Señor Brew™ wins a ribbon!

Fall Down Go Boom barleywine took 2nd in the 2011 Pacific Brewers Cup held by the local brew club, Pacific Gravity.  It scored a 41, which is usually high enough to take first, so someone must have scored unbelievably high in this category.  Señor Brew™ also entered his Oktoberfest, Slippy Piggy's Oktoberfest, in this competition.  It didn't score as well, which is strange, because this beer went on to take first in the 2011 Spooky Brew Review, the Chicago Beer Society's annual competition.  More on this to follow.  The barleywine was brewed right around New Year's Day, using the first runnings from the Superbowl Stout brew, before the dark malts were added.  The recipe for both can be found here.  (Both Fall Down Go Boom Barleywine and Superbowl Stout have taken home ribbons this year). Look for the Oktoberfest recipe in my next post.

Babble Brew Off!

The Lake County home brew club is having their annual contest, The BABBLE Brew-Off, this Saturday. I entered 3 beers, Superbowl Stout, Tottenham Mild, and J & H Birthday Lager. I took second in the specialty category last year with the 2007 version of the J&H. (It's a Christmas beer--the J stands for Jesus). When the results are posted I'll let you all know how I did. Better than the last contest, I hope.

Friday Night Bottling

I bottled the remainder of the keg of Superbowl Stout tonight. I meant to take a photo of the counter-pressure filler in action, but was so into the bottling, I forgot to do it. Just picture one in your head, ok?

I bottled a few big bottles first, because I wanted to have some to give away, plus it seems like I get more foam when starting out, so I was going to have low fills due to foam, I would rather not have those on the small bottles I enter in competitions. Well that meant I only got nine twelve ounce bottles filled before the keg ran out. Oh well, that's enough for four competitions plus a spare bottle.

Now it's time to take Bosworth the Wonder Dog for a walk.

Did I say kegerator photos?

In an earlier post, I promised photos of my kegerator. Maybe seeing them will help some of you do-it-yourselfers out there with ideas for making your own.

So above is the inside of the kegerator. As you can see I put a collar on a small freezer chest so it can hold (barely) 4 five gallon corny kegs. Right now I have 3 five gallon and 1 2.5 gallon kegs in. The container of white powder at the upper left is DampRid, to keep the humidity down. There is a 3-way gas manifold on the right side, with a "T" on one of the lines so I can run 4 gas lines out of it. The gas lines are red and have been set up logically and orderly, unlike the clear beer lines, which are all loosey-goosey since I had a couple already hooked up when I put the 3rd and 4th keg in. Normally the beer lines run from each faucet to its closest keg. The wire at the upper right is the temperature sensor.

This is obviously the front of the kegerator. You can see the collar better, it's just 4 2X8's screwed together, with two additional boards screwed to it to hold it on the freezer chest. In hindsight I should have put longer 2X8s on the front and back, and shorter ones on the sides, so you wouldn't see the seams from the front. It needs to be stained or painted too. The faucets are all front-sealing Perlick faucets, except for the far right one, which replaced a Perlick that wouldn't fit on the shank properly. I spaced the faucets as they are so the shanks and nuts wouldn't get in the way of kegs inside. The big tap handles were given to me by my friend Roxanne, who owns a bar in California. I have two others not pictured. I usually will paste my own labels over the commercial beer label on the handle, but I didn't have the time for this party. Instead, I just used fridge magnets to hold paper describing the beers to the top of the kegerator, which you'll see better in the next photo.

Top view. You can see from the labels that we ran out of the Amber (Anglerman) ale and Beat the Heat Wheat.

Superbowl Sunday! Now in 3D!

So what's Superbowl Sunday without a Superbowl party? We hosted one here at Casa Brew, of course with homebrews on tap. So what was on tap?

• Superbowl Stout--brewed on New Year's Day specifically for the Superbowl. A sweet stout, full of creamy dark chocolately goodness. Overheard from one of the imbibers at the party, "it goes great with the football cookies".
• Beat the Heat Wheat--an American wheat ale, better suited for a hot August afternoon, yet still crisp and refreshing on a cold February eve.
• Anglerman Ale--American hops, English yeast, and German malt. An amber ale, made from the same ingredients as a bock, but with ale yeast. Malty, full-bodied, hearty ale which paired well with the chili and lasagna. You've heard of comfort food? Well this is comfort beer.
• Tottenham Mild--Named after the football team. Yes the soccer type of football. An English Brown ale, mildly hopped and traditionally a "session beer". Although this one came in a little stronger than intended. Call it an imperial mild.

The party was a rousing success, and the game was exciting to the very end. Final score: Superbowl Stout 5 gallons, Beat the Heat Wheat 2 gallons (all I had on tap), Anglerman Ale 3 gallons (also all I had on tap), and Tottenham Mild 4 gallons.

If first you don't succeed...

Well I'm still bummed that none of my entries even placed in the Upper Mississippi Mashout. That means it's time to enter another contest. As mentioned previously, I plan to concentrate on the competitions in the Midwest Homebrewer of the Year circuit. The next competition on the circuit is the Great Northern Brew-Ha-Ha. Unfortunately, the deadline for entries is January 30th, and I don't think I'll have everything ready to ship today, which is probably already too late to send without incurring rush shipping charges. So that one is off the list for me.

