Brew Day – AA1

Posted on August 4, 2013 by Andy Thomas

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Brewing in the evening

All in all, a good day. The mash was a long, drawn out process, but I’m happy that I came out with 73% efficiency. I really need to get a ball valve and drain filter of some sort for the mash tun (cooler). Well, it was still fun. The 90 minute boil was interesting. The first hop addition wasn’t until 60 minutes, and it did not threaten to boil over. I replaced about 1/2 gallon of evaporated wort at around 60 minutes in with left over drainings in the mash tun. In retrospect this was a mistake…I hope not too bad of one. The yeast starter went fine, and the fermentation was coming along nicely the next morning, and still is strong today (2 days later). The color is beautiful.

Rolling Boil

Hop Additions

Revised Recipe

When I was unpacking the ingredients, I found a mistake had been made and I was shipped 2 pounds of Dark Munich malt and none of the Crystal 40L. Fortunately, I had a half pound or so of some lighter Crystal malt and I added in a little extra of the Munich to keep the color similar. I’m hoping for a little extra roasty flavor as a bonus. Here is the updated recipe:

AA1-Amber Waves by Jamil

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Andy Thomas

I want to brew this Friday. I’m thirsty. I also want to use a yeast starter, which means I’ll need to use the Safale 05 I have on hand, because my ingredient order may not get here by Thursday, which is when I need to start the yeast. So…what to brew? I’ve been listening to older podcasts from the Brewing Network and like what Jamil Zainasheff, John Palmer and the guys have been saying about getting and tweaking recipes. So I found one of Jamil’s recipes for an American Amber and thought I’d give it a try. I happened to have a Red Tail Ale yesterday, which by coincidence is a Red/Amber Ale…and a great beer!

What to Expect

BJCP Guidelines for this style (10B American Amber Ale)

I’m hoping to produce a light-ish ale with decent body. It should be a little reddish. I’m trying to bring out the roast flavor in the malt. It should be firmly hopped, but I’m shooting for the hops to take a back seat to the malt. Hopefully it won’t be too heavy…something to enjoy several of on a warm day.

Recipe

Recipe Details

Batch Size	Boil Time	IBU	SRM	Est. OG	Est. FG	ABV
6 gal	60 min	25.9 IBUs	13.2 SRM	1.054 SG	1.010 SG	5.8 %

Style Details

Name	Cat.	OG Range	FG Range	IBU	SRM	Carb	ABV
American Amber Ale	6 B	1.045 - 1.056	1.01 - 1.015	20 - 40	11 - 18	2.3 - 2.8	4.5 - 5.7 %

Fermentables

Name	Amount	%
Great Western 2-Row pale malt	11 lbs	81.48
Crystal 40, 2-Row, (Great Western)	1 lbs	7.41
Munich (DURST MALZ)	1 lbs	7.41
Crystal 120, 2-Row, (Great Western)	0.5 lbs	3.7

Hops

Name	Amount	Time	Use	Form	Alpha %
Magnum	0.5 oz	60 min	Boil	Pellet	14
Centennial	0.25 oz	10 min	Boil	Pellet	10
Cascade	0.25 oz	10 min	Boil	Pellet	5.5
Cascade	0.25 oz	0 min	Boil	Pellet	5.5
Centennial	0.25 oz	0 min	Boil	Pellet	10

Miscs

Name	Amount	Time	Use	Type
Whirlfloc Tablet	1.00 Items	5 min	Boil	Fining

Yeast

Name	Lab	Attenuation	Temperature
Safale American (US-05)	DCL/Fermentis	77%	59°F - 75°F

Notes

http://byo.com/stories/item/126-american-amber-style-profile
Mill the grains and dough-in targeting a mash of around 1.5 quarts of water to 1 pound of grain (a liquor-to-grist ratio of about 3:1 by weight) and a temperature of 154 °F (68 °C). Hold the mash at 154 °F (68 °C) until enzymatic conversion is complete. Infuse the mash with near boiling water while stirring or with a recirculating mash system raise the temperature to mash out at 168 °F (76 °C). Sparge slowly with 170 °F (77 °C) water, collecting wort until the pre-boil kettle volume is around 6.5 gallons (25 L) and the gravity is 1.040 (9.9°P).

Total wort boil time is 90 minutes. Add the bittering hops with 60 minutes remaining in the boil. Add Irish moss or other kettle finings with 15 minutes left. Add other hop additions at 10 minutes remaining and flame out. Chill the wort to 67 °F (19 °C) and aerate thoroughly. The proper pitch rate is 9 grams of rehydrated dry yeast, 2 packages of liquid yeast or 1 package of liquid yeast in a 1.5-liter starter.

Ferment at 67 °F (19 °C) until the yeast drops clear. Fermentation should be complete in about one week. Allow the lees to settle and the brew to mature without pressure for another two days after fermentation appears finished. Rack to a keg and force carbonate or rack to a bottling bucket, add priming sugar, and bottle. Target a carbonation level of 2 to 2.5 volumes.

Substituted Magnum for Horizon hops due to availablility.

Download

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Brew Day – Brooklyn Brew Shop’s Summer Wheat

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Andy Thomas

Cameron and Cassie gave me this cool kit for my birthday last month. I brewed it yesterday and it was a lot of fun! It came with the needed yeast, so I thought I’d try a yeast starter. I don’t have a stir plate yet, so I just swished it a bit whenever I walked by the beer fridge for about a day. It was a real kick doing a complete all-grain brew of 1 gallon.

