New Brew Kettle Step 1

Okay, this is for everyone that ever did anything with the thought "this is going to go great because I am going to do it right!" and after a few beers and a little impatience looked at what he created and said "it'll work."

This is my first few steps on creating my brew kettle, if you looked at the previous post on my search for a new brew kettle and saw the link to this cool "how to" on turning a keg into a kettle, you would see that the steps seem easy. Drill three holes, cut the top off, drill another hole and you are done. Well this is my side of the story:

First off I thought I could get away without buying the step drill bit because those things are expensive and I ended up making some funky cuts in the top of the keg and getting no where.

So I went ahead and bought the step drill bit ($27), but things could be worse because it does seem pretty useful.

Once I had this new bit I could drill the three holes in the top of the keg and start to cut the top of the keg off. However, cutting between two holes cost me three blades. Now I had this coming because I am a very tight individual and I decided to go bargain on the blades. But nonetheless, there is a lesson, kegs are TOUGH stuff, be prepared if you are going to try and do this kid of cutting.

Now after two nights of going at this thing in my PJ's (because I am a strange person) in my basement with my wife and dog both hating me, I made it though!

I am going to do somethings this weekend to get this into better shape, but in the end, I made good progress on a project that is much harder than I would have EVER anticipated. The next steps are going to be to drill the holes for the ball valve and for the thermometer and to grind down the edges on the cut off top and the holes.

I am happy where this is going because this is one hell of a brew kettle and its going to be rough, but it's going to be capable of easily brewing 10 gallon batches when all is said and done.

More to come...


Cheers.

New tools in the mix

It's been a long lag for me on the brewing and the reason is that I have wanted to get a new brew kettle. I was at a bit of a crossroads with where to go. The way I was seeing it is that I could get a stock pot a little bigger than the one I have now (the one I have now is about 24qts or 23L) because I don't have the room to brew at the size I should be.

So I started looking and saw that I could get a 32-35qt (30-33L) stock pot for around $30-$40 on eBay with shipping. However, my concern was that I would get this stock pot at the 32qt and 6 months down the line I would want a bigger one to start with larger batches. So I also saw a 60qt and 80qt (57L and 76L) stock pot for just under $100 plus shipping on eBay as well and started to think if I should just put the money down and do it right.

Well last night my BYO came and like a sign from the beer gods there was an article about turning your pot into a brew kettle! This was great because after reading Grove's blog entry about his new brew pot a few months back I was totally inspired. I wanted the fancy temp gage and spout at the bottom. No more pouring my beer into the fermentor (I know it's bad but at that point I am always ready to get the process into the next stage).

So I just called Galeville Grocery and they will sell me a used keg for $10!!! I got a hold of my little brother and he is going to torch open the top for me and with the great writing in the BYO I should be all set to go! I am going to have to order the temp gage but I think I can get the ball valve from Home Depot and save myself a few bucks (I know I am a very cheap person).

This seems like a great compromise, I get the size of a big kettle with the money I spend going towards making the brew kettle everything I want it to be. I will be sure to make a detailed entry on how it goes!

Cool instructions on how to DIY this here...

Brew Podcasts

So since I have a little bit of lag time between brew batches and I usually spend that time reading about beer, checking brew blogs, listening to brew podcasts and oh yea, drinking beer, I figured I would start to make some posts about some of the sources of brewing information I find.

A while back I got a recommendation (Grove) to check out a great resource called Basic Brewing where you can get videos on beginning brewing and advanced all-grain brewing. They also have a podcast hosted by Basic Brewing called Basic Brewing Radio hosted by James Spencer.

I am a real podcast buff, so this is coming from an objective source, but this is a very good podcast. From the homebrewers perspective, the topics are interesting and good for anyone to follow with interest. It does not matter if the subject is slightly above or below your brewing level, because the interviews are done well and after all the subject is beer, it's fun for all.

From the prospective of a podcast listener, this is a great set up. James has a consistent format that allows the audience to know what to expect. Best yet, he responds to emails. I shot him an email out about my OG missing its target and I received a response later that day! To me, that's really cool.

Anyway, this is great stuff. If you are a iPod guy (like myself) just click on the iTunes link next to one of the episodes and subscribe.

Hope this was helpful, cheers!

