Burton Baton

I just drank a new bottle of Dogfish Head Burton Baton and am now opening an old bottle (3 years old). My are they different. No offense to the old guy, but this beer is better fresh.

Admittedly, my three-year old bottle tasted “old” even when I bought it. My review of the beer from 2007 indicated a beer that was very malty and not particularly hoppy – definite barleywine territory (despite being labeled as an Imperial IPA). Three years have done nothing, obviously, for its hop presence.

The fresh stuff – still more like an American Barleywine than an Imperial IPA – is a wonderfully balanced, big, delicious beer. The old stuff has lost all pretense of hop aroma and is cloying in the nose.

The flavor of the old stuff is quite smooth and actually very good. But, man, is it sweet. It tastes like candy… malted barley candy. It has just enough hints of hops in various areas (subtle bitter fruit, subtle evergreen, subtle citrus orange) to balance the big-ass wave of candy-sweet malts. So it is actually drinkable – not too cloyingly sweet in flavor. But not drinkable enough to have a pint. It sits quite heavy in the gut (even the fresher stuff). That and the fact that it’s a strong beer, make me reconsider the idea of opening two of them. Oh, well — I’ll call it a nightcap and hope it help me sleeps…

Running On Empty

We had a brew day a few weeks ago, and it was very successful: our overgrown stock of fine beer was vastly diminished. We still have an absolutely silly amount of fantastic beers sitting around, but two homebrew kegs (out of three) now sit empty.

We will be filling one of them on Monday with Hump’s Union Jack Bitter — the beer that we made on the brew day. It is currently sitting on a half ounce of U.K. First Gold hops and isn’t due to come off until Monday.

The one remaining keg stores the remainder of Hump’s Irish Dry Stout. I totally dig this beer, but I sort of miss not having a hoppy one around. And that’s why the next two beers we’re cooking up will be such a perfect fit.

This weekend we’ll brew Hump’s Cascade Pale Ale. If there ever were a stereotypical beer (other than the sea of stereotypical bland pale lagers), this is it: an American Pale Ale… made with Cascade hops. It seems that every brewpub has a beer like this — it is required fare for almost any craft/small brewer in the country. Is this kind of beer overdone? Nah…

I enjoy Cascade hops, and I love hoppy pale ales. We’ll see if we can make something truly exceptional out of what amounts to the “apple pie and baseball” of American craft beer.

And after that we’ll be making a truly special brew – another Imperial IPA. We may end up making it next week. (Is brewing back to back weeks insane? Didn’t think so…) This will be no ordinary Impy though. It will be our first attempt at a single-hop Imperial IPA (our last single-hop brew, Old Humperdink, was a wonderful success). What hop variety you ask? Magnum. Were it a normal-strength IPA, we might call it “Magnum IPA”, but this is a Double IPA. So what do you call a “double magnum”? A Jeroboam. So we’ll call this one Hump’s Jeroboam.

Perhaps we’ll have an opportunity to empty our Jeroboam of Stone’s Double Bastard and fill it with our own Jeroboam brew. Is it just me, or does that seem poetic?

Hot Liquor

We’ve now made a couple of batches using the latest gadgets added to our hot liquor tank. Back in December, I had a 15.5-gallon Sankey keg converted into a hot liquor tank. We chopped the top off (losing about 1 gallon of volume), added a thermometer, and added a spigot.

The latest gadgets: we put a down-tube on the inside of the keg, attached to the spigot. This means that we can extract almost 100% of the hot water since the tube pokes down close to the bottom of the pot. We also added a sight glass.

Having a nice hot liquor tank setup definitely takes some of the “chore” away from all-grain brewing. It makes it much easier to hit my dough-in temperatures and is easier-to-use to boot.

Competitions

We used our 5 Seasons Westside gift certificate (part of the prize for placing 5th in the BEERmuda Triangle Competition) the other day, sampling their Plan B IPA poured through the world’s largest Randall: a conical fermentor packed with Willamette hops. Apparently, since the conical is so big, they just dumped a keg of Plan B into it after filling it with hops (it must have been either not completely full or very loosely filled with hops – because that seems like a waste of so much hops otherwise since most of them would have such little contact time with the beer…). They then opened the transfer valve on the bottom of the conical to pour each pint. It was a damn tasty pint. I was amazed by the fact that the flavor was not that radically transformed. I tried another sampler (just two ounces) of the normal Plan B that night, and the two tasted almost the same. The Randallized one was a little hoppier in aroma, but the biggest difference was actually the mouthfeel. The Randall must impart loads and loads of hop oils or other mouth-filling compounds, because it was very full-bodied. Chewy… but not in a bad way. Delicious in fact. Another big difference between the two versions of this IPA: the Randallized one was way cloudier.

Speaking of the BEERmuda Triangle Homebrew Competition, we entered brews into Georgia’s Peach State Brew Off this year. The PSBO is an AHA-sanctioned event, so we got BJCP-certified feedback on the beers we entered.

How did we do? Old Humperdink received 45 points (!!!) and got honorable mention. I know, I know – I ask myself the same question. “How the hell did three other beers score better than 45?!?!?! Were the judges wasted?” Maybe… It was a record number of entrants, and I’d heard they were frantic to get a sufficient number of judges lined up for it…

We also got high marks for La Brabançonne. The scoresheet indicated that it also moved on to the Best of Show round. Back-Breaking Brown (my personal favorite) received good marks but not as high as I had hoped.

You can see the feedback I received on the latest page that I’ve added to this site: Contests (click Brews, and you’ll see the link there).

