Brewer’s Cache

Yesterday evening I finally got around to transferring the Step Ladder Stout  from the primary into its keg.  I don’t much like waiting this long before racking it off, but I have been very busy lately getting Brutus, the brew dog, acclimated and trained–getting used to morning walks has been a bit of a shock to the system!

The step ladder stout terminated with a final gravity of 1.014 which is a little higher than expected–I had trouble with the mash temperature control and ended up mashing at a low temp.  I took a little taste and the roasted barely comes through in a huge way, maybe too huge.  The color is lovely ink.

I am going to carbonate this one just using CO2 because I don’t have the nitrogen kegging equipment. Based on my past results, this one will be carbonated nicely in about a week or so ( sitting at 12-15 Psi and 45 degrees ).

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This batch of company cream ale is finally carbonated enough to issue some early observations. The color of this beer is a very nice straw yellow color but is quite hazy. I recommend that a flocculant be used to create a beautifully clear beer. This beer has a strong flavor profile with very apparant ester notes of bananna and pear. I can also detect some cider notes in this one, which would likely be due to the extra table sugar added. I recommend that a Californa Ale Yeast be used to clean up the profile a bit and be sure to keep control of your fermentation temperatures. There is little or no hop flavor and the nose is all esters. For a cream ale, I would have perfered a more noticable DMS character, which I am sure is present but masked by the strong ester profile.

This beer has a very nice mouthfeel, very drinkable. I need to fine tune the carbonation before I can give a full report.
Overall, this is going to be a fine beer, just not the beer that I had intended ( we will see ). To find the right balance in this recipe, next time around I am going to experiment with first using a cleaner yeast and keeping very close attention to the fermentation temperature, and then if that doesn’t get me where I want to be, I am going to cut almost all of the table sugar out of the recipe.

[Edit]  This beer is improving every day with age and improved carbonation.

If you attempt this recipe, let me know. I always love to hear feedback from the readers.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Today I will be adopting a new brewing helper, a boxer-mastif pup named Brutus. Having a curious dog in the house should provide a little more excitment during the brew day. I will finally have someone to help clean up those sweet wort spills. I will post some pictures of the new brewer in action as soon as I teach him how to stir with the mash paddle.

Update:  Brutus is no boxer/mastif; he is really more of a boxer/pit.
Brutus somehow conned me into letting him on the couch. He’s good. He’s real good.

From Puppy

Brutus can’t help with the brewing yet but is a big help when it comes to sorting laundry.

From Puppy

In this picture, Brutus has somehow manage to get a leaf glued to his nose. I wonder where he has been sniffing?

From Puppy

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I just tapped my recipe, Company Cream Ale, brewed some weeks ago.  Though it is quite early to offer my my early observations, I can say that I nailed the color that I was shooting for.  This beer pours crystal clear with a beautiful straw yellow color–it was my first attempt at a light-lovenbond beer.   The first pour was relatively free of any “gunk;” I chose to secondary this beer, a practice that has significantly waned now that I keg my beers.

At this point, the flavor is pretty strong; the DMS that is characterisitic of the cream ale style does come through.  The pilsen malts and a boil limited to 70 minutes contributed the DMS.  The alcohol warmth is certainly present ( 7+%).  I expect that this beer will be a nice counterpoint to my lastest batch of brew, the Step Ladder Foreign Stout, which will take its place on tap in a couple of weeks.   I hope that the difference in final gravity of the cream ale will be different enough from the stout that I will be able to pour a black and tan, where one beer “sits” on the other in the glass.
More updates to follow when this golden beauty is fully carbonated ( and further aged ).

Popularity: 10% [?]

Step Ladder Foreign Stout
A dry, intensly dark, foreign stout that should go nicely on a cool fall day.

OG 1.050
IBU 50
Bu/Gu: 1.0

Grain Bill
.75 lbs Roasted Barely 300 L
.75 lbs Roasted Barley 650 L
1 lbs Chocolate Malt
7.6 lbs Pale 2-row
1 lbs Wheat Malt
.50 lbs Dextrine Malt
.75 lbs Crystal 6L

Mash
Single Infusion mash @ 152 with a R = 1.2. I had a hard time holding on the to temperature this time around. My mash actually dipped to 149F before the end of the mash. I had too little remaining capactiy in the tun to adjust. This will lead to a very fermentable, albeit lighter beer–I normally perfer my stouts pretty thick. I batch sparged and got about a 70% efficiency.
Hop Schedule ( 90 minute boil )
2.38 oz Amarillo @ 60 minutes.

I had a boilover at around T-50 minutes. This will likely affect the overall bitterness of this brew. I couldn’t guess how much hop matter was ejected during the boilover so I didn’t attempt to correct for it.

Yeast
1 pk Danstar Windsor English Ale yeast ( properly rehydrated )

Notes:

I had about 5-6 gal of wort after the boil @ 1.050 OG. This was the first brew that I have brewed that required a blowoff hose. I just used my syphon hose which is a little on the long side; it generates too much resistence when it gets gunked up with krausen. When the hose if full, the fermenter pressure really builds up; I can hear the fermenter whistling. I am going to have to keep a close eye on this one.

