My Favorite Homebrewing Posts this Week

Ales of the Riverwards – HBC-438: The Homebrewers Hop, for now

Ales of the Riverwards is another homebrewing blog that’s been around for a few years now. He posts some delicious recipes, great how-tos and overall interesting articles. This one is no different. In his most recent post, he talks about a new hop varietal and it’s characteristics by brewing an IPA using only this hop. The flavor sounds very complex, interesting and is definitely something I will experiment with as I work into American style ales. The post also includes a pretty delicious sounding recipe and does a good job explaining the flavor profile of this new hop.

A Ph.D. in Beer – Off Beat Yeasts (and Bacteria)

A Ph.D. in Beer is a blog by Matt, a microbiologist who loves to homebrew. His scientific background and training make his posts about yeast and bugs particularly interesting. While this post does not describe much right now, it is the first of a series that I think will be a must read. He’s collected all kinds of different yeast and bacteria that are not traditionally used to ferment beverages but are in the same families as those that are. He plans to attempt to brew safe and tasty new beer with these. I say attempt because we don’t really know what will be created, no guarantees here. But that’s what will make this series of posts so amazing, we could be witnessing a new chapter in fermentation history being written.

Inbounds Brewing – Lambic, Recipe and Brewday

This is part 4 of a series on lambic. In parts 1 through 3, we’re taught all about the lambic style and how it is possible for a homebrewer to brew a traditional style lambic. The whole series of posts is very well written and does a great job explaining all of the steps. This post clearly explains the brew day process and I look forward to reading about how this all turns out.

Five Blades Brewing – Geburtstagsparty – “Traditional” Vienna

This beer just looks and sounds delicious. There’s a great explanation of this style and what a good recipe does and does not include. The pictures look great, the process and recipe are well explained. Not much else to say besides this looks like a great tasting beer and one I will be brewing later.

Larsblog – Oppskake

This post is not so much about recipes or process as it is about tradition. I love the description of this Norwegian brewing tradition. It shows that in some areas of the world the only brewing is homebrewing and paints a beautiful picture. I feel like this is why I homebrew, to share what I’ve made and what I’ve learned, to learn from others with more experience and most of all to spend time with my friends and family around a tasty beverage. I love all things about this tradition. Thank you for sharing it with us!

And that’s it, my favorite posts of the week. Were there any others that you read that didn’t make the cut? Let me know about them!

The post Favorite Homebrewing Blog Posts I Read this Week (2/14-2/20) appeared first on Some Guy Brewing.

My Favorite Posts of the Week (2/7-2/13)

Regular Guy Brewing – Barrel Aged Results

Regular Guy Brewing is 3 guys who like to brew beer and are considering the jump to becoming professionals with their beer. I stumbled upon them through Twitter and have been following their production of a Bourbon Barrel Aged Chocolate Milk Stout. Well it’s done now and it looks and sounds delicious! I’m particularly interested in the process of barrel aging since it’s something I’d like to try in the coming months.

Bear Flavored – Maple Imperial Stout

Bear Flavored, first off what an awesome name for a blog. As for the post, he made a 15% ABV Maple Imperial Stout that he aged on oak chips for a barrel aged flavor. As someone who was born and raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, maple flavor always holds a special place in my heart. I have yet to use it while brewing simply because of the massive amount you need to use in homebrew to impart maple flavor (1 gallon for a 5 gallon batch) and the price tagassociated with that huge amount. After reading this though, I really need to give it a try.

The Mad Fermentationalist – Chocolate Butternut Squash Porter Recipe

The Mad Fermentationalist brewed a nice twist on the traditional pumpkin seasonal beer. Instead of the usual amber ale base, he added pumpkin (well in this case butternut squash since apparently the grocer was out of pumpkin) to a porter and served it on nitro. Sounds delicious. I usually make a Pumpkin Marzen for the fall but this sounds like a combination I should try. While this post wasn’t posted this week, it was updated this week with new information about what he did with the second half of this batch.

Brulosopher – Fermentation Temperature Exbeeriment Part 4

I first have to start by saying the Brulosopher blog is one of my favorite reads. The experiments (or exbeeriments) they run testing different variables of the brewing process and in some cases completely debunking brewing myths altogether are just awesome. Which is why this post is so interesting. I’ve said it here and you’ll see it said in almost any literature, forum or post about homebrewing beer: fermentation temperature is one of the most important things that will determine how good a beer is. Except, is it? Brulosopher has featured a series of experiments testing this theory and it seems like that theory might not be holding up. This most recent one is a lager yeast they fermented at 50°F and 70°F and the results are interesting. Take a look!

Beer Simple – Dogmatic Brewing

Finally, there’s this blog post talking about homebrewers and people who adhere to rules and assumptions without questioning them. It’s a bit more philosophy than brewing but it does a good job mixing the two by explaining why holding to strict beliefs about beer production (long fermentation times, fly sparging is better than batch sparging, etc.) may hold homebrewers back. Personally, if there was no need for certain steps of the brewing process that we’ve “always done” I’d be all for omitting them. Overall, it’s a good read and carries some great takeaways.

So that’s it, those were my favorite homebrewing blog posts I read this week. If you liked any others that I missed feel free to post them in the comments.

The post Favorite Homebrewing Blog Posts I Read this Week (2/7-2/13) appeared first on Some Guy Brewing.

Researching the Ordinary Bitter Style

As with any beer recipe I’m about to make the first place I looked was the BJCP style guidelines. Here’s some highlights for the English Bitter style:

“Low gravity, low alcohol levels, and low carbonation make this an easy-drinking session beer…

…Low to moderate malt aroma, often (but not always) with a light caramel quality…

…Pale ale, amber, and/or crystal malts. May use a touch of dark malt for color adjustment. May use sugar adjuncts, corn, or wheat. English finishing hops are most traditional, but any hops are fair game; if American hops are used, a light touch is required. Characterful British yeast…

…Emphasis is on the bittering hop addition as opposed to the aggressive middle and late hopping seen in American ales.”