We currently have four entries in the NHC. I believe the first round judging is supposed to take place tomorrow. To be honest, I almost hope that some of our beers do not make it to the second round because that means I get to keep the other bottles (which I set aside just in case they advance) and drink them myself (or with suitable company of course).

Hop Plants

Our hop plants are coming back this year and all looking fantastic. The worst looking plant is the Horizon plant, but even it looks to be doing fine. The Centennial, which did horribly last year and didn’t produce a single flower, is looking great. The Willamette and the Chinook are off the hook.

We’ll be getting hog-fencing and rebar this week to make a new, taller trellis for the vines to crawl up.

We were hoping to add another bed of hop plants to the garden, but – alas – no dice. Doug at Just Brew It only received orders for 7 rhizomes. Four of those seven orders were from me. Unfortunately, it costs him about $100 to ship the rhizomes as they must be sent very quickly and in temperature/humidity controlled transit so as to maximize their viability when they go into the ground. Doug’s prices were already set much lower than the pro-rata shipping costs alone, so he couldn’t afford to deliver. Doug was super-nice about it. He regretfully informed us of the situation, gave us store credit for what he’d already collected, and offered to give us a free potted hop plant from his personal garden. I politely declined the plant (though he may still bring it in to his store and try to give it me) because I didn’t feel it was necessary – I completely understand and empathize with the situation. And it’s not like anyone lost any money. Were I that set on having more hop plants, I could mail order them myself. But four is a fine number, so we’ll stick with that… for now.

Scotch Whisky

The morning of brew day, I had a couple of birthday gifts to snag. So I headed to the liquor store. (Where else?!) I nabbed a nice bottle of beer and a nice bottle of wine for the two friends whose birthdays I had missed and while there nabbed a bottle of Scotch for myself.

I was hoping to find the Uigeadail expression of Ardbeg – a distiller from Islay. It was not to be found (and I’ve called a few other places around — it’s just plain hard to find in this part of Georgia). But I did grab their flagship: Ardbeg 10 year.

This one packs a punch. It isn’t as intense, medicinal, or crazy strong as the cask-strength 10-year-old Laphroaig I have, but it is much more intense than the Lagavulin and Talisker (all but the last being also from Islay; Talisker hails from Skye). It is smoky and crazy phenolic. But in a good way — at least if your palate is like mine – which, luckily, mine happens to be! ;)

And Now…

Your moment of Zen:

But I promise to get pictures soon. I have to show everyone my new rig. I just bought this week a three-tier metal frame for all-grain brewing – professionally built by the operator of my local homebrew store. He was very generous in price since this piece was a “pilot” rig. It was one of his earlier ones that doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of more recent systems that he’s built.

Along with a rig that will make brewing much, much easier, I also upgraded my propane setup. I bought a new regulator, new fittings, and some longer hoses to get (supposedly) four or five times the heating capacity out of it. Apparently, turkey fryer systems come with gas lines, fittings, and regulators that limit output to 30,000-50,000 BTUs. But with the upgraded equipment, It’s been suggested that I’ll see 175,000 BTUs. If that turns out to be the case, I’ll be able to heat up water way faster than before, which should make brew day go faster.

The three tiers alone would make brew day go faster, too. No more lifting heavy, full pots or mash tuns to gravity feed to the next step. Everything is at the right height to naturally feed down to the next tier. The only lifting I’d have to do is during an uncommon decoction mash: I’d have to feed mash out of the tun and into the kettle and then lift it up to the top tier to boil it and then feed back into the mash tun. Since a decoction is usually only a gallon or two (at least when I’ve done it in the past), it’s not hard to lift…

I still have a little more to put into my rig, but I have time. It’s just right for now. My next step will be to convert a 1/2-barrel keg into a hot liquor tank. I fear that may warrant a special occasion like a birthday or something before I spend the money on that upgrade. It can be done very cheaply, but I have my eye on a few things that would make it much easier to use but at a potentially hefty price (like building in a thermometer probe and a sight glass).

Village Idiot

My friend and co-worker, Rob Homer, has begun brewing this year. I took the whole family over to his house last weekend to brew a batch with him and to taste his first creation – an English Brown Ale that was based on a modified recipe of my own: Hump’s Holiday Ale 2007. And Malin and Will got to hang out with Tracy and their three kids (all of them are older than Will but played well with him).

Rob’s brew turned out pretty tasty. And it is remarkably different than the homebrew of mine on which it was based. The spices are almost imperceptible (whereas I think they were too strong in my brew). The finish is fuller and sweeter (which I kind of like). It has a very English character to it from the yeast, decent depth and complexity, and is smooth and without any real flaws. It may have a bit of extract “twang”, but it’s hard for me to tell. I could never pinpoint the twang in my extract homebrews, but I did feel that was something was slightly “off” about it – and it was something I detected in Rob’s brew too. Once I started using more specialty grains, the off flavors seemed to fade from my beers – as far as I could tell anyway. Quality took another jump when I went to doing a 5-6 pound mini-mash in every batch. Going to all-grain hasn’t seen a similar jump in quality, but it is more rewarding on days where everything goes right. And it also gives you more control over the finished product, so I think it’s worth it overall (despite the amount of cussing I do on brew day).

