I think the key to lagering is to buy a fridge.  My wife bought me a refrigerator for my birthday last month and it has come in handy for the lagering of the Maibock.

Right now, I have the cider that we made last October conditioning in there and some maple porters from two years ago.

I’ll get a thermostat for it eventually.  This set up will eliminate the fusel alcohol issue I had last summer when my basement was in the high 70s in the month of August.

If you can get your hands on a used fridge, I think it is a good investment.

Just a quick update:  I racked the Maibock to a secondary vessel, a glass carboy.  It is now in the beer fridge chilling out at about 37°F. 

It’s been in there for a day and a half and it is not as clear as I thought it would be at this stage.  I guess we shall see as time goes on.

I took a gravity reading yesterday following my own advice about how to do it. My hydrometer read 1.015 which is a little lower than my target, but in the ballpark.

I tasted the sample to see if I had a diacetyl problem. I didn’t get any overwhelming buttered popcorn or butterscotch taste. The sample did leave a bit of a coating on the roof of my mouth that was kinda slick.

Mike came over the house because we were going to a scotch tasting in the afternoon. (I betcha didn’t know we were Scotch dudes too!) He tasted it and came to the same conclusion.

Anyway, I brought my fermentating bucket up to the ground floor of my house and I put it in the front hall closet. It is sitting pretty at 62° F and I will probably leave it there for a good 36 hours. I hope the yeast still has some oomph to clean up the diacetyl.

Tomorrow night I will rack the beer to a glass carboy and let it sit in my beer fridge for a month or so.

More on the fridge later.

We had a reader write in to ask us about how to take a gravity reading during fermentation because he had never done it before. 

To tell you the truth, I haven’t done one either.  With ales, I would let them sit in the primary fermenter for 2 weeks and then bottle them up.  I would take a reading at bottling and whatever my hydrometer said, I would take.

With this lager, two weeks may not be enough time.  It may have to stay in primary fermentation for a month.  I won’t know until I check the gravity on Sunday.

Here’s a few thoughts about gravity readings during fermentation from my perspective:

1. You want to get a long, thin cylinder/tube of some sort that is easy to clean and sanitize.  I have seen homebrewers use (new) turkey basters.  I have seen homebrewers use glass wine thieves.  I have a nice plastic one that can be broken apart into 3 pieces for easy cleaning.  Whatever you use, you want to make sure it fits the opening of your fermenter and it has openings on both ends.
2. Like I alluded to earlier, clean your tube well and sanitize it before you use it to take your gravity reading
3. Open your fermenter in a non-drafty place.  You want to minimize wild yeast getting into your fermenter.
4. Put the tube into your fermenter to a level that fills the tube with a good sized sample…a half filled tube should be good.
5. Put your thumb on the end of the tube that is in your hand and slowly pull the tube out of your fermenter.
6. Use the sample for whatever tool you use to get gravity reading like a hydrometer or a refractometer.
7. Some brewers return the unused part of the sample back to the fermenter.  If you think it is clean, then go ahead.  If you feel like you have compromised it in a way that may bring infection or other bad things to your beer, just chuck it.

If you have hit your target final gravity, then go to your next stage of the beer’s life.  I plan to use the sample I take on Sunday for two purposes.  One is to check the gravity.  The other is to taste it for diacetyl and see if I need a diacetyl rest to have the yeast clean it up.

…or what happens when you are outgrowing your LHBS. 

I was going to write this post as an open letter to Beer & Wine Hobby….but it’s not their fault. 

Like a common theme in some break ups: It’s not you, it’s me.

You see, I’ve grown as a homebrewer.  I am brewing beyond kits.  I am brewing beyond the top 20% most popular ingredients.  I want to make great beer…not just good beer, but great beer.

I don’t think I can get to where I want to be with my current home brew shop.  I think they have a successful business.  I think they really help people who want to get into brewing beer get over the initial obstacles that stand in their way.  I just don’t see them as a good resource for homebrewers who are more advanced or more experienced.

What doesn’t suit me is having to seek out alternatives for ingredients that should be on hand.  I am not talking about “out of stock” stuff.  I am talking about ingredients that they just don’t carry.

