20 bbls of Porter

Ray has been out with a bum shoulder and he asked me to step in and give Ryan a hand with the next brew. We made 20 bbls of Pullmans on Friday. I ditched out of work at noon and we were were cleaned up by 3:00pm We even managed to pretty much nail the gravity on this one. It's nice to be brewing again, even if it isn't on my setup.

Seven barrels of Dead Horse IPA

This Saturday I finally found myself in the basement of the Elliott Street brewery making seven barrels of dead Horse with Ryan. The brew pub on Elliott Street is even quirkier than the Putney road brewery. It's going to take some getting used to down here in order to dial things in. I'm sure it will take a handful of times brewing down here before I get completely comfortable with the setup. We'll likley be looking at an eight to ten hour day to start. Hopefully I'll be able to dial that back after I'm dialed in with the equipment.

Back in the mash tun.

I had been on a brewing hiatus for the past several months. Between logistical issues, work commitments, family life and ski season it has been challenging to find the time to brew beer.

With that said I put my boots on and climbed back into the mash tun to make 20 bbls of professor Brewhead Brown Ale on Saturday. I performed the typical tag team with Ray. He mashed in and took care of the back end of the brew. The great thing about brewing is it's scalability. For the most part all the ratios remain the same whether you are making 10 gallons or 10 bbl's. I'm happy to finally have my boots on again and look forward to helping Ray and Ryan out whenever possible.

Yeast Failure, changing gears.

I checked in on the Pilsener Tuesday evening, and there was nothing going on with the fermentation. I suspected that the fermentation may be stuck as a result of underpitching the yeast. My suspicions were confirmed after I took the gravity reading. It was stuck at 1.044. It had been almost 72 hours and nothing was happening. Red flags are now popping up all over the place and I needed to make a decision. Ditch or pitch?
When brewing beer it is paramount that one pitch an adequate amount of viable yeast. In this case the yeast I used was obviuosly not adequate enough to jump start the fermentation process.
Ideally, one would like to see the fermentation lag phase commence within four to six hours of pitching the yeast. Three to fifteen hours is considered acceptable. Anyting longer than that and your risking uninvited guests to your fermentation party. Since I had already invested around six hours in this brew session, I decided to go for it and pitch more yeast.
The only hitch was that I didn't have enough viable lager yeast to pitch into this brew. Instead I pulled out theWLP 565 (Saison strain) and pitched it. This essentially will change the characteristics of my beer. Instead of a crisp clean lager, I'm now making a light farmhouse ale.
Ahhh....Alchemy at it's best. Well fermentation blasted off within a few hours, and it is bubbling away.
I'm taking a gamble here and hope it pays off. Best case scenario I'll make some fine beer. Worst case, I'll have wasted six hours of my time, a few dollars in material and have to pour some beer down the drain. Only time will tell.

The German Pils

I finally got down into the basement after a month and a half hiatus from brewing. Between being out of town, out of CO2, and spending time working on the first floor apartment I have found myself without any free time to make beer since end of April.
My luck changed this weekend when a window of opportunity opened and I brewed ten gallons of German Pils. This time around opted for not performing a decoction. So instead it was a single infusion brew, mashing in at 152f with 22 lbs of fine pilsener malt from Germany. I pitched a nice cake of WLP 830 from my yeast bank.

ESB

Today I brewed up a new ESB recipe that I have been working on for a few weeks. This experiment saw the introduction of Demura into the beer. I'm branching out a little bit more these days with the intruduction of more adjuncts into my brews. Lately it has just been sugar in various forms. Coming soon: beer made with six row, corn, and rice.
This beer was brewed so I could have a yeast cake availabel for the next batch of Strong Scottish Ale.

Back in the mash tun

I brewed up the Chocolate Stout last Monday. This was the first brew of the new year for me. Lately my time has been taken up by the usual barrage of Winter activities, solo and with the family.
I took advantage of some free time to myself and finally made it down to the basement brewery to start filling up the fermenters for 2009. I decided on the chocolate stout because it is such a solid beer in my arsenal. It's good to be able to rely on tried and true recipes from time to time. It lends to less of an ordeal in the whole brewing process since I'm not putting the time in to design something new. So with that said I think that I will continue to bring on the clones this Winter.
Happy Brewing!