Looks like Ordinary Bitters are brewed with mostly a good pale English malt (I chose floor malted Maris Otter) with some Crystal, Biscuit or other thrown in to provide a little malt character but not too much. I settled on a darker UK Crystal (70-80 Lovibond) for around 10% of the grain bill. After reading elsewhere about hopping this style, I went with Kent Goldings and only chose a bittering addition with no late additions. I like hops as much as the next guy but it sounds like traditionally this beer did not have any aroma hop additions and instead focused on minimal hop aroma.

Another note on the Ordinary Bitter is how crucial the cold side of the brewing process is to this beer. It would not be doing the style justice to throw this into a corny keg, force carbonate to 2.5 volumes and serve it cold. An Ordinary Bitter is an English pub session beer meant to be cask conditioned to a low carbonation and served at cellar temperatures around 55°F. I don’t have a cask and would have difficulty draining all 5 gallons in one go even if I did, so I decided the appropriate way to finish this beer was to bottle condition to an ideal carbonation level of 1 volume of CO2. Full recipe is below.

Brew Day

So the recipe described above and listed below was what I planned on making, however my brew store had other ideas. I went on the day before brew day (shame on me for procrastinating) and they were out of the Maris Otter. They also did not have enough of Golden Promise or ESB Malt to fill out the grain bill. The result was a hodge podge of 3 lbs of Golden Promise, 1 lb of ESB Malt and 3 lbs of German Pale malt. I’m hoping this will turn out and give the beer some complexity it would have lacked otherwise.

Another thing I did differently was brew an oversized starter so I could harvest yeast for the next batch (an Extra Special Bitter) from the starter while it is still unhopped and unstressed. I got this idea after thinking about the process of harvesting and washing yeast after fermentation and how much easier it would be to do it from the starter. Then I found a nice article on the Brulosopher website describing this exact practice. It seemed to work great, we’ll know for sure after the next batch.

The final thing I was going to try this brew was at the cooling stage. While researching and doing lots of math for an upcoming post about immersion chillers and relative effectiveness I learned that wort transferred heat much better when it was in motion. I’ll go into detail with this in a later post but it’s not just a little bit better, it’s like 10 or more times better than if it’s undisturbed. I’ve previously tried stirring and it’s just a pain with the immersion chiller in there, so instead I decided the best thing to do would be to use a special paddle drill attachment (affiliate link). This attachment is normally used to degas wine but I figured as long as I moved it closer to the surface there would be plenty of oxygen introduced and it might also aid in aerating the wort for the yeast. Since I’ve made a few batches of wine, I already had this attachment so using it cost nothing more for me.

Yeast Starter and harvested yeast from starter for next batch.

Collecting first runnings.

Collecting the wort.

1.700 oz of Kent Goldings, right on the money! Pretty lucky today!

Moving wort with drill attachment.

This was very effective at circulating wort and had a significant effect on cooling. Much easier than trying to vigorously stir with a spoon while the chiller is in there.

View of the entire cooling operation.

One last shot of the stirring.

So how did everything go?

Really very well. The chilling was outstanding with the stirrer. I can’t say that enough. My chilling time this batch was 1/3 the time of the previous batch. With the whole setup of ice water and recirculating pump combined with the stirrer I dropped the temperature of the whole 6 gallons to 60°F in under 10 minutes. Yes 60°F, apparently it was so efficient that not paying attention for an extra minute dropped the temperature that much. I had excellent cold break and the wort came out clearer than I’ve ever seen. The main factor here was the stirring. Last batch with everything in place except the stirring, it took 25 minutes to get the batch down to 70°F. I’ll explain this with math in a post on cooling I plan to do soon, but in the meantime if you’re not stirring your wort while chilling you need to start!

The drill attachment worked well for this since it was not constantly bumping into the chiller. If you don’t have this attachment a spoon will work just fine, you’ll just have to take care not to bump the chiller and you won’t be able to circulate as quickly. The drill attachment also did a fantastic job of aerating the wort by raising it up and down in the wort (carefully!). The resulting fermentation was very strong so this is definitely something I will work into my routine from now on. I was amazed with the difference that this made. Prior to stirring I was investigating bigger, better chillers since I was not happy with my current cooling times. This eliminates my need to buy a much bigger chiller and allows my 25′ 3/8″ chiller to work perfectly.

Other than that, harvesting from the starter seemed to work well. The wort tasted fine and I hit my target original gravity for this bitter of 1.038. This beer is busy fermenting away. Extra bonus: I got to keep the name since the Broncos actually won the Super Bowl!

The post Carolina’s Bitter Tears – English Ordinary Bitter appeared first on Some Guy Brewing.

Full disclosure, the links on this post are affiliate links. They don’t cost you any more but I get a small percentage of sales from these links to help support this site. I personally don’t care where you purchase your brewing supplies from so long as you decide to start brewing as a result of reading this!

What you need but probably already have

3 gallon or more brew kettle

1. 3 gallon or larger stock pot – Most mash extract recipes will have you boiling 2-3 gallons of liquid and while this leaves head space a little tight, with good stirring and heat control you can make do.
2. Cool, dark, dry place to ferment your beer – in my case, the closet in my basement stays a very stead 64 degrees in the winter and summer. I shut the door and don’t worry about ale fermentation. Lagering will require more.

