B.O.B’s Place Brews

So I have moved

2011-11-10T08:08:00.001-08:00

After renting for what seems like ages I have moved to a more permanent spot by purchasing a house. I can’t wait to get things organized and ready for both living and playing (brewing) ultimately I would like to get a nice outdoor shed that I can basically make into a brew shed. I have been accumulating so much stuff over the years related to brewing that it takes up a large portion of my garage. If I could have a dedicated space for brewing I could leave things set and ready to go rather than having to constantly set up and tear down the full kit. it be like having my own mini brewery, how cool would that be?

Wort Chiller

2011-08-05T11:42:00.000-07:00

I stole the idea from I don’t know where but here is a chiller I built for cooling post boil. The coil built up ice quite fast when I was running it without any circulation. This sucker has made cooling the wort in the Texas summer heat much easier than using tap water, ice and a pre chiller.

The chiller is mounted on a piece of wood so nothing moves

The gap that is seen is filled back in with the piece I cut out and the whole thing is siliconed.

No excuse

2011-08-04T08:20:00.000-07:00

Life takes over and interest is lost. This little page is one that I chose to set aside in lieu of other endeavors. Back in the saddle? Who knows for sure. I may… I may not… To be honest I am surprised the account didn’t get shut down.

American wheat beer brew day

2010-02-01T08:22:00.000-08:00

Brewing my lightly hopped summer wheat beer the other day I had a bit of a misstep. In the mash or in the sparg I had 1 gallon too much water. I did save the extra gallon and canned it for use as a starter down the road. My OG was also a bit low because of this but not drastically. This along with the heff I brewed 2 weeks ago will fill out two spaces in the kegerator I finished building. The one spot currently flowing is a porter that I brewed a while back. It is also a good thing it is on the cold side here in Texas. I am letting the new beer ferment in the ambient temperature of the garage since I pilfered the Johnson controls from my fermentation fridge to put it on the kegerator. Now I need to come up with the next beer to brew at the end of February on a brew day / BBQ I am hosting.

Kegerator Construction

2010-01-29T06:46:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures of the kegerator project.

Step one was cleaning the freezer.

Here are the collar parts stained.

This is the collar assembled just before I added weatherstripping.

Getting the freezer ready for the collar by removing the lid. This freezer had no light in the lid so there was no electrical to deal with on the top end.

Here is the collar on the freezer body. I used L brackets in the corners of the collar for strength and a clean, no fastener exterior. I had some Simpson L brackets that I bent to a Z shape for attaching the collar to the freezer and to give it directional stability.

Here is the lid reattached. The top two screws in the hinges I replaced with wood screws fastened into the collar. For the bottom two I very carefully drilled new holes in the back of the freezer. I didn't want to hit any coils if there were any there.

Here is the freezer placed into its final home next to my upright fridge that I use for fermenting.

Five taps are installed as well as a bottle opener and a cap catcher I made from some scrap. I made a mistake when I ordered the four keg kit. I should have upgraded the manifold to the five keg version. I will pick up a Y hose barb at a hardware store to make the 5th tap usable. I am also going to pick up a quick disconnect like air tools have. This way I can disconnect the CO2 tank and take it with me along with a picnic tap. I can also connect it to my commercial tap that way as well. Grated I may use that only once a year but it is worth it not having to pump a Bronco tap.

Here it is in all its exterior glory. In total I think the freezer could hold eight soda kegs. I will probably keep the extra open space for bottled beer. I have many friends that are set in their ways of drinking only macro lights. One day I will get around to brewing a super light lager for them.

Keging Beer

2010-01-26T10:08:00.001-08:00

My last post saw me buying a keg setup for homebrew… I should have jumped a little higher than I did. Even at the time I knew one keg and one faucet just wouldn’t last. I just ordered a 4 keg and faucet addition from the same place I mentioned before. I also procured a 15 cubic foot chest freezer from craigslist. Practically brand new for $70. What was more shocking is that when I saw the listing and sent the poster an e-mail, the listing was all ready several days old and I still got it. I bought it, picked it up and it is now in a state of being converted for beer usage. I will post some pictures as soon as I finish it, probably this weekend.