Recipe and directions

The mash was a little challenging because I didn’t want to use my regular brewing equipment, as I felt it would have been too cumbersome for this small batch. Using some of their suggestions and a few ideas of my own, I came up with this setup:

Mini-sparge in progress

I did decide to enhance the recipe a little by adding the zest from 2 limes and a handful of fresh mint from the garden to the last 30 minutes of the boil.

Boil in progress

The yeast starter proved fine, and there was an active fermentation this morning. Maybe a little too active for the fermentation lock. BBS suggested a blow-off tube for the first few days, which I will heed the next time I brew a 1-gallon batch.

All in all, a very enjoyable session. Thanks, Cass & Cam!

Overnight Ale – CDA2 … Success!!

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Andy Thomas

After a week in bottles at around 80° F I cracked one open, as I usually do, just to see how the young beer is coming along. Carbonation and head were just fine. The first taste was all I could have hoped for, I think:

Dark and clear brown color
Up-front hop flavor
Crisp taste
Decent mouth feel
Enough malt to stand up to the hops without contributing bitterness of its own
More hop flavor and aroma on the back end

We ended up killing 4 of these on Sunday. More of a kick than I expected. My hydrometer broke before I could get a final gravity reading at bottling, but I was expecting 4-5% ABV maybe. This felt more like 6% or maybe a little more. I won’t touch it again until this weekend. I’m keeping it down around 60° until then.

So what’s up with the name? Well, I had previously vowed to name our beers if I ever felt the desire to brew the same one twice. I wasn’t expecting the CDA1 debacle, but I will stand by my promise to myself. We thought long and hard about it and decided to remember and honor our first overnight adventure on Andeleen on New Hogan Lake. Calm, dark and a true adventure.

Overnight Ale Brew Day

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Andy Thomas

This went well. I made a list of new things to be sure to do:

Check water pH – 5.6-6.0
Tun – line with bag then add water
Add pH stabilizer
Stir grain in slowly and carefully (note: crushed grain came from Brewmaster’s Warehouse all mixed evenly in one plastic bag. Very cool!)
Iodine test at 30 and 60 min – it looked very good. A little hard to tell with the dark liquid, but conversion was definitely taking place. I also poured some off to taste it at the end of the sparge, and it was corn-syrup sweet.
Sparge entire volume into a vessel other than the boil kettle – I used my primary fermenter.
I ended up with about 8 gallons, so I used 7.5 gal or so in the boil. About 30 minutes in, I added another gallon to top up the brew pot. Gravity adjusted for temperature was 1.046.
I kept a nice, calm, rolling boil throughout the 60 minutes. Hop additions all went smoothly. The BeerSmith timer worked wonderfully for this.
Cool to 72F
After emptying and sanitizing the primary fermenter, I poured the wort through a strainer, catching a pretty large amount of trub. I believe it also aerated well.
Adjusted gravity at end of boil: 1.049
5.6 gallons in primary
Fermentation chamber set to 68F
Pitch yeast

Sweet Wort

The Boil

All was well with the brew day. When I checked for yeast activity later in the day…nothing. Hmmm… agitated the wort a little and checked in the morning. NOTHING! Oh, man what now?? When I got home from work I checked again and it was still dead flat. It sure seemed like the 2 bags of Wyeast had failed. Hard to imagine, especially since there was some swelling of the bags after smacking on Brew Day morning. Luckily, I had a spare packet of Fermentis 05, so I carefully sprinkled that in. By the time I came home Tuesday night, CDA2 was bubbling happily away. Smells great, too!

Stay tuned…

Hops Update 6-3-13

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Andy Thomas

Unfortunately, all I got out of the rhizomes was some damp sticks. Angry Dave gave me another rhizome and a Fuggle crown from Great Lakes Hops (thanks, Dave!). I was so happy with how the crown was growing that I ordered a Columbus crown myself…and received a free (Lucky Dog) Fuggle as well. I put them all in pots and placed the Fuggles in partial shade under some oak trees. After keeping the Columbus in full shade for a week or so I then moved it into direct sunlight.

2nd Fuggle

1st Fuggle

Columbus

Since they are growing so well, I started to get concerned about the stupid deer eating them. I found some deer repellent tape at my local Ace and put it up per the instructions. We’ll see…

Deer Barrier

From the Ashes… Overnight Ale (CDA2)

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Andy Thomas

Well, it’s clear now that CDA1 had a catastrophic failure in the mash. I had some good postmortem discussions with Zach W. and Angry Dave. These are the points and adjustments to be made:

CDA1
1st batch I missed the gravity…ended up with 1.036 OG. We think the mash was an abject failure for the base malt. Maybe too hot for too long. Maybe the boil scorched the specialty malt sugars. In any event, this beer came out undrinkable.

CDA2
Adjust brewery efficiency down to 65% in Beersmith recipe.

2nd batch will use filtered water to a 10 gal cooler (from Home Depot) to hold the bag. Also adding thermometer (from Williams Brewing) to the tun to make sure mash temp stays where it needs to be. Will test mash water pH and amend with 52 pH Stabilizer if needed.

Need to improve my mash technique:
Bag, then water, then grain. Add grain slower and stir/mix thrououghly when adding.
At end of projected mash time, perform iodine test and lengthen mash time if necessary.
Keep extra sparge water at proper temperature in boil kettle.
Batch sparge and transfer to secondary vessel.
At end of sparge, transfer to boil kettle.

Will also tweak end of boil:
After boil is cooled, drain through strainer into primary fermenter. I’m hoping to keep more trub out of the fermenters.

I believe the best way to find out for sure what went so terribly wrong with CDA1 is to “get back on the horse that threw me” and brew this again. This will then allow me to apply the changes to my procedures for future beer.