What you need to brew your own beer

So these are the items that I would get first knowing what I know now. You can make excellent beer using malt extract and some specialty grains, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Yes all grain allows you to customize the flavor profile a little more but it is not necessary to brew amazing beer. In order of importance here are the 6 things you need to start brewing your own beer at home:

Plastic Fermenter with Lid and Spigot

1. 6 Gallon Plastic Fermenter with Lid and Spigot – Fermentation is the single most important step in beer production. It is literally what makes beer (or any alcohol for that matter). This bucket allows you to ferment and later when you upgrade fermenters they make a great utility bucket for holding sanitizer or cleaning solution among other things. NOTE: the fermenter in the link above does not come with a lid, stopper or airlock which need to be purchased separately to use as a fermenter.
   

   Cleanliness is next to Godliness when brewing. Star San makes sure it’s clean.

2. Star San Acid Sanitizer – Now that you have a nice space for your yeast, time to make it safe by using Star San to kill anything in there. I like Star San because it’s quick (5 minutes) and does not need to be rinsed off. It works, get it.

Technically that is all you really need to start brewing beer. There are kits that are no boil kits that you could use right away. You don’t NEED bottle caps and a capper, I’ve seen several people who bottle in sanitized plastic soda bottles with screw tops. While not ideal it works and if you wanted to get started with a minimal expense that is what you would do. Plus this equipment would still be useful when you upgrade.

Upgrades to the brewing process

Glass Carboy with Airlock

1. 6 Gallon Glass Carboy – A glass carboy provides the yeast with a nice safe space to play in while it’s busy converting your brewed concoction into beer. This upgrade gives you a nicer fermenter or the option for a secondary fermenter after the bucket to clear the beer. I prefer glass to plastic because of it’s durability, scratch-resistance and the fact that you can see through it. Scratch-resistance is important because if a plastic container gets scratched, it basically becomes useless for fermenting because that scratch can harbor bacteria and contaminate your beer. Being see through is useful for when you’re siphoning your beer out of the fermenter. If you can see the layer of yeast and hop residue at the bottom you can avoid siphoning it into the next container (bottle or secondary fermenter). Plus you get to see fermentation taking place which is always cool.
   

   Auto-siphon and tubing

2. Siphon and tubing – Of course now you need something to get the beer out of your narrow neck fermenter into a final container of some sort. This is where a siphon comes in. There are several ways to siphon beer but I prefer and use the auto siphon. It’s very easy to start and just works simple as that.
   

   Funnel to transfer into carboy

3. Funnel – The funnel allows you to easily add wort and other things to the fermenter with minimal risk of spilling. Not 100% necessary since you could siphon wort into the fermenter, it’s still very nice to have.
4. Bottle capper, caps and bottles – Yes you CAN bottle in reused soda containers, but there is something nice about cracking open a bottle of beer brewed. Glass bottles stay good a little longer block sunlight, etc. You’ll need this bottle capper plus extra bottle caps.

Those are the 6 pieces of equipment you need to brew great beer. But there’s nothing in there that helps to create the wort you say? You’re right there’s not. But the most important step in making beer is fermentation and if you have a good fermenter with good temperature control you will make much better beer than someone using fancy methods of wort production who does not control the fermentation.

Want a little more?

I would recommend the 6 pieces of equipment above to get started and make sure you enjoy making beer. Inevitably as you get more involved with the hobby you will want more and better equipment. Here are my recommendations for the next pieces to acquire:

Bottle Filler

1. Bottle Filler – This little device makes bottling so much easier. It’s basically a spring loaded valve for the end of your siphon tube. Basically you start the siphon, place the end of filler in a bottle and push down. When you stop pushing beer stops flowing. This makes bottling super easy, it even gives you uniform head space.
2. Hydrometer – Eventually you’re going to want to know things about your beer like the amount of alcohol in it. You do this by measuring the Specific Gravity before fermentation and after. This will also let you know when fermentation is done.
3. Thermometer – If you want to know what temperature your wort is, well pretty obvious you need a thermometer. This is mostly important for pitching temps but is also important when steeping specialty grains for mash extract and certainly for all grain brewing.
4. Nylon mesh bag – Lots of uses: boiling hops, steeping specialty grains, dryhopping

If you assemble ALL of this equipment you’re well on your way to brewing truly great beer with the mash extract method. Or just purchase this starter kit which has everything mentioned above plus a couple of other things.

Am I missing anything from this list? Do you use anything you feel should be added? Let me know!

The post 6 Things You Need to Start Brewing your own Beer appeared first on Some Guy Brewing.

Researching the Oatmeal Stout style

I don’t drink a lot of stouts but I have consumed enough to generally know what they are supposed to taste like. But to be certain I checked my two go to references for creating recipes of a specific brew style: the Brewer’s Association Style Guidelines and the Beer Judge Certification Program Style Guidelines. From the Brewer’s Association:

“Oatmeal Stouts are dark brown to black. Coffee-like roasted barley and roasted malt aromas are prominent. Caramel-like and chocolate-like roasted malt aroma should be evident. Fruity-ester aroma is not perceived to very low. Hop aroma is optional, but should not overpower the overall balance if present. A roasted malt character which is caramel-like and chocolate-like should be evident, smooth and not bitter. Hop flavor is optional, but should not overpower the overall balance if present. Hop bitterness is medium. Oatmeal is used in the grist, resulting in a pleasant, full flavor without being grainy. Fruity-ester flavor is very low. Diacetyl should be absent or at extremely low levels. Body is full.”

Ok so pretty similar to a porter except a stout does have a roasted barley flavor while a porter does not. I had heard at some point “black patent for porters, roasted barley for stouts” and this seems to reflect that. Roasted barley, caramel malt, chocolate malt plus oatmeal for mouth feel. Bittering hops but no aroma hops.

Note: after researching for this post I realized I didn’t notice or pay attention to the very low to no Fruity-ester flavor mentioned above. I wondered about the yeast I was using and looked at it a little more carefully. While great for all kinds of English style ales and in particular stouts, White Labs says this strain is not particularly good for an Oatmeal stout. I’m guessing it’s because of the potential fruitiness this can impart. I’m fermenting in the mid 60’s and probably over pitched a little (big starter) so hopefully this will reduce the amount of fruity esters that are produced. Either way the beer should taste good, I just hope it’s true to style.

