FOOLCiRCLE

So I went to go hook-up my 4-way gas manifold in preparation of outwardly pimping my kegerator today.

Seems like all went well with setting up the manifold. I cut all my gas lines, one shorty coming in, three medium guys going out, and one biggie going out. The shorty supplies the gas for all four outgoing gas lines, the three medium guys go to the three kegs that will be in the kegerator, and the one biggie will be permanently hooked-up in preparation for use with another new toy, a Blichmann Beer Gun.

Unfortunately, after all went well setting up the manifold in preparation of switching over the tower to three taps and getting ready to fill a few bottles off the keg, things stopped going so well. I went to hook everything back up to the keg and gas first and pull a pint to make sure all went well. Turned on the gas, opened the valve on the regulator to let the gas out, opened the valve on the one gas line on the manifold to let the gas out, checked it was set to 10 psi, hooked it up to the keg and … nothing. No beer would come out. I lifted the keg and it felt pretty light, so I thought maybe I kicked it and didn’t realize it. Released the pressure on the keg, looked inside with a flash light, still like 3/4 to 1 gallon of beer. So now I have everything still hooked up with no beer coming out. Obviously I don’t want to fool with the Beer Gun until I get this in order.

To say this put a slight damper on my Saturday afternoon is an understatement. I really like the idea of having a kegerator, but I am not sure I am comfortable with the process of owning a kegerator yet. After homebrewing now for almost 9 years and having the idea of my own beer on tap be part of the whole grand scheme of things, and then to keep running into obstacles is extremely frustrating. I know I will figure it out, and I know it will be OK, but I just wish it wasn’t an issue in the first place.

 

Close-up of the gas manifold itself. 

So I transfered the Chocolate Porter off the cacao nibs and vanilla bean the other day.

 It was weird, I’m assuming it was the cacao nibs, but there was a brownish film that was left behind on the carboy that was kind of gross. No problems with racking as others have indicated with the nibs. The beer smelt lightly of dessert and tasted more of a dessert (chocolate/vanilla blend). I was pleased with the results of the nibs and bean, more so than the actual underlying beer. If the beer was better/bigger I may have waited longer before racking, but in this instance I think two weeks was fine. Now it is in a third carboy, not really necessary for conditioning I just need to get my kegs in order. I have three beers ready to be kegged and only one keg ready to go. I have another keg that is available but the pressure-release valve is broken, and seems to be a weird size. Dunno … beer!

So I pulled the first pint(s) from the kegerator last night.

Right now things are pouring slowly and with a lot of foam. Hopefully I will be able to balance the system without too much trouble. As of now I do not know where the problem lies: the tubing, the keg, the beer, the gas, the temperature – lots of variables to figure out. Once things are up and running smoothly I’ll post some more pictures.

It’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming…

Well, actually it arrived today, but it isn’t ready to pour beer yet. Actually, all I really need is gas and it’s a go. Very exciting!

So tonight I transfered the Porters to secondaries, one of which is now in line to be Chocolate Porter.

Raw Chocolate and vanilla beans in a porter, yum. Well, porter light, but hopefully it’ll still be all good. So, part of the attraction of doing 10 gallon batches for me is that I can split the batches into 5 gallons of traditional been and 5gallons of an experiment. So this time we have 5 gallons of a Robust Brown Porter and 5 gallons of a Chocolate Porter. I racked one of the carboys of beer onto 8oz of Cacao Nibs and 1 split, scraped, and quartered vanilla bean. It should be pretty good. I figure I’ll let the beer sit in secondary for about two weeks on the nibs and beans and then taste to see how it is progressing. Cacao Nibs are raw chocolate, they were sort of the consistency of coffee beans and chocolate chunks mixed together. Honestly they barely even tasted like dark chocolate, but they smelt like heavenly baked brownies, it smelt just like the air in Hershey, PA.

Hopefully these little suckers aren’t going to make racking to a third carboy or keg a royal pain in the ass, we’ll see!

Or something. Last night I brewed what was to be a 10 gallon batch of Robust Porter, I think I missed my mark.

I’ve been trying to get into the habit of brewing on weekday nights to help free up valuable weekend time. I still don’t have my routine down, but the concept is sound. So last nights goal was to be a high gravity (1.120 range) Robust Porter split into two carboys and diluted down to achieve two normal strength (1.060) five gallon batches of Robust Porter. I should have known from the beginning that it was going to be ‘one of those days’ when I was feeling a little out of place from the get-go.