I am sure there are business reasons for why they carry what they carry.  I am sure their customer base gets what they need.  I guess I am saying that I am not getting what I need.

So now what?   Do I need to get back out there immediately and try to find a new one? 

Has this situation happened to you?  What did you do? 

I really don’t want to go the whole online catalog route, but that may be the best solution.

I had been thinking about using a couple corny kegs as fermentors.  Maybe even trimming up some dip tubes to be able to CO2 push finished beer out of the kegs to clean serving kegs.
Here are some of the things I am concerned about.

1. Using the standard gas out port for my airlock set up (tubing and a water jug), may have more restriction than I am used to.  A source of regular clogging perhaps?

2. The corny keg only holds about 5.25 gallons.  This almost ensures the need to blow off every time, and as stated in part 1 cleaning that narrow a diameter tubing would be a pain each time.  The fix would be 4 gallon batches.  I nice idea for experimenting with recipes, but my mash tun and boil kettle are all somewhat optimized for 10 gallon brew sessions.  Do I really want to ferment in two kegs for each batch?

3. The stainless keg is a superior container for sure.  Light, easy to move, relatively indestructible.  But I’d be competing for keg fermentor space all the time vs. keg serving space.

Fermenting in Corny kegs just doesn’t seem to have a enough plus sides.  Am I missing any?

See these other posts about fermentor choices also:

Fermentor Vessels

Glass or Plastic

Just as an update, I took a couple of photos of my lager fermentation set up:

 This is a photo from my basement.  For the most part, the air temperature in my basement is around 53°F.  To keep the fermenter at 50°F, I put it in this styrofoam box and filled it with water.  If the temp goes up, I can put some snow in the water to cool down the fermenter.  We got 6 more inches on Sunday night and I might as well use it for something.

The lock is clacking away.  I wouldn’t say it is as vigorous as an ale fermentation, but it is steady. 

We’ll keep an eye on this one.   Brew On.

Winter time homebrewing. 

In some ways, a better brewing experience than its counterpart in summer.   The heat from the fire actually warms you up.  The cold break you get from the immersion chiller is well defined.  Your beer stays cold outside.

All good points but distracting from the main reason for this post.  Today I brewed a Maibock.

As voted on by readers of this blog, this was my first attempt at a lager style.  

If you are following along at home, I updated the Maibock Recipe to reflect what happened today. 

After the mash, I was able to get the boil going pretty soon (ok, it took a while).

The brew itself had a nice caramel color.  I was able to get a 7.5 gallon boil volume going, which tested the limits of my heat source and the size of my kettle. 

While things were chilling, I got my yeast starter out for a photo. 

I decanted most of the “beer” off of the yeast cake at the bottom of the glass jug.  The bit that was left I used to help swirl around to get all the yeast out. 

While things were chilling (it took a while to get it down to the target fermentation temp - a little colder than an ale yeast temp), I was able to pour a beer we got from the Buckbean Brewing Company.  Full disclosure: They sent us a couple of cans free of charge. It was a schwarzbier, which was the other choice for my first lager. It went well with the brewing day.

Wort chilling New England style.  I had my immersion chiller going and packed the snow around the kettle.  It still took an hour or so to get it cold enough, but I think it was faster than without snow. 

Good brew day.  I hit my original gravity and pitched a good amount of yeast.  I am hoping this Maibock comes out well.

Here’s some other posts associated with this brew:

Maibock Ingredients

Maibock Substitutions

I had to post this wonderful piece of information about yeast and yeast starters.  A great great brewer friend of mine, Wade, over at the BKB forums posted a reply to a discussion we were having about yeast starters and cell #s provided in the yeast packages we all typically buy from WhiteLabs and Wyeast.

Wade, a.k.a. 1n1m3g in cyber-land, is currently working on his PhD in the biological sciences arena and works exclusively with yeast for his research.  He and I have talked in the past about yeast; and he really knows his stuff.  When Wade is not working in the lab or being a great father and family man he can be found bumming around with the Boston Wort Processors.  A homebrew club here in the Boston area. (Please consider checking out their upcoming Homebrew Competition)

So please take a minute to read and digest the post I have copied below.  Its a bit long, but it’s amazingly informative.