The Best Laid Plans

2009-11-30T09:04:00.000-08:00

AHHH… The fruits of getting older. Every year brings more knowledge, more goals both near and far and new adventures in brewing. This holiday season has started the ball rolling on some long held plans that will bring about the demise of bottling beer. I have placed an order for a keging setup. I placed an order with kegconnection.com on black Friday. They have a sale running on a fridge conversion kit including co2 tank, keg, lines, dual gauge regulator, faucet and shank for $129.95. My local shop is twice that. Check it out and consider giving them some business if you are looking to get into keging your beer. Now I need to find a chest freezer or another fridge to turn into a keg chamber seeing as I don’t want to sacrifice my current fridge used as a fermentation chamber.

My Hombrew Community

2009-11-25T07:15:00.000-08:00

Being from the area around Houston you would think that there would be a large populous of brewers. Houston is the 4th largest city in the US and it feels like we have a very small population of home brewers. I would be surprised if per capita it is way down the list. There is only two supply shop that I know of, one of which is way, way, out of the way. That is until I just scoured Google and there appears to be one other possibility. Of all three only one has a web page. There are 2 clubs I know of but again are way out o the way. So how do I get my fix? I brew beer, read books, the internet and try new beers at a local liquor store that has a great selection. I continually try to get more buddies involved in the hobby. Some are quite interested but have not taken the leap. I’m thinking about hosting a monthly brew event for anyone I know that is local to come and learn and or brew on my equipment. I figure that way they can try their hand at brewing by only buying the ingredients. I have the fermentor space and secondary space to do this. If they wanted to do small batches it would be even easier since they could ferment in the 5 gallon carboys I have. It’s a good excuse to continuously brew and have friends get together.

Plans Kyboshed By Work

2009-11-23T09:07:00.001-08:00

My plans for hunting this weekend were kyboshed by work. I am a PM and I couldn’t get a hold of the end user of one of the jobs I am running. So instead of being able to take all of next week of I am back at the office bright and early Monday.

Even though I was not able to go hunting I did brew beer. The first time I have brewed since May for various reasons. And such a wonderful brew day it was. The morning started out cool even though I got a late 9am start. Everything went overly smoothly for not having brewed in so long. I even employed a new rolling tool cart I have and it assisted quite well. It allowed me to be able to roll my cooler mash tun to the kitchen so I wouldn’t have to run constantly in and out of the house. I was able to prep and sanitize everything while heating mash and sparge water and even start the mash all in the kitchen. The cart was at the perfect height that allowed me to have the wort drain directly into the boil kettle while it was on the burner base. This let me have the burner start heating before the sparge was complete saving a lot of time. The cooling of the wort was also fast since the ground water has cooled substantially here in Texas over the last month. All in all from the time I rolled in the cart to the final cleaning of the last piece of equipment was 5 hours. That is the fastest I have ever pulled off a brew session. No I wait and hope that my first attempt at a brown porter comes out well.

FF "Why do I brew?"

2009-10-19T13:20:00.001-07:00

Why do I brew?

I remember why I started brewing the first time. It wasn’t legal for me to buy finished beer in the store. You see, I was 18 and living in a dorm room as a freshman in college. Just extract brews all kits. Nothing fancy or worth writing home about, it was simply a means to an end which was getting drunk. After my freshman year I packed everything up and didn’t look at it again for several years. In that time I worked in a bar, started a small business, wrapped up school and closed a small business. All the while I continued my outdoor hobbies, found other hobbies, and realized I had a taste for the finer things in life. By the time I closed down my small business to move away from the college town to the city to take a newly offered position I had a scotch collection that surpasses most. Unpacking my alcohol reserve supply of a small country I rediscovered my brewing equipment. Realizing that the only beers I had been drinking were of the craft brew variety I decided it was time once again to try my hand at brewing beer. This time around it was not for the only reason of getting trashed cheap. The last five years have seen brewing become a true escape and a means to relax form the beginnings of crafting a recipe to the magic conversion of the last drop back to water. It has witnessed the gathering of friends, solo brew journeys, crazy experiments with ingredients people would never brew with, sun rise, sun sets and all manner of weather. So why do I brew? It’s fun, that would be the short answer, but it is so much more. It’s a way to slow down time for a short while, maybe to live a bit of history, to create, to slow down and watch the world go by. Maybe it’s that elusive dream of finally creating the ever elusive perfect beer. Its enjoying the perfect beer, the one you created, flaws if any and all, cold from the fridge, while brewing the next beer to become the perfect beer.

