Big # Ten...mess with success

After the collander incident, I went back to Vegas Home Brew and asked Steve if he had a solution - of course...a grain bag.  I'd also managed to break my hydrometer, so got another.  After sanitzing everything with bleach, I lay the stuff I'm not using right away out on paper towels.  When I put the measuring cup on the towel, it stuck.  When I picked it up again the hydrometer went flying....apparently a not uncommon component to break in that or a similar manner. 

Everyone, including me liked the porter so much, I decided I better make it a regular and make some more.  No changes to the recipe, except that this time I threw the licorice into the boil for 15 minutes instead of 5 and I used Centennial hops instead of Cascade.

The new grain bag stopped any mishaps and really made for a much clearer wort.  Couple of bungee cords kept it in place.  Still used the collander to spray the water and wort during sparging over the whole grain bed. I actually used more water than I planned to sparge it and ended up with 2 and a half gallons after the boil.  So I called up Steve and asked him if he thought I could ferment it in the bucket even though it would be less than half full.  He said to go for it, so I just popped an airlock on it since the lid already had a hole and grommet to accommodate it.  Worked out great, although I missed being able to see the kreusen.  At least I didn't lose a quart blowing out through the hose like I usually did.

The result was terrific again, using the bucket as a fermenter and wrapped in towels and later the bottles in the cooler again.  The Fermentis Safale S-04 dry British Ale Yeast has proven to be very reliable.  This time the brew tasted much stronger due to the extended boiling of the licorice.  Maybe too strong for some people's taste, but I really enjoyed it.  Might try 10 mins next time.  Or something different.

Had another annoying problem when I was cleaning up.  Trying to dry the racking cane, I decided to get the water out, and shake it down like a thermometer.  SNAP.  Broke it right below the elbow.  Another trip back to Steve and I got one long enough to fit in the 6 gallon bucket instead of just the glass one gallon jugs.

During July, my wife, son and I went to the third Saturday's tour at the Joseph James Brewery in Henderson, NV.  Very inventive guys, and Matt give a great tour and great brews.  They had just gotten in a bunch of old bourbon barrels that had some leftovers in them.  They used them to brew a monster Russian Imperial Stout that had an extra kick, plus an anniversary brew for Aces and Ales pub, both of which were absolutely kickass.  After we left, we had to spend a while at the Subway in the complex for the effects to wear off.

I also contacted Anthony Gibson over at Tenaya Creek Brewery.  They don't have regular tours, but he gave my son and I a personal tour for over an hour and a half.  By now with all my reading, I peppered him with bunches of questions.  Great guy and a much more controlled process than Joseph James, but some of that is due to zoning issues.  Tenaya Creek has a grain silo outside that feeds right into their mill and on into the mash tun.  Joseph James' guys have to lug the bags of grain into the tun.  Anyway, an absolutely fascinating tour and he treated me to their seasonal Oatmeal Stout, that was totally off the hook.  They have a pub attached to the brewery, so soon they want to expand the brewery into a new building so they can also get a brewery license instead of a brewpub license.  Otherwise in NV they are subject to a 15,000 bbl limit.  Problem is that when they split the two, they will have to bring in a distributor just to move their kegs from the brewery to their own pub.  Another weird NV law - no doubt from lobbying by the few distributors in the state that have a lock on the business.  Not saying NV government is corrupt or anything....<ahem>.

Ninth Brew - on a roll!

At the SNAFU July meeting one member brought in his latest pale ale with a twist.  He had brewed two batches and dry hopped one of them.  What an amazing difference!  Now I had read Randy Mosher's "Radical Brewing" and was determined to make a good American Pale Ale.  Besides the Pale Ale malt, I used rice, munich malt, crystal malt and three different hops from the collection I'd now accumulated.  Calculated the IBU at 37 and the ABV at 7%.  I decided to add coriander to the boil and try the dry hopping using 3% Cascade pellets.

While I was at Vegas Home Brew picking up the grains, Steve had gotten in a bunch of 6 gallon fermenting buckets.  I figured it was time to make sparging easier on myself so I snagged one.  This really made the sparging easier, until my collander slipped and fell into the bucket, causing it to splash all over the cabinets, blinds, counter, etc. and dump the grains back into the wort.  So I threaded the siphon hose through the handles of the collander to hold it on top of the bucket and started sparging again.  By 8/6 this brew was in the bottle.  OMG!  It was phenomenal.  7.07ABV, strong head, nice carbonation, very clear and golden.  I couldn't really taste the coriander, but the dry hopped Cascade pellets made a huge difference.

 

 

Also asked my friends what I should call it.  Someone thought that coriander comes from India and suggested India Spiced Ale, but since the style is more like an American Pale Ale, I called it India Spiced APA.  Of course coriander doesn't come from India, but who cares.  Dressed up Bailey to look the part.