My New Brew Lit

Last week I started looking at the whole "how do you create your own brew recipes?" introspection. After consulting my current brew literature I came to the conclusion that I had officially outgrown my current library of "The Joy of Home Brewing" (still a classic and a great reference) and "Homebrew for Dummies."

I posted something up on the Beer Advocate forums asking for some recommendation on reference material for the brewer looking to start making his/her own versions of classic styles. There were about 10 responses and all of them agreed on one thing; the Ray Daniels book "Designing Great Beers" was the way to go.

So I went ahead and ordered a used copy from Amazon (yes I am cheap, I am using blogger too) to see for myself. I just got started on it, but I was skimming around on it and this looks like a legit source for brew info. I will be referencing it in the future so I thought I would start with the endorsement of the book.

Happy brewing!

Tasting the IPA

Well I wish I could say that the beer lived up to the name, but alas, nothing ever does.

The IPA is all hops and no malt flavor. It's kind of sad, even my wife commented on how light it was.

The good news is that I know what went wrong. Remember, this predates my understanding of adjusting recipes to my system (and brewing experience) efficiency. I have since received a wealth of information from some of the bloggers on this site and others (Groves Beer Log and Bad Ben) and from the forums on Beer Advocate. This has helped me to understand where I was going wrong and help me to figure out how to get "Back on Track!"

Kegged Joe Cool

I moved my Joe Cool IPA from the fermenter into the keg. It's a little earlier than I wanted too, but I was drinking Molsons Canadian for the last week and I JUST COULDN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!

Anyway, this beer was surprisingly light in color and pretty smooth to drink. So far (and yes as always I am drinking my gravity test sample) it's not a knockout by any means, but it's good with a lot of hops flavor.

Something a little weird with this is that the reading I got on the hydrometer was 1.000, but since mine only reads in increments of .005 I figured that was a sign that is was under .005. It made me thing though, is it possible to get a reading of 1.000 from anything other than water? Could you have an aggressive enough yeast session to get down that low? My first thought is no. I would say that in a hypothetical case like that, you would not have any flavor in the beer because there would be no sugar left.

Either way, beer is beer and I am pleased with this one thus far.

Cheers.

I got it!

you can now access my brew blog from either cnybrewblog.blogspot.com or just www.cnybrew.com. Hope all is well and it is killing me waiting on my brews!

Cheers to not having to screw around on annoying tech crap anymore.

Quick Tech Note

For anyone that is using blogger and has seen that you can create a personalized URL for your .blogspot site, I have to put out a little warning. Now I have been using GoDaddy for my domain registration for a while now and have not been pleased. However, the war that I have had to go through with this new blogger business is out of control!

Here is the point of this; if you are interested in using the custom domain feature in Blogger, do not use GoDaddy! It is the worst.

Thanks, I promise that's the last of the tech biz I will put out on my blog, back to the beer!

Grain Bill Adjustments

I am always looking for a way to get things done that makes sense and saves money. I have to say that as of late I have been a little obsessed with this whole concept of efficiency and it led me to create a little adjustment sheet so that I could make changes to my grain bill.

If you are interested, I found a website that allows users to post documents called ThinkFree and I posted a spreadsheet I made here. This program allows you to download the document when you have an account so here is a quick run through on getting this thing down loaded:


1) go to the drop down menu in the upper right corner


2) choose Copy to My Folder from the menu


3) from here is will ask you to sign in, assuming you don't have an account, you sign up for the free account and the program will send you an email to verify your account.


4) from there the document should be in your should be in your My Office tab and if you choose from the file menu, you can download the doc to your hard drive.

The reason that I recommend downloading it to your computer is that the web adjustments don't work fast enough for my liking. I know what you are thinking, no this is not a less than clever plan to plot worms on people's computers, this is an excel doc!

Now the way that this is set up is there are a bunch of equations built into the doc (stick to sheet 3, it's the best one) and they will allow you to adjust a verity of items on your recipe to get the grain bill that fits.


Here goes:


1)The column to start with is the LBS per Batch, this is where you will enter in the amounts of the grains indicated in column A that the recipe you are planning calls for.



2)As you can see here, I have put in 1 lb of Chocolate Malt, 4.25 lbs of Belgium 2 row pale malt, and 4lbs of Belgium wheat malt. There is a recommendation about the amount of each of these mats you should use and on the far right column it lets you know how much you have in your recipe.






