Month: March 2012

Blowout

Truly nothing better than to come home from a crap day at work to learn that the Belgian Wit was fermenting with such vigor as to blow the top off the airlock with krauseny goodness. The fermentation room smelled like beer and the bucket lid looked like the closing shot from some circle jerk pr0n video.

After an awesome Circle Family Dinner and some quality porch time I went back downstairs to address the “problem”. First I pulled the airlock and cleaned it up. When I went to return it to its spot, the beer vomited another round of krausen and filled it back up. Cleaned it up again and this time stole the tubing for the bottling wand and slipped it over the top of the airlock. I put the other end into a bowl of sanitizing solution and watched the beer blow bubbles for about 15 minutes.

This morning I checked on things and found another mess. Yay! The tube and bowl were all sludged up with goo. The beer was still blowing bubbles in the solution so the thing wasn’t all clogged up. It was hard to head off to work because I wanted to sit and watch. Damn tube is going to be a bitch to clean out. I wonder what kind of mess awaits my return tonight.

Not sure what the magic is here. First four brews never got much more than six inches of krausen but the last two have been crazy messy. I did make a yeast starter this time so maybe pitching a larger population has something to do with it. This doesn’t explain the nutter’s behavior though. The only other change was the addition of the wort chiller. Could it be pitching at <70˚F really makes that much of a difference?

At any rate, awesome problems to have. Adding a second action item before the next brew day: engineer a less messy blowout tube solution.

I’ve got pikkies on my phone. I’ll try to get them posted here too.

Belgian Wit

After a fun morning of yard work (who ever heard of mowing the yard before April?), a dog meet up in the circle, and racking the peach wine we endeavored to brew up a yet to be branded Belgian Wit. Judging by the smell test administered via the airlock this morning, it promises to be yum-o!

It’s a modified Blue Moon clone recipe I found on HBT in the recipe database. We did the all-grain, BIAB version as follows:

  • 5 lbs Maris Otter Crisp
  • 4 lbs Torrified Wheat
  • 1 lbs Flaked Wheat
  • 1 lbs Flaked Oats
  • .75 oz UK Golding
  • 1 oz Crushed Coriander
  • 1.4 oz Fresh Orange Zest (zest from two average sized navel oranges)
  • 3 cups Wyeast 3944 yeast slurry from starter made on Thursday

Into the pot went 8.5 gallons of water and on went the flame. We heated to 132˚F for a strike temp shooting for a 30 minute protein rest at 126˚F. Unfortunately we missed a bit and the protein rest happened at 132˚F although it drifted down to 126˚F by the 30 minute rest.

On went the flame again and we heated to 154˚F for the starch conversion. After 20 minutes the temps had drifted down to 148˚F so we heated and stirred for a bit to get back to 154˚F. Another 22 minutes and we had our 45 minute conversion with the temp drifting down to 150˚F by the end. Really should work on an insulation strategy if I’m going to keep using BIAB instead of using an MLT.

On went the heat again and we brought the temp up to 170˚F for a final 10 minute rest. At the end we drained the grain bag and then tried a few attempts at squeezing all of the possible wort from it using various methods. It has been demonstrated that we lack a colander or grate of sufficient diameter to rest securely on the lip of the fryer pot or a bucket. So we lost a little efficiency. That’s the bad news. The good news is we hit a pre-boil OG of 1.050. This was .008 higher than the target 1.042. Looks like I can bump my BIAB efficiency to 80% based on the last two attempts. Well, given there have been exactly two attempts, last might be a bit misleading.

Brought the wort to boil and let it roll for 30 minutes. In went the hops and we let it run for another 50. At 15 minutes to flame out we added the chiller and with five minutes on the clock we added the zest and coriander.

Damn it smelled nice!

Forgot to time the chiller (again) but we went from rolling boil to 70˚F inside of 15 minutes. Dumped the wort into a sanitized bucket via a paint straining bag. This kept out the zest and coriander (boo) but also left out a softball sized lump of trub and break material (yay). Post boil OG was a whomping 1.061. If this thing ferments down to the target FG we’re looking at a 6.4% ABV. Kind of a cross between a wit and a dubbel…Double wit? Do we have a brand name for this one now?

Down to the dungeon where we dumped in the yeast slurry, capped the bucket and sent off to the fermentation room. Within three hours the airlock was burbling away pleasantly. Checked on it again this morning and no blowout yet even though the airlock is going crazy. You can really smell the orange being carried along with the CO2 exhaust. I hope some of that odor/flavor stays behind!

Fermentation room is hovering in the middle 60s which is on the cool side for the 3944 so we won’t pick up the esters as much as one might like, but the orange and coriander should still spice it up nicely.

So the remaining tasks are to wrap up the post-brew cleaning (everyone is a-soakin’ today) and come up with a clever name for the Belgian Wit sitting in the cellar.

