then add to bottling Bucket.
I brewed at the Seelke’s house, while Matt was brewing an all-grain British IPA. It was neat to see his all-grain method, which seems incredibly straight-forward, and a lot less scary than it seemed before I witnessed/assisted. I was mashing in the oven while Matt was boiling, and when his burner was free, I moved the mash to the burner. I had two boil-overs, with one where a significant amount of liquid was lost 🙁 I believe I would have hit a much higher gravity had I been more careful about preventing boil-overs, but it will still be a huge beer! We all tasted the sweet wort that I stole for gravity readings before pitching the yeast, and it tasted delicious!! Thanks for a fun brew day, Matt!
UPDATE 8/4/12: 4 weeks in the primary, bottled with the above-mentioned tea, and it tastes FABULOUS, both with and without the tea. Gotta make this again without the tea, just as an imperial honey brown ale. FG 1.011, estimating an ABV of 8.6%. WOOT!
UPDATE 11/11/12: cracked my first chilled bottle, and it was delightful 🙂 Not quite what either of us had expected, but it is a subtle, complex, and very pleasant brew. It has no noticable nose. It starts dark and malty, has a caramel middle, and ends with a soft press of spices, everything represented but nothing dominating. Quite quaffable.
UPDATE 1/1/13: keeps getting better 🙂
Briefly, I am finding myself in the midst of a SMaSHing experiment 🙂 Last batch was a pale/nugget ale that I ended up splitting between two containers to dry hop with either Nugget or Zythos. This batch will be the compliment, brewing with Zythos and them splitting the batch to dry-hop with either Zythos or Nugget.
Recipe Type: BIAB
Yeast: White Labs WLP 001 California Ale
Yeast Starter: 1/3 of the yeast cake from Batch 5
Additional Yeast or Yeast Starter: N/A
Batch Size (Gallons): 2
Original Gravity: above 1.06 (at least 55% efficiency, not tons better than last time, but I didn’t write down the OG when I tested right before pitching into the fermenter. I remember being pleasantly surprised, and OG may have been as high as 1.064, which is 1.066 corrected, giving 60% efficiency, and getting into the lower end of the BIAB efficiency reported by some)
Boiling Time (Minutes): 45 mins
Steep the grain in 2.25 gallons of water at 155F (Strike 168) for 90 Minutes:
5# Pale 2-row
1# Crystal 60L
This equates to a 1.5 qt/lb mash ratio.
Mash in at 168 at 8:18p (was a little high), added ~1 qt cold water and stirred down to 155 by 8:20p, put in oven preheated to 175, ~2.333 g for 6 lb grain, stirred at 8:40p, read 152* avg across a few sites, stirred 9:15p, avg read 148*, small variance, turned oven to 200. Took out 9:50p, avg temp 150, +/- 2, OG 1.041 at 150* (adjusted: 1.056)
Left with 2 gal wort after drain and squeeze, added grain to 1.25 gal 168* water, steep for 15 minutes, drain & squeeze, got 1gal wort at 1.014 G at 145* (adjusted: 1.028), added to pot, started boil
Added .25 oz Zythos (10%) at 60 min
Added .25 oz Zythos (10%) at 10 min
I conducted a 60 min boil to reduce by 1gal to 2gal final volume, also to extract slightly more alphas from Zythos to compare this batch to nugget batch (batch 5) in bitterness
Pitched at 78* onto 1/3 yeast cake from batch 5, mixed with a little water from yeast washing
The plan is to keep this in the primary for at least a week.
UPDATE 6/28/12: after 9 days primary, FG 1.014. I racked to a 1 gallon 2ndary with 0.25 oz Zythos, another 0.5 gal 2ndary with 0.25 oz nugget, 4 straight to bottles with 1.5 tsp priming sugar stirred into wort b4 bottling. I expected 2 bottles but ended up with 4, carb might be a bit weak. Taste is quite .. well … tasty 🙂 it doesn’t taste nearly as green as Batch 5 did at this stage, and the beer already tastes a bit brighter and more balanced. I’ll let this sit in the secondary for at least a week to see what it does.