3)Now in the column labeled Adjust LBS there is a new number that is the result of the equations set in the spreadsheet. When you download the sheet, it is set at 54% efficiency so all of the adjustments are based on that.











4) To adjust the efficiency to reflect your homebrewery, all you need to do is change the 0.54 number that is in the highlighted box to what ever your efficiency is, for example if you are at 75% efficiency, change the number to 0.75. The number on the spreadsheet will reflect the difference from that number and 1, so for 0.75 it will read 25%. I wish I could have made it do everything, but alas.



5) Finally when you have inputted your efficiency and the recipe you are planning on using, you should have an adjusted recipe to reflect your homebrewery's efficiency.

If this doesn't work let me know. I am good with excel, but bad with math.

Cheers.

Efficiency

So I am now 3 batches into my new all brew system and I figured I would try to come up with my efficiency. I found this explanation of efficiency on the HBD Efficiency web page. These are listed in opposite the order that they were brewed, so the Yeti was the first all brew I tried. The Ed at the local brew store said that this was an aggressive first brew so it should not be surprising that I only had 37% efficiency on that one.

JC IPA
8lb. Durst Pilsner (3628 g) 56 pts
2lb. Briess 2-row (907 g) 14.8 pts
1lb. Durst Wheat (453 g) 7.8 pts
0.5lb. corn sugar to boil (226 g) 4
82.6

Potential 1.082
Actual 1.045
Eff 54.8%

Pilsner
4.0 lbs (1,800g) 2 row pale malt 29.6 pts
2lbs 10oz (1,200 g) 6 row pale malt 18.2 pts
2lbs (907g) flaked maze ?

Potential 1.048
Actual 1.030
Eff 62.5%

Yeti
15.25 lbs American 2 row malt 112.85 pts
1 lb- Crystal Malt 6.8 pts
12oz- Chocolate Malt 4.5 pts
12oz- Black Patent Malt 4.35 pts
10oz- Roasted Barley 3.48 pts
8oz- Wheat Malt 3.9 pts
8oz- Flaked Rye ?
135

Potential 1.135
Actual 1.050
Eff 37%

Avg Eff 51%

Overall I would say that I need to work on efficiency for the future, but it looks as though I am in the ball park of many brewers that are new to all grain so I am not going to complain. After all, if I started out perfect, where would I have to go?

Joe Cool IPA

This is an IPA that I made some changes too for my recipe. I am waiting on my Schlitz to lager for a month so I decided I would brew up an IPA for the Super Bowl. This should be a fine one:

5 Gallons

8lb. Durst Pilsner (3628 g)
2lb. Briess 2-row (907 g)
1lb. Durst Wheat (453 g)
0.5lb. corn sugar to boil (226 g)

1oz Spalt 60 Full boil (28 g)
1oz Hersbrucker 30 min left (28 g)
2oz Spalt 5 min left (56 g)

1 Orange (Tangelo) peel 10 mins left
1 TBS Cilantro 10 mins left (15ml)

OG- .045 (it was supposed to be up in the .058 range so I am a little disappointed, but what can you do? It's still beer)
FG- ~.003 (I need a better hydrometer, mine only works in increments of .005 so I am never sure about exacts. In this case it was actually closest to 1.000)

5.5% ABV

Wyeast Rogue Yeast- This was a recommendation from my brewer and he has yet to steer me wrong so I decided to go with it. I guess this is a limited release yeast so you are on your own for an alternative.

My version of this brew is named after the ultimate Super Bowl QB, Joe Montana!

The Schlitz

I saw this recipe in BYO.com and since I had never tried a lager, I decided this was a good place to start. This is my version of the recipe The Schizlitz from BYO:

90 min at 150F (65C)
4.0 lbs (1,800g) 2 row pale malt
2lbs 10oz (1,200 g) 6 row pale malt
2lbs (907g) flaked maze

.55oz (15g) Czech Saaz 3.8% alpha (60min)
1.1oz (31g) Fuggles (60min)

Wyeast 2035 (American Lager)

OG- 1.030
FG- 1.005

I used about 7 gallons of water, 2 gallons for the wart and another 5 for the sparge. After the boil down, I had the right amount. This was my first time using a starter and I think it helped out, though I am not sure about the smell I am getting from the fermenter. There is a sulfur smell coming out that I get a little bit of, so if there is anyone out there that know anything about that, please feel free to add some input. I am a little afraid that I may have my first infected batch (knock on wood), but I am going to wait and see if it's not something with the lager yeast that I may not know about.

