First brew of 2013 - Black IPA

So, it's been a pretty long time since I brewed.  In fact, I'm embarrassed to say, the last beer I brewed was over a year ago! (yes, I made a mead last fall, but that doesn't really count...).  I've been excited to finally get back to it!  My parent's bought me a recipie kit from Austin Homebrew for Christmas - a Black IPA.  It's an all grain kit, and the grain is un-crushed; good because it keeps better this way, but I didn't have a grain mill so I haven't gotten around to brewing it until now.  I finally bit the bullet and bought a Barley Crusher grain mill with a 7 lb hopper.

Brew day went pretty well, considering how long it's been since I've brewed!

The new Barley Crusher mill worked like a charm!

I had to improvise a new fermentation chamber as the last one I built was insufficient to deal with the Houston summer heat.  So for now, I hooked up my temperature controller to an old minifridge.  The minifridge's internal thermostat doesn't work anymore (it just runs at full all the time until everything freezes), so I figured since I was going to bypass that anyway and use my temperature controller, it would work perfectly as a fermentation chamber!  I removed the door lining, and the fermentor just barely fits.  Looks like my next project will be to build a bigger fermentation chamber around this fridge.

Black IPA

Estimated OG: 1.078 SG
Estimated Color: 24.6 SRM
Estimated IBU: 171.9 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 76.7 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt                   Name                                     
14 lbs 12.0 oz        Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)          
8.0 oz                Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM)          
8.0 oz                Brown Malt (65.0 SRM)                    
8.0 oz                Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM)    
1.04 oz               Millenium [15.20 %] - Boil 60.0 min      
1.04 oz               Warrior [15.23 %] - Boil 60.0 min       
1.04 oz               Zythos [10.90 %] - Boil 60.0 min         
1.04 oz               Zythos [10.38 %] - Boil 30.0 min         
1.04 oz               Falconer's Flight [10.85 %] - Boil 15.0  
2.0 pkg               California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) 
1.00 oz               Falconer's Flight [11.40 %] - Dry Hop 
1.00 oz               Zythos [10.90 %] - Dry Hop 


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 16 lbs 4.0 oz
----------------------------
Name              Description                             Step Temperat Step Time     
Mash In           Add 5.58 gal of water at 160.3 F        150.0 F       60 min        

Sparge: Batch sparge with 2 steps (0.36gal, 3.99gal) of 168.0 F water

Taddy Porter Clone

Well, today is both Father's Day and my birthday.  My wife surprised me this morning with the sweetest pictures and cards from my daughters.  She also suggested that I have a brew-day this weekend, so I decided to make a Taddy Porter clone which I've been thinking about doing for some time.  I've been reading some old brewing texts lately, and reading up on the history of Porter.  Very interesting beer (and one of my favorites!).  It seems that historically porter was made primarily with brown malt.  Most modern porters, however, use pale malt as the base, and varying amounts of roasted malts (black, chocolate, patent, etc.) to get the color and flavor.  Some recipes I saw also used treacle or blackstrap molasses.  These sound intriguing, but I settled on the following recipe without molasses:

Recipe: Taddy Porter Clone
Style: Brown Porter
TYPE: All Grain

Recipe Specifications --------------------------
Boil Size: 7.74 gal
Post Boil Volume: 6.24 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.50 gal
Bottling Volume: 5.10 gal
Estimated OG: 1.052 SG
Estimated Color: 23.1 SRM
Estimated IBU: 27.0 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 76.4 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients: ------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
8 lbs 8.9 oz Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 3 77.9 %
14.8 oz Brown Malt (65.0 SRM) Grain 4 8.4 %
14.8 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) Grain 5
8.4 % 9.2 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 6 5.3 %
1.63 oz Fuggles [4.20 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 7 23.6 IBUs
0.65 oz Fuggles [4.20 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 8 3.4 IBUs
0.9 pkg London Ale Yeast (Wyeast Labs #1028) [12 Yeast 9 -
Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Medium Body, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 10 lbs 15.7 oz
 ----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperature Step Time
 Mash In Add 15.73 qt of water at 166.1 F 152.0 F 60 min
Sparge: Batch sparge with 2 steps (1.51gal, 4.12gal) of 168.0 F water

First brew of fall

Ahhh... fall at last! This has been a particularly brutal summer here in Houston. A month of temperatures in the 100's, and little to no rain to speak of for most of the year. A "cool" front moved through on Friday night - I never thought mid-to-upper 80's would feel so good! Especially nice was that it went into the 50's last night. So we opened all the windows in the house. Nothing like waking up on a crisp fall day. Almost enough to make me forget I still live in Houston...

