FOOLCiRCLE

First brew day in a while and it turned out to be a good one. Today I brewed what will be my first attempt at a Saison, and if nothing else a Belgian Specialty Ale (catch all). Quick highlights of the day were that Robert was there to tag-along for the brew day and it was a success brew day in the rain.

So the day really started pretty regularly for me: had a game plan of when I wanted to start and over shot that by a good two hours which kind of just sends the rest of the day a little askew. One day I will learn the joys of early morning brewing, but first I have to be awake and mobile enough to meet it there. Since I knew it was supposed to rain today and I wasn’t real big on brewing in the garage, I decided to try and rig up some sort of tarp action. I decided the rain-fly from my tent would be the easiest choice because it was a decent size and already had bungee fasteners attached to all the corners. It went up fairly easy and looked alright. After going back down stairs and taking a look from the brew area it looked OK but pushed too far to the left. Unfortunately, there was nothing to attach it too if I wanted to move it more right, so I decided to leave it there and mental note that I want to buy a plastic tarp twice as long and just about as wide for the same application. The rain never got too crazy, though a little heavy at times, and the tarp totally did its job.

This was Roberts first time kicking it while I made a full all grain batch. So he got to help/watch as we did all the things he didn’t get to do before: grind the grains (got a new drill for the mill), heat and transfer hot water with no handles on the kettle while wearing flip-flops, mash-in, sparge, all that happy horse shit. Everything seemed like it went fine. I declared that there should be a bumper stick: Brewers Don’t Wear Flip-Flops. I just think it sounds funny, but it is also a good way to burn your feet.

The reason why I said that this is my first attempt at a Saison, besides that I have never brewed one, is that I always feel as if it is more difficult to stay within style guidelines than it is to just brew what you like or to not brew what you don’t like. Typically I would say my favorite “styles” of beers that I like to brew and drink are big and hoppy, experimental and one-off, and Belgian-esque,  specifically Dubbels and Tripels. I brew enough big and hoppy and experimental stuff, so that’s good, but I can’t think of the last Belgian-style beer I’ve brewed versus drank. Probably my last one was the ol’ Double Dubbel back in 2004, I’ll have to break one of those bottles open soon. So anyway, this is me taking a stab at the style, Saison, and like I said, If nothing else it is definitely a Belgian Specialty Ale.

My brother receives the Keystone Homebrew newsletter (I wonder why I don’t?) and brought to my attention a new event they are kickin’. It is called ‘The KisE (Kissy) Challenge”.

Here’s a little cut and paste action from their website for anyone too lazy to hit the link. Why do I want to take the time to bring this to your attention, well, one Keystone Homebrew and Jason (the owner) are good people so why not promote some brotherly love, two it seems like a neat event, and three it sounds like a twist on a familiar idea. Anyway, here you go: “We are proud to announce the first Keystone is Everywhere (KisE) Challenge: A fun contest, sort of like a scavenger hunt, with real prizes! You’ll need three things to participate: 1. an official Keystone Homebrew t-shirt, 2. a camera, 3. the official KisE Challenge List.

Here is how it will work. Below is a link to the official KisE Challenge List of places, people, and events. Each will be worth a certain point value. Participants will have until June 30 to take pictures of as many KisE Challenge List items as possible. Everyone who participates wins valuable coupons. Collect 50 points and get a free t-shirt. Those with the most points will win:

• 1st place $100 gift certificate to Keystone Homebrew or a 15% discount on all items purchased at Keystone Homebrew through the end of 2007
• 2nd place $50 gift certificate to Keystone Homebrew
• 3rd place $25 gift certificate to Keystone Homebrew

Additionally, more prizes will be awarded for the funniest, most creative, and best overall pictures. Entries must be submitted in electronic format via e-mail or by dropping off a CD or DVD at one of our stores.The official KisE Challenge List, including official rules, is now online! The race is on!”

There you go, Jason, there’s some love for you. Now all I need to do is to get that Keystone Homebrew link up for you, I promise I will. Hope your event works out as well as mine. – B

So Saturday I dropped off beers at Iron Hill West Chester for the 2007 BUZZ Off Homebrew Competition. Basically I chose to drop off the four beers I had brewed for the Scavenger Hunt: the Oak-Aged C-Hop Pale Ale, the S.A.W. Pale Ale, the Belgian-style Wit, and the Hazelnut Brown.

