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#9 – Kolsch

December 21, 2014 in Beer Topics, Beers by Brian Thompson | No comments

Beer Name: Change

Style:  Kolsch

Alcohol: 4.5%

Color: 4

This is the second all grain beer that I’ve made.  After the last one blew up in my face, literally, my goal for this beer was to pick a simple recipe and really work on producing the clearest beer that I could.  During our summer trip to Denver I had several good Kolsches and decided that this is what I’d brew.  The brew day went well and the final product is a really nice beer.   Its refreshing to have and there is a good chance I do this one again, but maybe as a 10G batch next time since it goes down pretty easy.

Final Product
Mashing
Settling after boiling
clear transfer to fermentor
super clear
nice head on the beer
the cap
Recipe
Schedule
Yeast Calculations

[Show as slideshow]

My Brew Notes

Recipe Info

 Recipe

Execution Notes

The brew day went pretty well considering that last time I had stuck sparges and all-grain brewing was new.  My mash temps wavered around more than I’d like and will need to refine this.    I tried to use PH strips and iodine to check the mash, but have to say that I have no idea what I saw and will need to work on this more.  I did boil off more than I thought and had to add 2 gallons of water back in.  Though with that the gravity was on target.  Also, my pump broke so chilling took way longer than it should.  My plan to have a coarse bag around the metal screen in the boil kettle  and a fine mesh bag on the output side of the hose really helped me to remove most of the trub prior to going into the fermentor.  I cold crashed twice and used a secondary in addition to Irish moss in the boil and gelatin prior to bottling.  I’m not sure which helped the most, but I have a good beer.

Schedule

 Schedule

Recommendations for next time

  • Try hitting and maintaining the mash temp better
  • Plan for a higher boil off than most other people (try to turn down the burner a bit too)
  • See if I can figure out idodine and PH strips.

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Beer 8 – Black Rye IPA

November 15, 2014 in Beer Topics, Beers by Brian Thompson | 1 comment

  • Beer Name: Burnin’ Spades RIPA
  • Style:  Black, Rye, IPA
  • Alcohol: 7.1%
  • Color: unknown

My first venture into all grain brewing has literally blown up in front of me.  So who know how it tastes, but here is what happened.   After coming home from vacation I saw liquid coming from the fermentation chamber.  When I opened the doors about 6 bottle or so had exploded at the bottom.  So I took everything out and cleaned things up, exactly what you want to do after a long travel day.  Just as I was putting the beers back in the fridge, the bottom of a six pack broke open and the bottles dropped maybe a foot.  Well all 6 of those bottles exploded.  Sounded like a bomb went off.  I was lucky no glass hit my face, but my legs and feet were not so lucky and had blood streaming down.  Now I had another mess to clean up.  So while I was cleaning that up 2 more bottles exploded just sitting on the sidewalk.  Awesome, I have bottle bombs.  Not wanting to loose everything. I place the remaining beer bottles in a cooler and inside my fridge.  That night I heads several more explode…sounded like a gun shot.  Hoping to save the beers, I planned to pop the tops on the remaining bottles and then re-cap them.  I put on my bomb squad gear (an old paintball face mask, a thick long sleeve, and some gloves) and reached into the cooler to take the tops off.  The first one gushed everywhere, same with the second, third and so on.  After a bit there was so much foam I was just feeling through the cooler to find unopened bottles.  Well needless to say this was a total loss.  I did try about half a glass full just to see what it was like and it was sweet almost like the raw wort.

So here is what I think happened.  During my last batch of beer my fridge died, so I didn’t really have good fermentation control while this beer was fermenting.  We had really hot days and warm nights.  I think the yeast shutdown due to the high temperatures.  I should have noticed that my final gravity reading was high and done something, but just moved right into bottling.  After I bottled I also replaced the AC unit with a min-fridge coils and was able to set the temp.  I think when I did this the yeast woke up again and started chomping on all the unprocessed sugars, thus creating my bottle bombs.

On the fun side, I got some 3/4″ stickers to make cap labels for my beers.  I got lucky and made labels for my previous beers as I had to move my bottles all around while cleaning.  Making a label is now part of my beer making process.