Summertime brewing blues

2009-06-17T11:09:00.000-07:00

Here in Texas the heat is upon us and brewing beer is flat out a sweaty endeavor. With daytime temps pushing 100F with generally higher humidity, being around vast quantities of hot liquid and a raging, high output propane burner can be miserable. I feel like Hansel and Gretel testing if the oven is ready. To beat the oppressive heat I drink the occasional home brew and copious quantities of water. The heat is probably worse than when I worked in a kitchen during college. Through the brew process I easily drink over a gallon of water. And spend a lot of time in front of several box fans.

The high heat also makes cooling the wort problematic. There are no frost problems in Houston so pipes are almost always run up in the attic. The solar radiation that is so good at heating up an attic space in turn heats even the “cold” water to a high temperature making it virtually impossible to cool the wort fast. I end up employing a lot of ice in bags packed around the kettle to help. I have plans of getting a second wort chiller to use as a pre chiller for the circulating water.

Fermentation used to be a concern but since I got a Johnson controls and an old refrigerator it isn’t an issue any more. Once the wort is transferred to the fermentor and in the chill chest it’s time to clean up and cool off.

I wonder if I could convince my non brewer better half to let me experiment with small batch brewing in the kitchen. Brewing inside would be a treat but I bet she wouldn’t like the house smelling like a brewery.

The Joys & Stress. Fermentation Fridey

2009-06-01T08:42:00.000-07:00

As always a big round of thanks to BB2 for the creation of this fun day called fermentation Friday and to all the people who host it, thank you Ted at tedbrews for hosting this month’s F.F.

Brewing beer is pretty enjoyable process for me. I really like the steps I go through to decide on what type of beer I want to brew. The reading of others recopies and trying to envision what they may taste like. From there I start a formulation of my own and won’t look any recipe for several days until I have completed that. I enjoy the preparation of actual brew day and going through the steps that I the recipe dictate to create hopefully a tasty brew.

When nothing goes wrong there is very little stress on a brew day. I even enjoy the clean up to unwind reflect on how things went how I could improve or do different next time. It’s the days that don’t go so well that can be a bit stressful. I never like the feeling when you get ready to rock and roll and come up short some ingredient. The brew store for me is 30-45 minute drive. I have changed a mash schedule to a single infusion form a stepped mash because I forgot something and didn’t want my brew day to be a ridiculously long day. Those days however are rare. The most stress on a regular basis for me comes from bottling the brew. Though I have never had a batch go belly up at the bottling stage it is always a concern that there are bottles that are not clean all the way. I also just don’t like bottling. I can never get anyone to help…. I wonder why? My disdain for bottling in a short time will probably lead me to keging. I just can’t quite bring myself to build a draft setup. I’m not sure where I would put the darn thing. I could possibly rearrange my garage but that would be quite a chore if I still wanted to be able to get my vehicle into it. There is always the option finding a place with a larger garage.

The wheat is a success.

2009-05-26T12:04:00.000-07:00

The wheat beer is a tasty success and a hit with my friends who have tried it. Most of who are non adventurous beer drinkers or macro water sippers. Here it is and the first recipe I am posting online. It’s simple but good.

8OZ rice hulls
4LBS 8OZ pale malt
3LBS white wheat malt
8.53QT @ 130.5F (122F) 30min
6.4QT @ 206.5F (155F) 40min
Batch sparge with 6.35QT @ 170F twice
.5OZ cascade 5.4% 60MIN
.25OZ cascade 5.4% 30MIN
.25OZ cascade 5.4% 15MIN
1LBS Honey pasteurized at 130 for 20MIN added at flame out.
American ale yeast
Primary at 68F
Bring up to room temp for 2 days
Rack to secondary and return to 68 for 2 weeks
Prime and bottle or keg.

