Brewing journal
Hop Merchant Indie Hops has a blog posting about a recent pellet evaluation by Chad Kennedy of Laurelwood. It’s more of a press release about how awesome their pellets are, but it’s still an interesting read.
Hopefully all hop processers take note of Chad’s quote:
The gold standard for dry hopping is the whole cone..
In this brewer’s opinion, whole cones are also the gold standard for not being a pain in the ass to clean out of your gear.
Christmas came early this year, and the stinky box of joy was full of gold foil surprises. For loose-leaf brewers cuts I have a brick of Cascades (8.7% alpha this year!) and a brick of Simcoes (11.8%). We all know about Cascades, but I’ve not used Simcoes for a few years and really like them. Great for a single-hopped IPA.
For pellets, I scored the following.
Thanks to my connection (father-in-law) and his at Hop Union.
While I was drying off my 1 liter Erlenmeyer flask yesterday, I heard a strange pop. I had just used it to culture a yeast starter for a beer, and after cleaning it up, there was a sickening clink that caused me to pause. A quick check revealed a long crack across the bottom of the flask. Luckily, this didn’t happen while I was boiling a mini-wort for the starter, or when I set the nearly boiling contents in to an ice bath. Best yet, it didn’t happen when the vessel was full of a bajillion yeast cells waiting to eat my fermentable sugars and poop out alcohol.
Do not use
Now it’s time to shop for a new one. 1L has worked fine, but wouldn’t 2L be finer?
I’m still brewing on a proto-tier system and taking notes about the height, usability and relationships between vessels so I’ll know exactly where I want things before I make them static. I used to be somewhat sensitive about that state of my “brewery,” until I started looking at other people’s tiers on the internet. Now the white towel rack from our first apartment no longer embarrasses me. And I know it’ll be retired soon after a second productive career.
I started heating water in the HLT at 6 am on Monday (it was light and so very nice out) and was really happy working in the quiet and cool morning, and I’ve grown so very fond of brewing outside, so I’ve got to make sure this system is still portable and can be broken down to store and transport. As I was setting up and breaking down, I started to realize how many piecemeal items that were added along the way can be made a permanent fixture and save time. I also realized that my wort chiller needs some modification to work in my new brew kettle.
Oh, and I still dislike pelletized hops. Such a mess.
I’ve been meaning to get a draft cleaning kit going for nearly 4 years. I’ve gotten away without simply because I (we) manage to drink the beer quickly enough that by the time the detritus and germs seriously affect flavor, there’s nothing left to taint. However, I recently had a pony keg of Laurelwood Hop Monkey on since I didn’t have any active brews, and since it lasted longer, the flavors were seriously injured by the end.
So I purchased Micromatic’s basic hand-pump cleaning system and am going to aim for a weekly line cleaning. The process is frighteningly simple and should make for better draft product coming out of my refrigerator door.
The first time I tried it though, I was also watching both girls. I was getting interrupted every 2.5 minutes, so I had to constantly wash my hands to make sure all the caustic was off, put out an emotional fire, then get back to the lines. It took a little longer than I expected, but real world results usually differ from “ideal conditions.”
Today Rich and Brent stopped by to join in the brewing session. It was a slightly longer than normal session because I chose to modify several variables in the brew house. Not only did I try out a prototype tier system (fugly), I used my new kettle. Luckily, the gear-related problems were minor, and the major time consumer was actually a cold mash. My strike temp was too low, so we pulled off a gallon or so and reheated it before adding it back. This of course made it too hot, so I added water from the HLT and the hose when the HLT wasn’t quick enough, but that dropped it too much. After 2 more pseudo-decoction mashes, we finally go up to the right temperature and let it rest.
Rich brought over some great rye bread, so we stepped next door for some ham and swiss and had some fine sandwiches with a Green King Suffolk Strong Vintage Ale. Talk about a great lunch. The Suffolk Strong a blend of a pale and a strong ale aged in wooden vats for two years. It had a wonderfully sour woody flavor and gave off a delightful aroma. Literally like someone’s old, musty woodpile. Must be the Cooper in my lineage that makes that an attractive flavor.
Anyway, the lautering went quite well and we used Rich’s refractometer to watch the gravity and ended up boiling about an hour and a half later than I’d expected. Rich had to leave for another engagement so Brent helped me cool and rack the beer, which was problematic because something circumvented the false bottom and clogged the dip tube to the spigot.
Anyway, we came out at 1.058 and the wort tasted wonderful. So much sweater than usual, largely because it wasn’t obliterated by my usual overdoes of hops.
My last couple brew days have included a weird shuffling ritual about half-way through lautering where my sweet wort kettle is nearly full and my hot liquor tank (also my brew kettle) still have hot water that needs to go in to the lauter. What ensues is a silly, high risk game of musical pots as I pour liquids between 4-5 different kettles and stock pots trying to get all the hot water from my main brew kettle so I can collect the remaining sweet wort.
Another method I’d like to leave behind is the constant ladling and scooping from the hot liquor tank and pouring it in to the mash tun. I’m afraid I’ll mess up the grain bed. I think I’m going to have to build myself a 2 tier rack so that I can harvest gravity’s natural talent in making water go downhill. Luckily, there’s lots of examples for ideas at Brewhalla.
Now I’m just mentally building it. And watching craigslist for potential kettles and parts.
No IPA sticker in my iMac
After sampling some good beers (and one bad beer) at the North American Organic Brew Festival last night, Joe, Linds and I stopped at Pause because we couldn’t resist the wonderful summer evening. We grabbed some food and a pint and chatted for a while longer, and Joe mentioned an article he’d read in BYO about New Belgium using olive oil instead of aerating the wort with oxygen. He explained that what the yeast really want is a fatty acid that olive oil has in abundance, so using a miniscule amount negates the need for pumping in oxygen. I was still perplexed, so he told me to go read some more on my
Homebrew Talk has a fairly complete rundown on who, what, where, and why. The main things to take away are:
The homebrew shop I used to live by wouldn’t refill gas tanks, they’d swap empty tanks for full tanks. This worked OK, but they charged way too much for the service. Each time I went, the cost seems like it had gone up. I started the process with a brand new aluminum tank (5#) that I got with my kegging setup. The last time I swapped tanks, it cost something like $20 and I got a POS steel tank that everyone else makes fun of. Sure, it’s old, ugly and heavy, but it also has “Blitz Weinhard #1″ etched in to it, and while it’s probably just a fluke, I like to believe that it had done a stint in the now defunct brewery.
Anyway, it needs refilled, and I’ve been lugging it around a lot, so I’m going to try and swap it once more, hopefully getting an aluminum tank instead. What it may lack in imagined history, it’ll make up for in “not ghetto-ness.” Besides, I imagine its time for it to be serviced, and if I’m paying $20 to have it swapped, I’d better be paying for some safety.
This tank has pushed beer for 2 weddings, at least 2 birthdays, and many batches of beer. Once I stopped using the crank-and-shake method of carbonating, I stopped needing as many refills. We’ll see if the swap happens.