Brewday: Christmas spiced beer

Today I will be attempting my first shot at playing with water additions.  Up until now I have always used RO water and added a generic pack of salts from the homebrew store.  I want to try to dial in my water and PH level though so I pretty much have to learn about water profiles.  I am only doing a 3 gallon batch today because this will end of at about 9% ABV and it would take me forever to drink 5 gallons of this.  Also since it is seasonal, I am not going to want to drink it much past January so I will save a few for next year and not worry about having to store a bunch of beer for next year. (We live in a small house).  I also am reusing my yeast cake from the porter I just brewed which was the first time doing this.

Here is my water profile.  I am going to be posting this to Homebrewtalk.com to get some feedback.  Hopefully I am doing this correctly.

 I don't have any other pictures from this brewday as most of the pictures are pretty much the same.  I will be sure to post a picture of the finished product. 

Brew Day: Porter

Well it is almost time for the cold weather here in AZ again and to me that means making sure that I have a nice dark beer for the winter.  I can't drink dark beers in the hot summer out because they just seem too much when it is 115 degrees out.  The very first homebrew I ever had was a Porter a friend made and it not only opened me up to the world of brewing but also beers other than Budweiser and the like.  It has become one of my favorite styles.


Here I am preheating the mash tun.  Next to it I have all my grains.  I read in the most recent BYO that you can actually get a better flavor profile if you don't do a sparge.  I figured I would try that so I just put in all my water minus what I calculated I needed for a mash out. 

I hit my mash temp right on target at 152.  That always makes things much easier.

I have several new toys since the last time I brewed.  Most are more for lagers but I couldn't help using them this time.  This is my stirplate that I build for $15 and some spare parts.

And this is my new refractometer. I found myself using this much more than I planned and was able to make adjustments as I went.  For example, after my mash my gravity was a little low so I just increased the boil time. 

 

 Here it is boiling away...

Here is my other new toy that is mostly for lagers.  I purchased an O2 system.  I think not being able to get enough oxygen in the wort affected my flavor a bit and cost me a few points when I entered my beer.  Hopefully I can avoid that with my next lager and in the mean time it will help with ales but not having to shake the bucket for 5 min. 

Once the beer is finished I will post a picture!

Hard Cider

We recently were cleaning up and came across a gallon of apple cider from last year that we had forgotten about.  The date says it is good until November but we usually only drink cider during the holidays so instead of dumping it I decided to just pour it into my new gallon carboy and ferment it.  I also added a cup of light brown sugar to bring the SG up to 1.062.  It should be about 7.8% alcohol when finished.  I plan on carbonating it and adding some additional apple juice or sugar to it to sweeten it after it is done fermenting and then bottling it for the holidays.  I should get about 8-10 bottles which is perfect since I don't drink too much hard cider.

One note is I am also doing a lager while this is fermenting and it makes me miss ales.  It took two days for the lager to start fermenting and this one I was getting bubbles within about 20 minutes.

Brew Day: Oktoberfest

I used some birthday money to buy a Johnson controller for my keg and since it was empty and I had room to fit a fermenting bucket I decided to try my hand at a lager.  I have always wanted to brew a true Oktoberfest since I started brewing but never had all the equipment that I need.  Being a lager it needs to ferment at around 50 degrees and then be stored close to freezing to "lager" for at least 4 weeks.  I also have learned how picky lager yeast can be.  They need lots of Oxygen in addition to a much larger volume of yeast to ferment the same 5 gallons.


Since this was my first lager I decided to keep the actual boil easy and just use extract instead of all grain. 

 Here I am steeping the grains for 30 minutes.

 And finally here is the wort boiling. 

 

Finally on 9/10 after 5 weeks of lagering, the Oktoberfest is finished!

Brew Day: Belgian Wit

This brew day I decided to make a Belgian Wit which is one of my favorite summertime beers.  Wit beers are traditionally very light almost a white color which is why they are often called "White beer".  The orange peel and coriander seed adds a citrus note to the beer.  It also has a high % of flaked wheat and oats which create a creamy texture.  To me nothing is better on a hot Phoenix day!  Commercial examples would include Hoegaarden or Shock Top. 

This is the recipe sheet I used.  I use BeerSmith for entering all my recipes and would recommend some kind of software if you are doing all-grain. Extract and partial mash brewers can get by without this.  This recipe come from Brewing Classic Styles.





  

 

  Here is just after I added the strike water to the grains   

Collecting the first runnings.  I will then sparge the grains and repeat.

 Just another view of collecting the wort.

Here I have collected all the wort and brought it to a boil and am just adding the hops.  This recipe called for a 90 minute boil to reduce the DMS in the beer but the hops only had to boil for 60 min so the wort has been boiling for 30 minutes already. The orange peel and coriander is added with only 5 minutes left in the boil.

Here I am zesting the oranges for the boil.  I tried to get oranges from 3 different sources to add to the complexity of the flavor. 

This is my cooling rig.  Not pretty but it works.  It is a copper immersion chiller that I run tap water through.  Here in Phoenix though the tap water will only get it down to about 110 so I bought a pump to circulate ice water through to finish chilling it to the desired 80 degrees. 

One month later a new Belgian Wit is finished.  Overall I really like this batch and am very happy with the results.  Wits are a difficult beer to keep consistent batch to batch as you are dealing with the freshness of the coriander and the oranges that can both make a big difference in the final taste.  This is only my second Wit and this one came out much better than the first.


Prost!

Favorite links

Here is a collection of the most useful links I have come across over the years.

1) This is the complete How to Brew book by John Palmer.   This is the best place to start but be aware that it has a ton of information in it that you don't need for your first batch.  But it is a great resource and a good starting point.  Just don't get discouraged.

2) Great How-To for making your own mash tun from a 5 or 10 gallon cooler.  

3) Link to another blog who I have found helpful. - Great info for the first time trying all-grain.


4) More advanced methods but great info on traditional German Brewing techniques

5) Great recipe book with one for each style of beer. - The recipes are very style specific but they have all won awards so they are a great place to start.  I am working my way through and eventually want to brew all of the beers in this book.

6) Homebrewtalk.com  - The best homebrewing forum on the web in my opinion.  They have just about any information you could ever ask for from DIY projects for mash tuns to all electric brewing setups.  Plus answers to just about every question on brewing you can think of.

Prost!

First Post!

Welcome!  I will be using this blog to create a history of my homebrewing adventures.  I have been homebrewing since 2006 and decided it was finally time to start keeping a log of all my homebrews.  I hope you find some useful information in here and will be sure to post tips and links that I have found useful over the years!

Prost!