Not that I am being pessimistic, but I do not have high hopes for these beers. Most of these beers are slightly out of style (per usual) for what I entered them in, but I figured some constructive criticism never hurts. Plus, since the BUZZ Off is a qualifying event for the MCAB lots of people mail in some excellent entries. Hopefully if my schedule allows I will be up there judging for this competition, more on that the closer we get to June 9th.

On a side note, the More Beer competition was also on Saturday (in California). This was the competition where I was invited to compete in the Stainless Brewer event. Two days later and no results are posted yet, weak. They did post that there were eight judges judging the Stainless Brewer event and that there was a unanimous winner. Somehow I’m not feeling it, but still curious. UPDATE: (6/1/07) – The results are in from the More Beer Competition and I did NOT place in the Stainless Brewer Competition. Still waiting some clarification from More Beer on how they were judging this one.

Last Wednesday was my second time kegging, and that’s without even knowing if the first time was a complete success or not yet, great! Anyway, things seemed like they went off quite easily which I guess is a good sign. I actually cleaned the kegs on Tuesday and sanitized and filled them on Wednesday.

Not going to have too much to say probably. I have learned that the closer it is to the event that the post goes up the more detailed and excited I typically am while writing the post. Since this was about five days ago now, there is only so much to say. So, basically I kegged the new-style (different recipe than the original-style) Belgian-style Wit bier and the Hazelnut Brown. Again, I stole a 6-pack from both kegs – I sure hope those Cooper’s drops work well.

Per usual when I do this kind of thing, I got to taste my batches to see how they are progressing. These of course were warm and uncarbonated samples, but sometimes that’s how I like it. The Wit was soft and silky on the palate, really nice feel, with a little zinger of a citrus bite. I’m hoping that this cold and carbonated will be a real day-time hit. The Hazelnut smelled fantastic! The hazelnut essence for the Hazelnut Brown was only added at the last moment for kegging/bottling to help retain the most hazelnut aroma, and let me tell you it really smelled great! The flavor seemed to have mixed well with the beer, but it was a little bit more difficult to form an impression of what the final product will be like. I guess I’ll have to wait and see.

So, Friday night was my first true kegging experience. Yeah, I got to watch/help Garrett when he gave me my kegging demo, but this was my first time alone, without a net. Sure I could have used the phone-a-friend option if I ran into trouble, but I knew Friday night would be a bad night to call. The only mishap happened in the very beginning when I accidentally tipped over the CO2 tank with the regulator on it and smooshed one of the gauges – I’m hoping I can get that fixed inexpensively.

I probably got started about 7:30. I had already decided I was going to clean, rinse, sanitize, transfer, and carbonate two beers, while simultaneously cleaning, rinsing, and sanitizing the draft box to be used in conjunction with them. Really most of the kegging stuff is pretty simple and pretty boring, just like bottling. But, the good thing with kegging is you only have to do all of those procedures to 1 container instead of 50. Plus once the beer is transfered you are essentially done. Sure you still have to carbonate it, but during bottling you’d still have to fill and cap all 50 bottles.

Basically the night went something like this: 1) Boil 6 gallons of water to add 3 gallons to each keg plus PBW. 2) Let keg sit for 30 minutes both upside-down and upright. 3) Flush hot PBW solution out of keg and through draft box. 4) Rinse each keg with hot water thoroughly, twice. 5) Flush hot rinse water out of keg and through draft box. 6) Fill each keg with cold water and sanitation solution. 7) Let keg sit for 10 minutes both upside-down and upright. 8 ) Flush cold sanitary solution out of keg and through draft box. 9) Now both kegs and draft box are clean, sanitary, and ready to be used. By this point it was magically 10:30 some how. Looks like the night was going to be longer than planned, but at least things were going well.

Next it was time to transfer the beer and then to carbonate it. I guess old habits die hard, because even though I was kegging I was still planning on “stealing” a 6 pack of beer from each keg. Originally I thought I may be able to just set up the siphon with the bottling wand attached to the end and siphon directly to the bottles. Well, that didn’t work. Not that big of a deal, I just siphoned it into a pre-sanitized bottling bucket instead. Of course I didn’t know exactly how much a 6 pack of beer was going to be, so I pulled off like 3/4 of a gallon, which was a bit too much. The other thing I had to figure out was how to prime the bottles for carbonation. Fortunately I had planned ahead and bought a pack of Cooper’s Carbonation Drops. Supposedly these cough drop looking things are the perfect amount of priming sugar for on 12 oz. bottle. I have never used them, nor do I know anyone that has, so we’ll have to see what the results are. They tasted just like rock candy.