I took some extra time after primary to help settle some of the dryness created by the honey. All the extra time in the bulk vessels may not have been necessary but I am generally not in a rush to get a beer complete. The wheat wine has been put in two separate one gallon jugs and one has been given some oak. The alcohol flavor has subsided somewhat but has a long way to go. As this sits I think it will become quite a complex beer. I’m tempted to blend and stew up some raisins, dilute the syrup to get an accurate sugar reading and prime a few bottles with it. We will have to wait and see.

Rainy Day Brewing

2009-04-20T09:11:00.000-07:00

We had a crazy amount of rain over the last few days. There were many times that the clouds blocked out so much of the sun that it was constantly in the twilight or just after sunrise. It was a very gloomy day but the lawn was thankful for the rain. It also put a damper on my original plans and instead I turned to brewing. I tackled that wheat wine I planned mentioned in earlier posts. I pushed the mash times a bit and lost about 7% efficiency and did a small sparge to rearrange time for the prolonged two hour boil. It was a basic recipe with white wheat and two row with a pound of honey pasteurized and added at flame out. During the first hour of the boil I was digging for a snack and got a wild hair. I weighed out some golden raisins and dates blended them with a bit of water and started pasteurizing them alongside the honey. I added them right to the primary as I started racking over the chilled wort. This should prove to be an interesting brew when it is all said and done. Being a fairly big beer I probably won’t be able to judge its true potential until at least October. I will probably leave it in secondary for at least three months. Then let it sit in the bottle for a few more. I do look forward to giving it a taste when I move it to secondary. The big question is if I added to many dates and raisin or if I will need to add more to the secondary. I may split up the brew into two batches and do a bit of experimenting.

Transfer and a taste

2009-04-13T12:46:00.000-07:00

I moved the wheat beer from one glass vessel to another and per the usual I took a sample for measuring and a taste. It tastes pretty good. It needs to settle and clear and sit in the secondary for a week or two and I will bottle it up. When I brewed and boiled it on brew day I ended up with more wort than planned so now I have a half to one gallon sitting in my primary. I am going to brew the wheatwine and pitch it onto these leftovers. The thing that I am not looking forward to is the long long boil to get down to the volume and sugar concentration I am shooting for. A positive event from brewing the wheat is that I must have had a really efficient mash since I was very close to my estimates with the large volume of excess. Over 75%. My buddy who helped me out seems to be getting the brewing bug too. Hopefully the taste of the final beer will set the hook. It is always nice to add to the brewing community. It would also be nice to have some to split the expense with on the more adventurous brews.

Wheat beer

2009-04-01T08:30:00.000-07:00

Wow, two months and a few days since my last post. I need to get better about posting on a more consistent basis. I may need to open this blog up to more than just brewing to keep me going. The two beers as seen in the photos below have since been bottled and have carbed up nicely. I think they are bit a bit young. The alt I think is just a bit to bitter for its own good. The honey beer has lightened up considerably but has a bit of a grassy hop flavor most likely from the hops I added at flame out. With the grassy tannic flavor it masks the light honey flavor that would otherwise be quite pleasant. I hope the grassiness ages out over time. If not it is still a very drinkable beer.

This weekend I am introducing a long time friend to the brewing world. He likes wheat beers so I have planned to brew up a simple American style wheat beer. 60% American two row and 40% American white wheat malt. Light hopping with crystal and cascade is planned. It is a simple recipe aimed at making a drinkable beer with little chance of anything going wrong so as to keep my buddy interested.

On a funny note I ended up buying twice as much grain as I need for this batch of beer. The problem lies in that I no longer have two fermentors since the unfortunate breakage when I moved. I think I will mash half of the grain as planned for the wheat beer and while that wort is boiling I will start mashing the second half of the grain. What am I to do with the second runnings if I don’t have a second fermentor? I am going to boil it way down to make a wheatwine. I figure two gallons will take my gravity up to the 1.123 if I also add in some honey. This should be an interesting totally off the cuff brew. There is no telling what this beast will become.