From Wade:
“OK, OK, i guess I can try to make some sort of contribution to this discussion here.  I think there is a bit of confusion here about the yeast that come in the liquid from the homebrew stores, either smack packs or vials.  There are two key terms everyone should be aware of and the differences between the two.  One is yeast viability and the other is yeast vitality.  Viability is easy to define as it basically describes the overall number of yeast cells that are alive.  If you were able to count the cells under a microscope and then plate out a small, countable number of cells onto an agar plate the viability of the yeast would be the number of cells that actually form a colony as compared to the number of cells you plated.  Vitality, on the other hand, is a more ambiguous term that describes the overall health of those viable cells.  In brewing terms, it could be described as how fast the cells could divide and as well as how efficient they are at fermenting sugars.  Cells will have high vitality if they have sufficient fermentation precursors stored up.  For example, oxygen is required to build up sufficient cell wall components prior to fermentation because during fermentation (in the absence of oxygen) these cell wall components are not synthesized and are depleted upon every cell division until a lower limit threshold is reached and the cells can no longer divide thereby decreasing fermentation efficiencies.  So, even before you pitch your yeast, you can easily have a population of cells with high viability but low vitality if not properly prepared.  For example, the older a vial or smack pack is the lower the viability is as well as the vitality, but I think that vitality drops off much faster than viability over time. 

So back to the question of starters.  Creating a population of cells with high vitality requires that you give the yeast the proper nutrients that prime them for fermentation.  I think this is where Wyeast smack packs are superior to White labs yeast vials.  When you pop the smack pack you release vital nutrients to the yeast so the somewhat dormant yeast greatly increase their vitality.  There is no way to do this for White labs unless you use a starter to wake them up.  A starter is useful for both because depending on the starter technique you use you can greatly increase the total number of viable cells while at the same time increase the overall vitality of the entire population.  The most important component for the starter is oxygen.  Why force the cells to start fermentation in a starter when you are just going to pitch them into an oxygen rich wort, which inhibits fermentation, only to have that oxygen quickly depleted requiring a switch back to fermentation?  If you use a stir plate to add oxygen continuously to the starter you can greatly increase the overall numbers of cells in a smaller volume of starter wort.  These cells will have built a nice ample store of the cell wall components required for proper attenuation of your beer.  If you prefer the more traditional method of a still starter you will be better off if you give the starter a stir twice a day or so to scrub out the built up CO2 and introduce more O2.

I think a better place to add things like yeast nutrient (i.e. Servomyces) would be at pitching or a day or two into the fermentation.  The yeast nutrients add things like metal ions required for enzyme function as well as free nitrogen required to synthesize these enzymes.  Adding this to the fermenting wort of your beer will give the yeast a boost as they use up the limited nutrients that come from the malt.

I use a stir plate for my starters because I don’t use smack packs or vials, but am instead building up my population step by step from literally a single yeast cell.  I need the extra oxygen to get to the proper number of viable cells with the added benefit of also getting high vitality.  Either way, though, if you are using store bought liquid yeast, make sure the package is as close to the manufactured date as possible and if you have the capability, use a starter of any technique (stir plate of otherwise) to increase cell vitality.

Wow, is that enough of an explanation?    Cheers!”

(Standing) BREW ON!

Today is 14F here in the northern suburbs of MA. In the winter time it can be tough to brew outside if you are a propane cooker brewer such as myself. When the tank is going full bore it tends to frost up and get really cold as that liquid propane in the tank vaporizes. I don’t know if the propane actually freezes, but as it gets colder and colder the flow rate can trickle to a stand still and the boil becomes difficult to maintain.

Anyone else notice that? What do you do to combat it?

I have two tanks and two burners actually. What I do is fire off about 2 gallons of water and get it up to about 150F. Then I pour that into one of those part tubs (for keeping a half barrel packed with ice) and I put my propane tank in there. The water only comes up to the top of the base ring on the tank. The tank isn’t submerged in the hot water.

I put the tub on top of a couple folded down cardboard boxes to insulate it a bit from the floor, and I cover the top of it with a few old beach towels to help trap the steam. This seems to keep the tank from getting too cold and I can get through an entire session. If I need too I can fire up the second burner with the second tank and get a little more hot water going if necessary.

BREW ON!