Evil Twin - Kegged and Labeled

I kegged the Evil Twin on Sunday and had the usual problem of me being too greedy when it comes to getting every last drop of beer from the carboy to the keg. I "push" the beer with CO2 so the pressure makes kegging very fast. The problem is I don't know when to say when and I usually end up sucking up CO2 out of the carboy and bubbling it up through the beer in the keg. Oh, well. No use crying over spilled beer! ;-)

Here's a copy of the label I came up with. Bonus points to anyone who remembers this episode. Thanks to my parents, I remember EVERY episode! :-)

New Brew Club

A few of the Modesto Mashers club members decided to create a new club. Reasons behind the split are unimportant, but we will be focused more on the actual craft of brewing.

One of the items we needed was a club logo and while I'm no graphic design artist, here's what I've come up with so far:

Evil Twin

Today I brewed a recipe made famous by Jamil Zainasheff, Evil Twin Red Ale. This is supposed to be a great malty beverage with a big hop flavor and aroma without the bittering as all of the hops come at the end of the boil. Here's the recipe:

Evil Twin
Size: 11 gal
Efficiency: 70.0%
Attenuation: 75.8%
Calories: 223.88 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.060
Terminal Gravity: 1.016 (0.995 - 1.035)
Color: 18.39 (1.0 - 50.0)
Alcohol: 6.3% (2.5% - 14.5%)
Bitterness: 42.8 (0.0 - 100.0)

Ingredients:
23 lb Pale Ale Malt
1.5 lb Crystal Malt 40°L
1.5 lb Munich Malt
1 lb Victory® Malt
1 lb Crystal 120
.5 lb Pale Chocolate
1 oz Centennial (10.0%) - added during boil, boiled 20 min
1 oz Amarillo (8.5%) - added during boil, boiled 20 min
1 ea Whirlfloc Tablets (Irish moss) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
2 tsp Yeast Nutrient (AKA Fermax) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
2 oz Centennial (10.0%) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
2 oz Amarillo (8.5%) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
2 oz Centennial (10.0%) - added during boil, boiled 0.0 min
2 oz Amarillo (8.5%) - added during boil, boiled 0.0 min

Notes
Directions: Single infusion mash at 154F (68C) using a ratio of 1.3 quarts water to 1 pound of grain. The 90 minute boil enhances the blood-red color. It also adds a touch more melanoidin and caramel notes. Cool the wort quickly after the last hop addition to retain as much hop aroma as possible. Optionally, dry hop with more Centennial or Amarillo if you’re a real hop monster. Carbonate to no more than 2 volumes and serve at 45 to 55 F (7.2 to 12.8 C).

Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.5.2

It was an interesting brew day. Everything seemed to go well, and then the unexpected happened. See the pics below for details.

I found a great new place to make the yeast starter: in the garage. The camping stove works great and the house doesn't end up smelling like beer.

Ten ounces of hops waiting to go into the boil.

My new "hopsock" that I built out of a small piece of aluminum dowel, a 3 inch PVC pipe adapter, a 4 inch hose clamp, and a 5 gallon paint strainer. The hopsock goes in the boil, the hops go into the hopsock, and I don't get leaf hops clogging up my ball valve when I'm draining the wort!

So, at the end of the boil I put in the wort chiller and noticed that the "in" side had a small leak. No big deal since it's dripping outside the kettle, right? Wrong! This little gem burst apart spewing water all over the garage but didn't get any in the boil kettle. Whew!


10 Gallons of wort in glass and the hydro sample (that tasted absolutely delicious!). If you look closely at the hydro sample you can see the red color that this beer will have. Can you tell which carboy got the bottom of the brew kettle nasties in it? ;-)

Three weeks until fermantation is finished and we can put this lovely elixer on CO2 to carb it up!

Hops!

I haven't brewed in four months, instead I've been buying supplies in bulk so I can brew cheaper. Last month I ordered three pounds of hops from www.nikobrew.com. I ordered:
1 lb Cascade Pellet
1 lb Amarillo Pellet
1 lb Centennial Leaf

I needed to seal these up with a vacuum sealer and one of my employees gave me a vacuum sealer that his dad picked up at the thrift store for $2. Not bad since these usually cost anywhere from $40 to $140.

I sealed up the hops today and they smelled wonderful! Unfortunately the Cascades were short 1 oz and the Centennials were short 1/2 oz. I emailed Niko today and let him know what happened. He seems to be a pretty straight shooter so I'm sure he'll make it right.

Update: Niko is sending out the hops to make up for the mistake!

Here's a couple of pics.

Three pounds of hops!

The $2 vacuum sealer that worked excellent!

Up Next: Evil Twin Red Ale

Some New Toys

I haven't been brewing lately, but I have been busy building some new toys. Brad (Mark's friend) bought my old brew kettles so i made a couple of new ones.


I bought a couple of straight sided kegs because they look better and they're easier to handle than the old "barrel" type of kegs (Coors Light). The HLT is on the left and the boil kettle is on the right. And, oh yeah, I bought a new wort chiller too!

The new HLT has a thermometer and a sight gauge built in as well as the spigot. I put the thermometer in so that I wouldn't have to keep reaching over a boiling pot of water to put the thermo in. The sight gauge was put in so that I don't have to measure out my water in a 3 gallon pot - I can go straight from HLT to mashtun.


Here's a close-up of the HLT.

Here's a hint for what's up next.

Kegging the Pale Ales

I went to keg the pale ales yesterday morning and realized that I'd never racked beer off that had been dry hopped. I was worried that I might suck hops up into the racking cane and clog it. After discussing options on the Modesto Mashers Forum and searching the web for ideas I came up with this:













It's a copper pot scrubber (sanitized of course) secured to the end of the racking cane with a zip tie. I had to stuff it into the neck of the carboy but it did a wonderful job of keeping ALL of the hops out of the racked beer.

Here's the rack in progress. I had to use CO2 to force the beer through the hops and through the scrubber into the keg.













Here's the resulting (very) empty carboy. I was able to suck out every last drop of beer with this method leaving behind the hops and almost all of the yeast.

ppfffffftttttttttttttttt!

The bad new is that the English Pale Ale blew last night. :-(

The good news is that the Scottish Wee Heavy and Apfelwein are in the fridge carbonating. The Wee Heavy will be ready to tap next Saturday. The Apfelwein will be ready a week after that.

Until then:

• Deschutes Obsidian Stout
• Traquair House Ale - 1 bottle
• Firestone/Walker Pale 31
• Big Sky IPA
• Big Sky Moose Drool Brown Ale
• Big Sky Powder Hound Winter Ale
• Pete's Wicked Ale - 1 bottle
  

That should hold me over! :-)