Beer is in the Fridge

2009-01-28T17:59:00.001-08:00

I have not added a photo in a long time so here it goes.

In the back left corner is the alt and in the front right is what is supposed to be a honey amber. Superbowl Sunday I am going to take their temperature down to the 40 degree range for at least two weeks. I'll taste them both at that point and make up my mind if I want to continue to age or proceed to bottling. In the picture you can also see a little trick I picked up from a friend who does a lot of mini batches. He cuts up an index card, punches a hole in it, writes any pertinent info on the card and attaches the card to his containers with zip-ties. Pretty smart so I utilize that idea now as well. One thing I need to do is build a wood shelf for the fridge. It is a bit scary to open the door and see that glass shelf bending so much.

In the drawers you can see two beers by flying dog, two by Breckinridge, Sweet George's Brown by Dillon Dam Brewery, and some Grolsch bottles full of homebrew.

Honey amber and a kolsch... maybe an alt beer...

2009-01-19T07:11:00.000-08:00

This weekend I brewed a honey amber beer that I intended to pitch on a portion of the yeast from the kolsch that is finished fermenting. I wanted a quick brew day so I decided in place of an all grain batch I decided to do an extract brew with steeping grains. One thing kept bugging me about the kolsch all morning and on my drive to the homebrew store. Why was the kolsch so much darker than expected? It hit me like a ton of bricks when I was weighing out my gains for this new batch. I grabbed the darker crystal malt next to the cara-pills; it was more than the 2L dextrin malt I had written down. It was a Cara-Munich or Vienne but I can’t recall as I’m writing this. The kolsch still tasted good going to the secondary but instead of a kolsch it is more of an alt beer now.

I also, after a good discussion with the patrons of the homebrew shop, decided to get an aeration stone to attach to an O2 bottle. I was a bit leery of using welding O2 in beer in place of medical grade however. It turns out that it is a similar degree of cleanliness comparing sanitation to sterilization. It’s all in how far you want to carry out the decimal places.

How good does it work? I went through my process of sanitizing mason jars in a pressure cooker gathering and washing 6 equal jars of yeast. Once the wort was cooled I gave it a 1 minute shot of O2 and poured in a jar of yeast. Normally I would have made a starter with the jar to get a much faster start but even with just pitching the settled yeast from one of six jars there is now a 1 inch krausen after 8 hours. That is a good start considering the first time I tried using yeast that I gathered in a mason jar. The first time took 10-15 hours to start a krausen in a mini batch. I am interested to see how using O2 plays out when oxygenating both the starter and wort.

Boo on broken glass

2009-01-14T09:06:00.000-08:00

I mentioned that I moved 2 weeks ago today. Since then I have been diligently unpacking and rearranging things as I go. When I moved everything was just shoved into the garage but some of the heavier pieces of furniture. Is I searched for specific boxes to lug into the house to unpack the garage became more and more of a mess. The utter disarray finally got to the point it was destroying my psyche. On Sunday I started the process of rearranging the catastrophe. About half way through I heard a cacophony of noise. The sound of broken glass made my heart sink. I walked out of the garage not wanting to even think about what just happen. Boo on broken glass. My primary fermenter still in its box from moving had given up the ghost. Sigh. With the blessing of my significant other I was off to the homebrew store so long as I try to brew something she likes.

Home brew stores can be a dangerous place when it comes to the wallet. I ended up getting a new immersion chiller with 100 lf of copper tubing. A SS racking cane, plastic be damned! Ingredients for a beer style I have never brewed, a kolsch, and as I was about to check out I made the executive decision to buy a refrigerator thermostat override in the display case below the register. If the kolsch doesn't work out I can throw my hat in the lager arena. Heck I really need the override control to make brewing easier in the summer anyways since Texas is so hot in the summer. I have had ideas for brewing lagers for some time anyways. After all of that the brew store didn't have a primary to replace the one I broke. I am glad now that I had two along with my secondarys.

