Wit White, Pale Ale, Red Ale, Sour

Updates are few and far between for me because of my schedule. I’d like to apologize for not updating in what seems like forever. I have a few projects in the works and I’d like to touch on them and upload some pictures just to keep us sane. In fact, I think these projects are what keep me sane during this busy time of my life.

A Short Look Back

When last I checked in, I was fermenting the Maple Pecan Nut Brown ale. The beer came out as one of my best to date, but there were pros and cons to this: I only got to bottle less than 4.5 gallons, but those 4.25 gallons were thick and strong.  A common issue I experienced doing my all grain 5 gallon batches was failing to hit target fermentation volume. This was due to my inability to measure the amount of wort gathered during sparge. So, in a nutshell, I only gathered 5.5 gallons to boil, then boiled off almost a gallon, then lost about a half-gallon to fermentation goop. This left me with my rough estimate of 4.25 gallons of the beer that was thicker and stronger than it was supposed to be. Not all that bad since I didn’t have any specifics to adhere to. Hitting that exact same recipe won’t be difficult, because I kept good notes the whole time. I would aim to make the beer more ‘sessionable’ next time.

Since then, I have made 4 beers: 10 gallons of Belgian Wit, 10 gallons of American Pale (single hopped!), 5 gallons of Irish Red and 5 gallons of a Belgian Sour (Abbey style). I have also updated my current hardware in some places and started a kegerator project.

The Wit

This was a very light, summer beer. We used coriander and bitter orange peel to match the style. I wasn’t particularly fond of the lightness of this beer and I have complaints of the level to which it was carbonated. However, the beer was favored among my friends who enjoy a lighter beer. At times I would even call it watery and flat but I imagine my intoxication at the time of tasting caused me to be bitter about it. A thick heffeweisen is closer to my preferred style for wheat beers.

Jonny uses the dremmel to cut a notch
in our bayou burner so that a
BBQ grill can fit snug.

Kyle stands by.

The Pale

As an experiment, my buddies and I wanted a basic grain bill and single hop variety while also trying out a new dry hopping method. Instead of racking to secondary at the full end of fermentation, we simply added the hops about 3 days into primary fermentation. This method was revealed to us from the internets somewhere, and we felt it was a great idea especially for (1) saving time on the ferm and (2) creating less work by not racking to secondary. We were not disappointed and in fact my buddies used this method in a recent IPA clone of one of our previous batches. I still have about 4 gallons of the pale in keg and I am picking up my CO2 tank this weekend: I’ll finally be able to hook it up and tap it properly and probably bottle a bunch of it for saving (but note, pales/highly aroma hopped beers aren’t meant to age because the characteristics of the aromas apparently fade with age). 

The Red

Of beers I have crafted, Reds and Porters are the most abundant. Of both I had first made extract batches and of both I feel I have started to hone my all-grain styles. I have experimented with hops a great deal in my reds and I may have found my balance (well, not in this red, but because of this red, I have discovered the balance). I’ve used this recipe a number of times but with an increase in efficiency in both method and madness, the red this time came out full bodied and full of both malt and hop flavor. I personally find the bittering level slightly high, it’s a crisp and lingering bitterness that is best tasted at warmer temperatures (60°F – 70°F serving temperature) in order to allow the smooth and thick dark malt body to slide in side-by-side with the Fuggles bittering. Not only was the chosen hops Alpha Acid percentage count higher than the suggested bittering hops for the recipe, but I also used more of the hops. One of the reasons for the change was because I have had these hops in the fridge for a while and I wanted to use them before they went bad. Some other things to note were that the beer came out much more red (read: darker) than previous batches of the same beer and this could be due to a number of reasons: my most likely culprit is that I over-weighed the specialty grains when I bought them.  The recipe called for 1 lbs. of Crystal 120L malt and a quarter pound each of Black Roasted Barley and Special B. This combination, in conjunction with the large amounts of fermentable malts, usually makes for a rich red color. My guess was I used closer to ½ pound of Black Roasted Barley or Special B by accident.

