So this weekend my wife and I are going to be hosting a party for the summer solstice.  While the weather outlook is a little bleak at this point, we’re prepared.  In the end, I’ll have at least five brews flowing and there will be plenty of food.

on tap for the party:

• Pilsner
• Samuel L. Jackson
• Poe-Boy IPA
• Space Money Wit (what’s left of it, first come first serve)
• Californication
• Mellow Meatball – Melomel

Wait, that’s six beers…oops.  I only have five taps and there is only a little of the Space Monkey left so maybe that will be replaced by my last keg of SLJ.  If you’re around and interest in stopping in for a beer, please drop me an email at travis@cnybrew.com.

Have a great weekend.

Yet another Fermentation Friday is upon us.  This month’s host is my old friend Ted (I can call him that because we’ve met!).  The subject is:

a. What part of the your brewday brings you the most JOY?
b. What part particularly brings out a good deal of STRESS?

This is great to think about.  I love to think about all the reasons I brew.  The smell of the grain, the sound of propane running, the thoughts of beer.  It’s a great thing. 

For me, the part of brewing that brings me the most joy is when I strike and take my temp and I am spot on.  This is like striking a 7 iron from 150yrds out and dropping the ball in the middle of the green on the last hole of the day.  This is what keeps me coming back.  The aroma of the grain brewing, sugars, conversions, steam…ah that’s good stuff.

The most stressful part of the brew day for me is the clean up.  I know that’s kind of a cop-out because no one likes cleaning, but the whole process of trying to close out the brew day when I am tired and really concerned about making sure my brew starts bubbling, really tests my patience.  It feels like no matter how many things you clean and take to the basement, there is always more crap to clean and then take to the basement.

Happy Fermentation Friday.

This weekend I was thinking that I would brew a small 3 gallon batch of barleywine for the fun of it.  I have 10lbs of US 2 row pale malt just sitting around so might as well put it to good use.

The plan is simple enough:

• 12lbs US 2 row pale malt
• 1lb Crystal 40L
• .5lb Crystal 10L
• 1oz Warrior 60min
• .5oz Cascade 30 min
• .5oz Cascade 10min
• 1oz Cascade dry hop
• California Ale Yeast – 1qt starter

I am going to do a single infusion with no sparge, at 152f for 90min.  I want a 90min boil so I am looking to have 5 3/4 gallon pre-boil volume.  The pre-boil gravity should be 1.085 SG and the OG should end up at 1.098.  The light malt is leading Beer Smith to give me a reading of 11.5 SRM, but I am willing to bet it’s going to be a lot darker with the 90 boil.

This should end up being about 9.5% abv 76 IBU cascade heavy barleywine.  No assuming anything though.

Below are pictures of the hops, oh yea, coming along nicely and naturally (unlike some people that are using hops enhancing drugs).

Well yesterday was a brew day.  We brewed up 20 gallons of the California Common we’ve done a few times in the past.  Unfortunately, I purchased a new thermometer with a wire connected probe from Kmart on my way home Friday.  I had been looking at digital thermometers for a while, but after a lot of research I decided that there was not a lot of variation on these thermometers.

Well I was VERY wrong.  This thermometer was a long way off from accurate.  I am assuming that it has something to do with it’s use in liquid as opposed to solids, but it was nonetheless VERY inaccurate and cost us .020 on our brew!  Why you ask?  Well we were shooting for 150 f as the strike temp.  Since I was using this thermometer and it was off on the strike, the mash bed temp was low on our readings, but was still reading 148.  I made an on the fly decision to run with the 148 as opposed to adding some hot water fast.

From there, everything was way off and we were probably closer to 135f in our mashtun.  It was really bad.

What is probably most frustrating is that I should have known better.  I should have tested the thermometer and been second guessing my readings with a second thermometer (what I’ve done in the past).  But alas I didn’t and it was a huge mistake.

It’s too bad, but lesson learned.  I guess this is Californication Lite.  Now the questions is answered; what is the most important tool in your brewday tool box?  Your thermometer.

FOLLOW UP:

I’m not sure if you can see from this picture, but one of my dial thermometers is in a glass of water with the probe of the other thermometer.  The dial thermometer is reading 60f, roughly room temp, while the probe is reading 88f.  That’s a 28f difference!!!  Makes sense that all my readings were off for the day.

Grrr, don’t buy your brewing equipment from Kmart (duh, right?).

UPDATE: FG 1.012, doesn’t taste half bad.  The flavors are a little more intense, but otherwise its good.

After listening to the April 2nd episode of Basic Brewing Radio and reading the BYO article, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on the Aussie-Brew in a Bag (BIAB) technique.  Beer Smith covers the basics here, but it’s a simple enough concept:

1. Crushed grains in a brew friendly bag
2. All water in a brew pot (this includes sparge and mashout and mash water)
3. Heat water to desired temp, add grains (obviously compensate for temp loss due to grains added)
4. mash for 30 to 60 min at between 148 and 156f
5. Pull grain sack out and squeeze it out into the brew pot
6. Boil and brew

It sounds like the biproduct on this process is a little bit more cloudy than more traditional brewing techniques, but nothing the fermentation process and some patience shouldn’t be able to fix.  It was interesting that those who brew using software like ProMash and Beer Smith can calculate all the water and grain needed by just brewing like you would for a batch sparge.

Now my take on this is that while it’s cool to try different things, I don’t see this as some kind of breakthrough.  I have always told people that really all mashing really boils down to is seporating grain from liqiud and finding a way to rinse the grain.  If you start there, options are limitless on how you do this process.