After the bottles, I could finally do what I’ve been wanting to do the whole night – actually keg the beer. I think I did everything right and pretty much kept my fingers crossed the whole time. I forgot how much sediment and debris can be left behind from dry-hopping, so whenever those first pints are pulled someone may get a slightly chunkier beer, oh well. The first beer I kegged was the Oaked C-Hop Pale Ale (I know incredibly original name). This was the beer that I had all sorts of trouble with on brew day. It has taken to just recently for it to finally clear and it was brewed back in March. But like I said before, there was a little bit too much beer taken for the bottles so there was enough for me to taste. And let me tell you, I was pleased. It is a very traditional West Coast Pale Ale style beer with a nice little bit of bite and nose from the oak to keep it interesting. I think this one is going to go on first and I bet it will go fast. The other beer I kegged was the SAW Pale Ale (I know another incredibly fascinating name). This beer is almost overwhelmingly over hopped. To me it’s good, to some it may be too much. It has tons of Simcoe, Amarillo, and Warrior hops in it so it’s picking up an intense-mellow bitter back-bone from the Warrior and Simcoe, and crazy flavor (think: orange juice) from the Amarillo and some depth from the Simcoe. I think it may be a hit or miss as far as a crowd pleaser, but I think those that do like it will really like it.

After that it seemed to be easy street. I hooked the CO2 up to both kegs (thanks again, Garrett, for letting me borrow some equipment!), dialed in the regulator, and it was a total set it and forget it moment. Supposedly after three days these bad boys will be already to go and I can start this whole process all over again, this time kegging the Hazelnut Brown and the Wit. After janitorial duties I finally went back upstairs to call it a night. When I looked at the clock it was almost 1AM! How did that happen? I really need to get a clock down in the basement, it’s like freakin’ Vegas down there.

Transfered the Belgian Wit-style beer to its secondary fermenter tonight. It seems to have attenuated well, smelled fine, and tasted pretty good – a little zingy, but refreshing. All of these things helped calm my nerves a little bit, I was worried because of the lovely yeast I was using.

Pretty much the transfer went off without a hitch, which is always good. Now all four beers that I will be kegging are in secondaries and waiting to be transfered. I believe the two pale ales are going to be kegged this weekend, and the hazelnut brown clone and the wit the following week. Doing two at once this weekend will give me a chance to work out some of the kinks plus give me an idea of how long the whole operation  should take.

I’m a bad hop daddy! It’s now the end of April and my hops still aren’t in the ground! I know, I know they should have been in like a month ago, but I’m a slacker and have had other stuff to do – forgive me hop-gods for I have sinned.

Right now my almost 4 year old Cascade hop plants are sitting in a flower pot on our back porch. This picture doesn’t show it but they are already as tall as I am and that’s with less than optimal growing conditions. I REALLY need to get these suckas in the ground. Last year when we moved and dug up the roots to replant here I was amazed how long they had gotten. When I originally bought them the rhizomes were about as long and thick as my finger. After I dug them up they the longest ones were over 3 feet long and half as thick as my wrist at there thickest point! I really don’t want to accidentally kill these hops. I don’t expect a large yield this year as they re-establish their root system, but hopefully by next year they’ll be kickin’ again. I’ll keep you posted.

So on Thursday I spent the evening over Garrett’s house learning the basics of kegging. The good news is that it appeared as easy as I was hoping and made bottling look like even more of a pain in the ass. I’m actually quite excited about giving this a shot.

Basically when I had arrived at Garrett’s he already had things in motion. First, the kegs need to be cleaned and rinsed before anything else can happen, and that’s the part he took care of before I arrived. He said that basically you take a strong hot solution of Powdered Brewers Wash (PBW) and water and clean the keg with that. The most ‘difficult’ part is making sure all the poppets, the relief valve, and the dip tube are all cleaned properly. After the cleaning with the PBW you need to rinse well with hot water also.

