Hops Rhizomes, Merlot Bud Break

The heat really came down on Walnut Creek on Saturday and Sunday. We had to start watering the grass, feels like forever since those sprinklers were on! I had some serious growth on the hops rhizomes. Check it out!

scroll down to the previous post to see how much these have grown!

I also noticed that the vines really shot out on the grapes this weekend, too. Here is a picture of the first of the bud-break on April 3rd. 

bud break 4-3-12

And here we can see the lush green image of vines from April 22nd. Progress! My parents use a sulphur  mixture to fend off bugs and plant eating parasites and what not, that’s what the white splotches are sprayed on the leaves.

getting big 4-22-12

This week in Maxfield Beer, my dad and I tried the two Red Ales that we have carbonating. I am fairly certain that my buddy and I only set them to carbonate on Monday or Tuesday, so I wouldn’t normally test them on a Friday, but it was so hot that I figured it would be a good test to see what only 4 days of carbonation could do. So we tried the Irish Ale yeasted Red on Friday and it was borderline flat. There was some feel of bubbles but no creamy head like I imagined. I decided to wait until it was properly carbonated before I have a proper taste. Dad drank the whole thing without complaints. What a trooper. So I left the CA Ale yeasted Red on the 12 PSI (at 35°F it was supposed to reach about 2.65 or 2.7 volumes of CO2) and tried it on Sunday. A small, golden head formed but it dissipated within twenty seconds, so something was going on. So I went to work trying to figure out what was wrong.

The first thing I noticed was that the temperature had changed pretty dramatically over the weekend. The fridge had risen to 40°F! I would need at least 15 PSI to get the desired levels at that temperature,  so on Sunday night I (a) cranked the fridge down from a 5 to a 7 (I can use this opportunity to check the fluctuation of temperatures when using the fridge’s temp control knob) so ensure that the ambient heat doesn’t jack up the old fridge, and I also (b) raised the PSI to 15 on both kegs. At these levels, I won’t dangerously over carbonate, however there is the chance that I carbonate too much for the desired style. But after trying the beer with ~ 2.4 level of CO2, I am pretty certain I will like the smallish difference added with a few extra days and aiming for a 2.75 volume beer. 

Somewhere in there, while I was changing from carbonating pressures to serving pressures, I managed to allow the pressure release of the Irish to get messed up. I don’t really know what happened, but at one point, I could hear hissing and my 50lb CO2 tank has lost about 100 PSI! or whatever the level is: it was at the 500 mark (the beginning of the red) at the beginning of the weekend and then when I was hearing it hiss, it was sitting at 400, a noticeable difference. What I ended up having to do was pop the keg lid off and unscrew and re-screw in the pressure release pin. When it is initially screwed in, the pin part is pushed up and the spring aids in holding it down. So either I had screwed it in too hard (so that there was always pressure being pulled on the spring allowing air to seep out past the seal) or perhaps the piece itself is messed up somehow, like the seal on the inside of the spring mechanism is old and deteriorated. I think it’s time I take the kegs in and have the techs at the home brew store have a look and see if I need some replacement parts. They are all used  kegs, after all.

The moral of this story is to (a) make sure you keep track of your fridge’s temperature on hot days. Our fridge is in the garage which gets especially hot. This weekend got up to 85°F and probably 95°F in the garage. I would also (b) pressure test your kegs before you use them and make note of how tight you make each of the fittings. I ended up tightening all the hose clamps on my CO2 lines, as well as using the wrench to tighten the body connect Gas-In line when ‘repairing’ the issue with the quick release pin.

I wish this post could have been about tasting notes, but nope, of course it has to deal with problems that occurred with used DIY home-brew equipment.

Mead and Reddit

I frequently browse www.reddit.com for cute pictures of animals, video game news and brewing tips. I am working on converting some of my posts to those forums into this blog, but I still encourage people to check out reddit and become a part of the community. A sub-reddit is a sub-community hosted by reddit.com but populated by its user base. You get some great people, advice and information.