Otherwise the whole process went well.

Next Brew

As an FYI for anyone interested; I am going to be brewing this weekend. I have an American Pilsner recipe I found in BYO called the Shizlitz and I made a couple of changes to it for a slight variation on the 70's style American Pilsner.

I am going to get some photos and do a detailed entry about how I brew to follow up the recipe.

Cheers!

T

First Glass

This is a great brew. I am not saying that it's the be all and end all, but to be honest a little part of me is still fired up when my beer tastes like beer!

Anyway, even though I did not get all of the OG I should have out of the grains that I used, it still has a nice Strong flavor and has all of the characteristics of a good stout. Something I might recommend changing is the hops. There is a stiff hops smell that seems little out of place in a stout. I have always associated stouts with that nice malt flavor and smell (which this has plenty of).

Either way, as you can see from the picture, the head is a nice gold color that does not stay very long, but it's there. The recipe is good and I would that anyone interested in a full flavor stout would like this.

Great YouTube Videos on Homebrewing

I saw these on YouTube and thought they were great. If you have never brewed before, or if you are just starting out, I have always recommended seeing someone in action and this guy have a modest, but thorough operation. He hits all of the high points and I must say, I even saw somethings that are going to make me change a few things I have going on.

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Video 4

Video 5

Kegged the Yeti

Just a quick note, I took my FG and kegged my Yeti. Needless to say, I have never been one to waste beer so I drank my hydrometer sample and this was what I got from my first taste:

From what I could tell it had a great taste up front. Strong smoky malt flavor but it lacks a finish. The smell was nice, but I am not sure it was fitting of a stout. It has a strong hoppy smell from far away, but when you get your nose right up to it and take a good whiff it has that rich malt smell that you expect in a stout.

Overall I would say (again this is a preliminary assessment) it's a so mediocre example of a stout. However, thats not a bad thing for two reasons; One it was my first shot at all grain, so anything short of a disaster is cool with me and two my friends who are going to be drinking it are hardly what I would call "beer aficionados" though they do consume quite a bit of the bubbly.



My bad on the pics, I should not have drank the sample before I got the camera out.

Carbonating the Keg

So I have been kegging my beer for about a year now and I am still tweaking the process having not found "the ideal" method. I was just reading something on Homebrewmart.com that outlines the force carbonating process pretty well. For this entry I am going to give a brief overview of my method, and some changes I am going to try for this time around.

After the obvious, sanitize, transfer the beer to the keg with minimal aeration, and sealing the top, I start with the CO2. I usually hit the keg with 10-12psi to ensure a good seal and bleed off any O2 (using the valve at the top I let some out and have the CO2 replace the O2 from the transfer). After I have the keg sealed and all of the O2 out, I hit the keg with about 30-35psi until I can tell there is no more CO2 going into the keg.

If you have never done this process before, the way to tell things have equalized inside the keg and there is no more room for CO2 is actually pretty easy, there is no more noise. Once you hear that there is no more CO2 leaving the tank, the kegs got all the CO2 its going to handle.

Next I shake the keg vigorously, I go back and froth, roll it around on the floor, ext. I do this for a few minutes and then hit it with another shot of CO2. I repeat this process 4 or 5 times and let the keg rest for 1/2 hour or so and repeat the process.

After I feel that it's had enough (no logic about the how much on that one, just a shot in the dark), I release the excess pressure from the keg and hook it to the in (CO2 tank) and the out (keggerator) at 10-12psi and leave it over night.

So far the results have been good, not great. I have had a couple of kegs give me trouble and lead em to do the whole process over again. Other times it starts out totally heady and settles about 6-8 beers in. And still other times it's all over the charts.

I would love to get this down to a science so any recommendations are welcome. A quick note would be that the kegs are kept in my basement as a 60-65F temp.

In the end, its still beer and no matter how flat my love is, I still love it.

Learn something new everyday!

So I was reading my handy-dandy "Homebrewing for Dummies" that I bought a few years ago (mine is an older version and I think it's written by someone different) and I saw an interesting tidbit that I didn't realize before. When you are brewing a heavier brew, like an Imperial Stout, you should give it more time in the secondary fermentation than you would with other brews.