So, I thought I'd take advantage of the weather and have a brew day. My wife and I were thinking that a nice idea for Christmas presents this year might be a mix-pack of homebrews I've been working on. So far, we've got the Wicked Widow Pumpkin Porter, a Chocolate Coffee Breakfast Stout, an Oatmeal Stout, and possibly the Lagunitas IPA (if there's any left!). So, I was thinking it might be nice to round out with a pale ale, and/or another IPA. I'd really like another crack at my favorite IPA recipie, the DFH 60min IPA clone. As luck would have it, Simcoe is back in stock at my LHBS! Unfortunately, they didn't have any Nottingham yeast, so Ray sold me some Safale US-05 (American Ale) dry yeast, which he said was probably the closest thing. I've been trying to do starters now for all my beers, but the conventional wisdom on these dry yeasts are that you don't need to make a starter for them, unless it's a pretty high starting gravity (like 1.060 or 1.070). The DFH 60min IPA has a starting gravity of 1.072, which means I probably should do some sort of starter. So, I had an idea - why not make a smaller beer (something with an OG in the 1.040 - 1.050 range) and then pitch the IPA on top of that yeast cake when the small beer is done? That will save me the cost of a second pack of yeast, plus I've always wanted to try re-using yeast. Now I just have to decide whether I want to simply pitch the 2nd beer right onto the yeast cake, or "wash" the yeast, which is a process of separating the yeast from the trub and "canning" it for later use. I've got a couple weeks to think about it...

So, that brings us to today. I've settled on an IPA recipe I found on Homebrewtalk that uses US-05 yeast. The whole hop bill is Cascade, so that should be fun - I'll get a really good idea of what the Cascade flavor profile is like. Right now, I'm sitting in my open garage. It's about 80 degrees (wouldn't even need to have my fan blowing on me if it weren't for the mosquitoes...). I've got a glass of Rogue Dead Guy in my hand, and my grains are mashing with about 12 minutes left on the timer. Life is good...

Yooper's Pale Ale
All Grain
Batch size: 5 gal
Estimated O.G.: 1.058
Estimated color: 12 SRM
Estimated IBU: 43.6
Efficiency: 65%


Ingredients:
5 lbs 13.9oz Pale Malt, Marris Otter (3.0 SRM)
3 lbs 8.5oz Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM)
1 lb 14.1oz Munich Malt (20 SRM)
7.5oz Caramel/Crystal Malt (60 SRM)
7.5oz Caramel/Crystal Malt (20 SRM)
0.85 oz Cascade Hops (60 min)
0.64 oz Cascade Hops (30 min)
0.85 oz Cascade Hops (10 min)
0.43 oz Cascade Hops (5 min)
0.5 oz Cascade Hops (0 min)
1.0 oz Cascade Hops (dry hop 7 days)
0.5 tsp Irish Moss (15 min)
Safale US-05 American Ale Yeast

Wicked Widow Pumpkin Porter

Before moving to Houston 3 years ago, my wife and I lived in Tempe, Arizona, while we were in grad school at ASU. For a few years, we had the privilege of living within walking distance of 4Peaks Brewery, and I must say, we spent quite a bit of time there. I've never been much for "flavored" beers, but 4 Peaks made a seasonal pumpkin beer that was A-mazing. I heard through the inter-webs that the recipie on the Brewer's Connection site was pretty close, so I decided to start with that. I wanted to do it all-grain, so first I converted the extract to 2-row pale malt. Then, since I'm doing it all-grain, I decided to mash the pumpkin instead of adding it to the boil. Actually, I first baked the pumpkin in a 9x9 baking dish at 350 deg for 1 hour to caramelize it a little, then mixed it in with the grain bill. Finally, I added some rice hulls to the mash to avoid a stuck sparge with all that sticky pumpkin. The final recipe I came up with is below. The name "Wicked Widow" was a friend's suggestion; When I racked the beer from the fermenter into the bottling bucket, I found a small dead spider at the bottom of the fermenter (I brew outside, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised...)!

