Category: Rants and Stories

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!

FML

Literally reaching to unplug the network jack on my laptop so I can put it in my bag so I can leave so that I can attend a hockey game this evening and someone comes by the cube and says “Oh thank god, someone from CM is here! I need help with a production issue.”

The problem is poorly explained, I ask for clarification. Dude runs back to his phone and continues with his conversation. I’m trying to figure out WTF is going on. And now I’m holding so that he can finish his phone call so that I can figure out WTF he wants, which, to the best of my understanding, is something they’ve ad hoc‘ed all through testing and QA so there is no way in hell we’ve set up a control for this in the configuration application.

So…Friday night, no hockey, stuck at work, and just waiting for the chance to jump in.

Hooray.

Things are looking gravy again

Wednesday and Thursday were depressing days at work. All of the gains from last week crumbled into a crapular pit of despair on Wednesday afternoon.

And then I decided to rewrite an entire module from the ground up. This is different than refactoring in that I don’t have the time to make improvements, I’m only trying to fix references and get around whatever undocumented crufty magic lies in .sln, .csproj, and .wixproj files. Love IDEs until I don’t I guess.

So today was the grand test, and, the answer is yes. So now the remaining trick is to cobble together something that can be referenced by consumers without breaking consumers that don’t reference the new stuff. Additional fun factor: both versions use the same file names and namespaces.

FML!

But I believe we are finally out of unknown unknowns now. From here it is plumbing.

Wix is ruining my life

On the one hand, yay, job security!

On the other hand, holy hell! Probably more a factor of how we initially wrote the code, but the upgrade path has been abysmal going from v3.0 to v3.6. Just today I had to rewrite almost three years of custom actions just to get the damn things to compile. All of this to try to prove that it is running wix 3.0 compiled custom actions in a wix 3.6 msi that is causing all of the big explosions.

This explains why we are almost two years behind. Very much hoping the next upgrade cycle is not so ass bitey.

Diacetyl rest before the crash

Took the McBee’s out of the fermentation chamber (fancy way of saying old coal room in the basement) today. She looks a lovely creamy butterscotch in the carboy that translates to a light straw color in the hydrometer test cylinder. There’s a metric butt tonne of trub sitting at the bottom of the carboy. SG reading was a bit higher than anticipated–1.015 instead of the expected 1.009.

Given that it’s been on the cold side in the ol’ carboy what with us actually getting a cold snap the last week I’ve pulled her out and set her next to the furnace covered in a tshirt and pillow case. Probably leave it there until Wednesday to give it time to warm up, kick out any diacetyl lying about and wrap up any remaining sugar.

Going to cold crash this by setting the carboy out on the back porch for two or three days before bottling. This assumes the weather cooperates. This should help settle anything else out. I have to say, though, it was pretty clear even though I gave up on running it through a filter on the way to the carboy because we were running short of time. Looking to bottle this next weekend if I get steady SG readings over the next week.

Drank a few swallows out of the sample tube and I think this one is going be an excellent session beer.

Pouring and details

Here’s the end result. 2012B01 A.K.A. Black Squirrel Nutter. She’s lovely, brown, and crisp/sweet with a moderate nuttiness.

Stats:
OG: 1.051
FG: 1.016
ABV: 4.7%

Bottles remaining: 21 as of right now. Yikes! Between gifts, graft, and personal consumption, that’s half the batch in less than a week.

Time to make more beer! Maybe this weekend?

Released into the wild

It’s been a bit of a wait, but the first reviews of Black Squirrel “Nutter” have been favorable.

This is the second ever batch brewed by Circle Bar Brewery, which is a fancy way of saying me and my compatriots. Special thanks to Dan, Doug, and Gavin who stopped by and helped while away the hours. The day was a bit warmer than the first ever batch, which helps explain why we were accidentally smart enough to keep the lid off the kettle.

Nutter is an extract recipe for a nut brown ale and the first that used LME. The full recipe:

  • 1/2 lbs UK Dark Crystal — steeped
  • 3/8 lbs US Dark Chocolate Malt — steeped
  • 1/8 lbs Weyerman Crisp Roasted 2-Row — steeped
  • 3.3 lbs Hopped Light Liquid Malt Extract — in boil
  • 1 lb Light Dried Malt Extract — in boil
  • 1 lb Sparkling Amber Dried Malt Extract — in boil
  • 1 lb Muscovado — in boil
  • 2 oz Fuggle Loose Pellet Hops at 10 minutes to flame out
  • 1 pkg Coopers Ale Yeast

Specialty grains in muslin bag at flame on, heated to 160F. Rest for 30 minutes and then removed bag and squeezed into wort. Boil for 60 minutes with hops addition at 10 minutes to flame out.

Of note: No boil overs this time! Kit called for a partial boil of 3 gallons and then a top off. Since I have the kettle space I did full volume boil. I believe we used 6 gallons which after boil off and trub loss netted almost 5 gallons of beer. We did get to the 80F pitching temperature (yes, too hot) within 45 minutes. Pitched dry yeast on top of cooled wort (now beer) in a 6.5 gallon carboy. Airlocked and off to the fermenting chamber for three weeks. Ambient temps ranged from 58 – 64 over the period.

Bottle conditioned using 5oz DME (probably 1oz too much given carbonation) and rested at room temp for two weeks.

Tasting notes: Nice pour with possibly too much carbonation for the style. Head retention is passable but not great. Wonderful nutty taste with sweet/spicy finish. At 5.5% ABV, highly drinkable.

I’ll post the pour pictures and additional notes later. Would definitely do this kit beer again but am more interested in moving to all-grain doing BIAB so it may be a different path to nut brown goodness next time out.