Slow It On Down - Batch #28

A few months ago, I read a few articles that proposed that 60 - 90 minute mash times were a hold over from days gone by. They proposed that modern modified malts don't need anything like that amount of time to convert in the mash. More on the order of 30 minutes was the claim.

You may notice I haven't bothered to link these articles.

That's because they are crap.

At least for us. As we dropped our mash times, our efficiency dropped right along with it. We went from our usual 85%+ down in to the 70s. We could, of course, compensate for this by adjusting our recipes but our Mash Tun is already packed to the gills and it seems like a waste anyway.

For this batch of Irish Stout, we went back to a 60 minute mash and our old numbers returned with an 86.7% mash efficiency. We also beefed up the recipe slightly to push the ABV up a little.

I expect this to be the best batch of the stout so far.

Jess also came up with a great name for this beer. It invokes images of sheep grazing in the green fields of Éire and also sounds vaguely religious which always works for beer. In actuality, it is named after Scarlett, Duchess, Holly, and Junior - the dogs that play frisbee with us all day while we brew. From now on, we'll be calling this beer Four Shepherds Irish Stout.

Supply and Demand

Our latest problem - getting our ingredients when we need them.

Now that we are brewing big batches we have run in to this problem a few times. Neither of our local homebrew stores are consistently prepared for us to come in and buy 30 pounds of various grains.

To make matter worse, we need to buy these grains no more than a day or so before brew day as once they are ground they begin to go stale.

Today, Shawn is driving to Columbia, MD (far far away) to attempt to complete our grain bill for this weekend. This, of course, sucks.

There are a couple of solutions to this problem.

First, we can submit our grain bill (and hop bill and everything else) to the store early and have them ensure that they order what we need.

Second, we can acquire our own grain mill. This would allow us to buy the grains far in advance and grind them on brew day. It would also allow us to buy grain in bulk which is much cheaper in the long run.

I expect that we may end up employing both of these solutions so that we are not scrambling around the state every time we are ready to brew.

Out With the Old...

In with the New Year! We've got some people coming over tonight and we'll be tapping the very first all-grain batch - the Hefeweizen. It is a *bit* young (I had a sample last night), but it will have to do.

The whole all-grain endeavor is moving along nicely. The big problem right now is scheduling. We have to make sure we have the right vessels (primaries, secondaries, kegs) when we need them. We screwed up a bit recently when we brewed two 10 gallon batches only 7 days apart and now we'll be forced to move one of the batches to kegs earlier than normal. This is not a big deal, but I don't know what I was thinking when we brewed that second batch...

The Last of the Extracts

Last night we killed off the last of the Strawberry Blonde (which was great) and the last of the extract Hefe (not so great - I'm starting to suspect a problem with keg #4).

These kegs were the final extract batches that I brewed. Extract brewing was the right way for me to start brewing beer. It let me refine many parts of the brewing process without the extra complication of mashing grains, etc.

From now on (actually from Batch #18 on), everything will be all-grain brewed. I put the first all-grain brewed beer in the fridge to cool down and carb up last night, so in a few days we'll be able to taste the fruits of our labor.

Brew Day!

What a day it was. Overall it was an exciting experience and went OK, but it had its moments of panic for sure.

First of all everyone in the house was sick. I was just feeling run down, but Jess and Mia were both down for the count. In addition my brew-partner Shawn was also sick and could not make it. I was on my own and dragging ass. It was also freezing out and raining.

Near Major Disaster #1 - My digital thermometer is full of hate and lies. It nearly had me attempting to mash at 110 instead of 152 degrees. New thermometers are a must-buy before the next session. Update: Done!

Near Major Disaster #2 - Stuck Lauter. I'm not sure what happened, but I think our braided wire filter in the mash/lauter tun collapsed. Or floated to the top. Or both. I don't know. I got the wort out eventually after much shenanigans. We'll try the big MLT next time and see if that works better. Update: The FOAM guys say that when mashing a recipe that includes wheat malt, rice hulls should be added to the MLT to help prevent stuck mashes. We will try this on the next batch.

Near Major Disaster #3 - Too much boil-off. Even with my awesome homemade lid (tin foil over plywood, yeah!) we lost too much wort during the hour boil I suppose due to the massive surface area of the liquid. Need a better lid and probably need to adjust recipes to allow for more boil-off. Update: Shawn is working on an awesome lid!

Near Major Disaster #4 - Wort chiller full of water when I dropped it into the boiling wort to sanitize it. It was full of cold water so it instantly stopped the boil. Oops. I cranked up the heat and recovered in about 8 minutes.

Near Major Disaster #5 - Not using a hop-bag when planning to siphon out of a very wide pot. I lost at least a gallon of wort and got tons of hop matter in my primary buckets. Hops in the primary is not a big deal but loosing a gallon of beer is.

I ended up with about 8 gallons of wort split between two primaries instead of the planned 10. Possible major disaster #6 - the airlocks are not bubbling yet... Update: Everything is fine!

On the upside our mash efficiency was above 80% which is awesome.

Also Shawn's wort chiller was incredible taking about 9 gallons of boiling wort to 80 degrees in 12 minutes and down to 65 in 20 minutes. The thing is a monster!

I'm not going to bother posting a brew sheet for this batch. Even if the beer comes out great I could never reproduce the parade of missteps that made it happen.

Mother of All Chillers

Built by Shawn, our Immersion Chiller is 50 feet of 1/2" copper constructed in two nesting coils that can be used separately or together in series or in parallel. Shawn designed it to work specifically with our huge (and wide) boil kettle but still be useful in other situations.

Like everything else the scale of it makes me smile every time I see it. Bring on the hot wort!

Don't Panic!

Yes, we are running out of beer. The last of the extract brews will be making their way in to our glasses over the next few weeks.

But the All Grain brews are coming and once we do a 5 gallon test batch this Sunday, we'll be doing several 10-15 gallon batches in fairly quick succession to build the supply back up.

News Round Up

There has been so much going on around here that I am behind in all things beer related, but I have great news.

First, the Strong Ale (specifically an Old Ale - BJCP Style 19A) is delicious. I gave it a test taste (pictured) this morning and was astounded at how good it was especially for not being a huge fan of the style - at least I thought I wasn't. I'm going to find out exactly how it measures up when I enter it in the FOAM Cup homebrewing competition on Monday night. I'm hoping to get some valuable feedback that, hopefully, I can apply across the board to my brewing endeavors.


Next I wanted to thank everyone for coming to our Octoberfest party. Although the rain forced us inside and killed the camp-out, everyone seemed to have a great time. There was lots of great beer around, from Dogfish Head to local beer from Growlers in Gaithersburg and my Saison (although it hardly tasted like a Saison - not sure what happened there) seemed to go over pretty well. The biggest issue with the Saison was that, due to its high alcohol content, people were having to switch off to something more tame lest they pass out in the bathroom adorned with a lampshade. Still, as predicted, the keg did not survive the evening. I applaud the effort from everyone and appreciate the kind comments.


Finally, the big news. With help from good friend Shawn, we are going All-Grain - just like a real brewery. If you don't know, the difference between All-Grain brewing and what I have done until now it is the equivalent of baking an entire pie from scratch vs. baking a pie in a pre-made crust. More control, but more things that can go wrong.

Shawn has never home brewed before, but has been following my exploits and has enjoyed much of the resulting product. We are putting together the equipment now that will allow us not only to brew All-Grain batches, but to brew 10 gallon batches - twice as much as before. And that, as Martha would say, is a Good Thing.