Rob has told me that he is not a fan of really bitter beers, but he did express an appreciation for the smell of hops (one good whiff of your hop ingredients while you’r brewing and you’re hooked). He remarked about how he wanted to change up a kit IPA recipe he has, moving some of the bittering hops towards the end or just using them as dry hops instead. So I took some commerical brews for him to try – two beers that, based on what he’s told me about beers he likes, I was pretty certain he was going to like (Clipper City Heavy Seas Hang Ten Weizenbock and Sweetwater Happy Ending Imperial Stout), one total unknown (Allagash Grand Cru), and one that he’d likely have trouble with (Sierra Nevada Bigfoot). He loved the immense, fresh hop aroma and balanced, malty finish of the Sweetwater Happy Ending (who doesn’t!!??). I left the rest with him. He has since called to tell me that he really loved the Allagash Grand Cru and that he did not care for the Bigfoot. C’est la vie!

So while I was there, we cooked up a Belgian Wit. It began life as a Hefeweizen kit that he received for Christmas. But it included a plain dry yeast (not even a Weizen yeast – just normal ale yeast). So we jazzed it up. We added some flaked wheat, flaked oats, and 2-row malt (the lattermost having sufficient enzyme content to convert the proteins and starches in the unmalted grain into sugars) and then some Curaçao orange peel and some ground coriander. Finally, we pitched liquid Witbier yeast to make sure the finished product had the right qualities.

It will probably be ready for him to keg this weekend, so maybe I’ll get to try the fruits of our labor this upcoming week.

And next time I brew, Rob has asked to tag along to see the all-grain process. It will likely be a little bit like the last time I had company: my friend Jason helped me cook up an Imperial IPA that turned out awesome, but he got to see me stumble through the steps (it was only my second batch on my all-grain rig at the time). This time it will be my first batch on the brand new rig, so I’m sure there will be some more stumbling. But if the beer turns out anywhere near as good as that last time then it will be more than worth it.

BTW, he calls his brews Village Idiot (hence the title of this section).

‘Tis the Season

It’s that time of year again: hop rhizomes are coming to stores soon. I placed my order today. I’ve got seven rhizomes coming: three for me and four for Rob (he’s really diving head first into home brewing). In addition to my current Chinook plant, I’ll be adding Centennial, Willamette, and Horizon plants. I ordered Cascade, Mount Hood, and two Willamettes for Rob (though we may go back and forth before the final split is really nailed down).

Despite last year’s disappointment (no hop cones popped up, so no fresh hop homebrew), I’m hopeful about this year’s prospects. We moved the Chinook plant to a garden we recently built up (freshly cultivated with high quality soil). It should fare much better there than its previous home. We’ll also be wiring it up differently so hopefully it will run and run and grow and grow (along with the three new plants, of course). I’ve heard that Centennial can be a little fragile, especially if there’s too much moisture where it is planted (susceptible to mold), but if it thrives, that will be awesome. It and Columbus are probably my favorite two hops right now (and Columbus is apparently far too fragile to reliably grow here in the south).

My first problem was, like nearly all brew days unfortunately, a late start. I didn’t really get started until 3pm which was about 2 hours later than ideal.

My second problem was encountered upon opening my mash/lauter tun after pulling it up from the basement: it was covered in mold – disgusting. I had to scrub it out and then rinsed everything in a solution of water and bleach (only 1oz bleach per gallon water, so hopefully that was actually strong enough to kill the mold… I may need to do more cleaning with a more potent solution).

One thing actually went quite right: I hit my mash temperature almost perfectly. I think I just got lucky… I was going for 155 and hit 154. It was still around 154 after one hour per my handy thermometer calibrator, so it may have actually hit around 155 and just cooled off by one degree.

The third problem was something I should have realized beforehand. It wasn’t necessarily a problem – just a complication. My lauter tun only holds 10 gallons. The total mash+sparge volume would be around 12.5 gallons. The reason was twofold: this beer featured a lot more grain than usual so there would be more water lost in spent grains, and this beer would undergo a 90 minute boil, which means I need to start with more to compensate for more of it boiling off. The long boil is due to the extensive use of continental pilsner malt (about five pounds) – which needs a long boil to boil off DMS precursors. So I would have to do a double batch sparge (i.e. fill the lauter tun to 10 gallons, sparge, and then add more hot water, and sparge more)

The fourth problem would be the ultimate issue, overshadowing (and foreshadowing) the rest of my evening: a stuck mash. Bad. Really bad. I had not even collected a quart or two of wort by the time it stopped flowing. Usually I have to restrain the valve on the lauter tun to insure a slow flow, but even with the valve wide open it trickled and ultimately stopped. I was worried about this possibility due to the use of pumpkin (nearly six pounds of roasted [caramelized] pumpkin flesh). To mitigate this issue I had added 1/2 pound of rice hulls to the mash. Rice hulls help to form a filter bed, much like barley husks. When only barley is used, the husks alone provide a sufficient filter bed. But when large quantities of wheat, rye, or other starches (like pumpkin) are used, rice hulls are a handy additive to prevent a stuck mash. Apparently they didn’t do their job.

Now here’s where things started getting really messy. After fighting the mash for a while – stirring it up heavily and digging the brewspoon into the bottom of the grain bed to stir it up and jar it loose – I gave up and decided to transfer the mash to the kettle (the only vessel in the house big enough to hold all ten gallons of it). After doing this by hand, two quarts at a time, using a two-quart Pyrex measuring cup, I added my remaining 1/2 pound of rice hulls. I stirred them up, hoping they would resolve my stuck mash, and then transferred it again by hand – this time back into the lauter tun.

Problem number five: another stuck mash. At first the extra rice hulls seemed to work. The wort flowed. But the flow slowly decelerated and eventually came to a stop after only collecting about 2.5 gallons of wort.