The Red, after adding oxygen

The Sour

I’ve been trying a lot of sour beers lately, as many as I can get my hands on. The first sour I ever knowingly tried was from a brewery in Dexter, Michigan called Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales. I am not sure which of their beers it was that I tried, but it was a sour with a raspberry on the label. Then, I picked out a Flemmish sour red from a brand called Strubbe’s which doesn’t have any advertised fruit characteristic but really hits home on the sour front. It might even have some dark cherry undertones. I really suggest that beer. The next I tried was Rodenback Grand Cru sour red ale. This one wasn’t as punchy as the Strubbe’s, but was more session-able. It came in a large wine bottle, corked, so it felt a little classier, or something. After trying a few different sours, mostly imports (Jolly Pumpkin was the only American sour I’ve tried), I decided to try and make one. A buddy found the recipe, and he, too, brewed this sour. Our plan is to blend our two sours together after 6 months of secondary fermentation. The way a sour works is, you brew a beer (usually  a Belgian style or ‘Abbey Ale’) then after primary fermentation, you add a culture of lactobacillus and let it ferment in a cold, dark area for a long time (recipe said 6 mothts).

11 lbs. Pilsner Malt

1 lbs. Wheat

1 lbs. Munich Malt

1 lbs. Aromatic Malt

1 lbs. CaraMunic Malt

4 oz Special B Malt

4 oz. Chocolate malt

90 minute boil – 1 oz Challenger Hops

@ 30 minutes – 1 lb Organic Cane Sugar

@ 2 minutes – 1 oz Fuggles Hops

OG: 1.085. The recipe suggests adding oak or dark cherries during this ageing/secondary fermentation. I have not done either of those, but I would like to age on both. As I mentioned before, my buddy and I will be blending about a gallon each of our two sours which will then be tasted and most likely put away for further ageing. I plan to age a large portion of mine for a year at least.

The Sour, Abbey Ale Yeast kicking ass

Chocolate Beer, Boysenberry Blonde, Maple Pecan Brown

As you might have heard, Diablo 3 came out May 15th. As a Birthday present to myself, I got a friend to build me a computer that runs the game at max settings. I also started a new job on May 7th so I've been especially tired. All of this hasn't stopped me from brewing so I have a few updates:

Chocolate Beer (6.8% ABV, currently drinking)
In early April, I followed a recipe from Beer, Beer, More Beer called Jamil's Chocolate Hazelnut Porter which originally calls for 8 oz. unsweetened coco powder and 25 ml of hazelnut flavoring. I changed the adjunct levels and addition time based on feedback from the techs at bbmb and personal preference.  I also used a 3rd generation CA ale yeast which is atypical for this style. Well, the beer came out great.

Instead of the coco powder, I used cacao nibs which are the shelled and crushed inside of the cacao bean (where chocolate comes from). I think it's basically an unprocessed chocolate. I added the 4 oz of aromatic nibs once fermentation had finished it's rigorous beginning, which was about 4 days after pitching the yeast. I let them sit in there for a month without racking.

To boot, the adjuncts weren't even finished at that point. When I bottled it after a month in primary, I added half of the 25 ml bottle of hazelnut flavoring along with the 2 cups water and corn sugar primer. I didn't want to go overboard with hazelnut smell or flavor so eye-balled it. I think the flavoring must have sunk to the bottom really fast because some of the bottles came out way more hazlenutty than the majority of the batch. Out of all them that I drank or saw opened by a friend or family member, only 2 of them were noticeable.

The lack of hazelnut was perfectly fine considering the semi-sweet chocolate creaminess that the beer took on. The beer is pretty easily mistaken for a stout on look and smell, and it even has a stronger kick to it than what the recipe predicted (5.9%). However, I believe these sort of inconsistencies are what gets you dinged in a competition so I'm planning on tuning my methods.