Fun with yeast

2008-12-24T09:32:00.000-08:00

I have been on the lamb for far too long so to speak. Everything from moving from one apartment to another apartment temporarily and now on to a house to a computer mishap rendering it useless has both prevented me from posting and brewing. But I digress for today is the Wednesday before fermentation Friday and I get to talk yeast.

I must openly admit when I started brewing I just did what the kit told me to. I have since stepped up to all grain brewing. I am still learning the nuances of grain selection and going off the cuff and making recipes that fit no classification but taste real good. I have been experimenting heavily with grains and I have had almost equally as much fun with trying yeast.

The first all grain batch of beer I brewed was an IPA using a patchable vial of California ale. It fermented fast and had a great taste as of the sample I took at the time of transfer to secondary. It was then that I made a spur of the moment choice. I quickly caped the primary and headed off to Wal Mart for some supplies. You see I had read that you could wash and reuse yeast. I didn’t want to go that far using acid and all but I did want to see if I could collect some for re use in a later batch. I purchased a quart canning setup and returned to the apartment and started sanitizing everything in my kitchen and boiling the first set of jars. I also purchased several gallons of distilled water.

When everything was ready I added two gallons of water to the primary and swirled the heck out of it to suspend the yeast. I then poured it into the first six canning jars and caped them. I gave them a good shake and let them sit to allow the non yeast to settle at which point I decanted them to the remaining six jars. I let them sit again for several hours this time and poured off the clean water that was over the yeast that were slowly dropping. After doing this several times I ended up with six roughly equal jars of yeast that I let fully settle over two nights and poured them into pint jars. It sounds like it took a lot longer than it did. I did all this at the same time as I was brewing up another batch so it was all just part of brew day.

With those six jars I brewed six batches of beer one of which I collected in the same manner. It’s not yeast culturing by any means but it has worked for me. If you collect 6 jars of yeast from each batch you brew over 4 generations you could brew 1296 batches of beer, 6480 gallons if 5 gallon batches. That is a lot of beer. 17.75 gallons a day for one year. I plan on taking the step up to yeast culturing in the upcoming new-year.

There was also that time I made a small 4oz starter that I poured the dregs from a newly opened, bottle conditioned, Sierra Nevada pale ale into. It fermented right up and I pitched that into a larger starter that I then added to a small 2 gallon batch of beer. It was no Sierra Nevada but it was a lot of fun just seeing if I could resurrect the yeast from a bottle conditioned beer for future experimentation on brew days.

Fermentation Friday

2008-09-25T09:50:00.000-07:00

Fermentation Friday: What indigenous brewing ingredient have you used or would you like to brew with and what style would that beer be? Please provide some history and description of ingredient.

When I first came to Texas I really didn’t know too much about the place, let alone anything about its staples of agriculture or some of the cultural norms. I have since learned to love several things that are big in Texas. Mesquite for BBQ and pecans. Interestingly there is another major crop that I just learned about that I have been tempted to use in brewing. Sugar cane. That however is not what I really want to play with in my beer. That would be mesquite. For those of you that don’t know, mesquite is a hard wood that is generally seen as a shrub but can grow up to 30 feet. It is always seen being used in Texas BBQ. I have seen some very nice woodwork done with it. It turns out as I just discovered that the beans it produces can be ground into flour, made into jelly and in the past was made into wine. The beans apparently have a sweet, nutty and caramel like flavor.

What I have been toying with is brewing up some sort of cask-conditioned beer aged at least in part on the mesquite wood. I have also been thinking, since I discovered the bean, about using them as well. Maybe every one out there could help me narrow down my idea. Using a former bourbon cask has always been a thought and I would like to take that concept and use mesquite in place of oak. The problem is that I have never seen, or heard of a used mesquite barrel. Any ideas how I could possibly replicate such a thing? All I come up with is throwing a bunch of homemade toasted mesquite cubes into a bucket of bourbon for a few months. As for the beans I was thinking of coarsely chopping them and putting them in the secondary with the wood. As for style I have considered a smoked beer using the mesquite to smoke the grains but I don’t know if that would be overboard. I have never brewed a smoked beer or done a wood aged beer and have never tasted one that does both. I have also considered taking some of my barleywine and aging it on wood. Any and all advice is welcome and any recopies to help form a starting point would truly be a huge help. Does a pecan beer sound appealing to anyone?

