Month: November 2011

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(32) Saturday, November 26, 2011 Bew Day — Night Horse Dry Stout

Today is a re-brew of batch 29. Changes in today’s version include:

  • Crisp Maris Otter in place of the Thomas Fawcett & Sons Halcyon malt
  • Simpson’s Roasted Barley (550L) in place of the Briess Black Barley (500L) — I thought I ordered Crisp Roasted Barley (695L) but that’s not what my records show
  • Re-pitching the Wyeast 1469-PC West Yorkshire Ale yeast from batch 31 in place of the Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale
  • Single Infusion Mash in place of the Double Infusion Mash skipping the protein rest.
  • As with batch 31, I am going to be using a low vigor boil — medium heat seemed to work fairly well

Note for next time: Gretchen pointed out the flaker marks on the flaked barley just like the ones she gets when she flakes oats for our oatmeal. We got a sack of barley from a local farmer to try our hand at malting, but we could use it directly just by running a pound of it through our flaker.

Continue reading “(32) Saturday, November 26, 2011 Bew Day — Night Horse Dry Stout”

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Be a Drop Out

20111125-125709.jpg

It might be a little hard to see, but if you look close you will see that the yeast have dropped out of about the top three inches of my carboy. This is what happens when you cold crash. If I let it go long enough, it would all drop out. Unfortunately, it does not look like it is going to make it in time for me, since I need the yeast in this carboy for the beer I am making tomorrow.

Update: By the next morning, the yeast had dropped to 4½ inches. For it to drop entirely, it would have to drop 10–11 inches. Since I put it into the fridge on Wednesday evening, it has been about 56 hours since crashing. That corresponds to about a 1/12 of an inch per hour (or an inch every 12 hours). In order to drop 10 inches, it would have to crash for 5 days — 6 to be on the safe side.

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I’ve Got Gas

I bought my first CO₂ refill today. I was comparing the receipt to the one I got when I filled my take the last (first) time over a year ago. No change in price! It cost me $11.23 for 5 pounds of CO₂ on 9/21/2010 and it cost me the same thing today.

Since that time, I’ve done 10 batches of beer, so that is my first data point on how long a tank lasts. I probably could have got a couple more out of it. It was not absolutely shot. I did mess around a little to learn how it worked at first, too. I made some carbonated water. I also transferred some sanitizer between kegs and carboys. Maybe I could have gotten as many as 15 batches.

That would be 75 gallons of beer carbonated with 5 pounds of CO₂ at $11.23. That is 800 beers at 1.4¢ per beer.

That is not too shabby.

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(31) Saturday, November 12, 2011 Brew Day — 2011 Holiday Ale

Today I am making another batch of my 2011 Holiday Ale. There are four things I am going to do differently with this batch then before.

  • I am going to get the mash salts into the mash tun correctly.
  • I am going to reduce the vigor of the boil. I have been tracking my brewhouse numbers and I find that my boil off rate is 21% ± 2%. Boil off itself is not bad, but it is a secondary indicator of thermal loading. That has an impact on the reactions that occur in the kettle. Below some level, there is not enough energy to drive off DMS precursors. Above some level, The Maillard reactions start to cause off flavors that can be mistaken for fermentation problems. There is some debate as to what the ideal evaporation rate is, but the suggestions range from 10–15%. Since DMS in Ales does not appear to be as much of a problem, I’m not going to worry about shooting too low.
  • I am going to repitch my yeast from the slurry in the last batch. Mr Malty suggests a bit more than half a cup.
  • I need to do a better job with the fermentation temperature. This is not so much a plan at this point, as an observation.

Continue reading “(31) Saturday, November 12, 2011 Brew Day — 2011 Holiday Ale”

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DMS in Ales

For ales, these sulfur-compound issues tend to disappear. For example, ale malt with only 1 μg of SMM per gram of malt is common. This low initial concentration means that the SMM level at the start of the boil is

1\; \mu g/g\; \times \; 200\; g/L =\; 200\; \mu g/L\;

This initial SMM concentration leaves a SMM residual of

200\; \mu g/L\; \times \; 0.21\; =\; 41\; \mu g/L\;

at the end of the boil. As noted above, 50% of the sulfur-containing compounds (be they SMM or DMS) is removed in the fermentation. Thus, the finished beer will have sub threshold levels of DMS no matter how the wort is cooled. Indeed, any hint of DMS in ales is likely from technical brewing errors, most notably contamination (see chapter 3). This fact probably explains why ale aficionados react very negatively to DMS in any type of beer.

Fix, George. “Production and Reduction of Dimethyl Sulfide.” Principles of Brewing Science: a Study of Serious Brewing Issues. Boulder (Colo.): Brewers Publications, 1999. 71-75. Print.

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While Thinking About Beer Styles…

Stop Thinking Outside the Box – Dan Pallotta – Harvard Business Review:

You cannot possibly think outside the box unless you understand the nature of the box that bounds your current thinking. You must come to know that nature deeply. You must have real insight into it. You must accept it, and embrace it at some level, before it will ever release you.

There’s a Zen saying, ‘What you resist persists, and what you allow to be disappears.’ Thinking outside the box without understanding the box is a petulant exercise in resistance — every idea that comes from the process has the box written all over it. It’s a reaction to the box. It’s fighting the box. It’s a child of the box.

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Aeration

Once the wort is chilled to pitching temperature, it needs to be effectively, but not overly, aerated. Most home brewers will not have the budget for a digital oxygen meter (unless you really have a serious bank account and are a possessed brewer). The dilemma of using pure oxygen versus aeration via agitation is easy to resolve. Use aggressive shaking if you are strong enough to do so. If it is too heavy for you, then use pure oxygen. It is easy to over-oxygenate the wort in a small vessel with pure O₂, so tread carefully. Levels of oxygen over 12 mg/l can have a toxic effect on the yeast and result in stopped fermentation.

Gordon, Dan. “Lager Brewing the German Way.” Zymurgy Nov.-Dec. 2011: 32–37. Print.

Methods of Aeration / Oxygenation

Homebrewers have several aeration/oxygenation methods available to them:  siphon sprays, whipping, splashing, shaking, pumping air through a stone with an aquarium pump, and injecting pure oxygen through a sintered stone.  We have tested all of these methods using a dissolved oxygen meter and have found that, when using air, 8 ppm of oxygen in solution is the best that you can achieve.  Injecting oxygen through a stone will allow much higher dissolved oxygen levels.  The chart below shows methods tested and the results.

Method DO ppm Time
Siphon Spray 4 ppm 0 sec.
Splashing & Shaking 8 ppm 40 sec.
Aquarium Pump w/ stone 8 ppm 5 min
Pure Oxygen w/ stone 0-26ppm 60 sec (12ppm)

It was concluded that pumping compressed air through a stone is not an efficient way to provide adequate levels of DO. Traditional splashing and shaking, although laborious, is fairly efficient at dissolving up to 8 ppm oxygen. To increase levels of oxygen, the carboy headspace can be purged with pure oxygen prior to shaking. The easiest and most effective method remains injecting pure oxygen through a scintered stone.

Wyeast Laboratories, Inc. “Oxygenation.” Wyeastlab.com. Wyeast Laboratories, Inc., 13 Dec. 2007. Web. 06 Nov. 2011. <http://www.wyeastlab.com/hb_oxygenation.cfm>.