FOOLCiRCLE

Well, it’s a little dated material, but also some pretty cool homebrew stuff on the Fool Circle front. Last week I brewed my first Imperial Stout since the Enigma fiasco. A did a couple things unorthodox, but overall I think we’re going to be looking at a fine beer here.

Almost brimming 15 gallon mash-tun

Last Wednesday, September 26th, I mashed in and collected the wort for the kettle. And last Thursday, September 27th, I boiled and collected the wort for the fermenter. I had never done a brew day over two days, but I was determined to brew an Imperial Stout (IS) by the end of September (not really sure why) and I had basically run out of weekends. Plus, I wanted to see how good or bad a week-night brew day session would be. Of course I chose to do it with an IS which is a much more involved process than a regular beer. And just to keep things interesting, I also decided sort of on the fly to try and run-off a “small beer” from the left over sugars in the grains. So essentially I wound up with the potential for two beers to come from one mash, a high gravity Imperial Stout and a low gravity “small beer” or “table beer”.

 

Collected wort from the mash: 6 gallons for the “small beer” and approximately 8 gallons for the Imperial Stout

After the grains were mashed in, all the water heated, and the mash sparged (twice) I had collected about 14 gallons of wort total. I collected the wort in my kettle then transfered it into sanitized carboys over night. One of my biggest concerns was that there would be some sort of thermal-shock problem with the glass of the carboys considering I was putting like 15o degree liquid into them. Fortunately (as far as I can tell) there was no major stress and the glass held up fine.

The following evening I was originally going to start my boil (135 minutes) with the Imperial Stout with the mind frame of if things ran too late I could always bag doing the small beer. Instead I switched things around and boiled (75 minutes) the “small beer” first thus forcing myself to complete both beers in one night. As the “small beer” was beginning to come to the end of its boil time and I was anticipating starting the Imperial Stout I came to the sudden conclusion that I was about to run into a problem. That problem was I had anticipated beginning the boil for the IS while the “small beer” was cooling, but I had forgotten that I only have one kettle thus eliminating the possibility of doing both at the same time and consequently possibly adding between 30-45 minutes to my night. I suddenly came up with the idea that I didn’t need a second kettle just a second vessel to collect the wort from the small beer and be able to use my wort chiller at the same time. I quickly sanitized my bottling bucket, measured the wort chiller in the bucket (great fit), and waited for the time to come.

 

Bringing the Imperial Stout up to boil while simultaneously  cooling the “small beer” down from boiling

I began to cool the “small beer” for about 5 minutes in the kettle initially dropping its temperature to below 150 then transfered it to the bucket. I then dumped the two carboys of liquid love for the IS into the kettle and got ready for a long boil. I think the total time the IS was in the kettle from bringing it up to temperature, boiling, and cooling was about 210 minutes, like three and a half hours (forever)! By the time I had things all cleaned up and pitching yeast it was a little after 1:30AM and I was whooped. For yeast I used the same for both beers, a 3rd generation yeast cake of WLP001. I was concerned about it’s viability even though I made a starter and it took off fine, but there didn’t seem to be any problems.

 

Imperial Stout chugging along the next morning 

So as of now I will say there didn’t seem to be any adverse side effects to splitting the brew day up over two evenings or from using a 3rd generation yeast cake, which should have been pretty darn potent actually. I will keep all posted with any interesting gravity readings or happenings that I notice with these beers. I will also say that a week night brew day is totally feasible in two days without a question, and still feasible in one day as long as things run smoothly with “regular” style beer. Oh, and a head-lamp-style flash light is your best friend while working outside in the dark, it gives you both hands, directional light, and keeps the bugs to a minimum. As you may have guessed from the title of this post I have dubbed the Imperial Stout “Vader”, anyone have any good suggestions for a name for the “small beer”?

I brewed my Saison back in the beginning of June and I now finally feel as though it has reached maturation. This been was giving me issues in the beginning, in particularly carbonation issues, but now I find it to be just a superb Belgian-style beer.