The Parti-gyle

Saturday morning I found myself with a little free time while waiting for the outside temps to rise above 40f so that I could finish up some house painting on the East side of the house. In true on the fly fashion I decided to make the 999 Barleywine. Mashtun capacity limitations prevented me from brewing up ten gallons, as a result I decide to collect second runnings and and make a small ale with Amarillo hops. Both brews were a success and they are fermenting away happily at 64f in my basement.

YI8- Stowebound

Saturday afternoon I got together with some of my friends up in Stowe for Yankee Ingenuity 8. Taking the brewing show on the road required me to scale back on my usual volume . I figured that schlepping around 10 gallons of fermenting wort Sunday morning would be a little much. This required me to dial back to a five gallons for the event. I decided to make a DIPA. Since I had some warrior hops on hand I opted for something that I'm calling "Warrior DIPA". This beer has a whopping 101 IBU's and a starting gravity of 1.074. This brings current primary fermentation in the brewhouse up to fifteen gallons.

Finally got one in the fermenter

After an eight week hiatus, I finally have some beer in the fermenter. I brewed my All American Pale Ale on Sunday morning. Fat squirrel and his family came over for breakfast,. After breakfast and we proceeded to the lab for some Sunday mashing. There hasn't been much to report because, well there really hasn't been much to report.

Somehow August turned out to be a very busy month. Between vacation, and visitors it seems that the month just zipped right on by. Grace is back at school today, and Winty has her first day on Thursday this week.

Three Carbouys in Less then Thirty Days

It happened again last night. Another carbouy bit the dust. B was racking the Hefeweizen to final packaging and was preparing a five gallon carbouy as a precaution to deal with any excess volume issues. Well there were no volume issues, but while he was cleaning the carbouy it slipped and broke. Funny how glass and water always win. I'm now down to four
He cut himself pretty good. Luckily no stitches required.

The Saison fell slightly short of the target gravity, but landed well within range for the style. It came in at 1.063. We are going to ferment it on the high side with hopes to produce some nice esters from the WLP 565 yeast that we used. Due to it's relatively moderate rate of attenuation It will likely sit in primary fermentation for around three weeks and then get finished off with a dose of WLP 550 to dry it out.
Due to warm temps and capacity issues this will likely be the last brew for a few weeks.

Summer Sasion

B and I are brewing a summer Saison today. I got all the malt measured up last night, along with the orange peels, ginger, and whirlfoc. I completed the final calculation for this beer today, and he going to mash in around 2:00 pm. I'll be blasting out of the office around 3:45pm on my bicycle for the ride home. At this rate I may fit in another hundred miles this week.
Brilliant!

Double Decoction at Dawn

I brewed up the Super Pilz this morning. Winty and I woke up around 5:45. I rolled out of bed, made some coffee and doughed in at 6:40 am. I wrapped things up by 2:30pm today. It was a big day in the brew house for a big beer.
My original plans were to brew up the Bohemian Pilz, however after performing a double decoction I determined that I was going to be overshooting my gravity in a major way. As a result I adjusted the Hop profile to meet my new target gravity, and voila The Super Pilz was created. It's fermenting away happily in the lager chamber.

I have a brewing problem

It certainly doesn't look like a drinking problem. Seems to me I have more of a brewing problem. I am compelled to brew to maximum capacity. With that said, I have had to make some minor adjustments to the styles I will be brewing in the next few weeks. The temps have jumped to around 73-77 in the basement. This is well beyond the acceptable fermentation range for almost any beer.
As a result I will be making use of my lager chamber. Saturday morning I plan on making some Bohemian Pilsener. Fortunately I can still make lager beers in this heat. The downside is it takes almost three months to complete the process.

There is one style that seems to fair well in with higher fermentation temperatures. This anomaly is the Saison , which is sometimes more commonly know as a farmhouse ale. So with that said as long as the temps in my basement stay above 70f, I'm going to brew some Saison. I'm in the process of growing up some yeast to an acceptable pitching rate, and expect to have my first Saison in primary fermentation sometime next week.

