The past 6 months in the Brewery

Over the past 6 months, I managed to see a few things and brew a few things. Most brews were standard and uninspiring. When I look back and see the lack of photos taken, I am reminded that the everyday brewing processes were once so new that they required documentation at every turn. Now the process is just part of the everyday. I blame the kegging for this. You begin to fill the need to just fill the thing and have something on hand. Meanwhile the bottling process is greatly decreased (for the good) but the ratios of bottling sugars begin to vary due to the different amounts of young beer left from a 3gal keg.

The image above is not the result of beer (or at least i'm not ready to admit so), but the solution involved beer!

Winter brings cold, and when its cold, the brewer brings out the darkness to counter the white. Bock's are high powered lagers with dark characters but often more on the brown to red side. This batch to the left is the fixins for Mr. Spock, an ale version of a bock. After trying to cultivate a lager strain that died on me before it hit the yeast starter, I had to use what was on hand. After three different strains of yeast, it started to bubble. Rapidly, music to the ears.

Although using multiple types of yeast can start a small war in your fermenter, when you have nothing else to lose with a batch, just go for it. Indicators that other strains are dead will help cut down on this conflict which results in off flavors in the batch. Pointers such as no activity in the bubbler, sandy to muddy textured sediment at the bottom of the carboy, and a lack of colored layering in the sediment. White layers are healthy and chunky sediment is a good sign as well.

This is a concoction based loosely on a recipe in Papazian's Joy of Homebrewing. His Sparrow Hawk Porter was the adequate base for what I am calling Dark Port Hawk. Combining the darkness of Black Patent Malt, Dark LME, Unsweetened Bakers Chocolate and Mayordomo Vanilla Hot Chocolate Cubes from Oaxaca Mexico, I am expecting great things.



This is the first time for me using chocolate and after reading several suggestions to use cocoa powder, im assuming the chocolate will melt and dissolve and not stick to the pot. Heres to experimenting.









Update! As of May 26th, the Dark Port Hawk took 1st Place at the Do-It-Yourself Brew-It-Yourself Fest!

A cautionary tale.

So, I'm going to begin from the end with this batch description. As the picture describes and reads, this Silver Dollar Porter was a bit of a nightmare. My first All-Grain batch of the Apartment Ber series. As I knew, dealing with 10+ pounds of grain was always going to be a problem in my tiny kitchen, with no wiggle room for error and no compost within 10 feet of me.

As described here, All-Grain requires a much more intensive process of both temperature and liquid utilization. In order to get the most out of your malts, you want to boil as much of the sweet wort runnings from the mash-tun as you can. Because I don't have a turkey fryer or a 7 gallon pot...I decided to boil three different pots getting as close to 4-5 gallons as possible. This allows for better hop utilization and longer breakdowns of the sugars produced from the starchy malt. The voluminous boil makes the better beer. This method however made the process stressful, humid and fevered. I hope everyone can taste a little bit of me in each bottle! (Ah the magic of not being bound by state sanitation regulations) The top picture is the primary chilling in an ice bath in the sink using the 'wet t-shirt' method. Because I boiled so much more liquid, the longer it will take to reduce the temp for pitching the yeast. By resting the primary in a cold bath and wrapping a soaked shirt around the top and keeping the waist end in the water, heat is wicked away as the water will always remain colder than the source it is covering.

To operate this process successfully, divide your hops by eye into the number of pots you will be using. You don't want to over-hop one pot versus the other where the malts will be stronger than the hops and weaker in the other. In addition to this, because of the metallic content of the pots used and the surface area of each, they will come to a boil at different times. In my case, i used two timers, one for the smaller pots and the other for the larger. Maintaining your hop schedule is key.

The batch here is a porter, dark in color and slightly lighter in body than a stout but still very dark with higher IBU's. The brewing process itself went off without a hitch despite the increase of scalding hot liquid around me. The original gravity was nailed, the temperatures for mashing were consistent, and the runnings produced just enough to get what should be a 5.5% abv.