Back to researching wort creation. So that’s what the Brewer’s association said what does BJCP say:

“Characteristic Ingredients: Pale, caramel and dark roasted malts (often chocolate) and grains. Oatmeal or malted oats (5- 20% or more) used to enhance fullness of body and complexity of flavor. Hops primarily for bittering. Can use brewing sugars or syrups. English ale yeast.”

Pretty much the same. This mentions using an English Ale yeast and in their description say low to medium-high fruitiness so possibly my yeast mistake will work out ok after all. Both descriptions mention full bodied (kind of goes without saying) so I’ll use a higher mash temperature. I went with crisp maris otter for the base malt, crystal 80L malt, pale chocolate malt and roasted barley along with fuggles bittering hops and flaked oats (full recipe below). I aimed for about 10% oats in the grain bill, more than that and I might have issues with the mashing. Then it was just a matter of plugging these ingredients into Beer Smith and tweaking them until I got the Original Gravity (OG), International Bitterness Units (IBU) and Standard Reference Method (SRM) were in the ranges I wanted.

A note about oats

I said above to use oatmeal, do I mean the same oatmeal you would buy at the grocery store? Well yes and no. There are many types of oatmeal and oats available on the market today: instant oatmeal, old-fashioned oatmeal, steel cut oatmeal, rolled oats and flaked oats. In general for brewing I use instant oatmeal or flaked oats that I buy at the homebrew store.

Why? What’s the difference between these different oats? You can use any oatmeal or oats while brewing you just may have to cook them first. Oats contain all kinds of starches and gums that need to be gelatinized first to successfully extract them in the mashing period. Rolled, flaked and instant oats have all gone through this process already and are ready to just dump into your mash tun with the other grains. Steel cut oats or some non-instant oatmeals need to be cooked first before being added to your mash. This is why I generally use flaked oats or instant oatmeal, they’re just easier.

The gums and starches in oats can cause another problem for the homebrewer: stuck mashes. The oats work to thicken the grain bed slowing the amount of water that can be filtered through it. Sometimes it is so thick that it stops the flow of sparge water completely. Here are two ways to avoid this:

1. Slow sparging – whether you batch sparge or fly sparge, doing so at a slower rate will reduce the chance you’ll have a stuck sparge. If you drain wort off the grain bed, faster than the sparge water is able to filter through you’ll develop a vacuum which will compact the grain bed causing the stuck mash.
2. Rice Hulls – rice hulls added to the grain bill won’t do much to affect flavor or sugar content but they will act as a bulking agent to keep the grain bed from compacting too much.

What do you do if you get a stuck mash? Well many references will tell you basically to start all over, dump the wort back into the mash and lauter tun (MLT) and sparge with it after stirring up the grain bed again. I’ll tell you what I did. If I had a stuck mash early in the process I probably would’ve started over. My stuck mash occurred after I had collected 7.2 gallons of wort and I was looking to collect a little over 7.6 gallons. I just closed the valve on my MLT, stirred up the grain bed, collected the first 2 pints or so and added back on top of the grain bed to make sure it was running clear and then finished collecting my remaining .4 gallons.

Probably not the greatest thing but I also wasn’t about to start all over with so little to go. Time will tell if that was a good idea or a bad one but my OG came out on target and the wort tasted fine.

Brew Day

I already described in a previous post how I harvested the yeast from the porter I brewed and made a starter with it in preparation for brewing this stout. Other than the previously mentioned stuck mash, my brew day went as planned. I tried out the variations to my cooling system that I mentioned in my last brewday and they seemed to work well. The grain bag I filled with my grain bill at the brew store had the name Laura written in giant letters down the side of it. The clerk mentioned that they may have just given this beer a name, they did.

My current all grain setup

English hops for an english style.

Adding bittering hops, no aroma hops!

My brew day assistant – I use Beersmith on the computer to design recipes and Beersmith on my phone to make them.

Cooling the oatmeal stout

Cooling setup with improvements from first use. Lots of ice and salt. Large blocks of ice to keep cold. Intake and output further apart.

The whiskey is there because it was the only cheap alcohol I had around to sanitize the outside of the ball valve.

Collecting the wort into the fermenter. Just a few weeks away from oatmeal stout!

Notes from Brew Day

Most things went well. Still tweaking this new cooling system, I’m interested in researching the best configuration for an immersion chiller in a later post (stainless or copper, 3/8″ or 1/2″, 25 ft or 50 ft). I ended up going through 30 lbs of ice, but there was still a significant water savings compared to just running the hose. The chiller and ice bath were also very effective.

I had the stuck mash I mentioned so next time I’ll probable add rice hulls and collect wort even more slowly than I did. Normally I refrigerate the starter and decant off the liquid, pitching the yeast cells that have collected at the bottom. I forgot to do this this time and attempted to decant some of the starter off, but ended up pitching around 1 Liter of yeast starter wort so we’ll see if that affects the flavor. Measured OG was 1.064 which was almost exactly the predicted 1.065. Pitched the yeast at 68°F. Fermentation started about 12-18 hours after pitching and so far things are looking good. Here’s to another great tasting beer!

The post Laura – an Oatmeal Stout appeared first on Some Guy Brewing.

But now the stars have aligned and I not only have an appropriate brew day coming up, I also have an appropriate batch in primary ready to go to secondary. Time to harvest!

Why Harvest and Reuse Yeast?

