Obfuscator Doppelbock

I brewed this beer two weeks ago, but am finally getting around to posting it here. It was one part of a split batch of lager/ale, as I have done in the past, but this time it was a true partigyle brew, using the first runnings from the mash for a strong beer, and the later runnings for a "small" beer. Also, this time, opposite of the YMM/YSM and the Johann Sebastian Bock/ Anglerman Ale , I made a smaller amount of the lager, and a larger amount of the ale. So without further ado, here's the recipe:

15lbs Dark German Munich malt
8lbs American two-row (I would have used Vienna malt, but I've got a ton of two-row on hand)
1lb Carahelles (a free gift from Larry at the LHBS--it was a sample from their supplier)
1lb Melanoidin malt
1/2 lb U.K. pale chocolate malt
2 oz Hallertauer 3.9% AA hops
Wyeast Munich Lager yeast

I did a single infusion mash for 1 hour at 146F. I mashed low, because I knew this was going to be a big beer. This style traditionally calls for a decoction mash to get melanoidin in the wort, but I thought the addition of the melanoidin malt would allow me to skip this step.

It was a batch sparge, and like I mentioned earlier, I took the first runnings as well as just a small amount of the second to get me approximately 6 gallons of wort. Pre-boil gravity was 1.083.

The hop addition was simple, all 2 oz at the beginning of a 60 minute boil. O.G. ended up at 1.089.

Sounds fairly simple, right? Well of course nothing is simple here at the Noble Square Brewery. I had to leave in the middle of the boil because of a family emergency. The wifey turned off the burner for me at the proper time, and covered the brew kettle. I returned from the hospital three hours later--don't worry, everyone is o.k. now--to finish my brewday.

But this means I didn't add Irish moss ( a clarifying agent) at the end of the boil, and it also means that the wort was not force cooled quickly. The temperature had dropped over 2 1/2 hours from boiling to 160F. Since it was covered, and still at a fairly high temperature, I wasn't concerned with bacteria or wild airborne yeast contaminating the wort. But also since it was covered and cooled slowly, I was concerned about DMS (Dimethyl sulfide). DMS is created from heating grain in a certain temperature range--it gives an unwanted cooked cabbage flavor to beer. Normally, when boiling wort, the precursors to DMS are driven off, and by force cooling it quickly, they don't reform.

I did force cool it from 160F down to 55F in about 15 minutes with my immersion chiller. I tasted a sample before I transferred it to the fermenter. I didn't taste any DMS, but the wort was so sweet and caramel tasting that it could have masked the flavor. General consensus at Brews and Views was to not worry about it. I fermented for two weeks at 53F on the yeast cake reused from Your Mother's Mustache. I'll find out soon if it tastes like cabbage when I transfer to secondary, although I won't know how well it clears until it lagers. I could always add gelatin to help it clear up.

The Mustaches are Fermenting

Both Your Sister's Mustache and Your Mother's Mustache are fermenting nicely. They were slow to start, and I was especially concerned about YSM, because the starter for it was just barely showing any sign of fermentation when I pitched it. I actually bought a dry yeast packet on Monday just in case. I didn't use it, because by Tuesday it had a nice krauesen starting to form.

I still have a question about it, because I did something unconventional with these brews. The carboy of YMM was too full, and since the YSM was a small batch, I had plenty of room in its carboy. So I took about 2-3 quarts of YMM and added it to the YSM. The only problem is that the yeast had already been pitched in the YMM. So it is possible that the small amount of Munich Lager yeast from YMM has propagated in YSM and is fermenting it, instead of the American Ale Yeast that I added originally. If this is the case, it is underpitched, and it's a lager yeast fermenting at ale temperatures, so I might get some off flavors or phenolics. I would do the sniff test for sulfur compounds, (a sure sign of lager yeast activity), but I'm all stuffed up with a head cold, and I'm not sure I could smell anything. We'll see how it turns out.

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.

Still still.