So this is the condition the kegs were in when I arrived. At this point the kegs still need to be sanitized, flushed with CO2, filled with beer, and carbonated. For the sanitation process we used StarSan which I was initially surprised about because of its history of being a notorious foaming agent, but Garrett reassured me that it was a non-issue. After the keg was done being sanitized, he showed me an intelligent move to kill a few birds with one stone, basically he hooked up the CO2 and pushed the sanitizer out of the keg and into a bucket. This removed the sanitizer from the keg in an efficient manner, filled the keg with CO2 (which we wanted), and gave us a bucket of sanitizer solution to sanitize the racking cane and anything else we may need. Next we transfered the beer, which is essentially what I do when I bottle moving it from carboy to bottling bucket then to bottles, but this time it was just carboy to keg, period. After the beer was transfered we threw the CO2 on it and essentially it is a walk-away and leave it alone kind of thing for about three days.

Pretty cool. I know I’ll be nervous when I first do it by myself, wondering if I’m doing it all right or not. Fortunately he said he was going to e-mail me a cheat sheet to help me remember everything, and as he repeatedly reminded me, “It’s not rocket science.” Thanks, Garrett.

So on Monday I got to do a little brew maintenance that was supposed to get done over the weekend. Well, weekends have a way of running themselves, so things got done on Monday. I bottled the Stainless Pale Ale or PA3 and transfered and dry hopped the SAW (Simcoe, Amarillo, Warrior) Pale Ale or PA2.

The bottling went pretty well. I got a full 2 cases out of the batch plus dumped a little bit. This is the beer that was made from the More Beer Stainless Brewer brew kit, that was sort of a secret recipe. Basically, they gave some of there best brewers (first, second, and third place winners) an opportunity to see who could brew the best beer with the same ingredients. Well, every single little thing that you do differently than someone else changes the beer. It will be interesting to see how they judge this one. I should be able to mail in my entries before the deadline. Right now the cases of beer are in the warm room (computer room) coming up to carbonation.

The transferring  of the SAW Pale Ale worked out OK to. Recently I had purchased a new siphon for this kind of application, a 1/2″ East Siphon which is suppose to work better than its 3/8″ inch younger brother (which I already have). So I cleaned and sanitized both siphons just in case there was a problem with one. Well, I started with the 1/2″ and I couldn’t get it to get going, it was as if there wasn’t enough initial beer to pull the siphon through. So, I reverted back to the 3/8″ and did everything as usual. I hate when you try to upgrade equipment, try to be pro-active, and its not even worth the trouble. I threw in the dry hops and let this baby chill down in chamber two.

So far the Stainless Pale Ale is bottled and ready for the More Beer competition, and I have four beers lined up for my first kegging experiment. The Oaked C-Hop Pale Ale, the SAW Pale Ale, a Hazelnut  Brow, and a Belgian-esque Witbier wheat-thing. Anybody want to guess when the kegs will be tapped? More information on that to come!

I brewed again yesterday, this time a Belgian Witbier style beer. Of course, per usual, everything didn’t go as planned. Because of this stupid sinus infection that has beaten my ass everything has been a little askew this week. So before I brewed I had to clean bottles.

I put the bottles in to soak on Wednesday night, and I was planning on de-labeling, cleaning, and sanitizing them on Thursday night. These bottles would be for the PA3 or the Stainless Pale Ale. Well, Thursday became going to the doctor’s night so cleaning bottles didn’t happen then. Then Friday was the ass kicker of all ass kicker days with me sleeping almost 16 hours straight, falling asleep almost as soon as I got home from work. So, by the time Saturday rolled around I still had cleaning bottles looming over my head of things I needed to do, and since I didn’t have anything else lined up for the day but to brew I figured I’d do it first. Bottling actually went off without too many problems. I still hate the labels that Dogfish Head uses, there stupid paper tears way too easily and you kind of have to scrape the labels off.

After I was done with the bottle cleaning I kind of had to re-arrange the “brew area” to transformer from be used in a bottling way to a brewing way. After that was all done I decided to regroup and shower and eat before starting into the brew day, kind of give myself a clean slate. While I was getting ready, I realized I had not made a yeast starter the day or two before because for the same reasons as described above. I was a little ticked that I could let that slide, but I wasn’t pissed. I pulled out the yeast and let it come up to room temperature, I grabbed a jar of canned wort starter (thank you, Garrett), sanitized all that I needed too, and began to make my yeast starter. I threw my O2 stone into some boiling water and let it go to town for like 15 minutes, than gave the starter a good blast of O2. I was constantly aware of the starter trying to give it a shake whenever I could.

