Get a Head Start - Brewing a stout for St. Paddy's

Probably a tad bit early but I wanted to make sure i got this in. It's a Dry Stout and I'm just trying out a new recipe that I designed but has probably been done. I wanted creamy and full bodied so I added the Flaked barley and Wheat. Should be a fair amount of roast, but i wanted a light ABV as per a dry stout style. I wanted to be able to pound back and not have to worry about calories either. I used a little Chinook because I didn't have enough East Kent to make the 35 BTUs I needed. All in all I hope it will make the Irish proud! Had a great brew day today, everything went smooth hit all my numbers and the beer is nice and snug in the fermenter now. Just thought I would share a couple pics.



The Mash

1st Run off

The Boil

Hops

Transfer to carboy

Ahhh the satisfaction of a brewday.

Can't wait to try this stout! Here is the recipe

Ingredients:
6 lb (64.4%) 2-Row Brewers Malt; Briess
10 oz (6.7%) 2-Row Brewers Malt; Briess
14.0 oz (9.4%) Roast Barley; Crisp
15 oz (10.1%) Barley Flaked
8.0 oz (5.4%) Wheat Malt; Simpsons
6.0 oz (4.0%) Chocolate (Mout Roost 1400); Dingemans
1 oz (74.1%) East Kent Goldings (5.8%) - added during boil, boiled 60 m
.35 oz (25.9%) Chinook; HOPUNION (11.8%) - added during boil, boiled 60 m
1.0 ea White Labs WLP004 Irish Stout
Style:
Recipe
Original Gravity: 1.050
Terminal Gravity: 1.013
Color: 32.06 SRM
Alcohol: 4.85%
Bitterness: 35.2

Brew Like a Monk

Highly recommend for anyone into brewing belgians. Now don't think you are going to get a bunch of recipes from this book, rather it shows you how they are made so you can develop your own. That's what I really like about it.

Ugly Pumpkin Ale 2012

Back in August a couple of friends came over the house to help me brew a pumpkin ale for a Fallapalooza party they were having. We wanted a pumpkin ale with spices and on the malty side. What I did was basically take my brown ale recipe, added spices and pumpkin to it. We made 5 gallons of the stuff but there was a set back in the brewing process. I had never worked with pumpkin before so I was reading that generally people used a couple of pounds of this stuff. I went out and filled my cart up with Libby canned pumpkin. About 6 cans. all six cans went into the mash then at sparge time we noticed we couldn't even vourloff. The mash water was soooo thick. We were in trouble! What ended up happening is that we started all over again. I mean cleaning then crushing grains etc. During the second time mashing I separated some of the sweet pumpkin wort from our original brew to mix with the new mash. This seem to work very well but obviously took a whole day to brew because of the set back. Well, fast forward to Fallapalooza and I come to find the beer wasn't fully carbonated and the spices that were so prevalent from the sample I tasted on bottling day was gone. I'm actually going to open another bottle tonight and see where we are at with this thing. I also plan on saving a couple of bottles to open up during next year's pumpkin brew day.

Here is the recipe I used

Ingredients: 

13 lb (82.5%) 2-Row Brewers Malt; Briess 

10.0 oz (4.0%) 2-Row Caramel Malt 120L; Briess- 

10.0 oz (4.0%) Biscuit Malt ; Dingemans 

8.0 oz (3.2%) Chocolate (Mout Roost 1400); Dingemans 

1 lb Pumpkin (canned) - added during mash 

1.0 oz (50.0%) Northern Brewer (8.0%) - added during boil, boiled 60 m 

1.0 oz (50.0%) Sterling (7.5%) - added during boil, boiled 0.0 m 

1.0 tsp Pumpkin Pie Spice - added during boil, boiled 1.0 m 

1.0 lb (6.3%) Dark Brown Sugar 1.0 m 

1.0 ea White Labs WLP001 California Ale 

Original Gravity: 1.079 

Terminal Gravity: 1.017 

Color: 23.21 SRM 

Alcohol: 8.17% 

Bitterness: 28.4 

I mashed for an hour at 148 degrees. Boiled for an hour 

Brew Day Preparations

Brew day Prepping for me is crushing all my grains and mixing them into a paper bag. If I am brewing a few beers back to back then I would want this done way ahead. In the picture below I have 3 recipes separated in 3 bags because I was brewing for 3 consecutive days. I'll even throw my hops in there as well. Then I staple the Beer Tools recipe print out to the bag for identification. Nerdy I know but prepping is part of the brewing fun. Investing in a barley crusher was the smartest thing I have done in brewing. I can now buy my grains in bulk and each crush from brew to brew will be consistent. Meaning my efficiency should be too. 

I can't help to think every time I ordered grains online if I was really getting exactly what I was asking for. I mean at the end of the day it's all like splitting hairs but I need the comfort of knowing my recipe is precise. 

For hops I like to use plastic cups to weigh and divide up the schedule. The one pictured here is an IPA hops schedule.  I like to brew, I like to prep but most of all I love my final product. 

Upgraded Cooler Mash Tun

 Nothing Fancy but the cooler mash tun I was using was so warped the lid wasn't closing properly so I had to make a new one. This time I chose the round Gott style cooler. I got this one at Lowes, it's made by Rubber made. I used the same hardware from my old Mush Tun which is 1/2 inch. You can however use 5/8 and use the grommet that came with the cooler for the best seal. The best webpage on this is in the Homebrewtalk site. So far I really like it. The screw top keeps the heat in nice. It also take up less table space. My efficiency has been in the low to mid 70s. Usually 73%. One day I might replace this with a direct fire mash tun but for now this works great!