Popularity: 3% [?]

This is a pull of Sim City IPA in a Samuel Adams glass ( courtesy of AHA )

From Sim City IPA

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Company Cream Ale

This a light-bodied cream ale ( ale-equivilent to light American lager ). A full description will be added after tasting. I am shooting for a crisp, clean finish with a light mouthfeel–something that is easy drinking. This beer should turn out like a big version of Rolling Rock. I have never brewed a beer that is this high in gravity or mashed at such a low temperature. I hope that the desired balance comes out. The color is very, very light, around 3-4 SRM.

In this beer, one of the key flavors is DMS. The boil length was reduced to allow for some DMS to remaining the wort. DMS has a half-life of 40 minutes.

Grain Bill

6 lbs Pale 2-row
6 lbs Pilsen ( 2-row) malt
1 lbs Flaked Corn ( maize )
1 lbs 2 oz Table Sugar

OG: 1.066 @ 70% efficiency

Mash: Multi-step

A multistep mash is required because a large portion of the grist is pilsen malt, a moderately modified malt. With a 5-gal capacity igloo-style cooler, multi-rest mashing can be a challenge. If I had more space, I would have conducted the first step with a greater water to grist ratio. After about 40 minutes, I had to draw off one quart of wort from the mash and heat it up to 190 degrees to adjust the mash temperature. I performed a batch sparge and collected seven gallons of wort in total. Be sure to exclude the table sugar from all of your mash calculations.

25 minutes @ 120F R = .8
90 minutes @ 149F ( for conversion ) R = 1.3
Hop Schedule: 75 minute Boil

1 oz Amarillo ( 7.6 AAU ) @ 70 minutes
1 oz Amarillo ( 7.6 AAU ) @ flameout

Yeast and Fermentation

I just used a pack of Munton’s Ale yeast that I rehydrated for 30 minutes before adding to the wort. Visible activity in the airlock was apparent in about three hours ( not bad for dry yeast!) I am going to ferment this as close to 65F as I can, which is some temperature around 70F–It’s in a cold water bath.

Additional Notes:

Due to the capacity of my brewpot, I had withhold about 2 gallons of the wort until after the hot break. The extra wort was added back in at 70 minutes.

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I have selected a cream ale for my next batch.  A cream ale is a very light ale that showcases DMS as a key attribute. A good example of this style is Rolling Rock’s pale ale.  I am going to buy my grains and post my recipe  tomorrow.

Also, I would like to say, the Sim City IPA is fantastic and I would suggest giving it a try. Just fantastic!

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Now that I have a free keg, albeit one minus a rubber o-ring, I think that it is time to start planning out the next two brews.  I would like to select two beers that use the same yeast; I will pitch one on top of the other’s yeast cake.

The first styles that come to mind are Bock and Sour Beer.   It is hard to imagine that I only really had my first bock beer ( Granite City’s Benedictine Bock) this last year and I certainly did enjoy it.   I believe that his style requires lagering so it may have to wait.  The other style, sour beer, I have not yet tried but it sounds quite intriguing.

With sour beer, as I understand it, you take about half of your grist and add enough water to wet the grain. You then leave it in the mash tun in warm place for about four days until it gets really good and stinky.  Then you add the rest of the grain and mash according to a normal schedule ( of course you have to make some corrections for the water already in the tun).  When you boil the wort, all the nasties are kill and your are left with a soured beer that is supposed to be quite nice.  I figure I could try this with a honey wheat or the like.

If any of you have tried making a sour beer, let me know. I would love to hear your tips.

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Never under any circumstances should you assume that the large o-ring washer that seals the keg lid is too small to slip off. When I was kegging up some of Jamil’s American Brown–damn, that stuff is going to be tasty, I had inserted the lid and was busy swapping the pin locks (ooops) when the rubber o-ring came unseated. I thought, well, no big deal, its just dangling there but that thing surely cant come off. I dont’ know what I was thinking and suppose those were my famous last words. Of course, that was exactly what it did.

I don’t know how the heck one would go about fishing one of those out of a full keg. I mean, who has a 2 1/2 hook laying around? Anyway, thankfully I had just finished the previous keg earlier today. The keg was still pressurized shut so I assume that the seal was in a pretty sanitary state so I used it. The other fully-lubed ( food grade petroleum lube that I bought at my lhbs ) is now swimming with the drunk fishies at the bottom of my keg.

And to boot, during all the messing around with the washers, I accidently sat on my still-opened tube of lube and shot a glob of it on my concrete basment floor. Lovely. Further, when cleaning everything up, I couldn’t find the lid to lube tube and was absolutley convinced that it had somehow slipped into my now sealed keg. Thanks to God’s good graces, I was not thaaat clumsy and found it that just rolled away.

Anyone else enjoyed such a delightful keg-day experience?

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