No activity on the bock ale this morning. You could say it's still still. I racked a carboy of Superbowl Stout to a secondary, and racked the bock ale on top of the stout yeast cake. I'm guessing it will be bubbling like crazy by the time I get home from work.

Speaking of the bock ale, I have yet to name it. Bock ale sounds lame, and it's not even really true. Any suggestions? It's the third runnings of my bock mash fortified with some light dry malt extract, lightly bittered with columbus, and now fermenting on Wyeast London Ale 1968. German malt, American hops, English yeast--worldwide ale? Nah, not really worldwide. Traveler ale--nah, it didn't travel anywhere, the ingredients did. I've got it, Angerman Ale.

Problems, more problems...

When reading other homebrewing blogs, one thing that I notice right away is that everybody seems to have problems of one sort or another. Almost all the time. I just read about somebody forgetting to hook up his mash tun manifold, the ultimate consequence of which caused him to mash too low. He also lost his carboy brush, realized it and the fact that his carboys were dirty in the middle of the boil. He had to rush off to a friend's house to borrow one, causing his boil to go long. Does it ever go completely smoothly?

So I mentioned that I made a side batch of ale during my Johann Sebastian Bock, which is already fermenting quite nicely. For the ale, I pitched some American Ale yeast slurry that I had saved from a previous batch. It was sitting in the fridge, and I just let it warm up to room temperature and pitched it. No starter, but I wasn't concerned. Well it's about 30 hours later and there's no activity in the fermenter. Slight positive pressure in the airlock, but no bubbles, no yeasty foam, nothing. I'm going to wait until tomorrow and if it still looks dead, pitch it over the yeast cake of the superbowl stout I brewed on New Year's day. That's one problem.

If you read the title of this post carefully, which I know you did, you know there's more. I also wrote in a previous post about a leaky faucet problem I was having. Well when attempting to fix that, I cranked hard on the faucet ring to really try to seal it off. Today, I was attempting to take the faucet off to see if I could try another gasket in there. My faucet wrench kept slipping. I took a look at it, and as you can see from the photo below, I must have bent it "real good" when I was swearing and tightening. New shopping list:

faucet wrench

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.

Wyeast 2308 Munich Lager Yeast

I wanted to get a starter going for my Maibock which I plan to brew this weekend. I stopped by Brew and Grow, my LHBS (local homebrew shop), to pick up Wyeast Munich Lager Yeast but they were out. Dave there said he expects to get it in tomorrow. I didn't want to substitute another yeast, in fact I want to replicate the recipe as closely as possible since this beer won 1st place in it's category in the Wisconsin State fair as well as placing in a couple of other contests last year. I'll have to walk Bosworth the Wonder Dog down there again tomorrow to pick some up.

Let your yeast breathe!

I was talking with a friend and fellow homebrewer, Bob, yesterday, and he mentioned that one of the bottles he stores his yeast in exploded from the build up of CO2, causing a horrible mess. Imagine the dregs of your carboy splattered off every single surface of the room. So this morning, I made sure to "burp" the caps of all the yeast bottles I have stored. If you save your yeast from one batch to the next, make sure you do this. Don't be like Bob, or your wife will kill you. Luckily for Bob, she wasn't home at the time.

Airlocks are bubbling!

All three carboys of Superbowl stout are fermenting nicely. The two that reused the yeast cakes from my last batch, Hotspur mild, began activity within 4 hours of pitching, so maybe there's no need to add wort to cakes the day of brewing.



The basement is a little cold for ales right now, so I placed two of the carboys in my homebrew closet. I have to figure out what do with the third; it's sitting on the kitchen counter right now with a sweatshirt over it to block the light.



I also need to take inventory and buy some grain. I used up the last of my 2-row in the stout. There's a malster on the south side of Chicago that sells 55 lb bags for a good price, but they're only open during the week 9-5, and it's pretty far. I might just order from Midwest Supplies over the internet.