Double brew-day Sunday = Double yeast-starter Friday

 

Wyeast 1056 - American Ale on the left for an IPA and Wyeast 3463 - Forbidden Fruit on the right for a Belgian Blonde. 

IPA II - Brewed with tips from a brewmaster

The first IPA was certainly satisfactory but wasn't exactly as envisioned. The final bitterness, aroma, body, head and alcohol content fell short of the pre-calculated values. It was still perfectly drinkable so I knew that I hadn't done anything "wrong" but there must have been something I could do "more right" during the next attempt.

As luck would have it, while attending the annual St. John's Beer Fest, I was introduced to the brewmaster at the Yellow Belly Brewery. We chatted briefly and he said that anytime I wanted to stop by and talk brewing, he would be more than happy to give me some tips, and... wait for it... free yeast!!

Now free (and fresh!) yeast might not sound like something most people would get excited about but I couldn't wait to schedule my next brew day and take him up on his offer. So I went down to see him one afternoon after work, with a bottle of my last IPA, the recipe sheet and a head full of questions.

The first thing we did was crack open the bottle I brought for him. It poured out with a decent head and a slightly darker colour than his Yellow Belly Pale Ale (one of the only hoppy beers served in Newfoundland). He took a few sips and commented "Good beer. I would drink that."... Not too bad, eh? I was pretty happy with that review anyway.

We spent the next hour discussing brewing (my process and his), and in the end I took away some tips that will stick with me for the rest of my brewing days. I won't go into any more detail than I have to, but a few things I learned are:

1. Boil everything it one pot - Having all the wort in one pot (as opposed to 3) leads to better hop utilization (ie: more bitterness), most consistent flavour and less liqud lost to boil-off.

Now that's a big pot.

2. Harden the water. The water in St. John's is quite soft (ie: low in calcium). A calcium deficiency can reduce the mash/boil efficiency, meaning less sugars and ultimately lower alcohol content. 

Gypsum. Apparently the Sin Jawns wadda isn't 'ard enough.

3. Cool the wort faster. The faster you cool it down from boiling to room temp, the less hop aromas will escape and the less chance you have of a bacterial infection... I should say, the pot in the bathtub is only a slightly improved technique over leaving the pot in a snowbank for a couple hours. I hope to have a proper work chiller soon. Pending budgetary approval.

Improved cooling technique.

3. Get all the alpha acids oils out of the hops. He didn't advise me on this one, but rather that doing my normal slow wort straining using a sauce pan and strainer, I poured the cooled wort and hops through a straining bags and then squeezed every last ounce of hop oil into the beer.

"Improved" straining technique.

4. Use healthy, viable yeast. It doesn't get much better than yeast fresh from a local microbrewery.

Real brewery yeast. Fresh off the conical.

Shaken and well poured.

I also added some CaraPils malt to the recipe for better mouthfeel and foam stability.

Tasting/seeing the results, I am certainly very pleased and wouldn't change anything the next time I make it.

Nice active head.

I left the brewmaster a bottle of it but unfortunately never got a chance to get his reviews before we moved back to PEI. I will look him up, the next time I'm over for a visit.

So farewell Newfoundland. The hoppiest beer ever served on the Rock (as far as I know) was a one-shot deal.

All the pics here.

Triple C IPA

Well due to several (positive!) events going on, I neglected the blog quite a bit in March... but that didn't keep me from brewing!!

Shortly after I went through my first all-grain brewing experience, I was eager to improve my technique and apply what I learned to another batch. A fellow Islander joined me for this brewing session and we split the costs and the bounty.

The choice of beer was easy. We wanted to brew a big IPA like the Garrison Brewery's Imperial IPA. 

Now before I go too far, I just want to set the record straight and let you all know that our once-beloved Nova Scotia India Pale Ale is certainly not a IPA according to the Beer Style Guidelines. It is not even close to being bitter and hoppy enough...

The first 2 glasses of our IPA, served in ironic mugs.

In terms of recipe, we looked into a few IPA recipes from the Joy of Homebrewing and from other resources online. We were also reliant on the stock of the local homebrew store, which didn't happen to have the exact hops we were looking for originally. In any case, this was the final grain-bill:

• 14lb 4oz Canadian 2-row Pale Malt
• 500g Crystal Malt - 40L 
• 12oz Toasted Malt

(Sorry for the mixing of imperial and metric units but that's just how it's going to be on this blog.)
 
