Harvest Apfelwein

This morning I kegged the Apfelwein. It smelled wonderful and I can't wait for this to be ready to drink. It's one of the strongest brews I've made at 9.19% alcohol by volume. It's actually a hard apple cider that comes in a little dry on the finish. The apple flavor is great and the alcohol is very apparent right now. This will mellow over time and mask the strength of the brew. It will be great to have this on tap during Thanksgiving and Christmas. It takes 8 weeks (minimum) to age so it should be ready to drink in late October, although I think I'll wait until Thanksgiving day to actually tap it.

Today was the first day I've had to chase down a leak in one of my kegs. I'd used it before but today the liquid out post decided that it wanted to leak even with a new poppet installed. I swapped that post with another off of a keg that won't seal around another opening and it worked like a charm. It did take about an hour of my time to switch everything out and track down exactly what the problem was. Damned analytical mind! ;-)

Happy Wednesday. Brew on. Wade

English Pale Ale

The English Pale Ale is kegged. It came in at 5% alchohol by volume and I couldn't have been happier with the taste of the gravity sample. It finished off with a final gravity of 1.013 which should make is slightly sweeter than the American Pale Ale that I, and lots of friends, enjoyed so much.

Kegging this beer was much easier than any of the others because I was able to drop the temperature down to 40 degrees in the chest freezer. The yeast cake on the bottom of the fermenter was very firm and didn't get sucked up into the siphon when I got close to the end.

Six weeks conditioning in the closet and this one will go on tap. Just in time for fall.

I've now got two beers on tap (Nut Brown & Lite), two conditioning (Columbus IPA, English Pale Ale) and one fermenting (Apfelwein). I'm hoping to do a ten gallon batch of a Scottish Ale soon and 10 gallons of stout for the winter.

Oh, yeah, the price of the chest freezer I want for the kegerator dropped to $269 yesterday so I'm hoping to pick that up this weekend and get started on the kegerator on the 30th!

A bad day brewing is.......

Better than almost anything! Almost.....

OK, so it wasn't a bad day at all. A pretty darn good brew day if you ask me. It did, however, start off a little weird. At 5:11 AM I woke up to the telephone ringing. When I answered it all I could hear was a sound like someone was pushing one of the buttons. I figured it was a crank call and went back to sleep. At 5:26 AM I got another call. When I answered it all I could hear was some pretty lame music. Now I was awake. Time to brew!

Today I brewed an English Pale Ale (Think Bass Ale). And since I have my new Barley Crusher, I decided to give the grain a good crush last night.

Here's the grain waiting to be crushed.













After about 10 minutes of hand cranking the grain through the crusher (3 hoppers worth) here was the outcome.














I've been missing my Original Gravity's lately. Falling a bit short actually, so I thought that crushing my own grain and switching sparging methods to Bobby M's method might help. Nope, still a lower gravity than expected. I figure it's time to stop fighting this and time to change my recipes to meet my brewhouse efficiency (68-70%).

Again, nothing earth shattering today, but I am pretty darn happy with my new (to me) chest freezer and temp controller for fermenting. Now I've got that part of the brewing process completely under control.

In the corner, out of the way.













Here's the EPA and the Apfelwein in the chest freezer. The Apfelwein has been fermenting for a week and smells like old elephant farts! Yucko! Everyone says they get these smells while it's fermenting. Glad I didn't stick that one in the basement of the SWMBO's office! The EPA is cooling down to 65 degrees before I pitch the yeast.


















Here's the nut brown ale that I drank right after brewing and cleaning up. Yummo! The drill will be used to aerate the wort. The vodka will go in the airlock. The Leggo sculpture is something my daughter made me last night. ;-)













Here's the Columbus IPA that I kegged Thursday morning at 5 AM. Smelled like a little bit of heaven!

Apfelwein!

At this point I think I'll ferment just about anything! I've been reading a lot of homebrew forums and EdWort at Homebrewtalk posted this recipe for German hard apple cider, or Apfelwein. It seemed so easy that I thought I should give it a shot. Here's how the "brew day" went.


Here are the ingredients for this fermented coctail: 5 galons of natural, pasturized apple juice from Costco, of course. 2 lbs of corn sugar, and 1 packet of dry yeast. You're supposed to use Red Star Montrachet, but Wayne at Barley and Wine didn't have any. He recommended Lavlin #EC-1118 Champagne Wine Yeast for the same clean, crisp, dry finish that the Montrachet would have produced.