The biggest struggle was dealing with the spent grains. Rather than carrying the awkward mash-tun with soaked grains - making it about 50lbs - down the block to the nearest compost bin, I decided to empty it into bags and buckets. I will Never use bags again. Even double bagging didn't stop the wort from leaking all over the place. After thinking the grains were contained, i would turn my back for a second and the runnings would be trailing the baseboards. If i had a resident cow in the spare room, things would be easy. Despite all this, the batch is fermenting away. Increased sediment in the primary is expected due to the husks and grain pieces coming along the way as well as the increased yeast I have been pitching with. If this becomes an issue, most brewers lower the temperature of their fermentation space which knocks down a lot of the yeast so that it doesn't carry over to the secondary or the bottle. Also Irish moss is effective for this, the method I prefer.

I don't believe I will be All-Grain brewing in the Apartment Ber series again, atleast not until I find that cow. A cautionary tale.

*UPDATE* Despite all the tedious work involved in making this beer in such a small space, it took 2nd place at the Brew-It-Yourself competition in June of 2011.

Coffee Porter & Oatmeal Stout

Northern Brewer Beer Kits, ah the selection! While home I managed to convince my dad that brewing was a good idea. Convinced him so much so that he took up the hobby within the first week of my arrival. His first batch, which I played assistant brewer for, was a Northern Brewer Peace Coffee Porter. His setup is much easier to get engaged in the hobby as he has ample light and counter space. We also were helping each other remember to follow steps (and drink beer) during the process which I have not yet had any regular help with. The brewing went off without a hitch. We followed his kit instructions to a near T, and utilized the equipment he had. One hangup we found in the process was the application of ground Peace Coffee to the secondary fermenter about 2 weeks in. Our wort level was way too high to include the entire bag of coffee. Yet, we kept pushing it down and letting the beer sop up as much grounds as possible. As usual, LISTEN TO THE BEER! We should have stopped with what we could comfortably apply as the porter (I've heard) still tastes like watered down coffee. As you can see (right), the coffee was as close to the overflow line as you can get. We finally had to thief some out in order to make the levels adequate. Despite this, it was a first batch, I had never applied anything to the secondary fermenter at that point so I was also learning from the process. For a first batch, he was pleased with the resulting head at about 3 months of bottle conditioning.


Upon my return from Minnesota, I began a tear into the homebrewing hobby. For the next 2 months I would brew a new batch every weekend. Currently I am sitting at 150 Grolsch (450ml) bottles, 5 Fischer (650ml) bottles and 3 growlers deep in beer. (This is my new Avinator in action, its...the best)
Back to the Norther Brewer Kits. I hauled across the border an Oatmeal Stout kit (among other brewing paraphernalia). I was keen to get into it, as Norther Brewer effectively kicks the supply-shelves-ass of my local brew shop, Grape and Grain (or so I thought). But this is merely an economy of scale. The kit itself required a partial mash technique, my first foray into mashing. As you can see at left, it required a lot of grain - thus it needs to be mashed on a higher scale than simply steeping a small sack in the brew pot. Solution without a mash-tun? Wrapping the brew pot, full of near boiling water and those three full-grain sacks, in two raggedy ass blankets and leaving on the kitchen floor for a half hour. It wont always look glamorously proletarian or masculine, folks.

The brewing process was standard otherwise. However, what was not standard to me thus far, is the pitch black color that the malts created! Love that midnight plunge. The stout has very poor head retention at the 2week bottle condition mark (and thats after a month and change from brew day). The initial flavor (the nose?) is not developed, it seems watery...AS my dads porter is. Now, im not saying its the kits, as we may have chinced out on the body by using grain sacks, or hop socks, not enough yeast activity in the primary, but I am making the statement about the uncanny'ness of two kits having the same imperfection. However, having said that, the finish is amazingly oaty, almost a roasted oatmeal flavor! Keeping the lot in storage for now.