I tried the same trick again, but this time I had no more rice hulls to add. I simply transferred to the kettle and back. I saved the 2.5 gallons of wort collected so far in another, smaller brewpot. But the goddess of brewing had turned a frown on me…

At this point, things were looking grim. I could not get any more wort. I even tried vigorously stirring up the wort and manipulating the grain bed with the brewspoon – with the valve open. I had decided I cared a little less about how clean the resulting wort would be. I just wanted to get on with it. It still wouldn’t work. I was being spurned by that cruel goddess.

Problem number six (or potential problem at least): efficiency. A full 7.25 gallons of wort was supposed to have a gravity of 1.048. I assumed only 60% efficiency – less than the typical which is 68-70%. I assumed the pumpkin would provide less gravity per pound than would the barley (15 points per pound per gallon – vs. 37.5 points per pound per gallon for the base malt). But I think the real situation was even worse – either worse than 60% efficiency or way less than 15 points per pound per gallon for the pumpkin. The 2.5 gallon “first runnings” had a disappointing specific gravity of only 1.059. Considering I’ve read that you typically get 2/3 of the total gravity out of the beer using the first 1/2 of sparge water, this should have been a little thicker I think (although it’s hard to tell – I think I was expecting closer to 1.070, but I don’t have hard scientific data to support that expectation – I don’t even think I have sufficient knowledge/formulas to calculate the proper gravity at this point).

My last ditch attempt to get this beer brewing was desperate indeed. I got out my old mini-mash setup: a nylon grain bag and a metal colander. I tried to suspend the colander on the lip of the brewpot and pour the mash through it. This resulted in a spectacular failure: the colander was too small to safely hang on the lip of the new, bigger brewpot. It fell into the beer, ruining it with grain husks and rice hulls. And splashing sticky crud on every surface of the kitchen at the same time.

At this point in time, I had been fighting this batch for over four hours. It was nearly 8pm. I should usually be finished at this point – or at least cooling the wort by now, preparing to pitch yeast.

My wife was great help throughout – she offered assistance through most of this frustrating process. But it was to no avail. The kitchen was an appalling mess (even though we had already performed significant clean-up twice after the previous missteps). I had nearly thrown my back out – from lifting a full ten-gallon cooler up onto the counter not once but three times. And I had lost four hours of my life. Actually, I wish I had simply lost these hours. Instead I found four of the most infuriating and maddening hours of my adult life.

I gave up. I cried, “uncle!” to that wicked goddess of brewing, cursing her under every breath I drew. Probably over forty dollars worth of ingredients down the tube. Completely wasted. I might as well have withdrawn a pair of Andrew Jacksons and tossed them in my fireplace. And let’s not forget four frustrating hours of my life, also down the tube.

I was livid. Perhaps livid does not adequately describe my mood. It was all I could do to restrain from destroying something. If I did not have a wife and kid, my psyche’s id would have taken over in a most childish and destructive display of rage. But, thinking of my family and knowing that I had already scared Will enough (he could tell I was upset for a good bit of the evening as I tried to make things work – ultimately in vain), I remained calm. Mostly. Only a few muted curse words. And then I poured everything out into the backyard, washed and rinsed all of the equipment, and went to pour myself a beer. I resisted the urge to pour an entire pitcher – and the urge to pour an ounce of Crown Royal into the mug…

Blogging, it seems, can be a form of therapy. The ability to describe the evening – to reflect on it (in horror) and then formulate the words that might, hopefully, do it justice – is therapeutic unto itself. Knowing that someone will read it (okay – I don’t actually know that – but I have a feeling at least of one of my friends will peruse through it) helps, too – as if you, the reader, are my silent psycho-analyst.

My nightmare is over. I still have a starter of lager yeast in the fridge downstairs – nearly 300 billion little organisms, anxiously awaiting whatever sweet nectar I ultimately give them. I also have an entire other batch of ingredients down there – for the English Bitter that I will be brewing next weekend.

Who knows – perhaps there is still time for a holiday ale this year – if I brew it next weekend and postpone the bitter until December 6^th…
This time it will definitely not have any cursed pumpkin.

I now I bid thee farewell. I’ll let you have one last look at my vision of Christmas for this year. That vision has been dismantled through my miserable evening, but it was pretty – dare I say beautiful – while it lasted:

This was my first all-grain batch of significant gravity. The planned OG was 1.072. This would require a mash efficiency of 72% – which, based only on my mini-mash efficiency, should be easy.

This was the second time I was using my new plastic cooler mash/lauter tun. A co-conspirator, my friend Jason, joined me to watch me screw up this premier batch. Luckily, I didn’t actually screw it up (at least not completely).

I had some trouble hitting the right strike temperature, just like last time. More calculations still didn’t get me there. But I did better. I did eventually hit it (unlike with Itsy Bitsy Brown, which simply had to suffer a lower temperature saccharification rest than planned).

I also had a problem at mash-out this time. Last time, when cooking up Itsy Bitsy Brown, I didn’t even use a thermometer in the lauter tun. I heated the sparge water to 180, tossed it into the mash tun, and then sparged. This time, my intent was to add hot enough water to bring the entire tun up to 170 or so. I heated the sparge water all the way up to boiling to accomplish this. This did not work. My calculations did not factor in the fact that the sparge water cools as it travels from the hot liquor tank to the tun, and apparently the mash tun itself and the air therein will soak up some of the heat. My mash-out and sparge temperature rose only to a dismal 160 degrees. Considering I heated the water up to boiling, I don’t know how I could have improved this. The only way I know is to use another means of heating up the mash tun like direct heat or a RIMS (which requires a pump that circulates the mash through a heater element or through the hot liquor tank). Or I suppose I could try keeping the hot liquor tank on the burner over active fire while it flows into the mash tun. And I suppose I could use add a little bit more hot water than I actually need into the tun and just stop the batch sparge when I’ve collected the right amount of wort.