Why not? Aside from cost savings and the ability to get good active yeast, homebrewing to me is one big experiment about what you CAN do yourself. Is it a little more risky than just buying your yeast? Yes, but no more crazy than pouring a bunch of sugar water into a glass container along with some microorganisms, letting it for a couple weeks and then drinking the result. Sure you could buy yeast every time, or buy all of your equipment fully made, but you could also just go and buy your own craft beer if you like. That would certainly be a lot easier and probably cheaper after everything is said and done. But no, I decided to homebrew my beer for several reasons not the least of which is I want to see if I can do it!

Aside from the philosophical reason for harvesting your own yeast, there is the matter of cost saving. For me at my homebrew store the average grain is $2/lb, hops are $2.50-$3/oz and yeast is $9-10 or so. In a standard beer I’ll use 10-15lbs of grain, 2-5 oz of hops which come to $25-$45 plus the yeast at around $10. Not having to buy yeast is a 20-30% savings or so. Again I don’t homebrew for the cost savings but I’m also not about throwing money away for nothing.

When is it a good idea to Reuse Yeast?

Technically you can harvest any yeast and use it in any next batch though there are some general things to keep in mind:

1. Yeast should be of the same type you want to brew next – you’re not going to get an ale if you pitch lager yeast and vice versa.
2. Make sure the yeast matches the style you want to brew – don’t use a yeast that gives lots of nice fruity banana esters from a Belgian Wit in an Irish Red. The resulting beer won’t turn out good and wasted beer is a shame.
3. The beer you’re planning to make should be similar to the beer you’re harvesting from – or at least not vastly different. Hop, roast and other strong flavors will be passed to the next beer and can create some undesirable effects. You wouldn’t want to harvest from an imperial stout and pitch into a pale ale, even if you would use the same yeast otherwise.
4. Your next brew day is soon – with the techniques we’ll be using to keep the yeast if you’re not re-pitching soon you’ll have problems with contamination and dead yeast. Ideally you would re-pitch within 3 days or so and no more than 2 weeks.

How to Harvest and Reuse Yeast

So you’ve decided you want to try and harvest and wash your yeast. Great! Now what? Well first thing I did was see what resources existed out there currently. I found two really good resources from Brew Your Own and Beersmith. After reading these and a couple others I had worked out what I was going to do. The yeast I was moving was WLP002 English Ale Yeast from the Robust Porter I brewed previously. These were the steps I followed:

Equipment

• Erlenmeyer flask or other container
• Siphoning tool
• Mason jars
• Saucepan
• Aluminum foil

1. Sanitize everything with your sanitizer of choice. I use Star-San, you can use what you like.
2. Start some water boiling (2-3 quarts should do) in the saucepan. After it’s boiled for 10 minutes cool it down to room temperature. You’ll need this later.
   

   Transferring Porter to Secondary Fermenter

3. Transfer your beer to the secondary fermenter using your siphon method of choice. As mentioned previously I only use the auto-siphon.
   

   Relax! Have a homebrew!

4. Relax, have a home brew!
   

   Don’t forget to take a sample and measure the specific gravity so you can monitor fermentation progress!

5. Once the transfer is complete, place airlock on secondary and tend to the yeast at the bottom of the primary.
6. You now have the nasty looking yeast cake at the bottom of the fermenter. If there is not enough beer remaining in the bottom of the fermenter to allow the yeast to pour, add some of your boiled and cooled water to the fermenter and swirl around to make a slurry.
   

   Pouring yeast cake into sanitized mason jars. I should have added water to this, but I didn’t and now we all know what it looks like.

7. Sanitize the top of the fermenter with some kind of cheap alcohol and pour some of the yeast cake into your mason jars. I really should have done a couple things differently here. First, I should have added water to the fermenter to make the yeast into more of a suspension. I did not and now we get to make poop jokes. Second, I should’ve used larger mason jars, I just couldn’t find the larger ones we have so I used these. Ideally, you’d only fill the jars about 1/3 full, but no more than 1/2 full.
8. Now that you have some questionable looking substance in your mason jars, if you did not already add boiled and cooled water to the yeast add some to the jars now. Place sanitized aluminum foil over the tops of the jars and swirl the yeast cake into suspension.
   

   Yeast suspension after refrigeration.

9. Place the yeast suspension into the refrigerator and set a timer for 20 minutes. The dead yeast cells and hop trub in the yeast cake will drop out of suspension and settle first leaving only healthy yeast cells in the fluid on top. If you let the suspension cool for longer than 20 minutes, the good yeast cells may start to settle as well and then you’d have to do this all over again.
   

   Pour yeast suspension into erlenmeyer flask

10. When you pull the yeast out of the fridge after 20 minutes you should have a layer of liquid on top of a layer of solids. You’ll want to carefully pour the liquid off of the solids into your sanitized starter container. Try to minimize the amount of solid you get into the starter but it’s not the end of the world if a little gets in.
11. Put a stopper on the flask. If you’re brewing in the next couple days, go ahead and make a starter with this. If your brew day is more than a few days away then place this in the refrigerator until your brew day is closer and then make a starter.

What I learned and what I will do differently:

I learned a lot of things doing this the first time. The biggest thing is, it wasn’t that hard! I will try to plan as many of my future brew days as possible so that I can do this for all of them. Since my goal is to brew one example of every style, I will probably stick to a specific style for a while and brew those consecutively from mild flavor to strong (like English Ales, German Lagers, etc.). This has also given me the motivation to try harvesting yeast from a commercial beer, which I’m sure I’ll do in a later post.

