Damage Control

We did a decent job saving a brew-day-gone-wrong yesterday.

Our problem: hitting our temperatures.

We have been very good at hitting our mash temperature so far, but yesterday we let it get away from us. We're so used to brewing in the winter that the summer heat threw us a curve ball and we overshot our temps in a big way.

We brought the temps back down eventually, but the damage was done. Our efficiency sucked and we were on our way to brewing 15 gallons of beer flavored water (see Batch #27).

However, two good things came out of this experience:
1. Early Warning. Lately we have been taking more readings more often including many refractometer readings during lautering and sparging. The numbers we were seeing on this batch didn't look correct from the start. This is the point that an expert could have possibly made adjustmets and corrected the issues before they really became problems. As for us, I'm just glad that we know enough to recognize when things are headed off the rails.

2. Damage Control. We did managed to save this batch. We had to adjust our boil schedule in order to boil off more than normal and ended up with only 13.5 gallons of wort in the primaries. I'm not sure how it will compare to past versions of the recipe, but it will be good beer.

You only really learn when things go wrong, and yesterday we learned a lot.

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.

Oh No I Suck Again!

The first all-grain batch is awful - totally undrinkable. It's the exact same problem I have had a few times before. So depressing. Crap. Crappity-crap-crap!

However, there is an upside. I believe that we have finally figured out what is causing these every-once-in-a-while bad batches.

At first I thought might be a problem with one of my kegs. There was no way to prove this because I don't keep records of which beer ends up in which keg, but the frequency of the problem seemed about right. I had already started stripping down my empty kegs and soaking the poppet valves, etc.

However, when I tasted this new Hefe and found the same problem I knew it must be something else. (BTW don't ask why I didn't notice the problem when I sampled the beer. I actually did notice it, but I think my brain refused to believe it). This 10 gallon batch of Hefe was split between two primary buckets, two secondary carboys, and two kegs yet both halves of the batch tasted exactly the same.

This is a big clue. A random poorly rinsed keg or carboy would only have effected half the batch. It had to be something in the boil or ingredients.

I was talking this through with Jess and my dad and that's when it hit me. The yeast. For all the Hefe's I've been using yeast that I harvested from batch #8 and every one of them has been bad. Another bad batch I had was the second Kolsch I brewed on top of a used yeast cake.

The more I dig in to my (crappy) records, the more I am sure about this. I actually stopped harvesting yeast quite a while ago, but the 3333 used for the Hefe was harvested and, I think, is bad and producing nasty flavors. It seems obvious now, which is even more depressing. I have some theories as to why the yeast is bad, but I wont bore you with them. They are probably incorrect anyway.

So, along with several gallons of bad beer, I'll be dumping all of my stored yeast as all of it is suspect.

Luckily, only one of the other batches currently brewing is not using a freshly purchased yeast. However, that yeast was not harvested from a batch of beer, but rather saved from a large starter. I'm not (too) worried about that one.

So lesson learned I guess. Especially now that we are doing 10 -20 gallon batches it is simply not worth the risk using old yeast just to save a few bucks.

Brew Day Report

Saturday was another big brew day as Shawn and I brewed up 10 gallons of Belgian White.

Shawn brought up his newly converted "Keggle" and propane burner and we used them for a Hot Liqueur Tank setup.

We again had issues hitting our Mash Temps, but we kept at it and finally prevailed. I blame the freezing ambient temperatures for most of our problems.

We used the large Mash/Lauter Tun for the first time as well and it performed as expected.

Jess was a big part of the team as well helping out and she even surprised us with a 'tank-o-bloody marys'!

We used our existing lid for the boil although Shawn is working on a new version that will be even better. The biggest foul-up of the day was mine. When I wrote my shopping list for ingredients I had to double the recipe since we were brewing a 10 gallon batch and I forgot to double the hops and spices. DOH! This is the first time I have ever screwed up a recipe, but I think the beer will be fine. It will just be sweeter than intended.

Overall it was a great day. Shawn finally got a brew session under his belt and we've got a total 25 gallons of All Grain beer fermenting in the basement. We have a long way to go with regards to working efficiently (something over which Shawn and I both obsess) but we're on the path.

One of the big thrills if the day was seeing and tasting the Hefewiezen that I brewed 2 weeks ago. The color is amazing (see the carboys in the picture) and it tastes fantastic - totally different from the extract version.

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.

Time Heals All Wounds?

I have had only one bad batch of beer since I started brewing way way back in May of 2008. It was batch #3 and my understanding of what the problem could be was tenuous at best. The beer tasted like chemicals and was completely un-drinkable (despite the fact that we drank it). I bottled some of that batch for a couple of reasons. I wanted to see if, over time, the beer "fixed itself" and I wanted to have some more knowledgeable people try it and tell me what the problem was.