Boysenberry Blonde (5.8% ABV, bottle priming)
Not much to say about this because I haven't gotten to drink it yet. Brewed on May 13th, less than a week since I'd started the new job, I decided to try another adjunct beer in tandem with the chocolate. It was a standard white wheat / pale malt hybrid with low hops. I upped the game by adding 1/2 lb. of dried malt extract during the boil. I used the same 3rd generation CA Ale yeast as I did in the chocolate. At bottling, I added 4 oz boysenberry extract. The recipe originally called for raspberry extract, but I wanted to see how the bitter-sweet boysenberry would fare (they were out of blueberry). If this one turns out to be something my girlfriend and I like, I plan to use this recipe to make other berry or citrus beers using fresh fruit.

Maple Pecan Nut Brown (fermentation)
More adjunct beer! This recipe I found in an internet forum and I didn't really modify it from what was suggested. I got a pound of grade A Canadian maple syrup and poured it all in during the boil (recipe only called for 3/4 lb). I was supposed to save some for bottling, but I just plan to buy more or use the end of a house-bottle. A pound of halved pecans were roasted for about 10 minutes in the toaster oven and this made the house smell incredible. It did turn out to be the most expensive beer I've made, especially because I super missed my target boil volume, being distracted and a little drunk. I basically pulled it too early from sparging because I don't have a proper measuring device for my converted keg. A sight glass is in the mail, so that won't happen again. The O.G. read about 1.060 which I am happy with. I got about 4.75 gallons into the fermentor, pitched a starter of British Ale yeast. It's my Beer Adjunct Naturàl Experiment.

Also somewhere in the mix of month and a half Kyle and I brewed 10 gallons of a Blonde Ale. It's fermenting at his house and he is getting ready to keg for the first time. I lent him 2 of my cornelius kegs because my C02 tank is out and I plan to build a kegerator before filling it back up for normal use.

Here's a picture of my friend building my super fast gaming machine. Thanks John Eternal! 

Yeast Washing / Yeast Rinsing

Save Money and Start a Signature Strain
So you have just racked your beer out of primary fermentation. The yeast has been active for a number of weeks and has multiplied so much that you're left with a half gallon of yeast slurry. Well, that slurry can be used in at least four more batches of beer, and each of those beers will make four more yeast slurries which can each be used. The Sourdough strain that's been around San Francisco since 1850 is still being used today. You could make a beer today and if the yeast is properly harvested, and the harvest is continually used, you could carry the strain on with your unique signature until you're kid's kids are making beer with it.

I would like to explain, in detail, the process that works for me. Ideally, you can rinse your yeast the day that you rack off the primary, but there is no harm in waiting a few days (just put the airlock back on). This doesn't require any kind of acid wash, it's just adding water to the dregs of a batch to re-use the yeast on a later date. Here is my arsenal of useful equipment and required components:

Things I use:
1. Batch of beer just racked out of primary, the 'dregs' as they're sometimes called.
2. Two 1 gallon jugs (glass apple juice containers).
3. At least four mason jars with lids.
4. Racking cane with tubing and rubber hood.
5. A bucket with sanitizer solution.
6. Funnel.
7. A square of tinfoil.
8. Spray bottle with sanitizer handy for last minute sanitizing jobs.

The Process and the Nuances:
1. Sanitize the two 1 gallon jugs and then fill them with tap water. Highly hopped beers can take more water because there are usually more particles to filter out, so if the beer was an IPA I will prepare 2 gallons of water. Otherwise, 1.5 gallons is just fine. There are three levels of care that I have given my Yeast Rinsing Water in the past and I will explain the benefits of each:

• Boiling and Cooling Overnight: this is the longest of the processes and gives you the best 'clean slate' for your yeast. Boiling your 1.5 to 2 gallons of water for 10 minutes is said to diminish all additives (chlorine, fluoride, etc.) that your water company puts in your tap water. Boiling would also kill any bacteria that might be present. Place some sanitized tinfoil on the jugs and allow them to sit overnight in the fridge. This method, although long in process, is said to have the least risk of infection.
• Letting Sit at Room Temp: place some sanitized tinfoil over your jugs and let them sit in a room temperature location (or in a fridge) for a number of hours, between 4-8. Allowing tap water to rest has been said to help diminish harmful additives. This has a low risk of infection (unless fridged, then slightly lower) since it wasn't boiled, but might give you peace-of-mind when it comes to your rinsing water.
• Using Straight From the Tap: this is how I do it presently. The water in my town is known to be very good for drinking and beer making. I sanitize my 1 gallon jugs thoroughly, fill them with water, cap with sanitized tinfoil, and let them sit as I prepare the next step. I've made great beer using yeast rinsed with this minimal amount of care to your water.

2. Now that your 1.5 to 2 gallons of tap water are ready to rinse your yeast, you can take the next step. Sanitize your funnel thoroughly, then place it on your fermenter with the dregs. Pour your prepared Yeast Rinsing Water into the fermeter via the funnel. Don't worry about pouring too fast and mixing the dregs (we want to do this) but make sure you don't spill because that's annoying.

3. Once you've poured your 1.5 to 2 gallons of water onto your dregs, put some sanitized tinfoil on the top and give the fermenter some good swirls. Mix all the gunk that's stuck to the bottom up into the water and get it to break up. Aeration is okay here (oxygen will help the yeast get stronger).

4. With the sanitized tinfoil left in place allow the fermenter, with all its new water, to rest on a counter-top or table or some preferred higher place. This placement is intended for gravity purposes to allow for easy racking with your racking cane. Go flip on your SEGA or clean up the area, and allow the fermentor to settle out for 20 minutes at least. 

5. Once 20 minutes has passed, go check on your fermenter. You will notice some serious separation by this time. Depending on the style of beer, this settling process can take up to 40 minutes to get the desired result. For example, Pale Ales with their high hops levels tend to take longer to settle out. After about 20 minutes you'll be seeing four fairly distinct layers forming. 

Here are the four layers:

1. A thin, relatively clear layer at the very top. The least dense of the mix, this is diluted beer-water. Useless to us as Yeast Washers. At 20 minutes, it will be the thinnest of the layers, probably about 1/2 centimeter. As time goes on, this layer will continue to grow.  
2. The milky layer. This layer's time frame is volatile. This is the layer we are looking for! Over time, it will slowly diminish and you'll lose your window. It's milky looking because it is brimming with viable yeast.  Ideally, this layer is harvested between the 20 and 40 minute mark (which I will explain in the next process step). 
3. The third layer is tougher to find in the beginning. This layer has a slight buildup of falling particles. What happens here is, the milky layer settles into its beauty and drops all the heavy particles. This third layer is where all the heavy particles are gathering before coming together and forming the cake at the bottom.
4. The cake. This layer of visibly thick particles has a lot of yeast, but mostly it's just hop particles and dead yeast. The cake will be visible at 20 minutes: it will be a thin, discolored layer at the floor of the fermenter. It slowly gathers particles from layer 3. If you wait longer than 30 or 40 minutes to harvest, you will start to see bright white particles forming on the top layer of the cake. The white stuff is the good stuff, so get your shit together and move onto the next step.

6. Thoroughly sanitize your racking cane/hood and get mentally prepared to rack. Thoroughly sanitize one of your 1 gallon glass jugs, you will be racking layer 2 into this jug. (Note: if your hobby was harvesting human organs for sale on the black market, this would be the part where you removed the stolen organ from your captive and placed it into your Styrofoam transportation cooler). So take a deep breath, make sure you don't jiggle the racking cane around in your newly settled yeast layer complex. Tips:

• Before putting the racking cane in, lower the racking cane's rubber hood most of the way down. The idea is to apply the hood to the fermenter without allowing the cane to breach the liquid. 
• Once the hood is affixed, slowly slide the cane into the liquid up to the middle of layer 2. Use your sanitizer spray bottle to lubricate the cane so it slides gently into the yeast rinse.