UPDATE 7/10/12: tasted the non-dry-hopped Zythos, almost 2 weeks after bottling. While carb is not great, the taste is great! Malty, but balanced with the Zythos. The beer is quite clear, and the color is a rich amber. This is not really a pale ale, but amber edging almost into brown ale territory in terms of flavor. The high amount of relative crystal 60 pushed it this way, but I’d say it’s quite delicious. Yum!! Gotta try this one again, and again, I’m eager to taste the dry-hops 🙂
So, this technically isn’t quite a SMaSH (Single Malt and Single Hop), as I’m using both 2-row and crystal 60. However, it is my FIRST ALL GRAIN BATCH! Yes kids, daddy has taken his first step onto the field. After reading a ton on BIAB (brew in a bag, a method of no-sparge all grain brewing), and messing around with a number of online brewing calculators (including hopville.com’s beer calculus, neat tool!), I decided to try my hand at it. I have a 3.5 gal brew kettle, within which I figure I can safely brew a 2 gallon batch. That will work on many levels, not least of which is the bill at the end of the day. If I mess up a small batch, it’s not as bad, right? I’m going to take this opportunity to experiment with recipes, and try an all-Nugget SMaSH(kinda).
Recipe Type: BIAB
Yeast: White Labs WLP 001 California Ale
Yeast Starter: No
Additional Yeast or Yeast Starter: N/A
Batch Size (Gallons): 2
Original Gravity: 1.0415 (brewhouse efficiency estimated at ~53%! yikes)
Boiling Time (Minutes): 45 mins
Steep the grain in 1.5 gallons of water at 155F (Strike 165) for 60 Minutes:
3# 8 oz Pale 2-row
8 oz Crystal 60L
This equates to a 1.5 qt/lb mash ratio. I preheated the oven to 150, and placed the mash tun in the oven to maintain temps while mashing. At 30minutes, I stirred the batch, and the temp was just about 151F, so I made sure to preheat the oven again as I was (carefully) stirring. After 1 hour in the pre-heated oven, the wort temp was 149, so I can guesstimate 152 average mash temp.
After initial mash, transfer the bag to 1 gal of water at 176F (given grain volume of 4lbs and temperature of 149, this will equalize to just under 170, good for “Mash Out”) and steep for 15 minutes (somewhat of a cheap batch sparge?). Add the “mash out” gallon to the boil pot, boil for 45 minutes.
Hops Schedule:
0.25 oz Nugget (13.3% – 45 min)
0.25 oz Nugget (13.3% – 10 min)
Primary for 2 weeks.
0.5 oz Nugget (13.3% – dry hop in secondary for half of the batch, 7 days)
I tested the OG of the first mash wort, and it read 1.054. I realize the yield from the 15 minute steep will be much lower than the original yield, and much less efficient than a regular lautering/sparging. Next time I’m going to increase the grain bill to see if I can increase my OG. Also, I want to try a multi-rest schedule.
UPDATE: 6/19/12 fermentation took off, and the krausen fell over the weekend. I decided to rack to the secondary just after 1 week. I racked to a 1-gallon jug, on top of 0.25 oz Nugget hops, and to another 0.5 gallon jug on top of 0.25 oz Zythos hops (Zythos at the suggestion of Jason from Black Dragon). I tried to ghetto-rig a bottling siphon from my racking cane/siphon and my bottling hose, but it led to aeration in the line and a few lost siphons. I am not sure how bad it is, but there’s potential for both aeration and infection here. I recovered enough wort after racking to those two containers that I was able to put un-dry-hopped, fermented ale into (2) 12-oz bottles. I poured the ale into the bottling bucket, didn’t bother to boil the sugar and just added it (1.5 tsp, the best I could figure from a variety of sources to add to what was really 30 oz of ale), swirled it all around, and bottled. On top of infection and aeration, I seriously have opened myself to either undercarb or bottle bomb scenarios here. I hope the beer gods have taken this blatant disregard for procedure in good light, and that they do not smite me. I washed 2/3 of the yeast, so let’s hope it wasn’t infected!! The other 1/3 I reserved in the carboy as a starter for the batch that was brewing as I conducted this racking/bottling crime spree: a 2-row/crystal-60/Zythos ale, same volume but 1.5 Xs the grain bill. See the next post for details!