I did have some beer guru types try it and the problem they identified was in-step with my main suspicion - chemicals in the beer (duh). At the time this would have been Oxy-Clean or One-Step that did not get rinsed thoroughly from some vessel that the beer spent time in during its birth.

I changed my cleaning ritual and eliminated the One-Step, replacing it with StarSan. I also made sure that I rinsed a few more times than I thought was necessary just to be sure. I have not had a problem since.

Until batch #10. Same exact problem. In fact, it is even worse than batch #3. It's like drinking industrial strength glue. I'm not sure what happened, but now I'm sure that what I am tasting is Oxy-Clean. I'm guessing that I was tired during one of the transfers and racked the batch into a keg that I had not rinsed very well. But there is light at the end of this tunnel, right?

Today, with hope in my heart, I grabbed one of the bottles from batch #3. It has been a few months and if the beer could fix itself, it should have by now. I knew that if the beer in the bottle was good, I could just take the batch #10 keg and store it for a few months and it would be fine. No harm done.

But no. The bottled beer, although clear and gorgeous, tasted the same - bad.

So this weekend I will be doing something I have never done - dumping a full keg of beer. I can't even bring myself to con my friends into drinking this stuff - it is just hideous.

Ahhh Houston..?

We might have a problem. I poured the second batch of Kolsch on the yeast cake of the first batch and I have yet to see any real activity in the airlock. About 12 hours after after putting them together I saw some, but it has been dead ever since.

I replaced the airlock in case the first one was clogged (it was not) and peeked through the airlock hole. I thought I could see krausen, but it was hard to tell.

I'm going to give it another day and if there is still nothing happening I'll have to get a better look and maybe take a gravity reading to find out what is really going on.

On the up side, the Strong Ale is fermenting like nothing I have ever seen. I'm lucky I put a blow-off tube on it instead of an airlock otherwise I think I would have a mess on my hands.

Batch #2 in Primary

Brew Date: May 25, 2008
Recipe: This Bud's For You Kit
(Follow the link for the ingredients list.)

This brew day was a bit of a disaster. I must have called Aric 5 times. I got started brewing late, and we also had a party scheduled that day.

First of all, I ordered this kit without noting that it was a lager. I don't have the facilities to lager yet, so my first call to Aric was about this. Aric told me that he had brewed this kit before and simply replaced the lager yeast with ale yeast - no problem. A trip to my local HBS and I came home with a 'smack-pack' of ale yeast.

Disaster #2 started on brew day when I smacked the pack of yeast. I smacked it too hard I guess and shot yeast-food and yeast-goo all over the kitchen and my friend Shawn who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Funny to be sure, but now I am freaking out because the HBS is closed and I just screwed up my yeast pack. Another call to Aric yielded what I realize now must be the most repeated phrase spoken by experienced brewers to noobies: "Don't panic. Just use it and everything will probably be fine." I had stuck the yeast pack in a zip lock, which I should have sanitized but didn't, so I was worried about that is well, but Aric calmed me down a bit.

Disaster #3 struck when I was crushing the grains (a first for me) on the counter with a rolling pin. The rolling pin slipped and shot towards me sending grain flying all over the kitchen floor. Luckily, these grains were going into a boil-bag, so anything ummm... extra that got mixed up with them didn't physically end up in the wort. Luckily, we had cleaned the floor that morning (party, remember?) so it wasn't bad at all.

The boil went fine, and just before it ended I started cleaning (Oxy-Clean) and sanitizing (One-Step) the primary, blow-off tube, pickle jar, etc. I was much more thorough with my cleaning and sanitation this time, and my timing was better over all. I'm getting a little better at the dance...

In to the primary the hot wort went, topped off with cold water, and my new thermometer stuck through the air-lock hole. I don't have any wort-chilling capability, and there was too much stuff going on for it to go in the sink with ice for a half-hour. I could have used some ice in the top-off water, but I thought of that too late. I ended up pitching the yeast (from the ruptured foil pack inside the un-sanitized zip-lock...arggg!) around 90 degrees. Too hot I know. I just wanted that yeast out of that zip-lock and to be done brewing as the house was now filling with party guests.

It took about 24 hours, but fermentation eventually got going. The pickle jar had sanitizer solution in it this time. After a day or so, fermentation slowed down and I swapped out the blow-off for an air-lock, also filled with sanitizer solution.

As of today, Batch #2 has been in primary for 8 days. I have not taken (and will not take) a peek at it, but all seems normal. Thats the bummer about brewing in buckets - you can't see anything... I will rack this batch to the keg on June 15th, or when we float the Batch #1 keg - which ever comes later.

Lessons Learned:

• "Smack" is not meant to be taken literally.
• Pay attention to what you are ordering.
  
• Don't brew when you have to compete for the kitchen.
• Contain your grains.
  
• Don't Panic!