In my opinion, people are often spooked by the high cost of buying mashtuns in catalogs.  I feel like this drives people to find inexpensive alternatives.  This sucks because I see 60qt coolers all the time for less than $30 (if you catch a  sale you can steal one for $10 to $15).  Throw in some copper, a ball lock valve and you are looking at less than $70.  If you want to go the really cheap and easy route, do 1/2″ PVC and the whole thing drops down to like $50.  To me, that is totally reasonable and not a bad cost for a mashtun.

One of the big selling points for this BIAB is the low cost.  While I don’t disagree that it helps for people that want to dabble in the all-grain arts, I have yet to meet anyone that went all-grain and went back.  I generally advise people to get creative, shop around and just build a very simple false-bottom cooler if they want to try rather than try to half-ass something to give it a test run.  Plus if you follow these instructions for the “El-Cheapo” mashtun you’ll be up and brewing in no time at all.

That’s just my opinion anyway.  I may still try a test batch with this technique anyway, but who knows.

Cheers.

With Mother’s day upon us, many of us need to thank our wives for supporting our wacky habit of homebrewing.  Happy Mother’s Day to my wife for her constant support.  Considering she is not really into the beers that I brew, she finds great party themes that allow me to showcase my beers to my friends and her food.  Add that onto the fact that she will get me random six-packs as a present (Great Lakes IPA last time), makes her an awesome brew wife.  Happy Mother’s Day to my Mom for (besides the obvious stuff of ‘being my mom’) for always finding me cool beer stuff (including two awesome flip-top growlers).

Beer Mom’s and Wives make the world go ’round.

Cheers to Mom’s

This weekend I was able to totally complete the hops trellis project.  I have to say, I am really pleased with how this turned out.  It’s not only a fully functional trellis, it also adds some curb appeal to the house (IMO anyway).

First off, earlier this week I hung the cross supports on the 4×4 beams.  These were 1×6, 4 feet long with a cut made 10″ in leaving 2″.  This gives that nice finish seen below.

Next, I ran 3, 2X6 12′ pressure treated beams over the top to hold the slats that ran across the top of the trellis.

For the top, I bought 12 eight foot 1by 2 pieces of pressure treated wood.  I cut the pieces in half and made a piece of wood for a spacer so that they would be even. 

I painted the whole thing, which, as my wife informed me it would be, took a VERY long time to paint.  No matter, it’s done and it looks very good. 

I took some time to dig up the area in between my hops plant and in between the posts so that I can make the whole thing into a proper bed for my hops.  To make matters better, my father has two or three more hops plants in pots that he got from a friend waiting for me next weekend.

Some how this weekend I also managed to till and prep my garden, clean the garage, dig up the walkway to the gate removing all the roots and enjoy a few beers.  I am enjoying my Belgian that I think, while not a Belgian Dubbel, is a Belgian Strong Pale Ale.  Cheers.

Since there is a plague in Mexico, no vacation for me.  In light of that, I’m going to continue to work on my hops trellis.  Last night I cut two twelve foot 1×6’s into six four foot pieces.  On each piece I cut a 10″ angle from the end that left a small 2″ piece.

I’ve decided to make some changes on my design and I am going to be doing something like this:

Special Thanks to Growing-Image.com for the idea

Mine will be a little wider – 4′ – and have three posts, but the idea is the same.  As I was looking around at how best to build one of these, I was really last as to the best way to make it look nice and have it tall enough to allow the hops enough room to grow.  This is nice because when it’s all built, the whole thing should be near 8 ft tall and 4ft wide so that the hops can grow up and over it.  Plus it should look really nice too.

Next up I am going to mount the cross beams onto the posts.  That will hopefully be tonight (weather permitting anyway).

So this weekend I started my hops trellis project.  It’s been a pretty crazy process because I changed my design once, and when I was at home Depot, I changed it back.  I think for the better, but we’ll see.

Pictured below are the post markers for where my 4×4 posts went.  I purchased 3 8ft 4×4 posts of pressure treated wood for this project ($9 each).  I also had to pick up a special shovel for the project from Harbor Freight as the post hole digger was like $35 and I was not into spending that much on something I was only going to use once.

I used two 60lb bags of quickcrete to set the posts in place.  Each post hole was 18″ deep (Nick recommended 24″ and I was thinking 12″ so I split the difference) and after checking this morning, I think they will be plenty sturdy.  As you will note from the picture, I used two support stakes on each post and used a level to ensure they were straight both ways.

The post on the far right has a bow to it, but after messing around with it, I noticed that it will straighten out once I put the cross beam in.

The next step is to cut and secure the cross beam up to the three posts.  From there, I need to decide if I am going to connect this to the fence as I originally planned, or just make it a free standing trellis.  If I connect it to the fence, I just need to get one more  wood piece to run parallel to the fence and all the perpendicular pieces for the top.  We’ll see how things line up after the connection beam is in place…

Cheers.

Not to be out done by my toothless neighbors to the south, it’s time that I finally made a proper hops trellis.  With that in mind, I’ve decided on a design.  The picture above is a concept that I am going to use in my design, tonight I am going to make some measurements and get a list of items needed to make this happen.  I am not sure if I am going to be able to get to this right away, but perhaps I can set the three posts this weekend.

The idea is pretty simple, use my fence and the distance from where the hops are planted to set up a trellis the same height as the fence.  I am going to run a cross board parallel to the three posts (that will be positioned in relation to the hops) using the fence to as the opposing posts.  I will run a few cross beams between the newly set posts and the fence as a means of giving the hops something to grow on and that’s it!  I might run some wire around it for growing, but twine has been working well so I might just set up a yearly twine stringing.

I’m just in time since my hops are just starting to pop up so hopefully I can have this complete in the next few weeks.  I also still have a can of paint from last year’s fence painting so I’ll be able to make the whole thing match.

Good stuff.

Cheers.