We actually bought 15 lbs of the 2-row and then toasted 12 oz of it in the oven for 15mins @ 350F, stirring it around a bit after 10.

The mash was done in my converted Coleman cooler. We added hot water in a ratio of 1¼ quarts per pound to achieve a mash temperature of 155F (5.03 gallons @ 169F). 

Mashing in the grain with the hot water.

Checking the mash temperature

This was held for 60mins, after which the sweet liquor was drained out completely, yielding a volume of about 3.5 gallons. In order to account for evaporation during the boil, the final target volume was 7.5 gallons so we needed to rinse/drain the grain with 4 more gallons of water. This was split into two equal parts of near boiling water, which before draining was allowed to rest for 15mins each time.

The drained grain.

This technique is called batch sparging and I found the process/result/stress-factor were much improved compared to the poor attempt we did at fly sparging the first go around with all-grain. Both sparging techniques are described more here.

Once the mash was done,  we moved on to boiling the wort and added the following hops:

• 2oz Chinook (full boil - 60mins)
• 1oz Citra (5mins remaining)
• 1oz Cascade (5mins remaining)

Adding the boiling hops.

We also added 1 Tbsp of Irish Moss for the final 15 mins of the boil. This is supposed to attract solids and make your final product more clear. I think that it helped anyway.

The remaining 1oz each of Citra and Chinook were used to dry-hop the beer, after it had finished fermenting in the bucket and was transferred over to the carboy for conditioning.

Dry-hopping with Citra and Cascade

The yeast we used was a classic American Ale yeast, Wyeast 1056. Their liquid yeast packs are only designed to inoculate five gallons of wort (up to 1.060 SG) and since our batch was around 6 gallons with an SG of ~1.070, we needed to grow more cells ahead of time.

Growing the yeast starter. Picture taken before I found out the hard way the airlock was a bad idea.

I used this online calculator and since I wasn't sure how much I would be able to attend to it,  I compared the results from Intermittent Shaking to Simple Starter and averaged them. Meaning a 1.5L starter would suffice. This was the recipe for the yeast starter:

• Water - 1.5 L
• Dry Malt Extract (DME) - 1.5 cups
• Boil 10mins
• Add 3/4 tsp yeast nutrient 
• Boil 10mins
• Cool to 20C in sink
• Pour into growler
• Shake to aerate
• Add yeast 

The target SG of the starter was 1.040 but since I didn't measure the DME by weight (bought a scale the next day), I ended up with 1.060, so I diluted it slightly before I pitched the yeast. Probably didn't need to dilute but I did anyway. The next night, when I was "stirring", foam and liquid starting spraying out the top of the airlock! I then found out that you are suppose to just put some loose fitting foil over the top of your starter jug... 

Here's a link to the online recipe calculator I used which includes the calculated/estimated values for the final bitterness and alcohol percentage... a professional brewer estimated the actuals to be 6.5% and 45 IBUs. He said it was good enough for him to drink though!

It was fermenting in the bucket for 11 days, then dry-hopped in the carboy for 10, then bottled and allowed to carbonate for 9 more before we poured the first tasty glasses.

The state of fermentation after 4 days.

This beer was certainly delicious and between myself, SWMBO and a few other friends, we're almost out! Good thing I'm brewing more in the morning...

More pics here.

First time all-grain brewing (aka: Hefeweiss: Part 1)

In case you didn't know, I love homebrewing and have been making my own beer in St. John's for about a year and half now. When I was in Halifax, I helped those other donkeys make a few batches of wine and beer and once we moved into our (rented) house here, I couldn't wait to get my own equipment and start brewing.

Up until the other day, I had been brewing exclusively with malt extract but adding my own hops. For example, here are some pics of a Pilsner brew from a few weeks ago. That recipe used Cooper's Lager (hopped malt extract), honey, Saaz and Hallertauer hops, and Wyeast Budvar Lager yeast.

Filtering the boiled hops out of a recent Pilsner brew.

I am pretty happy with the way the latest beers have turned out, but wanted to move on to the next level. That meant finding a recipe and taking the malted grains and extracting the fermentable sugars myself.

Over the Christmas break, we discovered a delicious wheat beer called Konig Ludwig Weissbier, which was part of a donkey beer tasting night in Halifax.