OK, um, I usually put "brewing" photos here but there was no brewing, just mixing and pouring. Here's the recipe right from EdWort:

Ingredients

5 Gallons 100% Apple Juice (No preservatives or additives) I use Tree Top Apple Juice
2 pounds of dextrose (corn sugar) in one pound bags
1 five gram packet of Montrachet Wine Yeast

Equipment

5 Gallon Carboy (I use a Better Bottle)
Carboy Cap or Stopper with Airlock
Funnel

1. First sanitize the carboy, airlock, funnel, stopper or carboy cap.
2. Open one gallon bottle of apple juice and pour half of it into the carboy using the funnel.
3. Open one bag of Dextrose and carefully add it to the now half full bottle of apple juice. Shake well.
4. Repeat Steps 2 and 3, then go to step 5.
5. Pour in the mixture of Apple Juice and Dextrose from both bottles into the carboy.
6. Add all but 1 quart of remaining 3 gallons of apple juice to the carboy.
7. Open the packet of Montrachet Yeast and pour it into the neck of the funnel.
8. Use the remaining quart of juice to wash down any yeast that sticks. I am able to fit all but 3 ounces of apple juice into a 5 gallon Better Bottle. You may need to be patient to let the foam die down from all shaking and pouring.
9. Put your stopper or carboy cap on with an airlock and fill the airlock with cheap vodka. No bacteria will live in vodka and if you get suckback, you just boosted the abv.

The outcome?


Here is the finished product with my son in the background hamming it up! It's mighty clear for a "brew day" concoction.


Here's a picture of the Apfelwein in my "new to me" fermentation chamber! Applause!!!!!!!!! My son and I just picked this up today in Turlock for as close to nothing as you can get.

This stuff will sit in this chest freezer (with temp controller of course) at 70 degrees for the next 6 weeks. 6 weeks? Yup, 6 weeks. It ferments slow and should finish out at around 0.999 on the hydrometer or at just about 8.13 ABV. Yikes, that's some serious alcohol. I might just have to invite Mark over to help drink this stuff!

And, no, I haven't built the kegerator yet. I may have to wait until next month to buy the chest freezer. I've got a broken window to fix on one of our french doors and that ate up quite a bit of funds!

Columbus IPA

Today I brewed my first IPA, YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's my favorite style of beer and I'm finally comfortable enough with my brewing techniques to brew it. Here's how the day went:

Here's Oliver (Ollie) the brew cat checking out the wort chiller.

Here's my first yeast starter on my homemade stir plate. It's looking mighty lovely!

I lit the burner and started heating my strike water at 8:15 am. UPS has not yet delivered my grains/hops for this brew, but I think they'll be here by 11:00. I heated the water early knowing it wouldn't lose too much temp by the time the grains got here.

Heating the strike water.

It's going to be a hot one today (104) so I'm brewing in my bathing suit (Semi-No Pants?). Several trips to the pool will be required to stay cool!

The UPS driver delivered the grains at 11:15 am and I mashed in at 11:30. The recipe for this delicious nectar is:

Grain Bill

• 12 lbs 2-Row
• 1.5 lbs Crystal 15L

Boil Schedule

• 2 oz Magnum @ 60 Minutes - Bittering
• Whirflock @ 10 Minutes - Clarifying
• Yeast Nutrients @ 10 Minutes - Helping the yeasties do their job!
  
• 2 oz Columbus @ 5 Minutes - Flavoring
• 2 oz Columbus @ 2 Minutes - Aroma

When mashing in lately the ProMash calculations for strike water temperature have been low making me miss my mash temp. ProMash recommended 163 for strike water temp, I adjusted up to 168/169. I put the strike water in the mashtun, added the grain and 1 tsp of 5.2 and nailed my mash temp at 154! Woohoo!

Mashing in!

Keeping the heat in for 60 minutes!

The mash went well. I only lost 2 degrees over an hour. The mashout went very well also. I got 5 gallons from my first runnings and 2 gallons from my second. Seems that I over mashed just a tad!

Draining the first runnings into the boil kettle after recirculating 4 times to get the grain bed to settle and the wort to run clear.

Woe is me! I turned my back to the boil kettle for a few minutes and had a nice (OK, not so nice) boilover. Sticky wort on the concrete is not what I wanted to be working around today especially because I'm not wearing any shoes!