UPDATE 6/29/12: FG after 9 days in the secondary : 1.012. 3 tbsp (1.5 oz) priming sugar btwn 1.5 gal brew, boiled in 2c water for 10 minutes then split accordingly between the 1gal (nugget dry hop) and 0.5 gal (zythos dry hop) secondaries when bottling. Impressions: tasty both ways. Nugget dry hop was definitely malty, but pleasant. The nugget dry-hopped ale was bitter and a bit of earthy flavor was present. Might dry-hop much more if I dry hop with nugget again. Zythos really balanced the malty ale flavor, very nice aroma with some ?citrus? and floral notes, difference from nugget might be due to dbl hop quantity by volume compared to nugget (0.25oz nugget / 1 gal wort, compared to 0.25oz zythos / 0.5 gal wort). Definitely trying Zythos dry hop again, and definitely looking forward to all-Zythos beer. Next time I do this, I might try significantly less crystal 60, or maybe some 40 or 20L instead.
UPDATE 7/3/12: after 2 weeks of bottle conditioning, I tried one of the two nugget brews that I bottled straight from the primary (so, no dry hop). It’s pretty damned tasty. Through a little bit of congestion (from a lingering cold), I can taste a crisp, session-like ale, balanced in bitterness and malt, with some noticeable, yet subtle earth and spice (characteristic of Nugget). The beer tasted a bit thin at first, which could be due to a number of things, but overall I think it’s a pleasant brew, and the wife (who is notably not a bitter-lover) enjoyed it 🙂 When the throat fully clears, I’ll try the other bottle, but this is getting my hopes up for the nugget dry-hops! ALSO : no signs of infection so far!! Horraaaay washed yeast! Also, also: no bottle bombs. The carb isn’t great in the bottle, but this is preferable to both no carb and bottle bombs. Horraaaay no bottle bombs.
I couldn’t easily get the last batch to ferment below the low 70s, so I figured for this batch I’d brew something where the esters of a hot ferment might be in-style. I chose the Belgian Wit style, as it seems straight-forward, gets a bit fancy with adjuncts (coriander and orange peel) and fits the bill of warm fermentation. After sifting through numerous recipes from various resources (homebrewtalk.com, hopville.com, and a couple of others), and taking into account what’s available at my LHBS (blackdragonbrew.com) I settled on this recipe:
6.6# Wheat LME (I ended up using Briess Bavarian Wheat LME)
1# Flaked Wheat (steeped between 150 and 160 for 30 min)
1 oz Tettnang (60 min boil)
0.5 oz US Goldings (10 min boil)
0.5 oz crushed coriander (10 min boil)
0.5 oz bitter orange peel (10 min boil)
whirlfloc (10 min boil)
WLP400 (White Labs Belgian Wit Ale Yeast)
OG: 1.054, SRM: 18 (guesstimate), yeast pitched at 80 degrees, 2 hours later the wort was ~76 degrees, 8 hours later the wort was at ~73 degrees, still no krausen. The wort was Much darker than I had anticipated. According to the calculations (hopville.com beer calculus), the SRM should be around 8. The Briess Bavarian Wheat LME has barley in it, and it looked a few shades darker than I had expected, hence the SRM difference. I put the fermenter in a large tupperware tub, put a 5-gauge tube on the end of the airlock and fed that into a bucket of sanitizer (blow-off, recommended by many who’ve seen very vigorous fermentation with WLP400), and then half-filled the tub with water. I’m going to put a frozen water bottle in the tub every morning to keep the fermentation temp down. The optimal temp range given by White Labs tops at 74 degrees. Overnight, the fermenter held around 73 degrees, and today with an ice pack in the water, it came down to around 71.