Some background on the following post: reddit user Toasty_Party started a mead exchange in /r/mead where we all brew a clover honey and juniper berry mead. Some buddies and I got together and here is what we came up with:

Juniper Berries crushed in a mortar and pestle.

MEAD EXCHANGE

Our initial feeling was that we did not use enough of the expensive, hard-to-find spice known as Dried Juniper Berries. However, mead accepts ingredients once fermentation is underway, so we will be upping the ante when the time comes. In the meantime, check out the rustic recipes we whipped up!
We cooked these 24 grams of berries with the total volume of 6 gallons. Juniper was in at 160°F for 10 minutes, during cooling, and left in for fermentation. We will be doubling the Juniper during secondary.

From left to right: 

3 gal carboy - 3 oz fresh local sweet orange peel, 3 pods dried Star Anise. 

2.5 gal carboy - 3 oz dried bergamont peels, .25 oz fresh local rosemary. 

5 gal carboy - 2 cups fresh local Kumquats, 2 oz fresh local lemongrass.

Fresh Sweet Orange Peel and Star Anise Pods

Dried Bergamont Peel and Fresh Rosemary

Fresh Kumquats and Lemongrass

As for the honey, we used 12 lbs of raw clover, 5 lbs of filtered clover (kirkland brand), 4 lbs of raw unfiltered Buckwheat, 1 lb of raw unfiltered carrot. I forgot to take a gravity reading from the must right out of the pot, but got some from the kumquat/lemongrass after pitching the yeast. OG was a whopping 1.135.


A note on using dried spices: my good friend, who bore the brunt of the recipe design, had us heat the dried spices over a low flame before using them. Specifically, the juniper berries and Star Anise pods were 'loosened up' in a pan prior to their respective uses.
A note on yeasts: we made two 4-gram, 500ml starters using the dry D47. For the starters, I used DME, Fermaid-K and Go-Ferm yeast nutrients. I started the starters on Thursday night and we pitched them (after mixing them together) on Sunday evening. We also put DAP, Fermaid-K and Go-Ferm into the must while dissolving the honey and steeping the Juniper. Cheers!




Well, there you have it. I changed the formatting a little from the original post but I think this looks nicer.

Homebrewing, Spent Grain Bread

Here is something fun! There are a few options a brewer has when disposing of spent grain from an all-grain or partial-mash batch of beer. Most of the time, we just dump between 10 and 25 lbs of grain into the chicken coop for our four chickens to enjoy. It makes them poop a lot more than usual, but I noticed an increase in egg production (we're getting 4 a day more consistently now).

Another option is to cook with the grain. All-grain batches produce way more spent-grain than you'll ever need for a normal portion of food. So in my most recent case, we kept 4 cups of grain (and only used 2 cups) for a spent grain bread for Easter dinner. 

Here are the instructions/recipe for the spent grain bread pictured:
1 cup warm milk

1 /2 cup of warm water

1 Tablespoon yeast

1 Tablespoon sugar

Let all rest 10 minutes

2 cups of flour

2 loose cups of spent grains

1 teaspoon salt

2 Tablespoons olive oil

mix well into the yeast and milk

Kneed more flour in till its not sticky, 1/2 cup at a time. Let rise in an oiled bowl for 2 hours, punch down, let rise all night. Shape into 2 long loaves and let them rise a couple of hours. Rub with melted butter and cook (in a pre-heated oven) at 400 degrees untill light brown top and bottom. (Lift to check after 10 to 15 minutes.) Cool completely before slicing (very important).

And for those beer people interested, here is the recipe for the Chocolate Hazlenut Porter:

10 lbs Marris Otter

1 lb German Munic

1 lb Crystal 40L

1 lb Crystal 75L

.75 lb Chocolate

.5 Black Patent

.5 Carapils

Magnum, Perle and UK Progress Hops were used. Also, cacao nibs were added once primary fermentation  slowed down. And furthermore, the beer calls for hazelnut extract prior to kegging. I will release more information when that beer is done.