Recipe: Wicked Widow Pumpkin Porter
TYPE: All Grain


Recipe Specifications
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal
Estimated OG: 1.050 SG
Estimated Color: 30.0 SRM
Estimated IBU: 22.6 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 61.00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes


Ingredients:
Amt Name Type %/IBU
8.8 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 4.4 %
10.4 oz Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 5.2 %
8.8 oz Special Roast (50.0 SRM) Grain 4.4 %
6.7 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 90L (90.0 SRM) Grain 3.4 %
4.5 oz Carafa II (412.0 SRM) Grain 2.2 %
1.00 oz Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] - Boil 60.0 Hop 19.2 IBUs
1.00 oz Fuggles [4.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 3.4 IBUs
0.17 oz Burton Water Salts (Mash 60.0 mins) Water Agent -
0.25 tsp Ground Clove (Boil 5.0 mins) Spice -
0.25 tsp Ground Ginger (Boil 5.0 mins) Spice -
0.75 tsp Cinnamon (Boil 5.0 mins) Spice -
1.00 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 mins) Fining -
22.00 oz Libby's Pumpkin (Boil 5.0 mins) Flavor -
1.0 pkg London Ale (Wyeast Labs #1028) [125.00 m Yeast -
8 lbs 1.3 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 64.5 %
1 lbs Pale Malt (6 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 8.0 %
1 lbs Rice Hulls (0.0 SRM) Adjunct 8.0 %


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Medium Body, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 12 lbs 8.5 oz
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Mash In Add 17.71 qt of water at 164.6 F 154.0 F 60 min

Lagunitas IPA clone

Recipe: Lagunitas IPA clone
TYPE: All Grain

Recipe Specifications
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal
Boil Size: 7.22 gal
Estimated OG: 1.057 SG
Estimated Color: 6.6 SRM
Estimated IBU: 46.2 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 65.00 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
Amt Name Type %/IBU
11 lbs 5.3 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 92.6 %
6.4 oz Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 3.3 %
4.8 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 2.5 %
3.2 oz Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 1.6 %
0.91 oz Horizon [9.10 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 30.1 IBUs
0.75 oz Cascade [6.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 12.6 IBUs
2.63 oz Cascade [6.00 %] - Boil 0.0 min Hop 0.0 IBUs
1.00 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 mins) Fining -
1.0 pkg American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) [124.21 Yeast -
0.26 oz Tettnang [4.80 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 3.5 IBUs

Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Medium Body, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 12 lbs 3.7 oz
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperature Step Time
Mash In Add 17.29 qt of water at 168.6 F 154.0 F 60 min
Also made an awesome pizza from scratch tonight. Mmmm...

Oatmeal Stout

OK, just finished up building my first Mash Liquor Tun (MLT), so this will be my first all-grain batch. When making beer from grain, you need to mix water into the grain, and bring it up to a specific temperature which activates enzymes that convert the starches in the grains into the sugar that the yeast will eat. This is commonly done in one of two ways: (1) direct fire, in which the grain and water are put in a pot over a heat source (gas burner or something similar) to maintain the temperature, and (2) some sort of cooler into which the grain and hot water are added, and the lid closed to maintain the temperature. I went with the second option since it is generally cheaper. My first all grain is going to be an oatmeal stout.