Total Loss
Bottle Bomb Casualty
First explosions
Exploded 6-pack
Bomb Squad
Welcome home
What I saved
Before the explosions
Labels
Recipe Notes
yeast output actual

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My Brew Notes

Recipe Info

 Recipe Notes

Execution Notes

Tried making a 2L starter in a 2L flask.  Resulted in a boil over.  Separated into two flask for the boil then recombined when they cooled.  Ended up with 1.6L of the 2L.

First time making all grain batch.  MLT filter was too small and got a stuck sparge.  I knew what my number were supposed to be, but wasn’t prepared to be able to measure if I was hitting them or not (ie. depth to volume conversions). Messed around switching in a different filter which caused the temps to go wild.  Through all the hops directly in which wasn’t so bad.  What was bad way the bag I had to catch the gunk at the output end of the hose when transferring to the primary got clogged up and ended up not using it which passed a lot of material in the fermenter.  When transferring to bottling bucket the the filter around the tube also was causing problems so a lot of material ended up in bottles.  Need to do this better next time

Schedule

  • Brew day: 6/13/2014
  • Cold Crash Start: N/A (Broken fermentation chamber)
  • Secondary Fermentation: 7/2/2014
  • Dry Hopping: 7/29/2014
  • Cold Crash 2: N/A
  • Gelatin: N/A
  • Bottling Prep: 8/4/2014
  • Bottling: 8/5/2014

Recommendations for next time

  • Get the filtering down much better
  • Make sure the fermentation chamber is working
  • Know numbers better and know how to take measurements

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Mash Tun

June 8, 2014 in Beer Projects, Beer Topics by Brian Thompson | No comments

I’ve finally completed my mash tun build, the last new tool I need for all grain brewing.  For my birthday, I got a 110qt Igloo Glider Roller cooler from Costco,  a ball valve kit, and a 12″ stainless steel water heater connector.  With this I will be able to brew the highest ABV beers (all the way up to 18%) in 10 gallon batches.  Which is perfect since I recently got new kettles and burners (see my other post on that) to do 10 gallon batches too.

With my new gear I’ll had to do was take out the coolers drain and then put in my own drain.  Well 8 hours later I’ve finally finished.  Apparently my cooler is thicker than most coolers so I had to get some additional parts.  With my new parts, a female to female (f2f) extension and a male to male extension,, both stainless steel, I had a setup that was too long and I had a leak out of the hole.  So I then hand cut the f2f extension on both sides to shorten it up.  Still this leaked.  I tried several other configurations with additional washers and they all had leaks.  Then when I was in DC I stopped at a My Local Home Brew Store  and got some help from some very friendly staff and purchased several O-rings, some heat resistant some not.  Well when I got home I still could screw things together without having an ever so slight leak.  Note, the leak on the outside was slow, which is bad, but I was also worried that it was leaking into the center of the cooler, even worse.  So then Chase and I made another trip to another hardware store and picked up some more washers and another pipe wrench.  With that final trip to the store I finally got a mash tun that didn’t leak.  Hallelujah! Oh, and it turns out I never needed to cut through any of the f2f extension, but it works just fine short too.

One final note, most coolers advertised size includes the lid and seems to not always add up correctly.  This cooler, Igloo Glide Roller Premium, is advertised as a 110qt cooler.  When you measure up to where the lid hits 13.5″ (which is needed to keep the heat in while mashing) and take out the bump in the inside this cooler ends up being about a 96qt cooler.  Still plenty big for 10G batches, but something to be mindful when selecting a cooler.

Leak test outside
Flow check
Final install - outside
Final install - outside closeup
Top down on the valve
Leak Test - inside
Final install - inside
Final install - inside closeup
Mash tun Measurements
at Costco
Igloo label
Original Drain
Look inside
Ball Valve close up
Drain Replacement
Water heater tubing
Water heater tubing 2
Washers
Tubing cut apart
Tubing folded at end

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“New to Me” Brew Toys Upgrade

April 20, 2014 in Beer Projects, Beer Topics by Brian Thompson | No comments

In a fortunate sighting on Craigslist, and a very understanding wife, I was able to get some “new to me” equipment for very very cheap to allow me to do all grain brewing for up to 10G batches.  The stuff could use some cleaning, but I got:

  • 24G stainless steel kettle with thermometer, sight tube, valve, and bazooka screen.
  • 16G stainless steel kettle with thermometer and valve.
  • 2 propane burners.
  • 6.5G glass carboy with top, thermometer tube, and 3 piece airlock.
  • 2000mL Erlenmeyer flask with stopper
  • homemade stir plate (no stir bar)
10G All Grain Upgrade

 

I had this great plan on how to do incremental upgrades from 5G extract brewing to 5G all grain brewing then to 10G all grain brewing, but this purchase basically jumps me right up to being able to do all grain brewing now!  I’m still going to do a couple of 5G batches to start so that I can figure out how to all grain brew and to understand my equipment a bit more, but stepping up to 10G batches will mean that I have/need/get to brew less and will have to do more fun things with Lisa and Chase.