The MHBOY rules state that you must enter 4 competitions and 10 different categories throughout the year, which should be no problem. The next one is the Babble Brew Off, and you have until February 19th to get entries in. Conviently held in the Chicago 'burbs, I can just drop off my entries. (If you haven't figured it out yet, this blog is based in Chicago, specifically in the Noble Square Neighborhood).

I think I'll enter my Superbowl Stout, J&H Birthday Lager, and possibly Tottenham Mild, depending on how it's scoresheets from UMMO look.

Angerman Ale

The Angerman (AmericanEnglishGerman) ale is fermenting quite nicely now. I bet it took off right after I racked it to the Superbowl Stout yeast cake. It looks like I will have 3 beers on tap for my Superbowl party--Angerman, Superbowl Stout, and my Tottenham Mild. YAY!

In hindsight, I could have called it Anglerman ale, and put a picture of a big fish or a dude fishing on the label. Maybe a dude just sitting in a boat drinking beer. I'll have to think about this.

1000 words about Superbowl Stout

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

The bock is done!

I said right in the title that one purpose of this blog is to learn from my mistakes, so instead of describing the whole brewday in detail, I'll just tell you what I did wrong.

1. Didn't have the right ingredients on hand. I ended up brewing something different than I had planned. (Traditional bock vs. Maibock)
2. Didn't stir the mash well enough before attempting to adjust the temperature. I checked the mash temp and it was around 160F--I panicked because I thought all my enzymes were starting to denature! I knew my strike water was a little warm, but the mash tun ws coming up from the 50F basement, and I wanted to mash fairly high, so I thought I would be fine. I added cold water to the mash to compensate. Once I did this, I stirred thoroughly and came up with 144F. There was no way I dropped it 16 degrees, meaning that my original temperature wasn't 160F--I just measured a hotspot. Since the mash tun was full, I couldn't add more hot water and I ended up doing a decoction to bring the mash temperature up, which is what you're actually supposed to do for this style. My efficiency was a bit higher than normal with this method too--85%, so it worked out ok.
3. Didn't have my fermenters cleaned and sanitized by the time I was ready to fill them. I usually do this during the mash or boil, but with the decoction going on, I didn't have time to do it during the mash. Also, I thought a friend was coming over to help brew, so I wasn't that concerned that I only had one fermenter ready to go. I had to rack my superbowl stout from a carboy to a keg, and clean and sanitize it. It added a lot of time to my brewday.
4. I didn't want to have frozen hozens, so I didn't use my immersion chiller outside. I figured there is an almost unlimited snow on the ground now, so I would draw off about 4 gallons of wort in another pot, and chill it in a snowbank. I would then bring the brewpot with the rest of wort inside, and chill it with the chiller hooked up to the kitchen sink. Well, the snowbank chilling method isn't very fast, and bringing up hoses and connecting up the adapters to the kitchen sink is a big pain in the ass. Also, my brew pot with 8 gallons of wort in it is still very heavy. More work and more time added to the brewday.
5. I didn't use hopsocks, so of course I clogged the screen on my brewpot. More PITA, more time.

But it's all done now. I've got about 11.5 gallons of bock fermenting. Plus I made about 4 gallons of an ale on the stove with the 3rd runnings from the lauter tun with some malt extract added to up the O.G. (I didn't want to wait 3 months for the lager to be done).

I'm beat now, and have to get ready for a potluck dinner. (I'm bringing homebrew). I'll post the recipe(s) tomorrow.

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.

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.

Happy New YEAR!!!

What better way to start the new year than by brewing beer? And why start a new blog documenting it while I'm at it? I'm hoping that by keeping this blog, I'll become a better homebrewer. I plan to detail every aspect of my homebrewery--equipment, recipes, process, etc. Call it a new year's resolution if you want, we'll see how it pans out.


Today I'm brewing a stout, specifically my Superbowl Stout, which is a sweet stout which will be ready to drink by Superbowl Sunday. Here's the recipe; I have to figure out a better way to post them than a cut and paste from Excel:

Brew Name
Superbowl Stout
Category
Stout
BJCP cat no.
13
subcat
B- Sweet Stout
recipe type
all grain
batch size
13.5 gallons
Grain Bill
18lbs 2 row
3 lb instant corn grits
14 oz Fawcett pale chocolate
27 oz lb 80L caramel
22 oz carafa III special
2 oz roasted barley
18 oz chocolate
Mash type
single infusion
Mash schedule
1 hr 150F with 2.5 tsp baking soda
Sparge type
batch
Total Boil time
100 min
Hop additions
2 oz galena 13% 100 min
3 oz northern brewer 30 min
2 oz northern brewer 0 min
additional ingredients
2 lb lactose sugar last 15 min
Yeast type
Wyeast London 1968
Starter info
1/3 on 1 lb DME 1oz carafa III special 1 gal water, 2/3 on yeast cakes from hotspur mild
Primary fermentation
10 days @ ~70F
OG
1.060
1.059 anticipated
FG
1.020 anticipated
abv
5.3 anticipated

The 1/3 that is on the starter is already fermenting vigorously, just 2 hours after pitching. The batches pitched on the yeast cakes haven't started up yet--the yeast must have gone dormant. For future reference, I'll either do a starter for all, or I'll try to wake up the cakes by adding frest wort from dry malt extract first thing in the morning.