Must have brewing book, "Yeast"

Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation by Jamil Zainasheff and Chris White

A Must have for any brewer at any level. No seriously. The fermentation process which is pitching the correct amount of yeast and controlling fermentation temperature, along with good sanitary practices will make you better beer than anything else. Leaving your carboy or bucket in your closet is just leaving it up to chance. I really appreciated this book and I made better beer because of it. 

Starting Out - First Brewing Kit

    So everyone remembers their first kit. After brewing just one batch of the 1 gallon set up my wife bought me I knew life couldn't go on 1 gallon at a time.
The kit included :

• Fermenting Bucket
• Bottling Bucket
• Caps
• Racking cane - Siphon
• Sanitizer
• Bottle cleaner
• Bottle filler
• Press style capper
• Hydrometer
• Thermometer

I believe all this was around 120 bucks. 

Then we picked out an IPA kit and went to work. Stove top 5 gallon partial boil. That was 3 years ago and I still have a few bottles left of that IPA.

Why Ugly Keggle?

    So why Ugly Keggle? Take a look at the free keg I got on Craigslist to the right. It don't get much uglier than that. It looks like some Coors drinking drunkard dropped it on it's side probably taking himself down while still holding on to the keg. That spot is not bad for the sight glass if you think about it. I posted this picture on the Homebrewtalk site and someone suggested to not to try and fix the dents but to embrace it even name my home brew after it, hence "Ugly Keggle"

I plan on buying all my conversion hardware from Brewhardware. Sight glass, bulkhead, thermometer all weldless. This is going to be one sweet keggle, you just wait!

Dogfish Head Brewery and Restaurant Weekend

 The wife and I decided to take a winterly trip down to Delaware and check out Dogfish Head. I gotta say although they have some really great beers they are not my favorite bre

I know many of you have been there but just thought I'd share. The tour was great I have never seen so much stainless steel in my life. They had countless fermenters and bright tanks. They had just installed a grain conditioner that wets the grains before going into the crusher. They had a lot of things going on. I wish I would have taken a picture of their wood aging tanks and the santo palo one as well.  We also stopped by the restaurant and I gotta say, best burgers ever. I found out that the meat from the burgers come from cows that are in nearby dairy farms that eat lots of spent grains from DFH. Circle of life.

Spirits from their distillery 

90 min IPA from this here randall!

90 min IPA from this here randall!

Notice the 2009 Barleywine, that was a treat, so was the 75 min IPA johnny Cask

First Time Brewing - 1 Gallon Brooklyn Brew Shop

My wife bought me a 1 gallon brewing kit from Brooklyn Brew Shop at Whole Foods. I used to always admire it when we would go shopping so she got it for me as a Christmas gift. Boy oh boy my life has changed ever since. I didn't know it then but these kits are high quality therefor makes awesome beer. Something else I didn't know if that I was making an all grain batch. Something most newbies don't do.

At 1 gallon it can be easily done using stuff you already have in your kitchen. The kit has everything you need including hops and yeast.
My first brew was a chocolate maple porter. It uses maple syrup as the priming sugar for bottling. The website had a video tutorial that was only a couple of minutes and pretty much they tell you if you can make oatmeal, then you can brew beer. I really enjoyed this kit and would recommend to anyone getting started out. Only thing is I fell in love with brewing and 1 gallon was just not enough.

1 Gallon concept... Well the founders of this kit live in Brooklyn and as many live in an apartment with no room for a big brewing set up. It's basically designed for those wanting to make the best quality beer with minimal space.

The work involved in brewing a 1 gallon and a 5 gallon was about the same so we opted for a 5 gallon kit shortly after our second beer on the 1 gallon kit. A tripel!
Now I use the 1 gallon carboy for huge yeast starters :)

The Mash

The Sparge

Brew Kettle - Weldless Sight glass set up

I'm using a Classic Bayou 44qt Brew pot that came with a welded 1 inch port for a Ball Valve. My first challenge was getting a 1in to 1/2in bushing because there was no way I was going to find a 1in ball valve. Even if I did it would cost me one of my testicles so I ordered the bushing at amazon for a couple of bucks.

I ordered the sight glass from Bobby at Brew Hardware.com

It's a sight glass / thermometer combo that I had never seen before. Bobby has tons of videos and instructions that made installation very easy. I have to say his site is full of great brewing hardware and I will order from him again.

This is now my main Kettle but after converting my Keg this will become my Hot Liquor Tank (HLT). I currently have a two vessel set up but plan on getting some pumps and doing a one tier.



    Using a metal bit to drill a hole then a step bit to get it to the 9/16 size I needed. A bit nerve racking drilling a hole into a perfectly good pot but I had practice drilling holes in my kayak for fishing gear installs so I got over that real quick.


It's best to tape the area you want to drill and mark it with a sharpie. A quality step bit will ensure you will have a perfect hole. Brewhardware.com has these bits for purchase as well.

The sight glass itself is a Polycarbonate tube rated for 250 degrees. The thermometer is a 2 inch dial face with a 4 inch probe. It can be calibrated using the screw in the back.

Then it comes with black vinyl numbers so you can stick on the glass which is the whole point of this thing. I really enjoy knowing my wort level, it was a natural upgrade for those serious about brewing. I highly recommend it!

DIY Stirplate

I must have brewed for 2 years before I decided I needed a stir plate. I'm not going to pretend I'm some sort of geek lab rat. Far from it! although this is a geeky hobby I'm in it for the saving. I will say that my geeky side loves building electronic gadgets like this.

I decided to build one because they are so damn expensive. This one costed me 27 dollars to build because the only part I had on hand was a hard drive magnet. I did not reinvent the wheel I pretty much copied what was out there and it works so well. I'm using a 1 inch stir bar that works great and got a few of them because I'm likely to lose them.  This project was so fun I made 2! A look inside with the Fan Closer look at the wiring Stir plate in action! Below is the wiring diagram I used