 

 



Eighth brew...porter redux

With the Dunkel languishing, I needed something to drink, so time for another porter.  By now I'd read Ray Daniels' "Designing Great Beers."  Vegas Home Brew has a nice little selection of herbs and loving licorice, I decided to add some root to the boil for this batch of porter.  I actually did a grain and attenuation calculation, thanks to the Android HomeBrew calculator, plus I found the Brew Timer app and entered my brewing schedule.  Later, I found the Brewing Assistant app and entered a couple recipes, but haven't actually tried using its timer.  Based on the calculations and a target ABV of 7%, I bounced up the quantity of pale ale and specialty malts and the amount of honey.

In June, Steve had given me an article, the time I was in with the Dunkel, that explained how to deal with the Vegas heat when using top fermenting yeasts.  Simple magic with evaporation, coolers and ice packs till you get to the temperature you want.  After the mash, I decided to use a collander for sparging, as the strainer wasn't big enough to hold all the grains.  The collander almost wasn't either but still was adequate.  But trying to do all this with my assortment of pots was getting difficult.  But the evaporation technique kept the fermenting jugs at a nice solid 70 degrees, with the house AC set to 80 or so.

I bottled it on 6/21 after only a week of fermenting.  I put the bottles in the cooler too with ice packs on either end of the cooler and covered the top of the bottles with a wet towel. This brew was finally ready for drinking on July 12th.  The licorice didn't come through as strong as I expected, but it was only in the boil for the last 5 minutes.  Still a fabulous result. 7.59% ABV, thick creamy head, nice mouthfeel, very malty.  I gave my daughter's fiance a six pack for a party they were having and he only let his guests share one bottle.  Since other people were going to see my brews, I came up with the Blind Dog name, after our older cocker, Bailey, who was blind in one eye, passed away the previous October.  I also named this brew after him...Bailey's Honey Porter.

 

Just hope Big Dog's doesn't think I was copying them.

 

Here's the original picture of Bailey.

 

 



Seventh brew...or how not to lager

As we got into April, the temperature started rising and I knew I wouldn't be able to ferment in the garage anymore.  With all my reading, it seemed logical that now was the time to switch to bottom fermenting yeast and lagering in the refrigerator.  I did some digging for recipes and ran across one for Munich Dunkel, in of all places, but Dave Miller's book,"Brewing the World's Best Beers".  

Tried a Dunkel just to be sure.  Or rather 6 of them.  In the name of research...okay, can't use that again, but pays to be sure.

After the mash, I kept it at 46-50 degrees for 9 days and it seemed to do just fine. Started with a 1.043 gravity and ended with a 1.012 for a little over 4% ABV.  A little low by .5% for the style, but I later realized that none of Dave Miller's recipes have enough grain specified. 

After bottling, and scouring the web for specs on the Wyeast #2038 and its finnickiness, I held it between 36 and 39 degrees.  After a couple weeks, I sampled a bottle...flat, barely 1/4 of head pouring straight down the middle of the glass.  Good retention though.  After a month I sampled a bottle...same, after two months I sampled a bottle...same, after three months I sampled a bottle...same.

Didn't help that everyone I spoke to at the SNAFU meeting just raised their eyebrows with, "Lagering?  I gave that up after one try." I took one over to Steve at Vegas Home Brew and when he pulled off the cap, he said, "Using screw top bottles?"  I hadn't even realized that a bunch of the bottles I'd been using were Blue Moon bottles.  Probably wasn't getting a good seal.  So I went home and suffered through drinking all the ones in Blue Moon bottles and promptly threw out about three cases of bottles.  Tried one that was in a Sam Adams bottle and it really wasn't any more carbonated than the ones in the Blue Moon bottles.

Finally, down to my last four bottles, I took one out and put it under a Shamwow in a cooler and soaked it every day in cold water.  Kept it a little below 70 degrees.  I left it that way for three weeks...and poof...carbonated finally.  Did the same with the last few bottles.  So with our Las Vegas Memorial Competition coming up, I have just enough to enter the contest and enjoy one for myself.

During this time, I'd attended several SNAFU meetings and tasted some great brews, both the May and June meetings had great raffles and home brews.  At the June meeting there was a case of Lagunitas Undercover Investigation Shut Down being raffled off.  What a crazy story that goes with it.

 



Sixth brew...Eureka!

After reading Papazian's book I had a much greater appreciation for what I needed to do, and a killer recipe for his Silver Dollar Porter.  I went back to Vegas Home Brew (www.vegashomebrew.com) and bought my ingredients.  I also decided to increase my brewing capacity to two gallons.  So I picked up another one gallon jug, an airlock and some hose.  It was only April, so it was still cool enough in the garage to ferment out there, as the temperature hovered in the high 60s, low 70s.