Theory-crafting; Mead, Growing Beer Grains, Re-using Yeasts, Growing Hops

There are facets of the home-brewing craft that can be done at home. Some of it requires way more work than it's worth, while other elements of the process are fun, easy and save the brewer money. I'd like to break down my opinion of examples for some of those facets:

Bee Keeping: if someone was so set up some hives near a large amount of a specific flower/blossom, they'd be able to create a very specific product that isn't seen on the market (at least, it isn't advertised). My idea for this would be to surround the hive with raspberry bushes so you produce primarily raspberry blossom honey. Then, use those exact raspberries in secondary fermentation to create raspberry mead. I might also put a dead bee in each bottle and tell people it's good luck to east it.

Growing Grain: this would be difficult to pull off if you didn't own some sort of field specifically for growing grains. I have considered some lawn-displacement in order to grow a field of cereal grain, but I get the feeling I would not be able to produce near enough for any amount of beer, let alone, produce it in a timely manner. However, one step up from buying a 50 lbs sack of one specific fermentable, you'd be saving money in the most expensive part of the ingredients.

Yeast Rinsing/Yeast Washing: this is one of the easiest ways to save money when home brewing, especially if you enjoy a specific type of beer. It costs upwards of $5 per yeast vial, or $1 for the dry varieties. I've always used liquid yeast, so this was a no-brainer for me to pick up. I followed instructions from a home-brew talks forum here and was able to get it down after two batches. I know how a small library of yeasts that, as long as I use within a couple months, will last me until I need a different strain. Update: I made a new post detailing my method here.

Growing Hops: similar to growing your own grains, but easier, I imagine. I ordered some hops rhizomes from Midwest Brewing's online store. I don't know much about hops, and I am definitely not considered to have a green thumb, but vines of many types grow well in my climate so I felt it is worth it. Hops, I've heard, require more sunlight than normal, so I am slightly worried because we have been having some sunlight issues in my backyard since the trees have reached a certain height.

These are the four facets with beer and wine making that I have access to. Some smaller items would be, buying a grain mill in order to mill my own grain (and cornmeal, flour, oatmeal), getting a stand-alone kegerator to carbonate and serve your beer from as well as design tap handles, or even creating a label for your business (even if it is not a money-making venture, creating an image for your product helps identify its uniqueness).

Homebrew and Kegging

4/17/2012

A buddy and I kegged 10 gallons of red ale that we brewed almost 4 weeks ago (this Saturday would be the 4 week mark in Primary). We had 2 separate carboys fermenting, the only difference was the yeast culture. One used a 3rd generation WLP001 White Labs CA Ale yeast that I've brewed some IPAs and Pale Ales with. Started it 4 days prior, it had a tall krausen and active fermentation ended pretty quickly. The second carboy of red ale used a 2nd generation Irish Ale yeast, also White Labs strain. The krausen was very short, fermentation was hard and quick. Both ended up with the same Final Gravity of 1.018 which puts both beers at 5.7% ABV. We set them both to carbonate at 12 PSI in the fridge at 36°F which should give them a CO2 by volume of about 2.7. The carbonation style would match that of the suggestion for American Amber Ales.

One of my three corny kegs is about 5 inches shorter than the other two. Also, the Body Connects for the short keg are smaller than the other two (not the actual connection for the quick-disconnect, but the part you must wrench off). I tend to use the short keg over the third keg because the third keg does not have a pressure release valve at the top, it has some sort of plastic lock tool. But for some reason last night, the short keg would not hold pressure! It would slowly leak air out of the pressure release valve. I tried resetting it multiple times to no avail so we ended up cleaning and sanitizing that third keg real quick. I plan to bring the keg back to Beer, Beer More Beer and explain to them what's happening. With any luck, they will find a problem with the little valve piece and I won't have to buy a whole new keg lid. Cheers!