Beer tasting contestants. Early Jan 2011.

Like Hoegaarden or Rickard's White, it's a wheat beer but doesn't have any added spices like those Belgian styles. It tastes like bananas, cloves and vanilla and most of the flavour comes from the yeast used. It also leaves a bit of sediment in the glass, which might not be for everybody. So I think technically, it's a Hefeweiss (aka Hefeweizen), which is an unfiltered Weissbier, which is a German-style wheat beer.

Anyway, we loved it so I really wanted to make a wheat beer and hopefully chose a recipe that I could use as a basis for future brews.

My recipe was: 

• 3kg of wheat malt
• 2kg of German Pilsner barley malt
• 1oz Hallertauer hop pellets 
• Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan Weizen

Malted wheat.

Malted barley.

I purchased my ingredients and got some really helpful advice from my local homebrew store, Brewery Lane.



I used a regular infusion mash, where you mix the grain and water together and hold it at a fixed temperature for about an hour, then sparge (rinse the sugar out). I used my cooler as a mash tun and converted it to lauter tun by adding a filter and valve, following the plans on the homebrewtalk.com wiki here.

Filter using stainless-steel braid.

Replaced drain-plug with a valve and hose.

There are other types of mashing such as two-stage infusion, or double/triple decoction but those are more complicated, and when getting started and using what are called "highly-modified" grains, single infusion is fine.

The mash went alright but I did have some issues with hitting my target temperature of 152F. When you add room temp grain to water at a ratio of 1 LB to 1 Quart, there should be an 18F drop. I had heated up my water to 170F using 2 pots but I think that made it cool down faster so when everything was mixed together, my temp was 147F. I had a homebrew, didn't panic too much and read that was fine, but that the conversion would just take longer and the beer might not have as much body (I can live with that).

Next time I would heat to 175-180F. Would be good to add a faucet on to the pot, like I did to the cooler, to keep the water flowing while I add the grain.

Adding the grain to hot water for the mash.

After an hour, when I opened the cooler, it certainly smelled like a real brewery inside. I extracted the sugary wort by slowly pouring more hot water over the top (which unfortunately cooled a lot again) and draining at the "same" rate from the other end. The spent grain wasn't sweet at all so I think the conversion worked!

Spent grain after mash.

I was targeting a final volume of 6 gallons so I collected 7 to account for boil off but after the boil I was actually only left with 5 gallons. I didn't add more water because my specific gravity was 1.050 already and I didn't want to dilute it more.

Boiling 7 gallons on the stove isn't ideal.

Chilling the hot wort in a bucket of snow.

Ready to ferment in bucket with airlock.

I learned a lot from this and can't wait for the next brew day. Really there's only so much reading you can do before you have to actually just brew it and get a better understanding of the process.

My buddy Jeff was a big help. He left a bit before the boil was done because he had to go home for supper. I failed to tell him it would take all of the afternoon and part of the evening to brew.

There are some more pictures up here. I would have taken more of the later stages but I was too tired to think and had a big clean-up ahead of me. Just like my homebrew hero Charles Papazian, I had used almost every pot, strainer and utensil in our kitchen!

The next evening, I made a short video describing the fermentation progress so far (will turn my phone sideways next time!):

I plan on leaving the brew in the bucket for 3 weeks, in order to complete the fermentation and settle a little. Then I'll prime and bottle and it should be carbonated and ready to drink 2 weeks later. Mit hefe!

Blueberry Wine: Part 1

I've been meaning to make blueberry wine for quite a while now. I have done a few grape concentrate wine kits but wanted to take it to the next level and make wine from scratch. Using blueberries as my fruit seemed like a logical choice given the abundance of them each Fall in Newfoundland. 

I wanted to get a good understanding of the process so I bought The Joy Of Home Winemaking which goes into great detail about how to make fruit wines or just about any other kind of non-grape wine. I also picked up the scratch wine kit from my local homebrew store, which includes a blueberry wine recipe of their own. 

Scratch wine kit ingredients

Using the recipe from the book and the store, I came up with my process, which seems to be working so far!

