Shew Brew Glasses for X-Mas!

Here's a look at the glasses my aunt and uncle had made for me. This would hopefully be the label for my brewery, if not just my home brewery for now. My aunt did the design and I love it!

This is taken with my Pliny the Toddler (Russian River clone) homebrew in the glass, which shaped up to be a very fine brew!

Homebrew #2: IPA - Pliny the Toddler (sort of)

It's been over a month since I last brewed my second homebrew. This time I chose a recipe from the American Homebrew Association website, one that was originally printed in the Zymurgy magazine. Here's a link to the recipe. Pliny the Toddler is a clone of sorts, a sessionable clone of Pliny the Elder by Russian River Brewing, CA. My brother loves IPA's and this seemed a logical choice, to involve him in the brewing process, split the resulting batch and brew a nice IPA.

I did deviate from the recipe a bit. If you notice, using the extract substitution (because I only have a 5 gallon brew kettle) the recipe calls for 5.6 lbs of pale liquid malt. The homebrew store only carries 3.3 lbs cans. The original recipe calls for some pale malt and some maris otter, so I bought two 3.3 lbs cans, one of pale malt and one of maris otter (contains at least 60% maris otter). When I brewed I just added it all. 5.6 lbs became 6.6 lbs. Also, to try and balance this, I added 1 oz. of each hop variety instead of .75 oz.

The result: A rounded malt balanced IPA, slightly grainy mouthfeel, with an excellent aroma and late bitterness. The hop aroma of mango, grass, floral, citrus, pine and spice dissipates somewhat quickly but it is beautiful. In retrospect, the Warrior hop addition at Warrior hops of 15.7 alpha acids (Centennial 9.0 a.a. and Columbus 15.2 a.a. should have made up for something though!) could have been more. I also omitted the gypsum, which would probably accentuate the hop even more and dry the beer out a bit. I also do not know what ABV it ended up as, because according to my hydrometer reading (which I'm thinking is not accurate) it started at an original gravity of 1.037 to 1.038 instead of 1.048 like it should--and I even added more malt! Somehow I did not manage to get an accurate reading or my efficiency was very low. Final gravity before bottling was 1.010 to 1.008 (if accurate).

If you're using the Untappd app, look for my version of Pliny the Toddler under the homebrew name of Shew Brew.

My First Homebrew...Fermentation to Drinking

The next steps in the process are simpler than the first half of the homebrew process. Once the airlock stopped bubbling I waited another 2-3 days. I believe the beer sat in the fermenter for about a week. I wish I had taken better notes at this point. Once I opened the fermenter, I used an auto siphon to transfer the wort into the botting bucket. The bottling bucket has a hole at the bottom for a bottling spout. I learned later that the bottle filler, which has a release pin on the bottom of a plastic tube, I used to transfer the wort instead of fill bottles. I filled bottles straight from the spout. It worked fine I think, but I could see the bottle filler working better because it would aerate the beer less. I filled about 52 bottles and capping them went fine, no bottles blew up from too much pressure. Once I'd fill a bottle I'd put a cap on, but not cap it until I filled all the bottles. Then I went back to the first bottle I filled and capped them in the order I filled them. I wait is supposed to release the oxygen from the head space of the bottle and fill it with CO2.

I learned more than a couple of other key things from this completed process:

1) I did not put my hops in at the right time. The instructions were vague at best about when to put my hops in once I started boiling. All they list is a time in minutes, in this case 45 minutes, next to the hops ingredients. I was not aware until recently that the time means "how long before the end of boil" instead of "time into boil". They need to specify a little more clearly.

2) I may have put too much water in. A homebrew book I was reading suggested putting 1.5 gallons of water in the fermenter (because I was doing a 3.5 gallon boil) before adding in the wort. I'm pretty sure I ended up with 5.5 to 6 gallons in my fermenter. Next time I will top the fermenter off to 5 gallons after pouring in the wort.

3) I am not sure the priming sugar mixed evenly. I read after the fact on a homebrew website that you should mix in the priming sugar by creating a nice whirlpool. Some of the bottles I opened streamed out the top for a good 30 seconds, while others maintained their level upon opening. The only difference I can account for is two days between opening and some were from the beginning of the bottle filling and the others were from the end/middle. I'll have to continue monitoring this to see if the difference is more about what order they were filled or how long they are bottle conditioned. By the way, I've only let them sit in the bottle for 2 weeks, so maybe they will also improve after another week or more?

