The eternal Krausen

The Blue Moon Clone I brewed over the weekend still has a 2 inch Krausen on it. It first formed within 18 hours of being pitched and has been going strong ever since. You can see the little yeasties happily chugging up and down in the carboy, and it has been 6 days already!

The Smithwicks won't be finished in time for St Pats tomorrow, unfortunately. There is still airlock activity as of last night, albiet quite slow. I don't even have time to cold crash and do a super-fast carb job on it, not and do it justice. It has to be ready and able to bottle from the keg by the 23rd though, so I'm hoping it hurries up. I need at least 48 hours to crash the yeast or it will be way to cloudy for judging.

Brew Day!

Brewing the Blue Moon clone finally. Only a few weeks after I had planned.

Brew Day 03/03/13

It had been a long dry spell since the last Brew Day, back in December if I recall correctly.

Thanks to my long suffering wife for doing parenting duty while I played in the Garage. Granted, during the Mash I also grilled some steaks and veggie kabobs which she found rather tasty, so there's that.

Anyway, I brewed the Smithwicks for the brew club challenge. I'm not sure if I'll have it ready for St Pats but it should be good for the end of the month judging at the next beer club meeting.

Everything went well, except for the hose that was frozen for a while until I thawed it out with the jet heater in the garage, but even that was overcome.

I'll probably brew again this coming saturday, the Blue Moon Belgian White clone that I had planned to be the next one until the Smithwicks interjected itself into the rotation.

Oh, 1.056 OG on a target of 1.051, so there's that.

PS: I broke my drill I use to crush the grains, so now I get to buy a new one! (always look on the bright side of life, doo doo, doo dum dee dee doo doo)

Ranger IPA A/B

Nate (coworker and fellow brewer) was kind enough to provide me with two bottles of his Ranger IPA that he brewed roughly at the same time I brewed mine. To be fair, he actually suggested the clone, although we used slightly different recipes.

I finally got around to opening one of his bottles to compare with what I have on tap. It's a rough task, I know, but I make these kind of sacrifices so you don't have to.

From here on out I'll be refering to mine as Ranger A, and Nate's as Ranger B.

To the comparison...

After the pour both produce a moderate head, very similar, and both leave nice lacing on the glass after drinking. Head retention seems to be the same, not quite disappearing but leaving a nice coating on the surface.

Ranger B on the left, Ranger A on the right. Head is very similar.

On the nose, Ranger B has a more pronounced fragrance of subtle fruitiness than Ranger A. One of the ways ours recipes differed was in the dry hop stage, I think the aroma comes down to this.

As to flavor, there is very little difference between the two, with just a bit more of a 'greener' hoppiness to Ranger B, once again I attribute it to the difference in dry hopping stage.

The major difference between the two is in clarity. This is most likely completely down to the fact that Ranger A is on tap, and has been able to settle in the keg while chilled for a good month now while Ranger B is bottled so has not had the same chance to clarify.

Ranger B on the left, Ranger A on the right. You can see the print on the piece of paper through Ranger A at this point. Ranger B has a bit of chill haze right out of the bottle, but it cleared up quite a bit once it warmed up a little. Once again, this is most likely all due to the fact that Ranger A was able to settle in the keg for a month while Ranger B did not have that conditioning.

All in all, I'm quite happy that both Rangers were so close. It was my first All Grain brew while Nate has been doing BIAB for quite a while now. I took Ranger A down to the LHBC meeting at the end of January and everyone there was favorably disposed towards the clone. I was still being asked for samples after I had already ran out of the samples that I brought down.

Brew Club Challenge

My LHBC has put forth a challenge to its members to brew a Smithwick clone. To be judged against each other, and the real deal, in an informal competition at the end of March. I'm up for the task, so this is what I'm planning.