 

The beer pours a slightly hazy copper-amber color into my new tulip glass. The haze appears to be a chill haze after comparison to a room-temperature bottle which poured brilliantly clear. The beer now stands a good two fingers high with foam and leaves a light and slight Belgian-lace on the glass. Minus the haze, the appearance is beautiful.

The aroma is rather complex, which is good. First things that hit: spicy, peppery, rose-like, and alcohol notes. Next: Floral, a little solvent-esque, some rum, and some toffee aromas.  The aroma fills the nose and burns just a little, which could be a hint at fusel alcohols which are the kind you don’t want in the beer.

The taste matches the aroma, peppery, alcoholic, some rum. Not very Saison like, but not non-Saison like, but good, interesting, growing, and complex.

The mouthfeel is medium to medium light with springy carbonation but no where close to effervescent.  A little slick on the palate, a little smooth, a little hot, but complimentary to each other. The slickness reminds me of beers that are made with rye, yet this been contains no rye.

Overall I’d say this is a quite a delicious Belgian-style beer, but maybe not the best Saison. I thoroughly enjoy drinking this beer and could easily have another, but I think the drinkability range would stay near two for this beer.  It did turn out to be close to 8% alcohol by volume plus with the excess of spicy flavor, it is one to appreciate. I still have about a half of a case left if anyone is interested in trying it before it is gone.

OK the score sheets and prizes came in the mail today so now everyone can hear how we officially did.

 

 For prizes for this competition they gave out cool medals with the Malt Madness logo on them instead of ribbons, I liked them alot. The biggest issue is that for the Gnarleywine we had two brewers and received one medal. I have already written to the Malt Madness coordinator requesting if we can have a second one, we’ll see. For the 3rd place Gnarleywine we received two 40z (approx) bags of pellet hops, they are Brewer’s Gold and Ahtanum. I have never heard of the Ahtanum variety, but Hop Union has it listed in the data base. Personally I could use either since I have no preference, so I’ll let Garrett decide which hops he wants and he can have them. And for the 2nd place Hazelnut Brown I received a Wyeast T-shirt (correct size) and a Wyeast coupon for a free Activator pouch of yeast. I have never used Wyeast yeast before so this should be cool. Looks like Garrett received his score sheets back yesterday so you can check out his post here.

Now, onto the summaries of the score sheets:

• Saturday IPA – 19/20 – “This beer is lacking in hop aroma, flavor, and bitterness; the finish is sweet and cloying.” – “Needs greater attenuation, pitch more yeast.” (I must say, this beer had 22 total ounces of hops and went from 1.074 to 1.016, these comments don’t even make sense.)
• Saison – 28/25 – “A Saison that may have fermented a little warm.” – “Perhaps lower fermentation temperature to eliminate fusel alcohols.”
• Gnarleywine – 38/32 – Third Place American Barleywine – “An excellent American Barleywine, well done!” – “This is a malt monster! I love this barleywine . . . Very, very drinkable.”
• Hazelnut Brown – 37/36 -  Second Place Specialty Beer – “A nice beer that features prominent hazelnut and chocolate flavor.” – I enjoy the hazelnut flavor, it presented itself nicely.”

It’s funny (in a not so good way), I just looked at all the judges ranks and was kind of turned off by how “young” this group appeared to be (I know I am only a BJCP Recognized Judge). Out of the 8 judges their were 2 Apprentices (unqualified), 5 Recognized ( the lowest qualified level) and 1 Grand Master Level III that judged out beers. Our best score came from the GMLIII judge, nice! Anyway, I’ll take what we got. I think the next local competition is Split Rock in November.

I bottled the Peach ABA tonight. I honestly wasn’t 100% sure it was ready to be bottled for there were still tiny bubbles every so often near the surface of the beer, but it had been thirty-eight days since it was brewed and the SG was 1.012, so I figured (hoped) I was safe.