7. This step requires finesse. Rack layer 2 into the gallon jug, paying careful attention to what the cane is sucking up. If you see it starting to pull up crap from layer 3, raise it up. If you've allowed it to settle for long enough, you will easily get more than a gallon of milky layer 2 transferred into your gallon jug. Sanitize the tinfoil again and place it on the gallon jug. Let the gallon jug milky yeast liquid settle for at least 20 minutes. Yes, it must settle out again! This time around when stuff is settling, you have some things to get prepared: jars and lids. 

8. Thoroughly sanitize the mason jars and their lids. Some people even boil them in water to make sure they are completely devoid of any other bacteria so that the yeast has no competition. In my experience, sanitizing works just fine. Line them up for easy pouring access and quick lid application access.

9. After 20 to 30 minutes, the same layers as before will be forming, but hopefully your layer 2 will be much bigger this time around. You can use the racking cane again but I never do. Just tip and pour slowly into your mason jars, filling each one almost to the top. If you're patient, I would suggest pouring two mason jars, then allowing the gallon jug to settle for 10 more minutes. This will allow the third layer to start to drop again and ensure that none of it is getting into your jars.

10. Apply your lids very tightly. Get them into a place in the fridge where they won't be disturbed. 

What do you do with the mason jars?

Always make a starter. You can treat these mason jars like the vials of live yeast you buy at the store. They probably have close to the same number of yeast cells as the ones at the store. Also, you can taste your starter to see if any flavors from previous batches are coming through. But don't get too optimistic: make sure you taste for off-flavors which will indicate if your culture was infected at some point. Personally, any time I've tasted a starter is always just tasted like yeast

Prepare some labels for your yeast. When labeling, list the strain, the brand, the date and the generation:

1st generation was what you bought from the store. 

2nd generation yeast is what you just harvested and will be using in your next batch. 

3rd generation would be the yeast you harvested from your 2nd generation batch, and so forth.

Irish Coffee Porter 2nd generation on left, CA Amber Ale 2nd generation on right

If you end up not using your harvest within a month, consider consolidating them into one jar. 

Consolidated

Keep tabs on which generations of yeast were used on which styles of beer. Sometimes flavors are imparted.

I was worried about the CA American Amber 2nd gens, but they worked great.

Here is a link to my original reddit.com post when I was learning how to do all this.

Most of what I've learned I got from the Internet and from talking with the technicians at the Concord Beer Beer More Beer. Thanks to Bernie_Brewer from homebrewtalk forums which i found through reddit. It started this whole yeast washing madness. Thank you to billybrew for the video that cleared everything up for me. Special thanks to /r/homebrewing.

Irish and California Red Ales

4/24/12 bottling

Kyle Hixson and I bottled the CA and Irish Red Ales that we made together and had a chance to taste both of them. Here is their story, with some background:

13 or 14 gallons of wort boiling

When Kyle comes over, he brings his 15 gallon kettle with its removable false bottom. When doing 10 gallon batches, we mash and boil in Kyle’s large kettle. After mashing from Kyle’s kettle into my keg-kettle, we would transfer the wort back to Kyle’s kettle for the boil. This last transfer isn’t necessary, but we prefer to do it because the surface area of Kyle’s kettle allows the wort to heat and cool a little faster. Also, both the thermometer and spigot are welded, whereas my keg-kettle has one weldless fitting. All around, Kyle’s kettle is of higher quality so we tend to use it. He bought it from Beer, BeerMore Beer in Concord, CA.