Recipe: Yooper's Oatmeal Stout
TYPE: All Grain

Recipe Specifications
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal
Boil Size: 6.69 gal
Bottling Volume: 4.60 gal
Estimated OG: 1.057 SG
Estimated Color: 35.9 SRM
Estimated IBU: 39.0 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
Amt Name Type %/IBU
7 lbs Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 63.6 %
1 lbs Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM) Grain 9.1 %
12.0 oz Victory Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 6.8 %
10.1 oz Chocolate Malt (200.0 SRM) Grain 5.7 %
8.0 oz Barley, Flaked (1.7 SRM) Grain 4.5 %
8.0 oz Black Barley (Stout) (500.0 SRM) Grain 4.5 %
8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM) Grain 4.5 %
2.1 oz Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM) Grain 1.2 %
2.00 oz Willamette [5.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 39.0 IBUs
1.0 pkg British Ale II (Wyeast Labs #1335) [124. Yeast -

Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Full Body, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 11 lbs 0.2 oz
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Mash In Add 22.45 qt of water at 167.4 F 156.0 F 45 min

Worst. Brew. Day. Ever

Ok, so I just thought I'd share my experience from last night. I have 2 young daughters (3 yrs old and 11 mos old) so brewing during the daytime is generally difficult. I've had the ingredients for Yooper's DFH 60 min IPA clone and have been itching to brew it for a while now.

This weekend was my birthday and father's day, so I figured good a time as any. Got started as soon as the kids were asleep (8:30-ish). Made a few changes in this batch - LHBS was out of simcoe, so at their suggestion I substituted falconer's flight. Recently bought a 15 gal boil kettle, so I had to scale recipe from 2.5 gal to full volume boil. Also, fitted the hand-me-down immersion chiller w/ vinyl hose and lawn hose adapters. Since I live in TX and tap water is 80 deg or more, I also bought a big steel tub for an ice bath.

Boil went smoothly, then all hell broke loose. Hose popped off chiller, running hose water into wort. While putting ice in tub, my leg brushed the propane burner frame giving me a 2nd deg burn. Couldn't get down below 100 deg after all the ice melted, so I racked it to fermenter, holding the siphon hose w/ a couple ice packs in my hands. Got it down to 80 this way. Pitched yeast around 3am this morning. Discovered wort was scorched as it took half an hour to scrub black s#!t off bottom of new kettle. Put it in my newly constructed fermentation chamber, only to discover that the peltier I used was way undersized, so now it's been fermenting at over 89 deg for about 10 hrs. I think this may qualify as my worst brew day...

Second Batch - Dogfish Head 60 min IPA clone

OK, so I haven't had an update in a while.  I tried the first bottle of my first batch at around 10 days.  Frankly, it was pretty good!  Not amazing, but good.  As the weeks have gone by, the carbonation seems to have gotten better.  It doesn't seem to form a great head, but I think it's getting better with age.

So, now on to batch #2.  A friend is having a crawfish boil at the end of March, and I decided it would be good to have an IPA to bring.  So, I looked around on homebrewtalk.com and found a Dogfish Head 60 min IPA clone.  It's a little more advanced than my first, all-extract, batch.  The basic flow was like this: steep a pound of malt grain in a grain bag in hot water for 20 min.  Discard the grain, and add malt extract.  Bring to boil and add several types of hops continuously for 60 min.  Cool the wort, add to fermenter, and pitch yeast.  So, we decided we would brew on Saturday.  Headed down to my LHBS only to find he had everything but a particular brand of hops called Simcoe, for which there is really no good alternative.  So, we packed up the kids and took a roadtrip down to De Falco's on the other side of Houston. Of course, in order to justify driving an hour each way for 2 oz. of hops, we decided to spend the rest of the day at the Houston zoo...

OK, so back to the house, stopped at Rudy's for dinner, put the kids in bed, and now it 9:00 - brew time at last? Unfortunately, no.  The recipe I had stated a 2.5 gal boil.  I therefore figured my 3 gal pot would be sufficient.  Unfortunately, it's 2.5 gal before adding the almost 10 lbs of extract!  So, off to the local grocery store to pick up an $18, 36qt aluminum pot made for steaming tamales.  Yeah, it's a little flimsy but, hey, whatever gets the job done...

So, got the pot, got home, and unfortunately discovered that our glasstop electric stove is not really up to the task of boiling 2.5 gal of water + 10 lbs of extract in a 36qt pot.  Go figure.  It got there eventually.  Boiling/hopping the wart was fun.  It didn't take long for the whole house to smell hoppy...