That and to thank the staff for their yeoman’s work yesterday. Butter was awesome on fire duty–not a single missed regulator reset! He’s also stepping into some management roles nicely even if he forgot to clock out for his lunch break. Doug was great with all facets of water management. If I weren’t so worried about him opening a competing bar next door he’d be pegged for management. Gavin makes a pretty good hop guy and since it’s not technically beer until we add the yeast, I don’t think his age presents a problem.

On the flip side, management has heard rumors of a coup. This must be quashed with extreme prejudice!

Goal: Make Beer

This weekend I want to brew but I cannot decide. We’re 3 for 5 assuming something strange does not wreck havoc on the Son of Nutter. The two failures were a Belgian wit and an oatmeal stout. I love a good wit and I also love a good stout.

I’m leaning wit right now for some reason. It’s been a while since I’ve had a tasty Blue Moon. Not complaining, really, because that means the pipeline is limping along enough that I’m not compelled to drink store-bought yet. I’ve also been watching the fermentation chamber (read: coal room) temps since the weather became unseasonably warm little over a week ago. With outdoor temps in the 50˚ – 80˚F range the coal room has climbed out of 60˚F range into the 66˚F range.

Yeast strains appropriate to stouts are still within that range, but I don’t see things cooling off in the near future. I’m hoping the coal room can be kept in the upper 60s and would even be okay with nothing higher than 72˚F. These are good temps for wits and saisons as the styles encourage fruity esters.

Ultimately I’ll have a temperature controlled fermenting environment. I’ve been pricing used fridges and freezers. Mixing in an external temp controller allows one to tightly manage ambient temps. At that point I can even entertain lagering.

….mmmmm….Czechvar…..

Anyway—I guess I’m just declaring my intent to brew. Going to try stopping by the LHBS during lunch to see what yeasts and grains are actually available. This will probably be the deciding factor in which way I go on Saturday.

Spam and eggs

Getting more and more convinced that there has been a disturbance in the force. Weird Facebook status update emails and now some out of the blue SMS spam. It’s not the first time ever so we’re still in the realm of coinkydinks but as the day goes on the more I feel like everyone’s favorite Sith lord right about the time Luke is slashing up Jabba’s little sandpit party.

At any rate, I found AT&T has a handy anti SMS spam FAQ. Of course, like the inept ISP they are, it’s a friggin’ PDF. Christ on a crutch.

At any rate, forward you spam SMS to 7726 (SPAM on your keypad!). They’ll reply asking for the sender’s phone number. Once you provide that, they promise to bring the wrath of several gods down on the spamming feathermuckers. At least that’s how I choose to interpret “Thank you, we appreciate your assistance.”

Two unrelated things…

First: Weird coincidence time! I’ve been reading Zodiac where one of the baddies is a company named Forex. I got spam today from a betting service named Forex. There was a weird moment where I couldn’t figure out why a betting service was dumping PCBs and why they wanted to contact me. Like maybe they were going to do me in like they’ve been trying to do in Sangamon Taylor.

Second: …

…

Well hell. Was so involved in the first thing I completely forgot the second. All I remember about it was that I wanted to file it under “Rants” and it came up while I was reading Facebook at work.

It’s Friday! Let’s go out and have us a good weekend, shall we?

Peachity peach

Like I said, we played brewery all weekend long. The last thing we accomplished was setting up to make peach wine. The must is currently airing out and the fabulous Elizabeth will add yeast tomorrow and get things cooking.

Here’s what we did:

Ingredients

  • 96 oz peach cubes and juice
  • 48 oz peach pureé
  • 3.75 gallons water
  • 11 lb white cane sugar
  • 3 tsp acid blend
  • 4 tsp yeast nutrient
  • 2.5 tsp pectin enzyme
  • 1/4 tsp tannin
  • 5 Campden tablets, crushed

Bagged the peaches in a muslin bag and mixed all the ingredients. We’re letting sit about half a day or so to let the Campden tablets do their thing and then adding yeast.

This should sit in the primary for about two weeks–we’ll probably rack it some time around the first of April.

Second racking should happen around 6 May.

Third racking and fining agent should happen around 3 June and we’ll look to bottle on 24 June (depending on gravity readings).

When we add fining agent we’ll also throw in 1.5 tsp Potassium Sorbate to reign in the yeast. If need be, we’ll back sweeten as well. This should be flavorful dessert wine (not unlike the gooseberry). Elizabeth intends to use this as a spritzer come August, but I’d also like to hold a few bottles back to enjoy in late fall / early winter.

Also…someone needs to remind me to do a write up on the black currant wine currently sitting in secondary in the basement. It had a nice ruby sheen to it when we racked it yesterday. Tasted pretty heavily of fusel alcohols and yeast when sampling from the gravity reading. Current SG: 1.011. Should be ready to fine next month and bottle some time in late April. Looking at a drink date in late fall for that one.