Trub Tripel

I went ahead and brewed up a Tripel on Sunday. It seems as if I have been working on this recipe for a very long time. Well it all came to fruition today. Iz got called to work at the coop, and I had some free time to kick around in the basement since I wasn't going to be riding my snowboard today. I ended up dumping the wort on the cake from the Belgian Strong Golden Ale that I recently brewed with the WLP 550. I also added a tube of WLP 500 to one of the five gallon carboys just to see what would happen with addition of another yeast.
The brew session didn't come off hitch free. As it turns out there were several small children playing in the basement. As a result my attention was turned periodically to them. While transferring the chilled wort to the carboys I ended up with a little more trub then I wanted. So much so, that i became gravely concerned with the possible outcome of having to much trub in the fermenter. I did a little research on this, and discovered that trub is good. Yeast like it, and apparently people like the end result as well.
So there you have it my Trub Tripel. This sucker might be ready to drink by the new year. See link for recipe.

Amarillo Pale Ale V2.0

I brewed up my Amarillo Pale Ale this morning. After making the best of Friday evening's unfortunate circumstances I mashed in bright and early this morning. I did overshoot my gravity a mile, but eventually attributed this to coming up short in my final volume. I came up a gallon short today. I'll be able to backfill this batch with some Pale Ale that has been cold conditioning in the basement for several months. Next up on the schedule will be a Belgian Pale. Here is the Grist composition from this mornings brew This grist has pretty much become the base for my standard Pale Ale recipe. It makes a fine beer.

	Malted Wheat	8.333%
	Crystal malt	8.333%
	Munich malt	8.333%
Pale Malt		75.00%

Along with the Hop Schedule:

Hop, addition and the IBU's

Perle-Kettle		20
Centennial-Kettle		10
Amarillo- Middle		10
Amarillo- Late		5
Amarillo-Knockout		0
Amarillo- Dry Hop		0

Chocolate Stout Redux

I brewed up the Chocolate Stout clone again this weekend. I aimed a little higher on the gravity. My target was 1.062 and I ended up somewhere around 1.068. The wort hadn't completely cooled to pitching temps when I checked the gravity it came in at 1.066 at ~78f. In order to compensate for the hydrometer's calibration set at 68f, I would need to add at least .002 points for accuracy. I'll have to dig up my calibration guide and double check this for accuracy.

This brew session went okay. While everything worked out fine today, I felt somewhat disorganized. I think I need to sit down and rethink the brew sculpture setup. I need to figure out a method that requires less lifting. Perhaps one of them fancy pumps should be added to my wish list.
I also picked up some Centennial hop Rhizomes today. This will be most excellent as I am looking forward to having my own hop flowers on hand.

The Amber Rye IPA Hybrid

Iz and the girls decided to go to Chelmsford on Monday to visit her sister. They would ultimatley surprise their cousin Buddy. I seized the opportunity by going directly to the basement after work. After a month off, I finally got a brew in the fermenator last night. I had been planning on making a Rye IPA. For some reason I had 1% chocolate malt included in the grist, so as a result the beer is more of an amber color then that of a true pale ale. I seem to be blurring the BJCP guidelines a bit these days, but what they heck I'm an alchemist and I deserve to do my own product development.

The original gravity rung in at 1.060 which was slightly short of my target gravity (1.062). Close enough for a basement hack. This was my first experiment with Rye. I plan on monitoring this beer closely to see how it turns out. I'd be very pleased to come up with yet another arrow for my brewing quiver.

Pale Ale V3.1

I love it when I am able to make a beer over, and over, and over, and have it come out the same. I brewed up the Pale Ale V3.1 today. In fact the wort is chilling as I write this up. I racked to Alt to a keg earlier this week, as a result this beer will yet remain 10 gallons short of reaching my maximum capacity.Guess I need to make some beer next week in order to fulfill this prophecy of maximum capacity. By the way the yeast starter for the Belgian Strong Ale finally took off Friday morning. Look like I'll be able to step it up again, and brew that Belgian. Now for the recipe. Think quick, any ideas?

Brew Schedule flexibility

I put together a yeast starter last night for a Belgian Strong Ale. The yeast had an expiration date on it of 11/30/06. While it is almost a year old, I'm going to try and harvest what is left, and try to step up a nice starter for an upcoming batch of beer. Ideally I would like to brew it this Thursday night, but given the potential high starting gravity of this beer (>1.080). I may need to rethink my plans.
Between the year old yeast and the high gravity of this beer, there will be limited margin for error in regards to pitching enough healthy viable yeast to start fermentation.
With that said, I may end up brewing the house pale ale Thursday night and save the Belgian strong ale for sometime next week. The fermenters will finally be at maximum capacity.
A kind word of thanks to those of you who have offered me solutions on my carboy dilemma.
May beer karma be with you.