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That’s it for now… Pics and more tomorrow!

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last month o’brian had generously shared with us a bottle of the stone collaboration with nøgne Ø and jolly pumpkin, which was a special holiday ale. very spicy from all the different ingredients used, but also delicious. stone’s got a great blog post about this beer.

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our first mishap occurred about an hour ago while gerry and i were milling the grain for the light and hoppy. thankfully it was toward the very end of the grain when it happened. we didn’t notice at the time, but a small, steel ball bearing went flying out of the mill across the basement, making the mill useless to us. we triggered the drill to start moving, but no grain was being crushed. so i ended up finishing off the small bit of grain in the blender on chop mode while gerry fooled around with the inner workings of the mill. that’s when he found the ball bearing and realized what had happened. we’ve now got the grain soaking and some water boiling and gerry is in the process of taking apart the mill. fun fun. meanwhile i’ve been doing some dishes and laundry to try to keep this place at least somewhat clean during this whole process. oh and blogging, yeah. more posting, pics and video coming later.

UPDATE:

measuring the grain

our new mill

perl wants to help

gerry and pam milling the grain for the stout after fixing the mill

racking the light n hoppy to a carboy

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5 gallon batch

9# American 2-row

1# Munich

1# Crystal 60

1# Roasted barley

1# Flaked Oats

1# Flaked barley

1# Chocolate Malt

1# Lactose sugar

.5 oz Magnum hops@60 minutes

.5 oz Magnum hops@10 minutes

1 packet SafAle S-04 English Ale yeast or WhiteLabs WLP002 English Ale Yeast

2 oz cocoa powder in secondary

1 vanilla bean in secondary

OG: 1.075

FG: 1.028

I have all the ingredients together and getting ready to grind the grains. Additionally, I created a starter for the yeast yesterday. I should have started it a couple of days ago, but I figure by the time I pitch today, it will be about 18-20 hours since making the starter. We’ll see how the fermenting plays out…

No disasters during the brewday, although it was quite busy- brewing and cleaning kegs at the same time is pretty tiring. It is now the day after, and fermentation is going a bit crazy- spewing a bit up into the airlock. I have changed the airlock 2 times already.

I have one question from my brewday, however- I checked my OG after adding in the lactose, not prior. Hpw can I calculate the contribution of the lactose? Since lactose is not fermentable, I would think that for an accurate OG I want the number BEFORE the lactose addition. Am I correct?

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we planned to get started at 9am, that is until we went downstairs this morning to find that we were out of propane.  we had totally forgotten.  so we made a trek down the st to rocky’s to fill up both our tanks, as well as pick up an extra adapter for the water filter since the one we previously used was attached to chris’ equipment that he took home weeks ago.   so while gerry went inside to find the adapter and pay the nicy lady for the propane, i was left to deal w/ the propane filler guy.  now that was a fun experience.. kinda odd actually, but entertaining at least.  it was an older dude who was quick to tell me that it’s far too cold to be cooking outside.  to which i responded, “but we’re making beer, and it’s never too cold to brew beer outside!”  and from that point he delightfully walked me over to the filling station while regaling me with tales of his wine making experiences and how he has led a happy and fulfilled life to the point where he could die tomorrow and be happy.  good for him.  but on to our fun and happy experiences of brewing beer…

so we were only set off by a half hour, not too bad.  in fact, we’re making great time.  we popped open an aventinus eisbock to share for breakfast after we slugged down some coffee and started the boil when we returned home.

here’s gerry dumping the initial hot water to preheat the cooler.

this is me vorlaufing

and then gerry forgot to close the valve when he poured the boiling water in, so he’s trying to skim the grain out of the kettle

measuring our efficiency w/ the refractometer, pre-boil

and we’re at 12 bricks, which is 75% efficiency

oh and then there’s me vorlaufing for the second time around

our ghetto brew setup in the snow

tasting the barley juice.. fucking delicious!!

and now we’re just waiting the hour or so for it to boil.  we added the willamette hops a little while ago.   then we need to chill it to 67 degrees, rack it to a carboy, then pitch the yeast from a 2000ml starter.  yay beer!  when it’s done fermenting we’ll rack it to a keg and then dry hop for about a week.  then we’ll rack it to another keg and lager it until st. paddy’s.  this should be a good beer for folks at the party who don’t enjoy the traditional irish stout. 

and now i’m to shower while the the boiling is finishing up.  we’ve got a few beer geek friends/guests stopping by for a peek at the brew and to sample some beverages while on their way up to the noho/amherst area to some of favorite beer haunts.

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