The end result was a mash efficiency of only 68%. I partially blame the low temperature sparge water. The other part of blame may lie in my lauter tun manifold – or perhaps I simply drained the wort from the lauter tun too quickly. In any event, after the sparge was completed, I could see obvious channels in the grain bed. And channeling is an easy way to miss your efficiency since it means that the wort travels unevenly through the grain bed. It never has the opportunity to dissolve and rinse away the sugars on one side of the bed because it is only flowing through a channel on the other side.

To compensate for the low efficiency, I added other fermentables: molasses and honey. Both were used in my original Hellishly Hopped Ale, on which this IPA recipe was loosely based. The final OG was 1.074. This was higher than planned partially due to the additional fermentables just mentioned and partially to the fact that the final volume was lower than planned (more water boiled away than I had anticipated).

This beer featured a ton of hops (okay – not really a ton). And no light-weights either. Okay – some light-weights: I used some Fuggles at 10 minutes for aroma. But the rest of the hop schedule featured 12.9% Magnum (pellets), 13.1% Nugget (plugs), and 9.6% Centennial (also plugs). In total, I boiled 4.2 ounces of hops. And I’ll be dry-hopping with another two ounces consisting of more Centennial, more Fuggles, and some left-over Kent Goldings.

Fermentation began in under 24 hours – and it absolutely wreaks(!!!) of hops. What an awesome smell…

Due to the use of honey and a low mash temperature, the beer could (should) ferment pretty dry. That also means it will be strong in alcohol. It could have enough hops and alcohol to instead qualify as a Double IPA. And I have no problem with that. Ever since I sampled my own Brain Bludgeoner last weekend, I’ve had a renewed hankering for something wicked hoppy!

My second batch of all-grain beer was brewed using a new system. I now have a 10-gallon mash/lauter tun.

Before my setup is complete, I still have to convert my kettle into a hot liquor tank though. This step will involve drilling a hole in the side/bottom of the kettle and installing a valve/stopcock with a faucet. This way the water can be drawn via gravity through a tube into the mash tun and avoid splashing. This past batch, I had to pour the water from the kettle into the tun. This involves splashing which generally means hot-side aeration, and hot-side aeration generally leads to oxidation in the finished product.

Hot-side aeration is when warm wort is aerated. Splashing is but one way to aerate. Oxidation in the water is usually driven off during the boil (which occurs after the mash to extract bitter compounds from the hops). But when the water/wort is over 80 deg.F, the oxygen entering the wort from aeration can bond with other compounds. These oxidized compounds are not driven off during the boil. When the beer is done fermenting and is aging, that is when the oxygen can come free of these compounds. At that point, your beer becomes oxidized. The best way to prevent off flavors from oxidation in my particular case will be to drink it all really quickly, before the oxidized wort compounds have a chance to release the oxygen into the aging beer! :)

So here is a picture of the mash/lauter tun. As you can see, it is a round, ten-gallon, plastic cooler. Also notice the metal spout/valve at the bottom which was the main investment when converting this thing into a mash/lauter tun:

If you are wondering why the lid appears to be silver, it’s because of that magical substance known as duct tape! The cooler belonged to my father-in-law. The lid could not be found. So I fashioned one using two inches of polystyrene (a good insulator to prevent heat from the mash from escaping out of the top) cut into discs and glued & duct taped together. The handle to remove the lid (because it is a nice, tight’n’snug fit) is a piece of rope. You can see the knots and washers on the bottom of the lid that keep it in place:

If you look down into the mash tun you see the lautering end – the manifold:

I built the manifold from a few dollars worth of CPVC fittings. Most people fashion the manifold into a ring or into a grill:

The ring isn’t really an option with CPVC because the curvature is hard to do. The grill would have been better, but I can always build one like this later: I have plenty of left-over 1/2 inch CPVC tubing and PVC primer and cement, and the elbows and T’s are really cheap (like a quarter or less each). Besides, mine looks kind of like an ‘H’ for Hump’s!

The manifold works thanks to small holes drilled into it (you could cut slits into it with a narrow saw, too, but I preferred the drill approach):

After the mash is completed, the sugar is rinsed from the grains and out the valve at the bottom, which will be fitted to a tube running to the bottom of the kettle. This process is known as lautering. My method is to use a batch sparge. In this method, instead of slowly drawing off the wort and slowly adding the sparge water to keep the water level even, I simply add all of the hot sparge water to the cooler and then open the valve. Before running the wort into the kettle, you draw the first 2-3 quarts and recirculate it (i.e. pour it back on top, but gently so as not to disturb the grains beneath). The first couple of quarts contain pieces of grain and husk. But after drawing off the first few quarts, the grains will have settled into a grain bed that acts as an effective filter to prevent pieces of grain and husk from getting into the kettle.

What I’ve learned from my mini-mash batches (and this batch was no exception): the hard part is temperature control. Once you get used to your system, it isn’t so bad, but this was the first time I’ve ever used this rig. Unfortunately, I did a poor job of reaching my desired temperature for the saccharification rest. The trick is to heat your mash water to the right temperature so that when you add it to the tun and the grains, it will equalize out to the rest temperature. I heated the water up to 165 deg. Fahrenheit, hoping to hit a rest temperature of 156. It turns out, I should have heated the water up to more like 177. I tried adding some boiling water to raise the mash temperature, but I only got to about 152. Some spots in the mash were as cool as 148, others as warm as 156 – about 152 average. I couldn’t add anymore boiling water or else run the risk of having too thin of a mash (which results in much slower conversion and could actually raise the pH too close to neutral so that the enzymes that convert starches to sugar are no longer active). A mash temperature of 152 means a little bit drier of a beer with less residual sweetness. Hopefully the choice of yeast (Wyeast 1968 London ESB Yeast) will offset this since it is a less attenuative breed.