4) My first homebrew came out alright but not great. It was hazy brown, light in the mouth, on the sweet side, had an aroma that was not necessarily off but hard to discern. I would smell it at first smell late in the palate and sometimes after I'd swirl the beer in the glass to aerate it.

I had my beer at the most recent group tasting event at my place and I think it went over OK, but no one was crazy about it, including me. I'm ready for my next homebrew.

My first Homebrew...Start to Fermenter

Finally, number 3 in my 5 Year Plan to Start a Craft Brewery is under way; home brewing!

I'm labeling this Start to Fermenter because the beer is still fermenting and I have not yet bottled. So, I'll walk you through what I did start to finish and you can see my successes and failures (though that could largely depend on the end product...).
First, I set out my Porter recipe and mash extract kit. This picture is incomplete because I had already started the next step when I took the picture. I'll get to that. What you see is two bags of dry ground malt extract (added to the boil), pellet hops, one of priming sugar (used in bottling) and one of maltodextrin (to add body), nitrogen vacuum packaged yeast, and some other equipment (auto-siphon, not open yet, crown bottle caps, spout, hydrometer tube, bottling device, instructions and under the priming sugar is a fermometer which you probably cannot see well).

Next I took a pot, filled it with a gallon of warm water, about 120 degrees (hottest my faucet would go) and put C-Brite solution in to create a sterilization solution. I put my tools that I would need sterilized in this (stainless steel spoon, hydrometer, infuser bag and measuring cup for yeast). I also used a rag to wipe down everything that I would need sterilized (kettle, fermenter and strainer). 

You can see in this picture a nice bottle of Shipyard Export, my sterilizing pot (on the right) and the malt extract soaking (in the left pot, this was the next step I was referring to earlier).

First thing was to get 2.5 gallons of water up to 150 degrees F, then added the specialty grains using the infuser bag for 15 minutes to get the dark color and smoky flavor.

After the 15 minutes I removed the infuser and raised the water temp to a boil. I think it was at this point I had the pot covered because a book I read told me to, but I wasn't watching carefully enough for boil overs and, yes, I had a boil over. Minimal damage though, I hope. I was under the impression that boil overs only occurr while adding the hops, well learned that lesson. Cleaned that up and when the water was at a boil I added all the malt extract and dry malts while off of the heat with help from my wonderful wife, stirring as I added. Then 45 minutes of boiling, stirring occasionally so the syrup wouldn't stick to the bottom (it did a little in the end where the burners were).

Once the 45 minutes was up I turned off the heat and added the pelletized hops. I then covered my nice 5 gallon stainless steel Polar War pot and put it in the bath to cool the wort down to 75 degrees F. I had to keep draining and adding cold water and stirring because the water around the pot would cool and the whole tub would warm up.

I also added a couple ice packs in for good measure, the faster the wort cools the better, and slightly vented the top at first. The ice packs melted pretty quick, but I did manage to cool the wort in 45 minutes to an hour, so that is decent. This is the step where the wort needs to be completely sterile and infections are most likely to occur I'm told so hopefully I didn't do something stupid. After cooling to just 75 degrees F (I had trouble waiting for it to get lower I admit) I pitched the yeast. To prepare the dry yeast I put it in 1/3 cup of 100 degree F temperature to help it get started. After 15 minutes I stirred the yeast and then pitched it immediately into the cooled wort. Final step of fermentation was adding the wort into the fermenter. I had already filled the fermenter with 2.5 gallons of cool water to make up the rest of the 5 gallon batch.

Shutting the fermenter bucket posed one problem, when I put the airlock on the o-ring popped off into the wort and I had to go fishing with my sterilized arm for the rubber o-ring. Another misstep that hopefully won't hurt my beer with infection. The little black strip on the bucket above "Select Ingredients" is the Fermometer. It's a really cool thermometer that sticks to the bucket and tells me the temperature of the room. Just about 72 degrees, we keep our house at 71, which is fine for ales though on the upper side of fine. Bubbles started coming out the airlock rapidly after less than 12 hours it seems and it has slowed to 2-3 a minute at this point. So,  either my beer will be at it's final gravity in a day or two or the yeast isn't doing its job. I may be jumping to conclusions. I also know how to take a hydrometer reading now. I originally tried after cooling the wort, but I couldn't figure out how to use it and just gave up. That reminds me of another potential flaw, the wort we removed with a (hopefully) sterile jar was returned to the fermenter (which is a no no).

Oh well, here's to drinking beer in 3-4 weeks. Will finish this when I can take you from Fermenter to Drinking!