Now this is news to me because I was just going on 2 weeks secondary fermentation for everything. According to the book, because these beers are so heavy, the yeast needs a little extra time to work through everything.

Anyway, just a quick update and a reminder to always keep learning.

On a side note- I bought that book before I actually started brewing, I figured that I was going to get to know everything before I went into it like that was going to make me a better brewer, needless to say, I was wrong. If you are thinking about brewing and want to "learn more" my advice is just do it. Watch someone do it if you can, but if you can't, just start screwing around.

*I don't recommend Homebrewing for Dummies, it's confusing, the recipes in it are dated and is really not good for any beginner. However, it does make for a good reference now that I have been brewing for a while.

My Operation

This is something that I have been planning on doing for a while now and because I got my digital camera to start putting photo on my computer, here we go:

This is my mash tun set up that I referenced in my posting about the Imperial Stout. As you can see there were somethings that I did differently and I have to say that if I were to do it again, I would recommend keeping it simple.



As you can see, I used a hose type nozzle on the cooler as a way to keep the flow of liquid controlled. The problem with that is it makes the operation needlessly complicated and gives yet another place for a leak to develop. Fact is, the liquid that comes out of the mash tun is all but trickling out and there is no need to have a device capable of stopping water at a higher pressure. That's just me over thinking the plan.



This is my brew corner. I built a corner table out of some used counter top (great because it does not warp from water and beer sitting on it) and some 2x4s. I built it in the corner so that I would be using some otherwise wasted space in the basement (over the sum pump). It have worked out great.



This is my mini fridge kegerator. I took a dorm fridge, drilled a few holes in it and made it into my kegerator. The brew comes from the keg in the back, into a cold plate (that sits in a pan of water to help keep it cool, Pete's idea from the Salt City Brew Club) and out of a tap on the door.

It works pretty well. It does not use a lot of power, keeps my beer cold and is a space saver. Do I dream of more? Of course, but this was a great use of some of my random parts.

As an FYI, I tried using one of the bigger dorm fridges (that you can fit the whole keg inside) but there were a lot of problems. You see the freezer box will freeze the whole keg and the thing never actually worked. It was a disappointment. However, this new little guy is great because I don't even have to get down on my knees to make adjustments.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy. I am going to post some pics from a brew session one of these days.

Thanks.

All Grain- First Stab at it

Well I feel better knowing that it's not as hard as I anticipated. But there are a lot of things that I need to step up in my next round. As I said in a previous post, I plan on updating the bog with an entry that out lines my current setup, but for now I just want to cover a few things that happened during the brewing that worked and that didn't.

First, I was at a loss to figure out how much water to use in the mash. I had heard 1qt per lb of grain, 1.25 qt per lb of grain and a lot of suggestions in between. I used 5 gallons for about 18lbs on grain. That works out to 1.1qts per lb of grain. I am not sure how well this worked, but I was erring on the side of caution because I was not use how much the mash tun I made would hold (it's 48qts and had PLENTY of room).

The temp held great in the mash tun which made me happy. 150F for the full hour, you can't ask for much more than that.

When it came time to run the extract off into the brew pot, I had a bowl that I was using to watch the liquid and get an idea of when it was running without sediment. Well if you take a look at the recipe I was using (Great Divide Imperial Stout) it was DARK and there was no telling if there was sediment or not, so I ran a little out and dumped it back in and just opened it up to the brew pot.

The other thing that I think I dropped the ball on was the sparging. I had about 3gallons of water at 170F and dumped it into the mash tun after the other liquid was run out. I stirred it around for a few minutes and opened it up to the brew kettle. This may have cut down on the OG because I did not give the sparging a chance to work.

Finally, I was not sure where to put the spent grains when I was finished so I dumped them down a storm drain. I don't think it caused any problems, but there has to be a better way. I think I should start composting them.

Anyway, everything else went off without a hitch. The only think that worries me is that there was an OG of 90 on the recipe, but mine was only 50. I think that I sold myself short, though I took the OG from the extract and not from the post boil brew, so who knows if it was as accurate as it normally would be.

I have some ideas for tweaking things for the next all grain batch, but depending on how this one turns out will dictate how many changes I make.

Cheers.