Another total buzkill was that my hydrometer broke right before I started brewing. So, as of now, I do not actually know how well my first batch went with regards to efficiency (i.e. how much sugar was actually extracted from the grains – which is easily measured via a hydrometer in the form of specific gravity of the wort). I kept a sample of the wort so that I can measure the OG once I buy a new hydrometer, which won’t be until Thursday.

But I must have done okay, because the yeast are really chewing on it. My first all-grain batch, Hump’s Itsy Bitsy Bitter, didn’t produce much churn during fermentation due to the low original gravity. This beer, Hump’s Itsy Bitsy Brown (a Southern English Brown Ale, designed to be a modest 3.6% abv), is producing much more fervor from the magical little creatures.

House Brews

Speaking of other homebrews, Hump’s Imperial ESB is about gone. It went nearly flat, disconnected from CO₂ while I was sampling commercial brews over the past couple of weeks (a 12-pack sampler of Magic Hat’s Summer brews). Tomorrow it will have been completely “reinvigorated”, and I’ll push it to bottles (or at least some of it – I think there is about one gallon remaining).

Hump’s Honey Nut Ale will be absolutely delicious. I racked it into keg #3 (yes, I acquired another keg) this past weekend, and it was so sublime. For those that don’t following along (or simply don’t remember from the last post), this batch is a “Nut Brown Ale” – in this case, literally with nuts. I added 3/4 pound of chopped, roasted nuts: mostly almonds, a good bit of pistachios, and a little bit of pine nuts.

The nuts did an amazing number filling the beer with an excellent nuttiness. The fats in the nuts even help the mouthfeel, giving it more body and silken texture. If I had to guess without knowing, I’d likely have guessed peanuts. On some level, the fact that the actual varieties of nuts used can’t be readily distinguished (at least by my palate) is somewhat disappointing. But not really. The finished product is really quite nice, so I really don’t have room to complain. It isn’t yet being force carbonated because I’m trying to “unflatten” the other two beers (as mentioned above, they were disconnected from the tank and lost some of their gassiness). Tomorrow, I’ll hook up the new keg to the tank and crank the pressure so I can have my first pint this weekend.

Magic Hat, Weyerbacker, and Stone

Speaking of commercial brews, Magic Hat, a well-known microbrewery in Vermont, is now available in Georgia. The mixed-up 12-pack I bought contained four different varieties:

• #9 – This is a really nicely done fruit beer: an apricot pale ale. It isn’t quite as nice as Dogfish Head’s ApriHop, but I do believe that Magic Hat made theirs first. That makes them the pioneer for this blend of flavors, and they did a good job. Dogfish Head’s approach is a little bit less fruit and a good bit more hops, which results in a better overall beer, but much less apricot – so some folks, particularly those with an aversion to really hoppy beers and those that really like apricot, may prefer the original from Magic Hat.
• Circus Boy – This was a decently done beer, too. This one is a hefeweizen flavored with lemongrass. The too flavors complement one another quite well making for a very decent wheat beer.
• Odd Notion (Summer 08) – This one didn’t quite hit the mark. It is billed as a Mild Ale, but is much harsher and less well-rounded than authentic examples of the style. The roastiness is a little too high, giving the beer a touch of acridity. The beer also had too many suds. A lower level of carbonation would have likely gone a long way in helping bring out the flavors of the beer. After all, many authentic milds from across the pond are cask-conditioned (thus having very little carbonation). Overall, it isn’t a bad beer – but not a really good one either.
• Hocus Pocus – This one is an odd one for sure. It is an American wheat beer, but has surprisingly more bittering hops than one would expect from the style. I actually enjoyed the beer – it is light and drinkable. But like the Odd Notion, it was overcarbonated. The body was way too thin, too. The flavor was bready with a firm, earthy bitterness. I mentioned in my notes at RateBeer.com that it was strangely familiar to me. After aging, my Itsy Bitsy Bitter shared quite a lot in common with this one. I also noted in my write-up how interesting that both of these two brews would be so far from style as to meet in an otherwise unknown middle ground. For the record, I think my bitter was further from style, but – from a purely hedonistic perspective – I enjoyed it more. Screw the style guidelines!

Another brewery that is only recently available in Georgia is Weyerbacher. I am still looking forward to snagging more of their beers – particularly the Double Simcoe IPA.

More to look forward to: this month (September 2008), Stone Brewing becomes available to our fair state. I’ve even seen the list of kegs that the Taco Mac in midtown is expecting, and it is most impressive. They are having a Stone Brewing beer dinner later this month, and I bet it will be absolutely phenomenal. I’ve had many of Stone’s brews, but I am very much looking forward to having more. Numerous great releases are expected to arrive in this state. I’m particularly anxious to get my hands on this year’s Vertical Epic, on some Oaked Arrogant Bastard, and on a bottle of their 12th Anniversary release: a bitter chocolate oatmeal stout.