The brew day for the Wit was so-so. I was starting later than I wanted to, though that should come as no surprise, and wasn’t even because of the bottling cleaning. Originally I was going to use that same time to actually bottle that beer instead of clean the bottles for it, which still hasn’t happened. When I went to grind my grains I killed my drill. I was using a very old hand-me-down corded one-speed drill. I have used it twice now with the mill and it seemed to work fine. A little slow to get going but fine to keep going. Well, the grain mill killed it. It started smoking and stinking about a 10th of the way through the grains, into the garbage. So I pulled out the 12 volt battery powered drill to see how much help that would be. It actually was doing better than it had the first time I had tried it. It sucked though, I could listen to the mill slow as the battery died, and of course that was the battery fresh off the charger. So with about two pounds of grains left I grabbed a pair of vice-grips and went to town on the grain mill. Let me just tell you, anyone who chooses the handle option from Crank and Stein is a freakin’ moron! That was some stupid-dumb tedious stuff. With a grain bill that was only 50% malted barley I was sure that the mash was going to get stuck again, it was just a matter of how badly.

When it was time to start collecting the sweet wort from the mash tun I let things go as usual. For the first 20 minutes or so, everything seemed to look fine. But just as I was beginning to add the sparge water as the liquid level in the mash tun was almost at the top of the grain bed, the run-off stopped completely, no trickle, no nothing. So I added a couple gallons of 175 degree sparge water, mixed it up real well, and let it sit for about 10 minutes. After 10 minutes I did another recirc and started up again. It seemed that as long as I kept a pretty good liquid level on top of the grains the run-off seemed to go just fine. After that point it was a fairly easy brew day, only two hop additions and no fining agents made the additions less than usual. But, there were the spices to add. Traditionally a Wit has at least two spices, bitter orange peel and coriander, plus often a “secret” third spice to help make that beer distinctive from its neighbors. Karen brought my third ingredient, and when the time was right the blended mixture went into the brew pot.

Since I had not bottled the PA3 in the morning I was getting low on big carboys. Typically I like to do primary fermentation in 6 or 6.5 gallon carboy for 5 gallons of beer. Plenty of head-space or extra room if you should need it. Recently I had purchased a few 5 gallon carboys to use as secondaries, well it was time to put one of them to use as a primary today. I had not marked off the gallon marks on the carboy, so I was hoping it was actually larger than 5 gallons, but I had a feeling that it was exactly 5 gallons. Anyway, I went to transfer the beer and realized I was going to quickly run out of room. I probably left almost a gallon of wort behind in the kettle, ashame really. So the carboy was filled almost to bursting when I realized I still needed to add the yeast starter! Since the yeast starter was made so close to pitching time, there was no way I could pour off the liquid and just pitch the slurry. So, somehow I had to make another quart fit where there wasn’t room.

To to say that it leaked a little would be an understatement. Later that night before I went to bed (early again, damn infection!) I checked on the beer to see how it was doing, there appeared to be no activity, odd I thought but not unheard of – maybe I had just gotten used to Garrett’s Super WLP051 yeast he had given me to use on the last two batches. By the time the morning arrived and there was still no activity I was more concerned. I searched for the tube the yeast had come in and was surprised – More Beer sold me expired yeast, bastards! The best before date was written as ‘Maar-03-07’. Thinking back on it I remember seeing that, but knowing I received my order the last week of March I assumed that Maar was a misprint for May not March.

So, after all my hard work, time and money invested, plus being sick and on antibiotics and pain killers, after a long day off brewing – I get pooped on by having expired yeast. I quickly tried to call the closest homebrew store to see if they are open and see if they have the same yeast. Yes, they are open, but no they don’t have the same yeast. The guy was strongly trying to sell me a Hefeweizen yeast, and I kept on explaining to him I didn’t want that banana-clovey thing going on in this beer, idiots. So I looked through what few packs of dried yeast I had to see what I could do and decided on a Fermentis Safbrew T-58 pack to see if that can pull this beer out. I re-hydrated it and prepared to pitch the yeast. Oh no, there isn’t enough room in the carboy! So I had to unwillingly pour out some of the non-fermented wort to make room for the new re-hydrated yeast. I was ready to smash something now! I think I would have gained more pleasure from taking that full carboy out into the street and watching it shatter than I will from drinking the beer when it is ready.

Between being sick, not getting to do almost anything I’ve wanted to do over the last four days, and having this beer begin as a pile of poo I am absolutely miserable. It’s the freakin’ nicest day of the year so far and I’m inside on the computer bitching about yesterday – how pathetic.