Boilover aftermath

After the boil returned to normal, I added 2 oz of Magnum hops. The patio smelled wonderfully of wort and hops! Mmmmmm! I've said it before and I'll say it again: They should make Potpouri that smells like this! Edit: after adding 4 oz of Columbus hops to the boil I have to say they should make Potpouri that smells like this! ;-)

Oops! I must have misjudged the pre-boil volume of wort. I only ended up with 4 gallons post boil. About 3.75 will make that into the keg. :-( So much for me being comfortable with my brewing techniques! From now on I'm going to sparge into a measuring bucket so I'm right on with my wort amounts. Last time too much, this time too little, sheesh!

Sweet wort being transferred from the boil kettle to the carboy for fermentation!

Here's the wort's resting place for the next three weeks: In the basement of my wife's office. It's been warm outside so I suspect this is going to ferment a little higher than 63 degrees, probably more like 68. Still in the good beer zone!

Edit: I missed my OG by 6 points. It was 1.054 and the range for this beer is 1.060 - 1.065. I've always had low efficiency on this system. Time to get a new cooler for a mashtun (this one's all bubbled up on the inside from the hot water) and start crushing my own grain to see if that helps. Still, the gravity sample tasted mighty good!

Up next: Hopefully the kegerator! I have all the parts except the chest freezer and the temp controller. Morebeer will have the temp controller available 7/18 and I'm just hoping Craigslist comes up with a freezer for cheap!

Nothin's Brewin'

I haven't brewed in a while so I thought I'd go to the next best thing: A list of the commercial brew I've got sitting in the beer fridge. Some good, some bad, and some really, really bad!
















From left to right:
Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat - A pretty good American wheat with hints of blueberry and lime. Not really my cup of tea, but not a bad beer on a hot summer night.

Alaskan ESB - A very good extra special bitter. Malty with very little bitterness and a small hint of hops. A very good early spring or late fall beer. This brewery is famous for their smoked porter. I didn't like that one very much, but I haven't liked any smoked beer that I've tasted.

Firestone/Walker Pale Ale - I've been drinking a lot of pale ales lately and this one is right up there with the best of them. Pours a light golden color with a medium malt presence with a very nice hop profile.

Green Flash Brewing West Coast IPA - A very, very hoppy IPA with a nice bitterness. Kind of a shocker if you're not ready for it. This is one big beer only for the serious hophead!

Deschutes Inversion IPA - I haven't had one of these yet, just bought the six pack last night at Bevmo. This is supposed to be a malty IPA with a good hop presence. Not over the top, but just right.

JB's (Trader Joe's) Winterfest Lager - I brought this home from the cabin a couple of weeks ago and haven't had one since ski season. This is a very good lager with lots of dark malts. Tastes of molasses, brown sugar, caramel, and roasted malts. I plan on drinking this late Saturday night while swimming in the pool.

Not shown (and for good reason) New Belgium Skinny Dip - Absolute grossness in a bottle. Seemed like the brewery had an infection somewhere along the line. If not, the head brewer needs to change his recipes. Actually, the only thing I like from this brewery is their 1554 - Enlightened Black Ale.

So, that's it for now. I'll be brewing again next month - probably a SNPA clone or a Columbus IPA. And, the kegerator will be started. Pictures to follow!

My Ghetto Stirplate

Alright, so when you make a yeast starter you can do what I've done in the past and just let it sit in a dark place with tin foil on the top...
OR
You can put your starter on a stirplate to give the yeast plenty of oxygen and really, really take off doing what they do best.

Stirplates cost a lot of money and I'm a pretty thrifty guy, and I like to build stuff so I decided to make my own. Thanks so much to Push Eject for putting these plans on his website. I did improvise a little, but not much.

I basically took an old hard drive enclosure and gutted it, raided the rare earth magnets from the hard drive, took an old PC fan and an old cell phone charger and put it all together. Here's some of the process.

The parts:
An old hard drive enclosure.
A PC Fan.
A rare earth magnet.
A Rheostat from Radio Shack.
An old cell phone charger.


The guts:
I took out the hard drive, circuit board and all the wires from inside the enclosure.
I harvested the wires from inside the enclosure to make the connections from the power supply to the rheostat to the fan.
At first I tried mounting the HDD to a couple of pieces of wood, but the magnet was too far away from the magnetic stirbar to take hold so I went to Lowes and got a couple of bolts and nuts to mount it to the top.

The finished product:
Even with the fan mounted to the top of the enclosure I still wasn't getting a strong hold from the magnet to the stirbar because the plastic was so thick. A cutting tip on a Dremell rotary tool made quick work of the plastic.



Bingo! This baby will keep the yeast in suspension and growing nicely!


What's next? The Kegorator will get started next month along with The Son of a Mother of a 38DD Fermentation Chiller.