Life has been good over the past month. It has been very busy, but has seen a decent bit of great beer…

I went on vacation to Boston in the earlier part of June. The notable beer-related highlight was our trip to Cambridge Brewing Company, within walking distance of where my brother lives (if I were him, I’d probably be spending way too much time there…). We also visited the Watch City Brewing Company, which had very decent ales (not as adventurous or interesting as Cambridge Brewing, but tasty nevertheless) and delicious fries. Watch City is in Waltham, also home to Brandeis University (a friend and coworker of mine has a son that is a student there). The other beer destination was in our obligatory trip to the Samuel Adams Brewery. This is a brewery operated by Boston Beer Company in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood not far from Boston proper. You might already know that the Sam Adams we all drink is brewed under contract by various brewers around the country. This brewery is their pilot brewery, where they develop recipes that will then be forwarded to their various contractors. The plain ol’ Boston Lager was okay – I think I’ve had better in the bottle as brewed by some of their contractors. Their Summer Ale, however, was fantastic – much better than I remembered it from the bottle… Unfortunately, we were not able to fit in a trip to the Harpoon Brewery (the schedule on which they open for tours did not mesh with ours).

We did more than just beer stuff in Boston. We did some tourist stuff, visited the MIT Museum (among other things), and ate good food. You know – the usual :)

Other beer news since last month: I have tasted some absolutely phenomenal beers. Allagash Hugh Malone and Brooklyner-Schneider Hopfen-Weisse absolutely blew me away. They were both fantastic: sublime, decadent, complex, hoppy, and drinkable all at the same time. And then I tried Allagash Interlude. Whoah! Complex, wine-like, intoxicating, alluring, mysterious, and untouchable. Words to describe it escape me. An amazing blend of fruit and sourness that still retains a distinct grain (i.e. beer) quality but is dangerously refined. Wine, watch out!

We’ve had quite the adventure on the homebrew front around here, too. For one, Hump’s Itsy Bitsy Bitter – my first all-grain batch – is already gone. It wins no awards in this department: it lasted 3 ¹/₂ weeks in the keg, and it is only gone because I dispensed about a gallon of it into bottles tonight (for sharing with friends and family, and a four-pack of label-less 12-ounce bottles, possibly destined for a competition). The record is a scant three weeks from kegging to completion. That honor went to Hump’s American Schwarzbier – my first kegged batch of homebrew (which was quite tasty, by the way). The last glass of bitter (fresh in my mind from earlier this night) was really good – remarkably flavorful for such a light beer (only 3.8%abv): bready and malty but without much sweetness and with a very pleasant, well-balanced hop bitterness that was earthy with a light touch of bitter citrus. I was happy enough with it to save some for a competition…

Other homebrews have been happening, too:

• Hump’s Brain Bludgeoner has turned out great. It is one of the best-looking beers I’ve made. It is bright with a deep orange/copper color and immense, long-lasting, egg-white-like, light-tan foam. The aroma is intense – not nearly as hoppy as I’d hoped, but intense nevertheless with all kinds of fruity esters and complex malt aromatics. The flavor is also remarkably well-balanced. Not as hoppy as I’d hoped (you’d never guess that there was nearly a half-pound of high-alpha hops in there), but quite pleasing. The malt profile is complex with some caramel and toffee sweetness along with some roasted grain character and a light graininess from the base grain: American 2-row barley. The fermentation-derived esters and hops play nicely together giving the beer a fantastic array of complex yet tasty flavors. It did, luckily, continue to ferment. After two weeks of fermentation it had only attenuated down to a specific gravity of 1.028. Luckily it made it down below 1.020 before kegging. It still isn’t as dry (or hoppy) as I had intended, but – as so often is the case – it turned out delicious despite its variations from my original objective.
• Hump’s Bosbessenbier (which is Dutch for Blueberry Beer) was cooked up and is now re-fermenting alongside 4.5 pounds of blueberries. I’m hoping that isn’t too much fruit – the beer is quite purple in color, like red wine, and smells strongly of blueberry wine. The beer before adding the fruit was fantastic – a delicious Belgian golden ale (a modest gravity pale ale with low hopping and fermented with a strain that is reputably sourced from Brouwerij Achouffe (a maker of delicious Belgian ales).
• Hump’s German Hefeweizen hit the keg tonight (it filled the void left by the absence of Itsy Bitsy Bitter – literally). Uncarbonated, the beer tastes great. It has a nice, palpable level of wheat malt with typical fermentation characteristics of Bavarian wheat beers – esters and phenols. Unlike the last Hefeweizen I brewed (a Pumpkin Hefeweizen that I made for my sister’s wedding), this beer has a perfect balance of esters and phenols (the pumpkin brew tasted distinctly of bananas, thanks to the esters produced by the weizen yeast).

Finally, we have some news on the hop front: our Mount Hood hop plant bit the dust this week. It started off quite slowly and then, amazingly, took off in growth, catching up with our other plant, the Chinook. But only a week or two after writing up my last post about them, the Mount Hood seemed to stop growing while the Chinook plant really took off. The Chinook hops are now up to my chest, and if I were to unwind the vine from around the poles it is growing up, it would probably measure about 6 feet in length. So it has grown substantially since my last set of photos, and continues to grow everyday. If I can get six ounces of hops out of the Chinook plant (which I think is highly likely) then it will have proved economical in the long run. I’m actually quite excited about the prospect of brewing a pale ale this fall with fresh, “wet”, homegrown Chinook hops.

My wife, Malin, documented parts of the day. In this pic you can see the “mash tun” (i.e. the 12 quart pot). Since the pot is metal (which is a poor insulator) and has no other form of insulation (like a thermal wrap or blanket, for instance), I keep it in the oven so that it doesn’t lose heat during the mash.