8 lbs Maris Otter
1 lb CaraPils
.375 lb Crystal 60
.25 lb Crystal 120
.12 lb Roasted Barley

1 oz Kent Golding

WLP004 - Irish Ale Yeast

Mash 1.3 U.S. Qts of water per pound of grain @ 154 degrees f.
Sparge with close to 2 U.S. Qts of water per pound of grain @ 178 degrees f.
Ferment at 60-65 degrees F (This will be the hardest part to get right for me as I don't have the means to Lager yet, but I'll think of something)

Blue Moon Belgian White Clone

Here is the recipe that I've put together for the next brew, a Blue Moon Belgian White clone:

6 lbs - American 2 row
4 lbs - White Wheat
1 lb  - Flaked Oats

I'm planning to mash on the warm side for a sweeter conversion, target will be 156F.

Boil for 90 minutes:

1.5oz Mt Hood @ 90
1.5tsps crushed Coriander @ 10
.5tsps crushed sweet orange peel @ 5

Will use WLP001 - California Ale yeast as the information I've read says to use.

The particulars:

OG: 1.057
FG: 1.014
ABV: 5.6%
IBU: 25.2
Color: 4.0 SRM

Not sure when I will get around to actually brewing this, probably sometime in February.

Next Brew

I know it will still be a few weeks before I brew again, but it is already in the planning stages.

I'm going for a Blue Moon Belgian White clone. I've researched a number of different recipes up to now and I think I have a good feeling for what it needs. I haven't quite built out the recipe list for what I'm going to use yet though.

My friend from Aurora (you know who you are) very generously got me a gift certificate to NB that will be utilized, along with a few other purchases. One thing I don't know if they have yet is the right adjuncts. A Blue Moon thread on HBT talks of specific dried orange peel to use, the commentor was one of the brewers that helped develop the beer back in the 90's.

Once I get the grain bill, adjuncts, and yeast decided, I will post the recipe and brew day schedule that I plan to use.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, Blue Moon, it holds a special place in my heart as it was one of those beers that launched my beer snobbery at Old Chicago.

Cheers!

Taste Test

I'm looking forward to next week. One of my coworkers, who is also a home brewer, brewed the a Ranger IPA clone recipe right around the same time that I brewed Ranger Danger. (he actually pointed out the recipe to me). I don't think our final recipes were exactly the same. I will try to get his recipe from him so I can point out the differences.

I brought him a sample of mine to work today, and hopefully next week he'll bring me a sample of his. It will be cool to do a comparison test between the two recipes to see how they are similar, and how they are different. This is the first time that I've been able to compare one of my brews against another.

I really like the Ranger Danger, and will most likely brew it again sometime during the summer months.

Ranger Danger in the Kegger

Took the Ranger IPA clone out of the fridge from cold crashing tonight. It had a lot of hops floating on the top when I put it in, cold crashing made all of it sink. That kind of surprised me a little. I know it helps particulates to settle out, as in yeasts, and other small size matter. But the whole leafs that were floating on top were also affected.

Tested the gravity as well.
OG: 1.059
FG: 1.005
ABV 7.2%

Tasted very very good even though it was not carbed yet. Looking forward to this one very much as it was the first AG brew I finished.

One of my brewing friends will be over this weekend, but I don't think this one will be quite ready by then, although sampling will be done with gusto!

New Micro Brewery

Just encountered this on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/WormburnerBrewCo

Wormburner Brew Company located in Davenport. Looks like it is in the infancy stage at this point, not licensed to sell retail, but are stating that they are giving out free samples to discerning tasters for feedback and/or suggestions.

I look forward to yet another Brewery here in the QC!

Failure

The Dunkle has gone down the drain.

This is not the first beer that I have dumped. I brewed the Dunkle back before Thanksgiving. OG measured out at 1.058, which was right on target. After the first week, Krausen had fallen, things were looking good and I took my first gravity reading. It was a disappointing 1.024 when my target was 1.013. I gave it another week and checked the gravity again, it was still 1.024. It hadn't budged a single point in a week.

Thanksgiving came, and I went out of town for the holiday. I figured that I could give the beer another week or two with no problems at all, I still had a couple on tap, plus more to keg while it sorted itself out. It never did drop below 1.024, so all of the following has a big question in my mind on whether or not it was due to the gravity stall. I figured I'd go with it regardless when a keg opened up.

I left it alone after the second gravity reading was showing no movement and bypassed it in kegging order with the Black IPA (which is still tasty). Once the English Pale was finished right around Christmas I had an open tap to fill so I pulled out the Dunkle.