 

I suppose my two biggest concerns with bottling this batch was trying to siphon the beer off the peaches without disturbing them and making sure I got my bottling sugar proportions right since I have been having carbonation issues. I didn’t have as much issue siphoning as I might which was good. The trick is to siphon from above the peaches (obviously) and then to bring the tip of the siphon as close as possible when things become visible. The most cumbersome part of this whole practice is holding the siphon in place while it does its thing. I used to use a “regular” racking cane and I had a clip I could us to actually adjust the height from which it would siphon from thus making the holding part unnecessary. But now I use an “auto-siphon” which is much thicker in diameter and has no accompanying clip to hold it at a level. The auto-siphon is great, it is actually the best instrument I have found to siphon beer; the others being a regular racking cane and a Carboy Tap (garbage). My biggest problem with the auto-siphon is the bend of the racking cane part seems weak. I have (as of tonight) broken three of these. Two in the exact same spot and one in a similar spot. From what I can tell in order to replace the racking cane you need to replace the whole auto-siphon because the cane has a special sealing tip. We’ll see, I think I may contact someone this time.

Typically for bottling I add four ounces of corn sugar per five gallons of beer. Typically this hasn’t been an issue and the beer is anywhere from better than lightly carbonated to almost heavily carbonated, but never a real issue. For some reason I have had a slew of poor carbonaters recently. Some make sense like the Gnarleywine, but others have me baffled like the Saison and the IPA. I threw a question up about this on one of my beer web sites I visit and some one mentioned residual carbonation in solution of the beer or lack there of and maybe this was affecting my carbonation. I had never heard of this and the more I looked into it the more it sort of made sense. Basically it states that during fermentation yeast is constantly releasing carbon dioxide thus the fermenting beer is constantly bombarded with CO2 thus absorbing some, but CO2 stays in solution better at colder temperatures, so the cooler the temperatures the more CO2 stayed in solution. The person suggested I check out a chart that showed how much CO2 should still be in solution depending on the fermentation temperature, and how much corn sugar I would need to add to compensate the loss of said CO2 to still achieve the desired amount of CO2 in the finished beer. I actually realized after I was shown these charts that Pro-Mash (the beer program I use) has a computerized/self-calculating version of this. So, this time I decided I would rack the beer to the bottling bucket, measure the total volume (with the peaches this could be a major variable), guesstimate the fermentation temperature (ridiculously high), and apply how much corn sugar I would need. Then I measured out said corn sugar, boiled it with two cups of H2O to form a simple syrup and to sanitize it, then added that to the awaiting beer and bottled like normal. So, I wound up with 4.25 gallons of beer in the bottling bucket, and estimated the height of fermentation to be 78F (I know, ridiculously high, I have the warmest basement in the world), thus drawing the conclusion I would need 3.99 ounces of corn sugar to achieve 2.5 volumes of CO2 (the halfway point for American beers). Go figure, all that thinking and worrying and calculating and it turns out to be basically the same number. But, if I wouldn’t have done that and just guessed that I would need enough corn sugar for 4.25 gallons versus 5 then I would have put in less, like 3.5 ounces or so. So I guess in the long run it was an experiment and we’ll have to see how the results work out.

Oh, by the way, the peach flavor and aroma really came through and complimented the chocolate malty flavor well. I can’t wait to try this and the regular ABA side-by-side.

I transfered the Amarillo to secondary tonight. Maybe a little early because it was still quite unflocculated, but it has been eleven days, so I’m sure it was ready.

This beer got three quarters of an ounce of Amarillo hops for a dry hopping dose. Other than that everything basically seemed fine. No off flavors or aromas, which I was concerned about because of the lovely yeast issues I was having. That’s actually  the same reason the beer is still cloudy, the second yeast I added US-05 is a notorious slow flocculater.

Looks like the results from the Malt Madness homebrew competition are in and our efforts were well received!