New creation

2008-08-21T08:23:00.000-07:00

I have several hobbies along with brewing beer. I like to build things in my little wood shop, tinker around in my good friends auto shop when he needs a little help on the odd weekend, backpacking and cooking. There are more but those are the tops at the moment. I am always thinking of things I can make to or crossover between the various hobbies I have. I just did that to great results with my hombrewing and thought I would share it here. First a few quick things you should know sow everything will come into light a bit more clearly.

-I mash with a cooler that I replaced the pour spout with a valve.
-I batch sparge.
-I boil in a 60-quart pot.
-I regularly visit my brew shop and find myself admiring the nice valved false bottom kettles they have in envy.
-Just the other day I helped a friend repair his hot water heater.
-I had a revelation.

When I got home I hoped on the computer made a few calls and started formulating my plan. And it has since become reality. I took said boil pot drilled a hole in the side and attached the valve I had purchased. I drove to my friend’s auto shop and drilled another hole for the stainless steel immersible heating element I just ordered. When it arrived fit in the hole I drilled perfectly. I added a high temp food grade gasket to prevent leaking. Attached a bimetal thermostat to the exterior wall of the pot and wired a plug. When I tested it out over the weekend it worked to perfection and held various temperatures with only 2 degrees fluctuation tested with probe thermometers throughout the wort. I mashed for an hour and had the most efficient mash I have ever achieved without changing any other techniques. It reached 84-86% where I usually sit around 71-75%. It will be nice to be able to create multi step mashes with ease of adjusting the thermostat. All of this was done for less than buying a kettle from the brew shop and a second out door burner.

Element $160
Thermostat $15
Valve $15
Pot $70
Total $260

The 60 quart kettle at the local brew shop with no false bottom $360
False bottom $70
Outdoor burner $30
Alternative total $460

My next upgrade will be to make a three tear setup or possibly swap the bimetal thermostat on the new mash tun with a 120V digital one for greater control.

Big Bad (good) Barleywine

2008-08-13T08:59:00.000-07:00

A few months back I made a barleywine. The first all grain barley wine I have made. I never had a pot big enough to mash the entire thing and I never wanted to do multiple mashes. It sat in the primary for 2 or 3 weeks and in the secondary for a month and a half. I bottled it in pints and let it sit in my closet for another month. I have since had it in my beer fridge for 2 months. It is now basically 5 months old and I just pulled out a bottle and tried one at this age. Wow! Is all I can say. It is very good and I think it can still get better. The only thing I have a bit of a concern about is its overall longevity since it doesn’t have the preservative power of a ton of hops. I only hoped it up to about 30 IBUs. You can taste them in there but the complex maltieness really shines without being overshadowed with the hops. I figure if you are going to use so much grain in a beer you might as well let it do the talking. If you want hops whip up an IPA. Cheers to a few more months in the cold box for the barleywine. Now I’m thinking of brewing up a barleywine with some spices for a truly warming winter pick me up.

Whats next

2008-08-05T08:11:00.000-07:00

Time to clean and replace things yet again. I took a taste of the beer that I believed to be infected and it had a bit more of the sour flavor. I have since put some of the beer into one-gallon jugs and poured out the remainder. I’m going to see what happens in these one-gallon jugs but didn’t want to have one of my five-gallon secondary fermenters occupied for such a huge duration of time. What I have on deck once I clean, sanitize, clean and sanitize again is a smoked Scottish ale. I also have an idea to make a super high gravity beer in the 20+ ABV range. I am going to do an all grain mash and boil it way down to be able to get the concentration I will need. I am then going to can the wort in quart mason jars and watch them for a few weeks to make sure no bugs got in. once all that is done I am going to use several strains of yeast to pitch at various intervals in order to reach that kind of gravity. I was thinking of starting with California ale, then pitching a high gravity beer yeast and closing out with a brewers or turbo yeast. The one thing I worry is that the brews or turbo yeast could create a lot of off flavors if I used it for the entire fermentation. I was also thinking of adding the wort in stages instead of pitching the yeast all at once on a ton of sugar stressing them out. In essence it would be like making a big starter. The thing I can’t decide on is what to use for hops and other adjuncts. I was thinking of using some sort of spices. Another factor is reducing I am trying to wrap my head around is the amount of complex sugars produced in the long boil. I will try to keep the boil as low as possible, maybe a simmer until at least the volume has come down and then crank it up just to finish it off.