Fermenting Porter

 

I lost quite a bit of wort in the fermenters as you can see how much ended up in the cups in the video and how low the wort is in the jugs.  I made the mistake of adding water to make up the difference, which diluted the result down to 3.4% ABV.  But at least I knew where the problem lie this time.  Still, I came up with a good tasting brew and something I knew I could build upon.

 

I took a bottle back to Vegas Home Brew and shared it all around.  They told me about the local home brew club SNAFU (www.snafubrew.com).  If I joined, I'd get a nice discount from Vegas Home Brew on my future purchases.  So I went to their next meeting in May, and I joined up.  I expected maybe 10 people to be there at www.acesandales.com, where they meet.  The beer menu is mind boggling there - 30 taps, 88 different brews in bottles from all over the world.

 

The side room was packed with about 50 people and the pool tables were covered with brews and equipment that was going to be raffled off at the meeting:

 

I won 4 bottles of great brews, joined up, and ordered one of their new T-shirts.  After the raffle, people passed around their home brews for discussion.  Good thing they have a breathalyzer in the bar.

 

 



 

Fourth and Fifth Brews..or Damn you Dave Miller

I don't even remember how I ended up starting with Dave Miller's books, but somewhere I saw that he was the end-all, be-all of brewing.  Little did I know how dated his stuff was.  Probably can't blame it all on him, but for the life of me, I still haven't figured out what happened to my next two brews.  I thought I'd return to a pale ale, perhaps an American pale ale, not overly hoppy, just something simple and drinkable.  I picked Miller's Pale Ale recipe - 1.4 lbs of Pale Ale malt, .2 oz of crystal malt, for a one gallon brew. One third of an ounce of Fuggles for the bittering hops and 1/5 of an ounce of UK First Gold for the aroma hops.  Safaele S-04 Dry Yeast. 

 

I picked up all the ingredients at Vegas Home Brew (www.vegashomebrew.com) and got a hydrometer so I could check the gravity, having learned the need for that from the book.  Besides the 3 gallon brew kettle, that was my first additon to the original kit.  I had been scrounging stuff from the kitchen - a measuring cup, a scale, funnel, spoon, strainer, pots for heating water, lautering and starting yeast, a pair of hemostats that I used to use for clamping soldering projects, now used for clamping the siphon hose (the clamp that came with the kit was worthless), and a cup for catching the kreusen when it blew out the hose.

Everything seemed to go fine.  Of course I had not done any calculations on the expected gravity or IBUs, since I hadn't gotten that far in my studies.  Miller didn't cover those little technicalities, and I'm not so sure I was ready for them anyway.

The first gallon came out very bitter and low in ABV - 3.9%.  I eventually managed to finish all 10 bottles, but surely didn't share it with anyone.  So I tried again and increased the crystal malt to .4 ounces.  This time the ABV only made it to 1.3% and tasted so nasty that I managed to down two bottles and dumped the rest.  This after babying it through reracking into a secondary, adding isinglass finings to get more stuff to settle out, carefully racking into bottles and controlling the temperature. 

Seriously, I needed to do some more studying, so I got the Kindle version of  "The Complete Joy of Home Brewing" by Charles Papazian.  I also needed a more forgiving recipe.

Second and third brews

So in reading Dave Miller's Homebrewing Guide, I found out there was something called extract brewing.  Digging around on the web, gathering all kinds of brewing supply store sites, I got a hankerin' for some Oatmeal Stout.  I had been dreaming of a thick creamy headed oatmeal stout like the one I'd had at River City Brewing in Sacramento back in the 90s.  So I dug around and found Mr. Beers Sticky Wicket Oatmeal Stout HME.  Ordered it and waited about a week.

I still only had a one gallon capacity, so I could only brew one can at a time.  I had already started to realize that brewing 9 or 10 bottles per month wasn't going to cut it.  So I started collecting more bottles.  And of course pick up an Oatmeal Stout for <ahem> research purposes.

And thinking ahead some Porter since I knew that would eventually be on the horizon.

And just to be sure what I wanted to do next, pick up a bit of a selection.

 

 

Well, finally the first Oatmeal Stout was ready on 3/1/12, good thing too, because I had already finished off the 3 bottles of the other Christmas present.  Mr. Beer didn't disappoint.  I wasn't crazy about the all extract process...just seemed a bit too easy...kind of like the TV Dinner version of brewing, without the TV Dinner taste.  Definitely, no complaints on the results.

 



 

 

Moving on to Dave Miller's other book - "Brewing the World's Great Beers", I decided I'd go back to an all-grain recipe, having had such great results so far.