Everything appears to have worked out with what I did, the starter was bubbling away and when I pitched this into my wort on brew day I had a good fermentation going in about 18 hours. That said, while it seems to have worked (time will tell when I taste the beer) there are a lot of things I think I’ll do differently in the future:

1. Use a larger container to collect yeast cake from fermenter – what I used worked fine but a larger jar would have been easier to manage.
2. Make sure there is enough fluid on the yeast cake to suspend it – because I did not have enough fluid, I think my slurry was a little thin and it took a while for the starter to get going. Once it did it was fine, but I was a little worried for a couple days.
3. Harvest the yeast sooner – due to time constraints I left the porter in primary for about 10 days. As a result, fermentation activity was very low when I went to transfer to secondary and harvest. I probably would have harvested more yeast if I would have planned to harvest after about 5 days while there was still some fermentation activity going.
4. Harvest from the starter – aside from having to keep them for a longer time, this seems like a great idea. Starter wort does not contain any hops and does not have any strong flavors or color which would prevent all of the problems with harvesting from one style and pitching into another. The low alcohol and hop content means the yeast has not really been stressed and is still very healthy. The yeast has not replicated many times and therefore has a reduced chance of mutation or contamination. I will likely try this with the next batch I brew.

I hope you can learn something from my experience and I hope this has motivated you to want to give yeast harvesting a try. It really isn’t as hard as it seems and seems to work well while being a nice way to save money.

Let me know if you harvest your yeast and what things you do differently!

The post Harvest and Reuse Yeast in Homebrewing appeared first on Some Guy Brewing.

Researching the porter style

I’ve only attempted to brew one porter before, and it tasted terrible. I think that was mostly due to contamination more than style or recipe, but nevertheless I’ve been a little gun shy about trying to brew another since. I needed to come up with a recipe so I did what I always do and started to research the style.

First I looked at the Brewer’s Association Beer Style Guidelines. Here I learned about the two main styles of porter: Brown porter and Robust porter. After looking at each of those styles I decided to brew a robust porter since I wanted a little higher alcohol content and stronger flavor. They describe a robust porter as having an original gravity of 1.045-1.060, color 30+ SRM and bitterness of 25-40 IBUs. From their description:

“Robust Porters are very dark to black. Hop aroma is very low to medium. They have a roast malt flavor, often reminiscent of cocoa, but no roast barley flavor. Caramel and other malty sweetness is in harmony with a sharp bitterness of black malt without a highly burnt/charcoal flavor. Hop flavor is very low to medium. Hop bitterness is medium to high. Diacetyl should not be perceived. Fruity esters should be evident, balanced with all other characters. Body is medium to full.”

After reading that I’m thinking definitely caramel malt and munich malt for sweetness and malt flavor; no roasted barley; and some black patent or chocolate malt. A recipe is starting to come together.

Now let’s look at the other definitive source for beer styles: The Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) 2015 Style Guidelines. BJCP does not break it down as simply as Brown porter and Robust porter. They list Baltic porter, English porter, American porter and Pre-Prohibition porter as possible styles. After reading through the style descriptions it seems like the American porter is the closest thing to what I’d like to make. Under characteristic ingredients they describe using dark malts like black or chocolate malt. For yeast and hops they say British or American can be used.

After reading all of that and looking at a few other recipes I decided to use crystal malt, munich malt, pale chocolate malt and a little black patent malt with kent golding and fuggle hops and White Labs WLP002 English Ale yeast (full recipe below). I went with the UK ingredients because I figured it was originally a UK style even if we were making it a little stronger than the original. Additionally I wanted to try adding some cocoa powder and brewer’s licorice to give it a little something something. That’s the joy of homebrewing, you get to put what you want in your beer!

Brew Day

I already described in a previous post how I made the yeast starter several days before brew day. Then it was just a second trip down to the brew store to pickup my grain bill and hops and it was time to brew. My dad was in town and I thought it would be fun to introduce him to brewing and have someone to drink a beer with during the mash. My daughter call’s him “Papa” so that’s how the beer got it’s name. Anyway, on to brew day!

Heating strike water for mash to 168°F

Crushed grain before mash

Preparing to sparge. These are my 10 gallon Rubbermaid coolers I use for HLT and MLT

Collecting the wort.

Mmmmm… dark porter goodness!

Boiling the wort

First hop addition

Kent Golding Hop Pellets

Mmmm… Licorice! I added about 3 inches.

Silver Serpent immersion chiller from Northern Brewer. I get to use my new Christmas present!

New chilling setup. Ice water in cooler is pumped via submersible fountain pump through the wort chiller.

Close-up of fountain pump in cooler.

Transferring to fermenter

Notes from brew day

The brew day went well and the specific gravity of the beer in the fermenter at the end of the day was 1.060 which was right around target. Mash temperature may have been a little higher than I was aiming for but that’s ok, I didn’t lose much in efficiency and the worst that happens is the beer is a little more full bodied. Oh darn. Fermentation kicked off within 12 hours.

I tried some new things this brew day that were worth noting:

1. First time adding cocoa powder to the mash – Previously when I’ve used cocoa powder in recipes, I’ve added it to the boil. After doing some reading I decided to add it to the mash, I guess it can be overly bitter if added to the boil or something like that. We’ll see if I notice a difference.
2. New chiller – Previously I had a homemade copper immersion chiller made from 50ft of 1/4″OD refrigerator supply tubing. It had great surface area but the narrow diameter and long tube slowed the flow of water too much preventing great heat exchange, but for the most part it worked. As a wish list item, I asked for a 3/8″ stainless steel immersion chiller and I actually got one! Stainless does not have the same heat transfer capability of copper but it makes up for it in how easy it is to clean and how sturdy it is. When I got it I tested it to see the flow of water and found that it was great. In fact it was almost too good, which lead to…
3. Recirculating ice water through chiller – If I were to use the new chiller hooked straight up to the hose outlet from my house, there would be a huge amount of water to come out over 10-20 minutes. In the summer that’s not usually too much of a big deal, I’ll just hook the outlet hose to a lawn sprinkler and water my lawn at the same time. But in the winter, I would just be turning my yard into an ice rink. So after looking around I stumbled on the idea of using a cheap submersible fountain pump (got mine from Harbor Freight for $35 plus a coupon) and a cooler of ice water. This reduces the amount of wasted water and in the summer allows you to circulate cooler water than the warmer ground water.

