Smoked Malts & Super Yeast

As I mentioned in this previous post, I wanted to try brewing with more grains. Hence, I decided to put together a recipe for the rare and elusive rauchbier using a lot of grains. This fit, because the the smokey flavor of a rauchbier comes from the smoked malts. As my buddy described, it's "like drinking a campfire." Kind of like an Isle of Islay scotch.

The result was:
3 lbs of cherrywood smoked malt
1 lb of beechwood smoked malt
3.3 lbs of liquid munich malt
3.3 lbs of liquid dark malt (I accidentally had ordered an extra one of these with a previous batch, so it fit in here)
2 ounces of Hallertau Hops (I was thinking of Mt. Hood for a spicy more spicy sort, but Hallertau seemed to be most common in other rauchbier recipes; hops chart)
1 vile of liquid White Labs San Diego Super Yeast

I still have yet to purchase a good grain mill; however, I noticed an option to pre-crush the grains at purchase, so I decided on that. As you can see, they did quite the job milling the grains below. Much better than my ziplock bag and wooden block.

Crushed!

When boiling the grains, you typically use something called a muslin bag, to allow the grains to steep while being easily removable. Luckily, I still had several large muslin bags lying around, as I certainly needed it with 4 lbs of grains. It was definitely the most I've stuffed one so far.

Giant muslin bag

Typically at the start of a boil, I add to gallons of water to the brewpot, so I stuck with that trend this time. After boiling and removing the muslin bag, I realized that there was only about 1 gallon left, meaning the other had been soaked up by the grains and bag.

Now the typical solution to this is something which I've done in the past called 'sparging', which would have allowed me to regain a lot of the sugars  and good liquid. However, by the time I realized how much I'd lost, the muslin bag was already in the waste. Hence, I'm hoping I still am able to achieve good amount of the smokey flavor, despite the lost juice.

An additional change I made to my custom recipes this time was picking a liquid yeast, this one being called White Labs San Diego Super Yeast. The choice behind this was, I've heard good things about White Labs and this one had a somewhat high optimum fermentation temperature between 65-68 degrees, which is where my closet is usually at during the winter.

Super yeast!

Typically I get dry yeasts, but this one was liquid, which you have to be slightly more careful with. However, from what I understand it doesn't make a huge difference whether it's a dry or liquid yeast in the long run. The final reason which I went for the San Diego Super Yeast was because it's a very active yeast, which means that my closet would be doomed with yet another explosion of krausen if I did not setup a blowoff tube. So I did, and although it's not as fun to watch bubble as a typical airlock, you still witness plenty of bubbles as the super yeast works away.

Krausen Uprising

Saturday was a very productive beer day which involved brewing a new more complex beer (to be described in an upcoming post) and bottling the previously explosive experimental recipe.

For those interested, here what the interior of the explosive fermentor looks like. You can see the ring around, where the krausen rose until it blew the lid and everything else off.

Krausen uprising

In the end, the beer tasted fine, so it likely avoided any contamination. Hence, it should be good to go with a review in a number of weeks now.

Newest Experiment Soon To Be Released

I've just ordered my next custom experimental recipe. I'll keep it a secret for now; but it should be pretty cool and challenge me this time!

Stouts & Grains

Since I have to keep the cycle of beer going, it was time to brew again the other night. I had a chocolate stout recipe and ingredients that had been laying around, which I'd bought on sale a while ago. It was  tried and tested recipe by the people at beer-wine.com, so not too much of my own creative input went into the recipe.

Now I have a bit of history with chocolate stouts. Both recently, and about 5 years ago (when I first tried brewing), the wort boiled over the pot, leaving a sticky mess of malt over my stove to clean up. It's never happened with any other brews. However, chocolate stouts have it out for me. You'd think I would have learned after the first time, but nope... the score currently stands at Ryan: 0, Chocolate Stouts: 2.

Hence I was especially careful this time to ensure my victory over a chocolate stout. I kept the boil temperature on the low end while checking on the wort frequently, which led to an unscathed brewing session this time.

