Why Sanitize When You Can Sterilize?

I'm not a fan of bottling. It is very time and labor intensive, especially if you reuse bottles instead of buying new ones. However, I do enter contests and occasionally give away beer as gifts, so I do have to bottle to do so. I have a counter pressure filler so I can fill carbonated beer right from the keg, which saves me the time waiting for the beer to carbonate in the bottle. You still have to wash and sanitize the bottles, but lately I have been sterilizing my bottles instead of sanitizing them.

I do this by heating them up in the oven. I cover the mouths of the bottles with aluminum foil, and place them on their sides on the oven racks. Then I crank the oven all the way up to maximum, 550F. Once the oven reaches this temperature, I turn it off, and let the bottles cool very slowly in the closed oven. The reason for this is twofold. One, the bottles stay at a hot enough temperature for a long enough time to completely sterilize them. Two, if glass cools too quickly, it will shatter. Be careful not to place any bottle too close to the heating elements, the quick heat up will cause them to shatter as well.

Since the bottles are covered, they will stay sterilized until I am ready to use them. As you can see from the photo above, I can sterlize 20-30 bottles at one time, depending on their size.

It's frickin' cold in my basement!

I just made a starter for the lager I plan to brew next weekend. I've decided to brew all my lagers in a row this year for a couple of reasons.

1. I can reuse the yeast saving some expense and time.
2. It's frickin' cold in my basement!

In the past, I had made lagers throughout the year. I would time them so I had free space in my freezer chest/converted kegerator to ferment cool and lager cold. It would also guarantee that I always had something on tap because I would alternate a lager which takes a lot longer with some ales that were done fairly quickly. It dawned on me that I was causing myself a lot of extra trouble shifting things in and out of the kegerator, and constantly adjusting the temperature if I was fermenting or lagering. I also realized that my basement in winter is a perfect temperature for fermenting lagers, and that I could keep the kegerator a little colder than normal when lagering, and still be able to use it to serve my other beers. As far as keeping something on tap, I decided to do split lager/ale batches, hence my Anglerman Ale made at the same time as the Johann Sebastian Bock. Next week I'm going to do a split Classic American Pilsner (CAP) and a Cream Ale.

So how frickin' cold is it in my basement? I take two readings, the first of which I call the WOF temperature. WOF stands for water-on-floor, which is exactly what it sounds like, it's the temperature of a 500ml glass bottle of water sitting on the concrete slab floor. WOF today was 46 degrees fahrenheit. I also take a WOT temperature reading. WOT is the temperature of a 500ml glass bottle of water sitting on an approximately 3 foot high wooden table in the basement. (Water-on-table, but you already guessed that, didn't you?) WOT was most recently observed at 50F. I measure water temperature instead of air temperature, because I'm sure the air temperature varies a lot more.

Now the yeast fermenting wort into beer create their own heat, so fermentation temperatures are going to be slightly higher, and I adjust accordingly. I'm going to put the starters and the pilsner on the table, even with the heat of fermentation, they should stay below 55F. I'll ferment the cream ale upstairs in my brew closet. For later lagers, I'll place them on the floor. I should be good until about April 1st, when last year the WOF was 54.

Starter Time

I made a starter for my maibock tonight. I actually made two starters, a 1.5 gallon one for the maibock at about 1.080, and a .5 gallon starter at about 1.040 just to grow some yeast for my next lager. I often reuse the yeast cake from one batch to the next, but I have read that it's not good practice to use it from strong batches as the yeast are stressed. The maibock is supposed to have an O.G. of about 1.075, so I won't be reusing that yeast cake. I'll split the big starter into two carboys and fill them the rest of the way with the maibock wort.

A lot of homebrewers will decant the liquid from the starter and just use the yeast slurry, but I figure this is a waste. They will usually grow the starter at very warm fermentation temperatures to promote as much yeast growth as possible. This leads to fuesels and off flavors in the starter, but since they're disposing of the liquid, these don't carry into the finished beer. What I usually do instead is make the starter close in O.G. and color to the beer I'm making, fermenting it at regular temps (low 50s for lagers, low 60s for ales), and then just add the beer wort to the starter wort. For example, I steeped some carafa in the starter for my Superbowl Stout. This way I don't waste, and no bad flavors are carried on the finished beer. I know I don't get optimal yeast growth this way, but using this method I've made award winning beers. I don't hop the starters, so I adjust for the dilution of hops when formulating my recipe for the finished beer.

It has been about 6 hours since I pitched the yeast. No activity on the airlock of the small. I'm too tired to head down to the basement to check the main starter. I'm sure they'll both be going fine when I get up tomorrow. Then it's off to the LHBS for the ingredients for the maibock so I'm ready to brew on Sunday.

Wyeast 2206 Bavarian Lager Yeast

So Bosworth and I walked down to the LHBS again today. I called ahead to confirm that they got their new shipment of yeast in, but unfortunately they still didn't have the Wyeast Munich Lager that I used in my award winning Maibock last year. I really want to brew it this Sunday, so I broke down and substituted the Bavarian Lager yeast instead. It should be close, I mean Munich is the capital of Bavaria, right?

According to the Wyeast website, the Bavarian's fermentation range is slightly lower, which is good for me, since the basement of my coach house has an on-the-floor temperature right now of about 48F. The Bavarian is also slightly more attenuative, meaning that it ferments more dry, which is also probably fine since there is a high percentage of (less fermentable) cara-malts in my recipe, but I did like the full-bodied malty goodness of last year's brew. Maybe I'll mash a couple of degrees higher to compensate?

Anyway, the pack is smacked and swelling already. (I know that probably sounds dirty to non-homebrewers, but it's not). I'm debating on whether to make the starter tonight or tomorrow. I think I'll have another Tottenham mild, and make the starter tomorrow morning.

At what temperature do you drink your beer?

I'm enjoying a nice Tottenham mild right now, and for the heck of it, I decided to see what temperature it was in the glass. (The kegerator is set to 42F, I just wanted to see how much it warmed up in the glass). 43.5 degrees Fahrenheit, according to my handy dandy digital thermometer. I know, I'm a beer nerd. I think that is perfect, because it will warm slightly by the time I finish the pint. Realbeer.com says it should be a little warmer.