Three out of our six entries placed, and I think that’s pretty damn good! (See original post here.) Garrett’s Abbey Brown ale placed third in the Belgian Dubbel category, our Gnarleywine placed third in the American Barleywine category, and my Hazelnut Brown placed second in the Specialty Beer category. I was actually surprised to not see Garrett’s Travelers & Tourist beer in the Belgian Dubbel category also for that is an awesome beer. Wouldn’t that have been cool to see his name twice for two different beers in the same category? The other two beers I honestly wasn’t too surprised to see them not place. My Saison is a good beer but doesn’t fit the BJCP style guidelines, and our Saturday IPA is a bangin’ fresh IPA but my bottles are having carbonation issues which I am sure more than anything else is holding that beer back. I will post more after I get the results back.

After brewing the Amarillo Amber, Karen and I bottled five gallons of the plain American Brown Ale. This beer was crispy clear and was dying to get into the bottles to be consumed.

 

I almost had a major mess-up right at the on set of bottling. Everything was being set-up and soaking in sanitizer when Karen asked about the bottling sugar, whoops!That would have been real bad to forget that, but at least I would have a good excuse why one of my beers didn’t carbonate. Bottling went smoothly, I think about an hour to do the whole batch. I actually ran out of prepared bottles with a significant amount of beer left. So I either had the options of dumping it (no way), drinking it (the usual), or figuring out another way to package it. Though I don’t know how well it will work, I grabbed a clean growler and stuck it in the sanitizer bucket for a few minutes then filled it on up. It’ll be cool if it works, but I have low expectations, it was a screw-on cap. More information on the ABA when it’s ready to drink and when the Peached ABA is ready to bottle, hopefully soon (minor visible bubbles still).

On Monday (Labor Day) I finally got around to brewing a beer that I’ve tried to brew the past three weekends, I was starting to get a little pissy about the whole thing. Anyway, I brewed an Amber Ale with all Amarillo hops, thus the Amarillo Amber.

Two things really spawned the birth of this brew. First was Garrett’s Amarillo Pale Ale and second was the fact that I had 2oz of really old Amarillo hops that needed to badly be used, plus I had enough sorta fresh Amarillos to finish off the hop bill. Originally I was going to actually make this a pale ale, and it may still taste very pale ale like, but the color will probably be closer to amber, plus Amarillo Amber sounds good.

Anyway, after transfering the ABA to secondaries like two weeks ago I decided at the last minute to reserve the yeast slurry from the carboy. So knowing that the residual beer from the ABA was definetely darker than the AA I decided to try and wash the yeast slurry to try and eliminate the possibility of any color transfer. Well, it didn’t go quite as planned. The beer picked up some color, but most likely it didn’t pick up any flavor. The weird thing was this was third generation yeast so I was expecting an explosion of a fermentation with very little lag time. Instead after 12 hours no visible activity, and after 24 hours no visible activity, WTF! So I went to one of the dry packs of US-05 and threw that in and walked away, basically disgusted.

I’m sure the beer will be fine, it appears fine now, but damn-it that pisses me off! I didn’t get to brew for three weeks (planned), and got a late start on brew day but an early finish. I was actually went into the brew day with a bad attitude and finished feeling great, then the freakin’ yeast shit on me. Whatever, RDWHAHB.

You know that I’ve been feeling tight on time since there has either been one of two things going on: A) Not enough posts going up or B) Posts with more than one subject that could be multiple posts (D) Stick it in the pooper) You know what, I changed my mind, I’m tucking some of those others posts back for later, this is what you get for now, you’ll see . . .

So here’s some of the supplies I received in the mail the other day. I actually placed two orders, one with Northern Brewer (NB) and one with More Beer (MB). From NB I got a new Auto-Siphon, some dark Belgian syrup, some grains and hops I couldn’t get from MB, and the last of the supplies I needed for an upcoming kegging/bottling experiment. From MB (see above picture) I got a bunch of different grains and hops, some back-up dry yeast, a new thermometer, some caps, some corn sugar, and some honey. I prefer to order from MB because of their offer for free shipping if you spend over $60. Unfortunately MB has really gone down hill as of late with shipping everything that was ordered, and they are becoming more and more of a hassle to deal with about their mistakes. I’d say the last 3 out of 4 orders have had something left out, and the last 2 out of 3 times it has been a hassle to get them to ship out what was missing at no cost for shipping. Versus with NB I’ve only ordered three times and each time they have been fast and have had things in stock which MB does not. Maybe that free shipping thing isn’t all that it is cracked up to be . . . ?