Fermentation activity after 3 days

Ingredients:

• Blueberries - ~4 kg 
• Honey - 2 kg 
• Acid Blend - 1 tsp 
• Bentonite - 1.5 tsp 
• Campden Tablets - 3 
• Pectic Enzyme Powder - 1 tsp 
• Potassium Sorbate - 2 tsp 
• Grape Concentrate - 16 oz 
• Yeast Nutrient - 1 tsp 
• Yeast - Lalvin EC-1118 
• Water - ~10 L

This will make about 11.5 L or 3 gallons with about 8% alcohol. I wanted to make sure it tasted like the berries so I thought a 2:1 ratio of berries to honey made sense. I could have made 1 gallon of stronger wine but I wanted to be able to give people bottles so I went for quantity over strength.

Also, since I'm using honey, this is technically melomel and not wine, but I'm just going to call it wine for simplicity.


Laura and I picked an ice cream bucket of berries in the Fall and that took a couple of hours! I probably only picked a third of that so she was twice as fast as me. I knew I needed more berries but didn't want to pick them myself. Fortunately, a co-worker gave me another large bundle and I will be happy to give him some wine when it's done.

Anyway, let's get on to the making of the wine. Since we don't have much counter space or a large basin sink, I clean and sterilize all my gear in the bathtub so that's pretty sweet.

Washing equipment in bathtub

The berries were frozen and since I wasn't thinking ahead, I had to thaw them out on low on the stove and with a couple of liters of water.

Thawing frozen berries

Once the berries were thawed out, I crushed them using a potato masher. You should wear dark clothes when you do this and keep away from walls and try not to splatter. Just for future reference. Anyway, I was sure to relax, not worry and poured a homebrew, just like my favorite book suggests.

With Laura's help I transferred the crushed berries to a nylon sack in my primary fermenter (bucket). This will keep the pulp out of the final product and make the berries easy to remove when the time comes in a couple of weeks.

Transferring berries to sack in bucket

I put 6 liters of water in another pot to boil the honey. Looking back, for that amount of honey I could have used half that amount of water but now I know for next time. This just meant that I was cooling down a larger volume of water where I could have just added cold water once everything was mixed together. For reference the SG of this mix was 1.096.

Adding honey to boiling water

Once it was boiling, I skimmed off the brown foam that collected on the top.

Brown foam skimmed off of boiling honey

I boiled for about half an hour and then put the pot in some cold water to cool it down to room temperature. To cool it down as fast as possible, I made a circulating system using some tubing and my auto-siphon. I got this idea from a free Booz How Tooz iPhone video tutorial.

Cooling down honey water using cold water circulation

I dissolved the bentonite, acid blend and crushed Campden tablets into a couple of liters of warm water and poured that over the berries, along with the grape concentrate. You can see the sack floating in the bucket here too. For reference, the SG of this mix was 1.041.

Adding grape concentrate to the bucket with the berries

Then I added the cooled honey water to the bucket. This total volume was 13.5 L with an SG of 1.064 at a temperature of 26C. The volume of the sack of berries is around 2 L so that will give me the 11.5 L final volume I need.

Specific gravity reading of 1.064

Final volume of 13.5 L

I took the bucket upstairs and covered in in a garbage bag to keep the light out and catch any spills. I have a space heater in the room to maintain a temperature of 20C.

Primary fermenter in garbage bag

It took this donkey four and a half hours from the time I started cleaning my equipment until I was done cleaning up. A normal person could probably do it all in 3 but that's just how I roll. 

You can't add the yeast until the fruit is broken down more and in order to break it down you use the pectic enzyme. One set of instructions said to add the enzyme 12 hrs after the Campden tables so I waited till the next morning.

24 hours after that, I added the yeast. I put the yeast in some warm water to activate it before adding.

Adding activated yeast to primary fermenter

I checked the must (mix of water, sugars and yeast) the next day and there was some activity. Not as much as beer, but I was happy to see that something was happening.

Fermentation after 1 day

You have to stir the must every day until you remove the berries. Otherwise, I guess the pulp gets rotten on the surface. I keep the spoon in there so I don't have to wash and sterilize it every day. I will take another SG reading after a week.

I'm going to leave the sack in there for a couple of weeks. Then I'll leave the must in the primary for another week and then rack over to the carboy until the the fermentation is done.

So far so good!

Check out the full photo album here.

Making blueberry wine.

Boiling water for the honey and thawing out the berries.

And of course, had to pour myself a homebrew.

-Hogie