UPDATE 5/31/12: the Krausen rose on Monday morning, and started flowing through the blow-off tube Monday night. It’s been fermenting strong for 3-4 days now, and the Krausen hasn’t fallen yet!! I’m going to wait for the Krausen to fall and then take a gravity reading just to see where we’re at. Most of the reviews for WLP400 talk about vigorous (lotsa krausen) but slow (slow to attentuate) fermentation, so we’ll see how it’s going. The temperature has held steady around 71-72, with the help of a water bath covering 1/2 of the fermenter, and temperature held by putting a frozen bottle of water in the tub every morning. It’s gotten into the 90s outside the past few days, and while we have air conditioning in the house, the thermostat is set pretty high (close to 80), so the water bath and ice will help keep the temperature below 74 (high end of the stated optimal range for WLP400). Reviews also noted really really stinky Krausen, which seems to be the case. Thankfully, I put the end of the blow-off tube in a bucket of sanitizer, so I think most of the stink is being filtered through the water. Gotta keep that in mind next time.
UPDATE 6/10/12: It was a hot day today. I moved the carboy into the garage last night to give it a day to rest before I bottled, but it reached the 90s in there, so I set up a swamp cooler, and that kept the fermentation below 75 degrees. I racked onto 1/2 cup of priming sugar and bottled. I forgot to measure gravity before racking, but the gravity after racking was still 1.015, so I am pretty sure I got reasonable attenuation. Even warm, the brew tasted quite nice, and I am very eager to enjoy the conditioned ale!
I found this recipe (http://hopville.com/recipe/1132437/irish-red-ale-recipes/shaun-of-the-red-byo) and I brought it to the new Black Dragon Homebrew Shop (www.blackdragonbrew.com) to get it filled out. I met Jason and Heather, who were super nice and helpful (even offering a taste of Jason’s Fog, a California Common they’ve brewed). Jason signed off on the recipe and showed me to their grain room, where I measured and milled my own grain. Neat!! I see many an afternoon spent in the future at Black Dragon. They’re to open their brewery in just a few months, and it should be a great place to hang.
Anyway, I modified the attached recipe slightly, by replacing the 7 oz of Two-row Pale with an additional 4 oz of Crystal 60, and using a whirlfloc tab instead of Irish Moss. I also used 6lb Black Dragon Pale LME and 1lb Dry Malt Extract instead of the suggested 7lb LME. I was able to get the wort down to ~100 F in just a few minutes with a water bath and a good stirring (I’m really hoping I didn’t hot-oxidize in the process), and upon pouring the wort onto the water in the carboy, I ended up with a 78 F batch. I pitched WLP004 Irish Ale Yeast as recommended by the recipe (and I pitched it straight from the vial, no starter). White Labs suggests 65-68 F for the optimal fermenting temperature of WLP004 (http://www.whitelabs.com/beer/strains_wlp004.html), so I’m keeping the carboy in our bedroom closet for the next two weeks.
OG: 1.06 (really, 1.062 but at 80 F, that needs ~0.002 adjustment)
SRM: 16-17 (very rough guesstimate)
UPDATE: 4/28/12
The krausen has been down for at least a week, and the fermenter has held at ~73 F (+/- 1 F) for the entire time. I’ve been a little worried about esters, but I have been assured by many that it won’t be a big problem, and it won’t spoil the beer. I bottled tonight with FG: 1.018, leaving an ABV ~5.5%. The beer was definitely red in color, sweet with malt predominant, and with a hint of some esters that really compliment the ale. I am looking forward to this one!! I’ve kept the first two batches in the garage but otherwise unprotected from the temperature while they bottle conditioning. I think I’m going to store this batch in a dry cooler to try insulate it from so much temperature fluctuation.
UPDATE: 5/6/12
I’ve had most of the batch hiding in a large cooler in the garage to shield it from the growing temp fluctuations. I pulled one out this evening and popped it open to give it a shot (without cooling it), and I must say I’m impressed. Good head, and a nice remaining carb after the head fell. Deep red hue, but surprisingly clear. The beer is definitely malty and sweet without any prominent hop flavors, with hints of fruity esters that are more typical of some Belgian ales. Though not typical of the Irish Red style, I am enjoying the esters. Woohoo!!