So how did it all work? I’ll have to wait until fermentation is complete to test the cocoa mashing. As for the chiller setup? It worked very well. I used snow from the deck in the cooler and that wasn’t the greatest plan. Next time I’ll definitely have a couple 10 pound bags of ice and a bunch of salt to throw in the cooler and really make the circulating water cold. I’d also do a better job of moving the inlet and the outlet further away from each other in the cooler though I don’t think that affected efficiency very much.

All in all, good brew day. This will sit in primary for the next 7-10 days and then in secondary for another few weeks. I’ll let you know how it tastes when it’s done! The complete recipe is below:

The post Papa’s Porter – Robust Porter with Chocolate and Licorice appeared first on Some Guy Brewing.

I switched to kegs from bottles less than a year after I started brewing. Kegging offers the ability to control carbonation better plus less hassle  when filling. Only one container to sanitize, only one siphon to start. Right now I have a small under counter refrigerator (no freezer compartment) that can hold two 5 gallon cornelius or “corny” kegs. These kegs are perfect for homebrewing as they hold 5 gallons, have parts that are readily available and are themselves available used for relatively cheap.

Some of you who worked in the food service industry a while ago may recognize these, yes these once were commonly used to hold syrup and lived under soda fountains to mix with the carbonated water to make soda! Now they are no longer used as the industry has moved to a more disposable system, which is actually great for us homebrewers because these can be had used for not too much money. A good cleaning, refresh some of the gaskets and get a couple fittings and presto! you have the perfect homebrew kegging system.

What I’m Kegging

The beer I’m kegging today is actually the first I’ve brewed in almost 2 years. I brewed it the day after Christmas (before I started the blog so no writeup, though maybe I’ll post the recipe in a later post) .It’s an old recipe that I make every year for our family reunion on the lake. The lake is a little inland lake that my dad always likes to point out is full of “goose and duck shit,” hence the name of the beer. It tastes good, I’ve tweaked the recipe to the point where I like it and can reproduce it pretty easily. Basically it was an easy start back into brewing for me.

Carboy of Brown Ale

Anyway now it’s done fermenting. Technically I probably should rack it into a secondary and let it sit for a while, but I’m impatient and want to have something on tap again. Plus, it’s homebrew, so what if it’s not completely perfect.

How to Keg – Equipment and Directions

• Sanitizer solution
• Racking cane or Auto-siphon
• Siphon Tubing
• Keg
• 5 gallon bucket – not necessary but useful
• Beer (duh!)

1. Pull fermenter full of tasty beer out of the cool, dark place you’ve been keeping it and place it on a high shelf or counter. This is necessary to get a good siphon. Let the fermenter settle again while you clean and sanitize.
2. Gather your supplies. Disassemble all keg parts and clean thoroughly. Sanitize keg and all parts. Dump sanitizer solution into 5 gallon bucket and reassemble keg. When reassembling the keg, most kegs have a stamped “In” and “Out” on the outside of the keg, and while you don’t need to follow those directions it is VERY helpful to put the short gas tube and gas fitting on the “In” side while the long liquid dip tube and the liquid fitting goes on the “Out” side. There is a difference between the gas fitting and the liquid fitting so pay attention to that. Mixing those fittings up can lead to a poor fit and I’ve seen the plastic fittings that connect the CO2 tank to the keg explode because of built-up pressure. Sanitize siphon tubing and racking cane/auto-siphon.
   

   Starting Auto-Siphon

3. Pull stopper and airlock off fermenter. Attach tubing to racking cane or auto-siphon and insert into fermenter. Place other end of tubing into keg. Start siphon. That last sentence is only two words but can be a bear. Full disclosure, my first brewing kit came with an auto-siphon and that is the only thing I have ever used to start a siphon with. Using a racking cane seems difficult to me though I know people do it. To each their own, but I prefer the ease of an auto-siphon
   

   Kegging Beer

   
   

4. Fill keg with beer. When keg is almost full or when siphon gets down to the yeast cake stop the siphon. Seal keg.
5. Attach CO2 supply to keg with plastic fittings and send gas to the keg at a very low pressure. If you don’t hear the slight sound of gas entering the keg, double check all your fittings.  The top of the keg should have a blow-off valve, open that and make sure the keg is pressurized. Open this blow-off valve a few times, each time letting the keg fill up with CO2 again. This helps to remove oxygen from the keg since CO2 will displace the oxygen, which prevents oxygenation of your beer and the nasty flavors that can result.
   

   Keg Setup

6. Once you’re sure CO2 is being supplied to the keg, bring the pressure up to normal pressure (I use 11psi at 38°F but you can change that depending on how carbonated you want your beer to be and what temperature you keep it at). Listen for any leaks. Sometimes I’ll bring the pressure up higher for the first couple days to carbonate the beer a little faster though I’m not sure how well that actually works. Other people suggest bringing the pressure up and shaking the keg to carbonate more quickly. Again, the times I’ve tried that I haven’t had much luck but YMMV.

After kegging, place keg in refrigerator and allow to sit. I’m usually impatient with my beers and try them after 24 hours and as soon as they reach an acceptable level of carbonation I’m drinking them. That is not the ideal so it’s something I’m working on. Letting the beer sit for days or weeks is much better for it and I always notice improvement in the beer over the next week or two as I’m drinking it. But that’s it. The beer is in the keg, at some point I hook up the liquid line to my taps and I’m ready to roll!

If you’d like more information about kegging, including how to calculate volumes of CO2 and how to dispense from your system you can check out the following links:

• Keg Carbonation Calculator – Brewer’s Friend
• Dispensing Beer: Tips from the Pros – BYO Magazine

The post How to Keg – Kegging the Duck Muck Brown Ale appeared first on Some Guy Brewing.