Since I don’t have adequate equipment, I can only mash about 5 or 6 pounds of grain. I usually mini-mash right at 5.5 pounds. For this all-grain batch, I max’ed my equipment: 6 pounds 2 ounces. Any all-grain brewers reading this might think to themselves, “That isn’t very much grain.” It isn’t. I formulated this batch to be an English Bitter, weak in alcohol, and thus low in starting gravity. Furthermore, I formulated it as a small batch – less than 4 gallons.

In this pic, you can see me pulling the mash tun out of the oven. The large pot in the foreground, upon which my arm appears to be resting, is the brew kettle (a 28 quart aluminum pot):

You can also see that I use a nylon mesh grain bag to hold the grains in the mash tun. This is because my sparge equipment includes a perforated pot whose holes are too large otherwise (the grain bits and hulls would slip right through). So I have to use the mesh bag to keep the grain from entering the final wort.

After Malin took these pictures, Will ran over and exclaimed that he wanted to see the pictures (i.e. he wanted to see the previews on the camera’s LCD screen). In case you are curious, the crud on his cheeks is peanut butter from a sandwich he was eating.

Speaking of eating sandwiches, while the grains were mashing (sitting in the oven for an hour, steeping at 156 deg. Fahrenheit), Malin made delicious steak sandwiches for lunch. She cooked up skirt steak to medium rare, caramelized some red onions, and pulled some fresh greens from the garden. This was all added to a Publix bakery hoagie (they make pretty damn good bread there) with some spicy brown mustard and some pepper-crusted goat cheese (Ile de Franc Petit Bûche). I opted for provolone instead of goat cheese and also tossed in a little creamy horseradish spread.

Here is a shot of Malin’s sandwich. Mmmm… isn’t it tempting you?

And here is another pic of Will, begging to look at the camera. In fact, it looks like he’s about to snatch the camera out of mommy’s hands:

In the recent past, my mash efficiency has varied from 60% to nearly 80%. I’m still working on getting that value more consistent. I knew I couldn’t really predict the efficiency this time because I was using a little bit more grain than usual and a little bit less sparge water (due to the smaller batch size) – two factors that would suggest a lower than average efficiency. I had figured on an efficiency of about 60% or just under, but instead I hit 74% efficiency. I had to change my recipe on the fly to include a little more hops in order to keep the balance of the recipe in tact, despite the greater level of sugars extracted from the grain. It was a good thing I had bought a little extra at the homebrew store on Wednesday.

The beer is percolating right along now, and hopefully the wort fermentability will be inline with my expectations. As long as the apparent attenuation is between 65% and 75%, I’ll be doing okay. The yeast I used, Wyeast 1187, is supposed to attenuate between 68% and 72%, so hitting an acceptable final gravity should be pretty easy.

While at the homebrew store, getting ingredients for this all-grain batch (which I’ve entitled Hump’s Itsy Bitsy Bitter), I also picked up ingredients for Hump’s Bosbessenbier. The name is dutch for Blueberry Beer. The beer is designed as a medium strength Belgian Golden Ale / Pale Ale, but with 4.5 pounds of blueberries added.

This week I also sampled Hump’s Brain Bludgeoner Double IPA. I wasn’t able to hit the level of attenuation I wanted, unfortunately. I think my starter wasn’t properly settled, and I discarded too much yeast that were in suspension. I probably would have been better off with no starter than with making a starter and screwing it up (doh!). On last check, the beer had attenuated down to 1.023. I was hoping for a finish of 1.018 or maybe even lower though. As it is, it is still 9% alcohol by volume, which is pretty intense. Luckily, the bitterness is decent enough to stand up to the residual sweetness. Only time will tell just how drinkable the finished product is. The beer is currently resting on 1.5 ounces of Glacier dry hops. They’ll remain there for another two weeks, and then I’ll keg.

After sampling the beer, I’ve already formulated a new Double IPA recipe that will be even more intimidating than this one. I call it Hump’s HMS Belleraphon. The main changes in the recipe are that it has a different malt bill that I think will make the final result have a more bready maltiness and less residual sweetness and that it has an even heftier hop bill: ³/₄ of a pound of high alpha varieties (including three ounces of dry-hops) that takes the recipe a little bit closer to the Pliny the Elder clone. That beer, from Russian River, is one of the most famous and exalted examples of the style. That clone recipe has helped numerous homebrewers win awards, including Mike McDole’s success at the Sam Adams Longshot competition.

You might ask, “Why don’t you just brew the clone recipe?” And I’ve heard many sage brewers (Jamil Zainasheff among them) explain that you really have to brew a recipe exactly as it is before you can get an idea of how you want to tweak it. I do understand that viewpoint, but I also have a lot of pent up energy when it comes to formulating recipes. I have to flex my creative muscle. And, you know what else? I’m not trying to make a clone of Pliny the Elder (hell, I’ve never even had it and couldn’t easily get my hands on it anyway). I’m just trying to make damn good beer, and I use my palate and my knowledge of ingredients to formulate recipes that I think will make that beer. My expertise isn’t perfect, and I do make mistakes in my formulation, but that is how I learn. I know my methods are far from scientific, and that they can hinder the learn-by-experiment process. But I still progress, and my recipes are slowly converging into my own view of perfection. And I think my latest Double IPA recipe will be delicious. Is it more like the clone recipe than my current Double IPA on deck? Definitely. Should I just brew the clone recipe instead and be done with it? I think definitely not.

That paragraph may have sounded like I was standing on a soap box. If so, I apologize. It must be the delicious liquor known as Dogfish Head 60-Minute IPA, coursing through my veins…