I had never done a split batch like this before, and I have now decided that experiments like this should still be attempted but should be left for when you have extra time and feel fresh, not when your crunching your time and feel spent. Anyway, lots of little things added up to a rough night. Measuring and grinding my grains took way too long and is one of those steps that I want to start doing the night before if I am going to continue brewing on weekday nights. So, since the measuring took so long, which is while I heat my mash-in water, I overheated my water, so I had to let that cool. While that was cooling I knew the rain was getting ready to break and I brew outside. So I ran out with my new tarp and bungees I had bought to try and build a rain-fly for the brew area. The tarp was way too big and the bungees were a little too small. Fortunately I rigged it up so it kept most of the water off of me, actually it worked pretty well, it just made the area really muggy for the rest of the night.

Then it was time to mash-in, but I forgot to put my Bazooka manifold in my mash tun. Just as I was beginning to pour the grains in I realized it. Fortunately my mash tun and hot liquor tank (HLT) are built the same, so I grabbed and manifold and inserted it in the HLT, then dumped the water from the mash-tun to the HLT then mashed-in. Between the water and the grains the tun was very full, 13+ gallons in a 15 gallon tun. But between all the over-heating, cooling, switching between containers and adding the grains I totally undershot my target temperature and had no room left to adjust. I was aiming for 155-156 and I hit 149-150, yikes! Oh well, nothing I could comfortably do at this point but ride it out. So I began to heat my sparge water and mash-out water. I couldn’t even use the full amount of mash-out water that was called for. According to Pro-mash everything was going to line up, according to what happened Pro-mash lied or something else went a rye. Anyway, I mashed-out with what I could fit.

So as I was sparging I realized I wasn’t going to be able to collect as much wort as there was sugar in the bed, I could just feel it. I ran it slow and hoped for the best. After the sparge was over I ran out what was left in the tun into a bucket, almost four gallons at 1.038 at about 120F, ugh. Plus, while I was moving my kettle from the floor to the burner (no handles) I spilt hot wort down my arm and into the gloves I was wearing just I was having my dinner brought down to me. So not only did I mildly burn myself, I was embarrassed. Fortunately I wasn’t really hurt (except my pride) so I turned on the burner and ate some food which helped. In preparation for this batch to be split I planned on using a bunch of hops, six ounces of pellet hops, I’m not a big fan of using that much pellet hops especially in this high gravity of a brew. I also didn’t realize I had any Whirlfloc left and used Irish Moss instead, no big deal, but the Irish Moss is my back-up, I prefer the Whirlfloc. I need to organize my stuff.

So the boil went fine I suppose, cleaned a couple carboys and the mashing equipment while it was going on. I began to chill the wort and remembered that it was summer time; it was going to be a while. After an hour I was tired of waiting, the thermometer read 78F and I was tired and pissy and didn’t care, so I was done cooling. I began to transfer the wort to a carboy. My idea was I would transfer to one carboy, see what volume I collected, and check the gravity. If it was in the “proper range” I would then split the batch half-and-half and dilute with bottled water up to five gallons, retake a reading and go from there. The goal was 1.120, I hit 1.098 at 78F, so I knew it was really at least 1.100 if I adjust for the temperature. Of course the valve on the kettle clogged twice before completely clogging (did I mention I love using large quantities of pellet hops) and I had to do my favorite, the ol’ dump technique. So since I gathered six gallons via that technique, I figured with all the trouble I went through, I might as well split the batch and hope since I was putting a little bit more than 2.5 gallons in each carboy to start with that the new OG might be higher than 1.050. Lets just say this turned out to be messier than expected and I was starting to crack a little.

After all the transfers I took a little bit of a break from the wort and cleaned everything up. After clean-up I took a second reading of the new diluted wort, 1.048 – wha, wha, what!? I tasted the original sample next to the diluted sample, I shouldn’t have diluted it. I hate this beer. So I’ve been having problems with my O2 stone, it just hasn’t been bubbling properly. So even though I thought my tank was pretty full I bought a new tank to test because the tanks are cheaper than the stones. No difference. After sort-of oxygenating my wort I pitched the yeast, a third generation WLP001 yeast cake split between the two batches. By this point I had basically been “brewing” this batch of beer for almost seven hours and it was nearing midnight. I was wooped and wanted to go to bed and just forget about this beer. Hopefully it turns out drinkable since I have ten gallons of it. Originally it was supposed to be a Robust Porter. Now it looks more like a Brown Porter, but with Robust Porter attributes. So maybe a Robust Brown Porter, I dunno.

Oh, and I was sober the whole night, brewing without drinking beer is almost unheard of in the homebrew community 😉 .

Two weeks ago was the annual BUZZ Off competition in West Chester, PA and I just received my results the other day.