After boiling for an hour, you're supposed to cool the wort as rapidly as possible.  Ideally this would be done with a wort chiller.  But I don't have one of those, so I was left trying to cool it in my sink filled with icewater.  Only, the ice maker in the fridge decided to stop working.  Oy vey.

After getting the wort down to 75-80 deg, and rehydrating the yeast in warm water, I poured the wort through a strainer into the fermenter and shook it up to aerate it.  Topped it up to 5 gal with bottled water, and pitched the yeast around 2:00 am.  Total brewing time?  About 4 hours.  Yikes.  Looks like it's about time to invest in a propane burner, a wort chiller, and a "real" brew pot.

I took a gravity reading right before pitching the yeast, and it read 1.022 SG.  This was a little worrysome, as it was supposed to be more like 1.070 SG.  The specific gravity is a measure of how much "stuff" there is dissolved in the water, and we assume it to be mostly sugar.  By measuring the gravity before and after, you can estimate how much sugar the yeast have eaten, and therefore estimate the alcohol content.  I'm not sure why my reading was so low, but my best guess is that I didn't mix up the wort and added water enough, and so only sampled the water on top.  I don't see how you can add 10 lbs of sugar to 5 gal of water and not increase the specific gravity...  At any rate, by 1:30 this afternoon the airlock was bubbling.  So, I don't think the yeast are having any trouble finding food!

My first batch

So, along with the brewing kit (similar to this: Gold Complete Beer Equipment Kit (K7) with 5 Gallon Glass Carboy), my wife also purchased for me a couple of books, and a Coopers Dark Ale Complete Beer Ingredient Kit for Home Brewing.  The first book came with the kit - "Brewing Quality Beers: The Home Brewer's Essential Guidebook" by Byron Burch.  It's pretty short - I read through it in it's entirety over Christmas and the next day.  Pretty good information, particularly if one wants to start brewing from recipes, or experimenting with your own recipes (he has a simplified method for calculating hop bettering units that should allow one to have a degree of consistency in your brews).  It's all a bit advanced seeing how I'm starting with kit with concentrate and extract, and won't be boiling my own hops, but it's a great primer, and has me excited to take it to the next level. I'm sure I'll read it again when the time comes...

I was excited to start my first batch, but the directions in the book didn't really cover brewing from a kit with extract and concentrate, and the directions "on the can" left me wondering if it was really that simple.  So, I went to the Cooper's website (http://www.coopers.com.au/) and downloaded the kit instructions there.  It's pretty basic: after sanitizing all your equipment, you simply empty the contents of the hopped malt extract, 1kg of sugar, and 2 liters of boiling water into the fermenter.  Stir it until everything is "dissolved", then fill the fermenter up to the 5 gal mark with water (Houston water has a chlorine smell, so I used bottled).  The kit my wife bought came with a container labeled "amber extract".  I assumed this was, and used it, in place of the sugar, so we'll see...  Finally, I sprinkled the yeast packet over the top, put the lid on, inserted the airlock, and filled it with bottled water.  Then I put the bucket in the downstairs shower stall (never gets used).

The kit said that fermentation should begin in a few hours, and bubbling should be visible in the airlock.  After ~20 hours, there was no bubbling.  I started reading the second (thicker) book my wife bought me: "How to Brew: Everything You Need To Know To Brew Beer Right The First Time" by John Palmer. This book is really great.   Aside from having a lot of detail on various aspects of brewing, it starts with a "Crash course" that I should have read before trying my kit.  After reading this, there are several things I probably should have done differently.  #1) I should have re-hydrated my yeast by stirring it into some warm water first.  #2) My wort was too cold (20 deg C) when I pitched (added) the yeast to it.  #3) The downstairs shower is likely too cold (it's been cold the last few days and the downstairs ambient temp has been around 63 deg F).  So, I moved it to the upstairs closet (ambient temp around 66-67 deg F).  Just the action of moving the pail must have "stirred" up the yeast a little, because just moments after setting it down, I saw the first bubble in the airlock!  Fermentation has commenced!