As I mentioned before, using Kyle’s 15 gallon kettle for mashing allows us to do 10 gallons per batch of beer. We will split the wort into two 7 gallon fermenters so that we can use two yeast strains and get two unique beers. For example, we found a recipe online for a 5 gallon batch in the style we wanted, and doubled all the grain choices:

final gravity of both Irish and CA  were about1.018

22 lbs Maris Otter Pale

2 lbs Barley, Flaked

1 lb Crystal 75L

.5 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine

.5 lb oz Chocolate Malt

We also added .5 lb of black roasted barley

Hops schedule:
2 oz Centennial for 60 min
1 oz Amarillo for 30 min
1 oz Cascade for 10 min




My taste reviews:The CA Red used a 3rd generation WLP001 yeast that we started 3 days prior. The beer tastes like a thick, sweet red ale with medium to high carbonation. The most noticeable trait of the beer is the chocolaty finish. Although the maltniness of the body is sweet, the chocolate flavored finish is bittersweet and reminds me of baking chocolate. Little to zero bitterness and no noticeable hop smell.


The Irish Red used a 2nd generation White Labs yeast, Irish Ale (WLP004) which was used in a smoked porter before. The Irish Red has uniquely taken on some of those characteristics in the taste up front. Much like the CA, the maltiness is sweet and thick. But the finish is very different, considering they have the same ingredients: the Irish Red has a sweet carmel finish that can be tasted even in the nose. The carmel tone is smoky and slightly savory, which is sometimes attributed to mashing at too high of temperatures. However, the overall flavor isn't savory, per-se: I would classify the savoryness into more of a salted-carmel taste. This brings me back to the use of the smoked porter Irish yeast, coupled with the black roasted barley.

Overall, both the red ales came out very good but sweeter than I anticipated. In the future, I would look into using different fermentables and more carapils or dexterous malts. I feel that way because (1) the head retention was not on par with what we normally brew. An extra amount of carapils will improve this. (2) it turned out a little too sweet for my taste, yet both fermented out as much as I could get them to go, to an ABV of 5.7%. I would want to research what could make the beer up to a healthy 6.5% with a more dry taste up front.

Extract to All-Grain Homebrewing

I did my first batch of beer at some undocumented time in early May 2011. The first documented batch of beer I have is from 5/21/2011 where I made a "California Honey Pale Ale" using extract ingredients, a bag of specialty grains and White Labs CA Ale yeast. The specialty grains used are listed as 1 lb honey malt (honey roasted pale malt) and 1 lb Carapils. I still use carapils in my all-grain batches today, it's great for head retention I am told (and I have seen first hand recently). However, since that faithful day a year ago, I have upgraded my system to support all-grain brewing. This takes longer, but gives the brewer complete control over the flavor and color of your beer. With all-grain, the brewer also has many more options in flavor and colors by combining malts.With extract (I used powder) there were only about 3 different base malts to use.

take pride in your notes

I did my first all-grain batch sometime in late August 2011. Within a month of that first batch, I also made two more and they were all served at my brother's wedding reception. They were an Extra Pale Ale: I didn't take a gravity reading before or after, but it was well received. The next documented all-grain batch was a smoked porter brewed on 9/2/2011 in which I managed to take the OG reading, but not a FG. The German Hefe was brewed within 2 weeks of the porter and I didn't even record the date for that one. I was more concered with getting the kegging system working at that time, that I didn't bother with actually making sure my beers were okay. But since those three beers turned out great, I knew all-grain was the way to go and I started taking a lot of notes

All-grain D.I.Y

gravity fed sparge setup

My home-brew setup’s capacity allows me to make five gallons per batch: I have a 5 gallon hot liquor tank (aluminum pot with weldless spigot I drilled and attached), CPVC sparge arm, 10 gallon Igloo cooler with a false bottom and a 15.5 gallon keg converted into a kettle. This is the all-grain setup I switched to about 15 batches ago, with the upgrade to the HLT and Sparge Arm earlier this month.

smaller sparge manifold, this is what I've found works best

Tried and true 10 gal igloo cooler now with steel false bottom

dis where it goes down

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.