So, as it is obvious I ordered a bunch of ingredients, that also means I have a bunch of brewing planned! Now that the temperature is about to be more cooperative I’m going to be more inclined to brew more often. So what is on the menu do you ask? Well, here’s a taste of what I had in mind when I ordered the ingredients and what I have preliminary recipes written up for, obviously all of this can change. All of the following are planned for 5 gallon batches: an Amarillo Amber Ale, RyePA (Rye India Pale Ale), a Tripel, a Dubbel, a Belgian Red, a Honey Oatmeal Stout, and an Imperial Stout. Sounds tasty, huh? A few of these really should be brewed sooner than later so that we’ll be able to appreciate their flavor this holiday/winter season. I think I am going to do another hard cider this fall and do it differently than last time, and maybe another mead, a sweet mead this time. I’d actually like to get into the habit of doing a cider in preparation for every Autumn and at least a yearly mead if not more frequently. I don’t think my first attempt at a cider or a mead were stellar, but I think they are both simplistic in comparison to making beer yet show a lot of potential for creativity, enjoyment with non-beer-drinking friends, and speed (in making that is, not aging).

This year there appears to be a new homebrew competition on the scene, Malt Madness presented by the Lehigh Valley Homebrewers. Of course, I didn’t want to bypass an opportunity!

So, between Garrett and myself we’ll be sending in 6 beers for this competition. Garrett is entering 2 on his own, 2 in conjunction with me, and I’ll be entering 2 on my own also. He is entering his  Travelers & Tourists and his Abbey Brown both in the Dubbel category. We’ll be entering the Gnarleywine in the Barleywine category and the Saturday IPA in the American IPA category together. And I’ll be entering my Saison in the Saison category and the Hazelnut Brown in the Specialty Beer category as a Rogue Hazelnut Nectar clone. We’ll see how it all goes, there’s a lot of very drinkable beers in that group.

I’m not too worried about Garrett’s beers, they are both excellent with the T&T as a stand-out to me. The Gnarleywine I am excited to here some feed-back on that one. The IPA I AM worried about though. It is an excellent beer, very big and fresh still, but I am once again having issues with bottle-conditioning for carbonation. I just tried one the other day and we had actually decided to not enter it because of the lack of carbonation, but at the last minute tonight while preparing the beers for shipping I said “screw it!” and decided to enter it anyway. I figured it’s till two weeks away from the competition and maybe the carbonation will come up, because otherwise I think it is an excellent IPA. So, we’ll see. The two I entered on my own I have mixed feelings about. I think the Saison is good, but not really a Saison, so I am waiting to get reamed a new one by the judges on that. I was going to enter it as a Belgian Specialty Beer but could not justify how it was one, so I’ll take an ass-kicking instead. And the Hazelnut I expect to do decent (like a 30 or so), but I can’t imagine there won’t be more stand-out-ish beers in the specialty category that will push mine out of placing. The Hazelnut will be “too normal” next to a Prickly-Pear Sage-Infused Braggot or something ridiculous like that. I was thinking of going up and judging, and I still might, but the competition is all the way up in Allentown and that’s a little far to go early in the morning and then again later in the afternoon after judging all day.

On another note/update it appears as if there is minor secondary fermentation going on in the carboy of ABA with the peaches. I have not pulled the bung or anything to see how things smell in there. Just looking at the carboy makes me think this is going to be a bitch to rack and I’ll have the easy potential to lose at least a gallon of beers, poo.

And on a side note, I’m not sure how much time I am really going to have this week, but hopefully I’ll be able to put up a new post almost every day this week. I really do like it better when the website is used, so check back everyday so as not to miss anything!