This year there were 401 entries for this competition, one of ten (I think) qualifying events for the MCAB. Because it is a qualifying event they actually get more entries (in my opinion) they they typically would, plus they are entries from all over the country instead of just the same local guys. Fortunately there are still a lot of local (PA, NJ, MD) guys that place during this competition.

Here are some descriptors from my results on the two beers I entered:

• Vader – 13F Imperial Stout – 35/33 = 34 – “Very nice drinking beer – this is good now, but with some age to mingle the flavors this will be a fantastic beer!” – “Nice big stout, flavors are slightly unbalanced toward bitterness, will benefit from more aging.”
• Tripel – 18C Belgian Tripel – 36/35 = 35.5 – Third Place – “Well made beer, a drier finish would bring this even closer to style.” – “A good beer, but a little on the sweet side for style with a low hop bitterness.”

I did not judge this year. I was going to, but I wasn’t “feeling it.” I did go out the night before which was part of it, and I did get home late that night, and I did have other things to do that day if I wasn’t judging, but in all honesty, I just wasn’t feeling it. I was told they had 40 other judges, which meant a long crowded day of judging. Wake up at 7:00 (on a Saturday 8-O), leave by 8:00, start judging around 9:00, break for an hourish lunch around 12:00, finish judging around 4:00, sit around the bar drinking beer waiting after drinking beer all day (honestly, this is the longest part) just to hear the results later between 5-6:00, then drive an hourish home after drinking all day, just to get home and almost collapse. I know ‘poor me I have to drink beer all day and talk about it’, trust me it is more like studying for a big test then fun. Whatever, until next time.

So I kegged the Naked Wheat and transfered the Frootid the Wheat the other day.

Since this both happened in the same time-frame I was able to pull samples of each and compare and contrast, and run them by the wheat beer guru, Karen. As I said before the Naked Wheat was mild and clean, nothing wrong there, actually can’t wait to try it carbonated and cold. The Frootid the Wheat was way cloudy and a little shady looking. It still smelt of fruit so I was hoping the fermentation was complete. The flavor was actually great, nice and fruity, a little sharp, the blueberries still shone through – nice! Karen really liked the fruited wheat (surprise), so I guess things are on target. I figure I’ll keg the fruited wheat sometime next week at this point. BUT, that would then mean I have no beers in carboys at the moment, I guess it’s time to get behind the brew kettle again.

So tonight I took the plunge and started to keg with my second batch of kegs.

 

I kegged two beers tonight, the Pacific Gem Pale Ale and the Naked Wheat. The Pacific Gen Pale Ale was brewed with all whole leaf Pacific Gem hops and boy did it smell good! I didn’t even use any dry hops and this thing smelt like hoppy-goodness. The taste wasn’t bad either, but the hop punch was lost in the glass. Also, I kegged the Naked Wheat, this was the “plain” American Wheat Ale that Garrett and I brewed a 20 gallon batch of just over a month ago. The beer tasted very mild, which was fine with me, but was actually very much more clear than I would have expected, go figure. I think the kegging of both went off well, nothing that I can remember that was weird. I will say though that I have to get my technique down better when taking a gravity reading, I am very bad about splashing from keg to hydrometer to keg, if you know what I mean.

Ugh, you shouldn’t always trust what you’re told, or you don’t always get what you don’t pay for, or something…

 

I sort of suppose they delivered as promised, but next time I’d rather trust myself than trust someone else. Homebrewing is not a hobby for the person who is impatient, like I am sometimes. So I got these 4 “rebuilt” kegs from MoreBeer the other day that were supposed to be cleaned inside and out and have the gaskets replaced. So in my opinion these should be ready to be sanitized and filled. Well, for an extra $30 dollars I’m not sure I was given the lack of work and piece of mind I was looking for. The first keg I opened smelt rank and had mildew along the bottom and the second keg’s pressure release valve wouldn’t continuously hold pressure. And I thought I was going to keg tonight. I was planning on cleaning (for good measure) and sanitizing the kegs prior to first use, but after those discoveries I had to do what I had to do. I was going to take apart and clean all the pieces well at that point, and then discovered I needed yet another deep socket, great… I have a 7/8 and a 3/4 which are both too big for this particular keg. Now it looks like I’ll need an 11/16 too. Anyway, I have two “clean” and “sanitized” kegs downstairs (about three hours worth of work anyway, ugh) ready to keg tomorrow. I know I am gambling a little and maybe I’ll have better vision tomorrow, but as of now I’m a little pissy. Plus I definitely want to clean-up the outsides, these 4 kegs are twice as bad as the original 4 I bought, and it makes me feel a little dirty using them. I hate this kind of dumb shit…