From the get go I thought I might possibly have an issue. I should have taken a picture, but unfortunately I didn't. Most of the time with long fermentation times, and this one was going on 6 weeks in primary, you have a nice clean looking beer. This particular one looked like it might have had some residual CO2 bubbles still on the surface, not much at all really. I cold crashed it for a few days as I normally do before I keg anything.

Once I pulled it out of the fridge to transfer it to a keg I got a closer look. The only way I can describe it was that it appeared to have very tiny (about 1 mm across at the largest) white spheres on the surface. It was by no means pervasive, maybe several dozen or so and like I said, tiny looking. In 5 gallons of beer, not really very much at all. As I was transferring to the keg, I noticed a few dozen more along the sides of the carboy, and some on the surface of the racking cane. At this point I was already worried about an infection in the beer, I tasted it as well and thought that it might have 'something' off about it but it wasn't carbed yet so wasn't totally sure.

In the keg it went, and got carbed up. After a few days at high pressure I tasted it again, and I wasn't sure whether or not my paranoia was kicking in, but it just tasted a bit ..... off. Hard to describe, other than a bit of a chemically taste to it. This is one of the reasons I want to train as a judge, so that I can tell exactly what is going on, even in a bad beer.

I kept it on tap for a while to see if it would mellow with full carb. Drank a few pints of it myself, and took a growler of the Dunkle and the Black IPA to a house party on New Years Eve. Everyone loved the Black IPA, but were all 'meh' on the Dunkle. I just couldn't get over my own paranoia that it was infected with something.

I gave it another go tonight, and I thought that I had worked past the paranoia, or the flavors had mellowed and it might be alright. But....... I had also just eaten a dill pickle before tasting it. Once I cleansed my palate of the dill, I tried again, and sure enough the strange chemical taste was still there.

Down the drain it went. I know you can drink a beer that has been infected, it won't do you any harm. But I just can't keep 5 gallons of it on tap and force my way through it at the leisurely pace that I consume my beer now. I also won't force it on my wife, who is a party to all my doubts about any beer. She knows I thought it might be infected, I won't keep anything like that from her and make her a gueinea pig.

The only bad thing is, I've never made a Dunkleweise before, so I had no base of comparison on that, but I've made plenty of Hefes to know that this one wasn't quite right.

Now the Ranger Danger is cold crashing to take it's place in the keg lineup. That one I am really looking forward to as it was my first AG beer. An associate of mine pointed me to the recipe, and he has his example so that we can compare as well.

My thoughts on what could have happened? Well, I must not have been diligent enough in sanitizing my beer thief. That was the only object that went into the beer once it was in the carboy. It is the only possible source of an infection. The Black IPA was tested at the same time with the same beer thief, but it is just fine. It also went into a keg several weeks ahead of the Dunkle. If the infection that I suspect was introduced by taking sample readings, the Dunkle had more time for it to take hold.

I've checked both the Ranger Danger and the Brown Turkey that are still in carboys and neither of them exhibit the same symptoms. Neither of them have had their airlocks off of them since they were brewed and neither show any signs of infection.

Either way, I'm now going to be scrubbing the crap out of my beer thief and racking cane. I'm also going to toss out all the fluid lines I use post brew, I have plenty to spare.

It is disappointing to have to dump out nearly a full keg of beer, but I have plenty more to drink. This is also not the first infection I have had. My peach experiment got infected much worse than this one. It was very obvious with big bulbous fuzzy growth all over the peaches. That one only got away from me because that was during the week that my daughter was born and I couldn't tend to the peaches soaking in the completed beer at all (you have to keep the peaches submerged to avoid the possibility).

It is a one of those learning experiences that keeps you on your toes about disinfecting everything that may come into contact with the beer.

Live and learn.

Another question I have to deal with now. I washed and saved the yeast from that carboy, is this going to have the same infection (if thats what it was) lurking around in the yeast samples I saved. I think it might, and to assuage my paranoia I think I am going to have to dump out the yeast samples. No big deal, I'm not even really sure what yeast strain it is, it came from a Brewers Best kit from the LHBS. It won't kill me to dump them.