Bring on the funk

2008-08-01T08:22:00.000-07:00

I am leaning more towards the belief I have an infection. I am seeing something I have never seen in a secondary. At the surface of the beer running a full circumference of the carboy there are very fine whit bubbles. There are a few forming on the surface plane of the beer as well. Both sets of bubbles have been growing very slowly over the last week. I am going to give it some more time and see what it does as the beer continues to clear. If its drinkable as is I am going to bottle some of for consumption as quick as possible. The rest I am going save in a smaller secondary and see what happens over the course of time and document the funkiness that ensues. Once everything has run its course I may even try fruiting it if its not totally awful. Now I need to clean and replace things yet again.

Cheers to the funk. As it grows I will post pictures.

My first infection

2008-07-27T11:20:00.000-07:00

I finally have a battle on my hands. I have two primaries and two secondary fermenters. Airlocks and stoppers for each and a myriad of other things that normal home brewers have. About the only thing that I do that is above and beyond what many home brewers do is collect yeast from the primary and divide it up into mason jars for batches down the road. I am anal about sterilization when it comes to this process and put just about everything through a pressure cooker. Every time I brew I fill my primary with a sanitation solution as well as a 5 gallon bucket to soak everything else. None the less I have been the victim of an infection. I should have taken a picture before it became a drain pour. It had long, I'm talking 5-6 inch gelatinous looking strands. There was no pellicle type layer and the krusen looked good but it was if there was a jelly fish in my fermenter. Before I poured it I did take a taste. Sour. You could smell it as soon as you took the stopper out. Wow. No vinegar just sour. Had to have been lacto. If I was daring I could have let it sit for a year and call it a lambic but I think it was a little over the top even for that. The only thing I can figure is I may have sneezed near the beer after it was chilled and racking to the primary. I have since super cleaned everything I have related to brewing and replaced hoses my racking cane and airlocks, also boiled my stoppers. That’s all I have that is not metal or glass. Even with all that something may be rearing its ugly head in my latest batch of beer. I just moved it from the primary where everything looked good to the secondary and there was a little of a sour smell and taste. Not over bearing but just a little off. Almost a bit greapfruity. Hopefully it will settle down and its just me being paranoid after my first infection.

"K.I.S.S." combined with "mise en place"

2008-07-25T08:19:00.000-07:00

I think my best advice would be to think in terms of “K.I.S.S.” combined with “mise en place.” Keep It Simple Stupid and everything in its place.

Now let me elaborate a little bit. I have a tiny apartment with only one 3 x 3 section of counter to work with. With that in mind on brew days I take the time to set everything up and get everything organized and ready before I start anything. If everything is set up and laid out in an organized manner the flow and transitions become much easier than if you are boiling a wort trying to clean and sanitize a fermentor, keep track of your hop schedule, find your racking cane, so on and so forth. Next thing you know your transferring a beer through a dirty hose and getting infected beer. If you prep prep and prep everything else becomes simplified. It also will take away the rush and worry of forgetting something that should be a simple step like forgetting to sanitize something like I did when I was starting off in brewing. I find that if I am fully prepped and have everything ready to go before I start my mash then I enjoy the process much more as a whole.

A new begining

2008-07-25T07:55:00.000-07:00

I have another blog that I have not been to attentive of lately because of work and other items taking up much of my time. Well in college I had another blog type thing that I finally disposed of completely just recently. Then the other day I stumbled across a blog called “Beer Bits” that inspired me to start this blog where I am going to put all of my homebrewing adventures, misadventures, experiments, musings and any other plethora of words you could throw out there to describe my homebrewing journey.

To every one there, welcome.