Now interesting about this recipe is the use of grains; which I don't have an extensive knowledge of yet. If you take a look at my previous experimental recipe, it's all malt extract and lacks any full grains. However, take a look at the grains used in the chocolate stout below. Tons. In fact, the use of chocolate malt is what defines the chocolate stout.

There's a couple of reasons I've stuck to malt extracts with my own recipes so far. The main one is that I wanted to start simple, and expand my knowledge from there. The other main reason is I do not yet have a grain mill, so I use a caveman method to crush the grains, as depicted below.

My hi-tech method

I put the grains in a plastic ziplock and use the wooden block to repeatedly roll over the grains until the grains look crushed, or my arms give up. If I owned a rolling pin, that would be a good solution as well; but I've been looking into buying a grain mill at some point soon. The problem is all of the half decent ones are quite expensive, so I'll have to research thoroughly before purchasing.

Anyways, I think in future recipes of my own, I'll start to incorporate more grains for a more complex and interesting beer. One that might be quite cool to try is some smoky grains, so I end up with something along the lines of a rauchbier. We'll see though!

Next time...

Well... last week I spent a good amount of time scrubbing the walls after the previous explosion, so time for some conclusions. Apparently the foam which rises during fermentation causing everything to blow off is called Krausen, as explained here.

My thoughts are that in an attempt to make a more alcoholic beer by increasing the amount of malt, I may have doomed myself. The yeast was busier due to the extra sugars to consume and hence there was more krausen; to the point where even the plastic carboy could no longer take it.

If I were to try the same recipe in the future, I might get a slightly larger carboy so that there's more space for the krausen to rise.  I'd also definitely want to try a blowoff tube setup.

However sometimes disasters are unavoidable even for the best of us; as can be seen in the following set up images from /r/homebrewing: http://imgur.com/a/DYlo6 ... an exploded fermentation tank that makes my losses pale in comparison.

Explosions!

Well it didn't take long for things to happen. Last night I went to check on my most recent brew. However, upon opening the door I saw what looked like a bomb explosion in my closet. The airlock had flow off as well fermentor lid. Apparently the yeast was quite angry! A look at the destruction below.

The lid was actually blown off it (I put it back on temporarily to prevent the likelihood of contamination)

The closet door, which could possibly be considered art now, signed by 'yeast'

Some of the content which overflowed everywhere; essentially mushy malt

The airlock, which couldn't hold back everything, and flow off along with the fermenter top

Now something similar happened to me before when I was brewing an ESB (extra special bitter). During the first few days, the beer rose and clogged airlock, which eventually blew off due to the pressure. It sat in such a state for several weeks actually before I went down to the basement to look at it.

I decided to let it finish brewing hoping that it had not become contaminated. After reading around a bit, it seemed there was a high chance that the layer of carbon-dioxide being produced by the fermentation would prevent any contamination. Plus my thought was 'beer never gave up on me, so I'm not gonna give up on beer!' In the end it turned out to be a great brew, which a lot of people liked.  Plus it pretty much named itself in the process as Explosively Special Beer.

The ESB's airlock clogged with hops

The ESB's dried risen hops, up to the level of the airlock's former location

From my ESB experience, I learned quite a bit actually. First of all, I probably didn't leave enough air at the top of the carboy. Secondly, using a glass carboy for primary fermentation may not have been the best decision. In the case that a glass carboy is used, something called a 'blowoff tube' setup would actually be preferable to a standard airlock. Having learned these two thing, I figured that I'd stay away from glass carboys for primary fermentation and would be fine.

However, apparently that's not the case as my closet will testify. If you take a look at my last post, you can see the ingredients used in the current batch, which is quite possibly one of the main reasons I'm cleaning up a giant mess right now. I have a few other thoughts as well, but will research it a bit more and share my conclusions next post.

Either way, I put a different lid back on the fermentor (since the old one was messy and actually had the rubber lining blown out of it too) and since then the airlock has been bubbling rapidly still, so the yeast is still busy at work!

Experimental Recipe Selection

I did in fact end up brewing last night, which worked out quite well. Hence, I'll explain my experimental recipe and thought process.