Choices

During the holiday weekend (which I took a break from the 'nets so no new posts here), my family visits helped with emptying out the English Pale that had been on tap since just after Thanksgiving.

Now I have to pick between 3 different ready to keg beers:

Dunkleweiss
Ranger IPA clone
Northern English Brown

The Dunkle has been in the fermentor the longest time, and I already have a Black IPA on tap...
The NEB hasn't even been checked for final gravity yet...

Dunkle it is!

Also, my lovely wife gave me a pressure cooker for Christmas, now I can sterilize jars, lids, implements, etc, for yeast washing and storing.

I'll be getting to that next, washing the yeast cakes in order to store my own like bank.

Major Difference

So the Brown Turkey is happily percolating this morning with an inch of Krausen already fully formed.

For the majority of the this year I have been using dry yeast in all of my brews for a couple reasons. Locally sourced kits were all dry yeast, and when ordering over the internet in the middle of the summer heat I tended to use the dry option as well. I didn't want to have complications with shipping liquid yeasts and having the heat kill them off before I received them.

I had been spoiled by the quick action of dry yeast. Dry yeast is packaged when the yeast has already been through the O2 uptake phase, making them set to go as soon as they rehydrate from the wort.

Other times I used Wyeast smack packs, which also tend to take off rather quickly. It really only seems to be White Labs that takes a while for the yeast to go through the O2 uptake phase prior to getting down to work. With the Ranger Danger IPA I did a few weeks ago, it was 36 hours or so before I started noticing any airlock activity.

This time around using the White Labs yeast, I made a starter on Thursday evening to get it all kick started.
2 cups of water and 1/2 cup of wort boiled for 15 mins, then chilled down and yeast pitched in. I haven't made a stir plate for it yet, but the yeast burned through that little amount of wort in 24 hours.

Using that starter has made a world of difference with this brew.

I'm happy.

Nano Nano Nano

Via Instapundit, an article in Slate on my favorite topic here at WBHY.

 Pint Sized

From the article:

 Brewing beer begins as a hobby. Friends praise the homebrews and clamor for more. The idea of going pro and quitting the day job tempts. But launching a microbrewery requires a mid-six-figure sum. Without independent wealth or deep-pocketed backers, the entrepreneurial fantasy ends there.

But a nanobrewery can get off the ground with a five-figure outlay. That’s real money and real risk, but it’s attainable for someone with passion and modest resources. In Dlugokencky’s case, he took a loan against his retirement for about $40,000 to upgrade his homebrewing kit into a system capable of producing three barrels of beer at a time. (A barrel is 31 gallons, or two kegs.) He handles the distribution—to bars, restaurants, and stores—himself.

Quitting the day job isn't in the cards, at least for the time being. A three barrel system would take up quite a bit of room, pretty much my whole garage. Sure would be fun though wouldn't it?

Taste Testing

Blackened is the IPA has been on CO2 at 10lbs now for 8 days. Pulled off a pint of it tonight, and I pronounce it good.

The recipe that came with the kit called for it to be dry hopped, but I altered it and put all the hops in during the boil. Most dry hopped IPA's tend to be a bit 'green' to my tastes.

Carb level still isn't quite up to full snuff, another week and it will be perfect. But, as of now, it is good to go as it still retains CO2 in the beer after the head subsides.

The gravity bottomed out at 1.024 on a projected 1.021. Earlier I thought it was a bit sweet to taste, but now it seems to have equalized out and has a nice balance.

Rare Belgian

I'm not sure if I can talk my wife into allowing me to make a trip to John's Grocery to pick up a 6-pack.

http://121212xii.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/hello-world/

Not when a 6'er costs $85.00.

Would make a great Christmas present though.

Beer and Politics

I don't plan on using this blog to debate politics, but I couldn't resist posting this informational article.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/blogs/hotlineoncall/2012/09/what-your-beer-says-about-your-politics-27

I know my beer drinking tastes do not match their chart, but then again I'm really an exception when it comes to most beer rules, as are most home brewers I would imagine.