Short story, I was able to get the wort down to ~120 after stirring and a few minutes in an ice bath in the sink. I then aerated it by pouring back and forth 5 times between the brew kettle and a sterilized bucket (used for bottling the previous day, soaked overnight in StarSan solution). I added it to the carboy then topped off with distilled water, and this brought the temp down to ~80 degrees. I pitched the yeast and put it into the garage, but it got down in the 40s last night, so that may have put the yeast to sleep. If it isn’t gurgling away tomorrow, I’ll bring it inside and give it a day or two to wake up. If it isn’t fermenting after a few more days, I’ll pitch some more yeast.
I tried to measure the OG before pitching the yeast, but I believe the reading I got (1.09) was waaay off, since the kit was supposed to brew to 1.05-1.055 OG. I used whirlfloc as directed by the directions, and this led to a lot of precipitate in the wort. I believe the precipitate may have skewed the OG reading. Either that, or the temperature upon reading (which was ~80 degrees). I let a good half-pint of wort cool and settle in the kitchen, and poured off the top half into the beer thief for measurement later that night. It still read around 1.09 OG, but I realize this may also be due to the fact that there was more liquid left in the glass (liquid mixed with precipitate), so considering there was all of that missing matter, cutting 1.09 in half to get the expected OG wasn’t too much of a stretch. I really don’t know. I’ll measure gravity over the next few days to try to get a handle on it.
UPDATE: After a few days, I moved the carboy inside, and it did not begin fermenting. I visited the nice folks at the Original HomeBrew Outlet in Sacramento to get some new yeast for re-pitching, and the nice gentleman there suggested that I ‘rouse the yeast’ (stir the yeast up from the bottom of the carboy). Turns out, that worked. I stirred the carboy at 8pm on Thursday night, and when I awoke on Friday morning, I saw the beginnings of Krausen. Woohoo!!! Now I have some WLP005 (British Ale Yeast) from White Labs in the fridge, waiting for the next batch 🙂 Let’s see how this nut brown ale ferments.
UPDATE (3/24): after two days, that ‘beginnings of Krausen’ was all that we got in terms of visual activity. I measured the gravity and got a reading of 1.048. The yeast may be doing something, but it feels terribly slow. The liquid still tastes like fresh wort, which I think is good, but that is telling me that the yeast aren’t working that hard, so I pitched the WLP005. Lets see if that gets us anywhere 🙂
OG: 1.48 ?
UPDATE (3/25): HEALTHY KRAUSEN!! I hope the week of not really fermenting didn’t kill the beer. Since bringing the beer inside, it’s been between 67 and 68 degrees in the house, and we’ll keep it there for the duration of the fermentation.
UPDATE 4/8/12 (Sunday): I moved the carboy into the garage today, a good week after the krausen fell. I am going to let it ‘cold condition’ (kinda) for another week before bottling.
UPDATE 4/15/12 (Sunday): I bottled at FG 1.014. The beer did not taste right, and I think it may have tasted like cardboard, which is a sign of oxidation (sigh). This may have been due to the fact that I aerated the wort when it was still ~hot (120-130 F), and John Palmer says not to aerate wort that is hotter than 80. Doh! We’ll see what happens with a few weeks of bottle conditioning.
UPDATE 10/08/12: I dumped this batch a number of months ago, b/c on tasting, the cardboard flavor was obnoxious. I did keep a 6-pack, however, and I tasted a bottle a month ago, a month before, and today. The cardboard flavor, though still present, has quite precipitously dropped in prominence, and I am tasting a lot more of the malty, biscuity and nutty brown ale that I am sure was being out-shined by the off-flavors. Still not regretting the dump, as it was nigh undrinkable, and still is not entirely quaffable, but I’m pleased to note that the cardboard has abated.