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All Grain Upgrade Plan

April 19, 2014 in Beer Projects, Beer Topics by Brian Thompson | No comments

I’m getting ready to make the leap into all grain brewing and am pretty excited, but I want to do it right.  I don’t want to buy things to turn around a few batches down the road and wish I had bought something else.  So I want to either make sure the things I buy now will work for future upgrades.  A couple of key things to keep in mind is that I am doing 5 gallon batches now, but might want to do 10 gallon batches in the future.  Also, I like high gravity brews which requires more grain to get the more sugars, so again I need to think about the volume capability of the upgrades.

Key Items for all grain brewing

  • Hot Liquid Tank – HLT
  • Propane or Electric Burner
  • Mash/Lauder Tun – MLT
  • Mash Paddle
  • Kettle / brew pot

To get into all grain brewing from what I have now (see my tools here) I will need to get a mash/lauder tun (MLT), a mash paddle, and a large kettle.  I’ll explain my logic as I go through each one.

Hot Liquid Tank – HLT

A HLT is a fancy brewers way of saying a pot or kettle for heating water.  The hot water here will go into the MLT.  I have an existing 5G stainless steel pot which will be sufficient for 5G batches.  For 10G batches I’ll need a large pot, but my plan will be to buy a larger pot when time comes for this.  At the very least I’m not buying something now that won’t be used later.

Propane or Electric Burner

I have an existing 38,000 BTU burner from the turkey fryer kit I bought to get into home brewing.  From my calculations my burner should be good for batches up to ….TBD

To eventually do a 10G batch I have calculated that I’ll need about a TBD burner.

Mash/Luader Tun

Since a MLT isn’t needed for extract brewing I don’t have any existing equipment and will have to buy something new.  Seems like when someone gets into a really fancy brewing setup the MLT is a stainless steel pot, but many successful and far cheaper options use a converted cooled as they can easily be converted into an MLT and are fairly inexpensive.  Additionally, MLTs can be made for fly sparging or batch sparging.  I’m going to plan to do batch sparging as it seems this is relatively foolproof and the advantages for fly sparging aren’t too great.   I want to be sure that the MLT that I end up with will be good for 5G batches now and 10G batches in the future.

A high gravity (barleywine) 10G batch will have 45lbs amount of grain and at most 27.25  gal of water in the MLT at one time.   Remember the space in lid usually counts as part of the volume for a cooler so plan for a slightly larger cooler.  From this I get a cooler size with at least 94qt of internal space.   Well a 100qt coleman extreme cooler is going to only have about 80.25qt of internal space, but I figure I won’t be making any 10G batches of barelywine and will call it good.  Also, many poeple have recommended that a 70 qt (17.5G) is good for up to 10G batches.  The coleman extreme cooler comes highly recommended since it has a drain groove through the bottom.  With this cooler in mind a 5G batch will have a volume of 18 qt.    So with that in mind a 70-100qt cooler should be good into the future.

So I received a 100qt coleman extereme cooler for my birthday, but I have some questions about it as it isn’t as I thought it would be.  Read more on the Home Brew Talk Forums.

Mash Paddle

I’ll need a mash paddle.  I’ve read to use a hardwoord such as maple makes a good paddle.  Also, when making the paddle drill/cut good size holes in it to break up the dough balls well.

Kettle Upgrade

As I mentioned below I’m planning to use my existing kettle 7.5G kettle to become my HLT and then will purchase a new kettle.  Since I want to to small brewing upgrades without having to discard things in the future I’m planning to buy a kettle that will work for 5G and 10G batches, but to save money now I’m going to pass on any of the extra gizmos (thermometers, valves, sight tubes) for now.

Other posts suggest that a 80 qt (20G) stainless steel pot/kettle can do 10G batches.

In my quest to selecting a kettle I asked for some help with the selection criteria on homebrewtalk.com forums (here).

 

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