The ingredients: 3 lbs dark malt, 5 lbs amber malt, 1 oz Chinook hops, 1 cinnamon stick,  and standard ale yeast

Most of the beers I've brewed in the past have used about 5 or 6 lbs of malt (for 5 gallon batches), which is pretty normal for beer and leads to a fairly standard alcohol content level. However, this time I wanted something stronger, so I hopped on a cool tool called BrewLab (I wish I had discovered this earlier) and started trying out different mixes.

Anyways, I went with an amber/dark mix, since I've had good results with ambers previously. In all a total of 8 lbs of malt. Malt is essentially sugar which the yeast consumes and converts into alcohol, so the more malt the higher alcohol content up to a point. Using the brewlab calculator, this should be about 5.7% or so, which is higher than any of my previous creations.

In terms of yeast, a basic ale yeast would suffice as it's quite cheap and I haven't worked with other yeasts too much yet. I'll have to start experimenting with them in the future. However, a beer is not necessarily complete with just malt and yeast! One time I brewed with no hops, which was still quite good, but tasted more like a cider than a beer almost.

With my last few batches, I've picked fairly bitter hops and over-boiled them leading to very bitter beers. This time I wanted to balance it with hops aroma more as well, so I took a look at the following hops chart and decided on Chinook hops, which I haven't worked with before; but seemed aromatic and still quite bitter. I also decided to reduce the amount of time I'd boil the hops in order to lower the impact of them.

However, a recipe is not 'experimental' until you throw something random in there, which is where the cinnamon stick comes in!  Reading up on it, too much cinnamon can destroy a batch.  Some people seemed to use cinnamon powder, while some just left the stick in for a few weeks during fermentation. I however, decided to boil 1 cinnamon for the last 15 minutes, then remove it; hoping it will add a really mild touch to a darker/amber beer.

The brew process ended up going smoothly, so I'll keep you updated!  Haven't thought of the perfect name yet, but it will come in time.

Tonight

is going to be a brew night, with an experimental recipe I created.

The Resolution

It's been on my mind for a while. I've been planning it for the last few months. Long before January 1, 2013, I know what my resolution was going to be:

To consume only my homebrew at home

That is my goal. There are many reasons I think it's a good resolution. I enjoy homebrewing a lot, so this will only encourage it. It will force me to master (or at least attempt to) the art of homebrewing. It will make me appreciate outside beer when I have it a lot more than I might otherwise. It will save a bit of money; not a significant amount, but definitely some.

Since it's January 3rd as I type, the trial has already begun.  There are several rules and exceptions which are set.  If I'm at a bar or somewhere externally, I am allowed consume whatever they have there as I don't have the capacity to carry my homebrew wherever I go.  If I am going to be hosting a party that hasn't been planned for in advance, other people are allowed to bring beer, as if this was not the case, a party could quickly dry me up.

Since it takes roughly 6 weeks for most beers to be ready from the initial brew day, I plan to always have something fermenting and bottling.  At the moment, I have a chocolate stout fermenting, some custom experimental ingredients of my own on the way, and last night I bottled a honey amber.  A couple pics from the bottling process below.

The syphon setup

A closer look at the active syphon

Anyways, it should be a fun year and resolution to stick by.  Na zdravi!

Introduction

I've always been a beer person. Being half Czech, it's in my blood. I've always loved microbrews, and started visiting a lot of microbrew festivals which are always amazing!

I tried micro-brewing about 4-5 years ago with a Mr. Beer Kit and slightly more advanced brewing kit, which turned out well both times; but for some reason I chose not to pursue it further. However, recently my family was cleaning out their house and stumbled upon the remaining primary fermentor and gave me to option of picking it up or tossing it out. Hence, I took the former and threw it in my trunk.

I let it sit there and roll around for a few weeks until I got tired of hearing it thud when I'd take a sharp turn, and decided to start brewing again. A decision to master the art of brewing, to the point where I can experiment and shape the way I want my beer to taste. I've got a lot to learn, so I've gotta get my practice in. Since there, I've become addicted to homebrewing and have created a nut brown, celtic red, peach weiss, and experimental malt only beverage with many more on the way.