Why should you make a yeast starter?

Yeast are the most important part of the brewing process. The goal of the whole brewing process is to extract sugars from malted barley, add hops for flavor so that you end up with a sugary liquid called wort (which tastes like a hopped grain tea, in other words not really that great). Yeast is what actually turns your wort into beer! Making a starter is useful because it:

1. Verifies that your yeast is viable
2. Increases cell count before pitching

Number 1 is important because you wouldn’t want to pitch yeast that was mishandled during shipping and as a result is dead. Pitching dead yeast into your beer would result in delayed fermentation (since you’d only realize the problem a day or more after pitching and you’d then have to re-pitch) and potential infection. That leads us to Number 2, pitching a large amount of healthy yeast cells ensures a quick start to fermentation which can limit the chance of infection from bacteria in the environment. A large, healthy population of yeast will outcompete any small amount of bacteria that happens to make it in after the sanitation process.

When do you need a starter?

If you’re using dry or certain types of liquid yeast a starter may be optional. In the case of dry yeast you can easily pitch high cell counts. In the case of pitchable liquid yeast, they are produced to have 70-140 billion cells and is perfect for most regular gravity beers. However, in many cases a starter is not a “nice to have” but a “need to have.” You should always make a starter if you are:

• Making a high gravity beer (>1.070)
• Using a “smack pack”, slant or other non-pitchable yeast
• Using a pitchable yeast that is past its “Best Before” date
• Making a lager with lower pitch temperatures

If you are using a pitchable yeast while it’s in date on a regular gravity beer, you don’t need a starter but there’s no harm in making one so long as you use good technique. All of this assumes you’re making a regular 5 gallon batch of beer, if you’re brewing larger volumes you definitely need to make a yeast starter every time. Right now, I only have equipment to make 5 gallon batches therefore the rest of the article will be based on making a 5 gallon batch.

How to make a starter

So you’ve decided you’d like to make a starter, what now? First you have to decide how big of a starter to make. The volume determines how many yeast cells are produced in the starter: larger volume, more resources, more yeast cells. There’s different calculators online (my favorite is Mr. Malty’s) and in brewing software packages but I usually make either a 1 quart or 2 quart starter depending on what beer I plan to brew. I use a 1 quart for most regular beers and a 2 quart starter for high gravity beers (>1.070 OG).

Now that you know how big of a starter you want to make it’s time to make it! You’re basically making a mini batch of wort for the yeast to grow in. The following recipe produces a wort with a starting gravity a little over 1.020, this should work fine.

Ingredients and equipment to make a starter.

Ingredients and Equipment

• 1 quart water (or 2 quarts)
• 1/2 cup Light Dried Malt Extract – DME (1 cup for 2 quart starter)
• Yeast of choice
• 4 quart saucepan
• Empty growler, Erlenmeyer flask or other sanitized container that is large enough
• Funnel (not 100% necessary but does make the pouring easier)

Directions

1. Add water to saucepan and bring to boil.
2. Remove from saucepan, add DME and return to boil. Note: Be careful of boil overs at this stage, boil overs are messy and you lose starter wort. Monitor the pot and if it starts to boil over quickly remove from heat until it calms back down.
3. Once you’ve returned to a nice rolling boil, let the wort boil for 10 minutes.
4. While your wort is boiling you can sanitize the container you’re using for the starter as well as the funnel. I use Star-San to sanitize all of my equipment, but there are plenty of other options. I like it because it takes 5 minutes and doesn’t need to be rinsed off.
   

   Adding hot starter wort to erlenmeyer flask.

5. When the wort has finished boiling, transfer to your starter container and place container in an ice bath to cool it down. I don’t usually use a thermometer for this step. I feel the container until it is cool to the touch. The goal is to get the wort down to 70°F before pitching. If you’re going to use a thermometer make sure it is sanitized. At this point anything that comes in contact with the wort needs to be sanitized.
   

   Cooling starter to pitch yeast.

   

   Pitching yeast into starter wort.

6. Once the wort has cooled to room temperature it’s time to pitch the yeast into the wort. Sanitize the mouth of the starter container and the package of yeast (I use cheap vodka or other liquor). Add the contents of the yeast package to wort.
7. Put a stopper of some kind on the container. I’ve used a sanitized piece of aluminum foil loosely wrapped around the top, a rubber stopper and airlock or a foam stopper. Any of these will work. It shouldn’t be air-tight since fermentation produces gas and it doesn’t need to be a sterile barrier because the starter wort will only ferment for 3-4 days in this container.
   

   Aerating yeast starter by swirling.

8. Swirl starter vigorously to introduce air into the solution which the yeast need to grow.
9. Let sit in a dry, dark place that will keep the solution at around 65-70°F. In the first two days agitate the solution again every 6 hours or so. If you have a swirl plate, put it on that and forget about it. Otherwise some swirling will do the trick. Since this is such a low volume of liquid, the fermentation can happen very quickly. So don’t worry if you don’t see any active fermentation, you probably just missed it.
10. Let the starter sit until brew day so it can settle. On brew day, the yeast should have settled on the bottom in a nice thick cake. Carefully pour off about 80% of the liquid without disturbing the yeast cake. Then swirl the solution to get everything back in solution and pitch into your fermenter with the cooled wort you just brewed.

If everything went as planned you should see activity within 24 hours and get the best fermentation possible out of your little batch of yeast. There’s loads of information out there on the internet, here are some that I like:

• Homebrew Starter Tips – White Labs
• Making A Starter – Wyeast Laboratories, Inc.
• Mr. Malty – Pitching Rate Calculator

The post Yeast Starter – An important first step appeared first on Some Guy Brewing.