State of the Brewery

I've been brewing for a little over 2 months now and will be boiling up batches 10, 11, and 12 this weekend. I'm still a total noob, but I have learned some things.

The biggest, I think, is this: Beer needs time.

When I first got started I came across the 1-2-3 rule. One week in the primary, 2 weeks in the secondary, and 3 weeks in the bottle. Of course there are better ways to tell when beer should go from one stage to the next and every beer is different, but this is meant as a general guideline. I followed it - kind of.

There are a couple of things about this rule that I now know:
1. These are minimums.
2. Kegging instead of bottling does not change the rule.

Let me start with item two. For whatever reason, I assumed that because I was kegging, I did not need to wait 3 weeks to drink. I thought this three weeks was for bottle conditioning to take place and carbonate the beer. Because I was force-carbing in the keg, I figured I could drink when the beer was carbed - about 2 days after kegging. I found out pretty quickly that this was not the case and set a 1 week keg rule. So instead of 1-2-3, I was practicing 1-2-1. This still had me drinking pretty green beer, although I was too inexperienced to realize it at first.

Regarding item one, this is definitely a bare minimum across the board. My batches are rarely if ever ready to secondary after 7 days, secondary can go longer if needed, and the conditioning part could be a lot longer.

So here is my new rule:
- Primary until within a few points of target final gravity
- Secondary until final gravity or 2 weeks, which ever is longer
- Keg condition at room temperature for 2 weeks
- Cold condition/carb 1 week

Certain beers can go a little quicker, like some wheat beers which are typically ready to drink faster. Others may take longer, like the high gravity Strong Ale I'm getting ready to brew. The point is - I'm done drinking green beer.

The picture is batch #5 (a wheat beer) which is still on tap and was brewed about 7 weeks ago - by far the longest a batch has ever survived around here. It's not the greatest beer in the world by any stretch, but it is the best one to ever come out of my tap. I believe this is because, by chance not design, it followed these new rules. Compare that picture to the picture from batch #1 - you can see the difference. If anything batch #1 should have been cleaner looking than batch #5 but you can see this is not the case. Far from it.

All my upcoming batches will follow these rules by design. This sucks in a way because I'm going to run out of beer again, but I would rather run out than waste soon-to-be good beer.

So until then - STEP AWAY FROM THE KEG!

FOAM

No not that kind! A few weeks ago, I stopped by The Flying Barrel in Frederick to watch an all-grain brewing demonstration. It was being given by a guy who won Best of Show at the Frederick Fair Homebrew Competition. I met a lot of people and sampled a lot of very good homebrew. Eventually I was informed that everyone I was talking to, as well as the guy giving the demonstration, were members of FOAM - Frederick's homebrew club. I was invited to attend the next meeting and join up. Based on the quality of the beers I had been tasting, the decision was a no-brainer - hanging out with these guys could only help my beer.

The meeting I attended was last night. It was a special meeting as it was judging night of the FOAM Cup - the clubs internal brewing competition. Because of this the meeting was not held at The Flying Barrel as usual, but in the Tap Room at Flying Dog Brewery. Nice! My dad attended as well and I think he enjoyed trying all the Flying Dog, Wild Goose and the FOAM Cup winning beers.

I ran into a few of the guys that I had met at the demo and a lot of new people all of whom were very nice. There seemed to be a wide range of ages and backgrounds, but everyone was borderline obsessive about beer and brewing which will be a good outlet for me - I think Jess and others are getting tired of listening to me ramble on like a crazy person about brewing.

It was also great to hang out with a few of the guys from Flying Dog who, of course, really know their shit and love to talk about it as well. They have a 20 gallon 'test system' there and they are constantly experimenting and getting their 'homebrewing' fix that way.

Here is the kicker for the evening though: They had a 50/50 raffle and I won. The money more than covered my club dues for the year and the price of the raffle tickets I bought. Sweet! The next ticket, my DAD won How To Brew by John Palmer which he gave to me. SWEEEET! The final prizes were Flying Dog posters and when the brewery guys saw them they said, "Those posters suck - we'll throw in a case of beer with each one." Really cool! I would have loved to win a case of FD, but I'm glad I didn't as it would have been a little embarassing.

Keg on Wheels

Bottling is OK when we want to take a few beers somewhere, but we needed a more drastic solution for taking a lot of beer to a party. After poking around on the inter-toobes, we found this solution:

First we modified a 60 qt. cooler by removing the lid and making a new lid out of insulation board. The old lid popped right off and will go back on if we want to use cooler normally.

We bought a shorty party tap as the one I have is several feet long and would have ended up on the ground getting dirty or stepped on.

Finally we bought a portable keg charger. This is a small device that uses food-grade CO2 cartridges to push the beer out of the keg. This allows us to leave our big heavy CO2 tank at home.

The whole system worked great. The beer was cold all night and we only used up one CO2 cartridge serving an entire keg. The cooler and new lid worked better than expected maintaining temperature - we left the rig in the back of the truck overnight and there was only about a cup of melted ice this morning. Nice!

Batch #9 - Kölsch

Brew Date: 7/28/08
Recipe:
45 Minute Steep -
.5 lb. Breiss 2 row malt
.75 lb. carapils malt

50 Minute Boil -
4.5 lb. Pale LME
2 oz. Spalt Hops (2.0%)
1 tsp. Irish Moss (15)
1 oz. Spalt Hops (2.0%) (5)
Wyeast 1007 Smack Pack (direct pitch)

Target FG: 1.008
OG: 1.042
8/5: 1.013
8/9: 1.013 (secondary)

Blonde Meets Berries

Batch 7 got racked on to 4 pounds of strawberries yesterday. I prepared the strawberries by removing the stems and slicing them in half. They then took a 15 minute bath in 160 degree water to 'pasteurize' and clean them up a bit and then spent a few hours in the freezer. Freezing the strawberries causes the cell walls in the fruit to rupture, releasing all the goodness inside when they thaw.

Once frozen, I dumped the strawberries in a clean primary and racked the beer on to them. Even though this is a secondary, I used a primary bucket for this operation since jamming four pounds of strawberries in to the 1 1/2 inch mouth of my carboy seemed like a pain - not to mention getting them all out later.

I have high hopes for this batch. The end result is supposed to have just a hint of strawberry flavor in the aftertaste. Jess is a big fan of Pete's Strawberry Blonde, so she is excited about this one as well.

Batch #8 - UFO HefeWeizen

Brew Date: 7/25/08
Recipe:
45 minute steep of -
1 lb. lager malt
1 lb. malted wheat
8 oz. carapils malt

Boil 60 minutes -
5 lbs. Wheat LME
1.5 oz. Hallertau Hops (2.7%)
.85 oz. Hallertau Hops (2.7%) at flame out. Steep for 30 minutes.
Wyeast 3333 (Direct pitch from activated pack)

This is a Harpoon UFO Hefeweizen clone recipe. The weird hop amounts are because the recipe specifies AAUs instead of weight and The Flying Barrel in Frederick sold me the exact right amount of hops - 2.35 oz. This makes the left side of my brain very happy. No late extract addition this time because I want to follow the exact recipe.

Target FG: 1.012
OG: 1.050
8/1: 1.015
8/5: 1.015
8/7: 1.015 (secondary in keg)
Note: Not hitting FG as expected - could be temperature issue? Sample at 74 degrees. Washing the 3333 for later use if the batch turns out good. Having trouble siphoning smoothly from bucket to keg - need a better solution. Had to restart siphon a couple of times and things splashed around a bit.

9/6: Keg is GONE. This is a great beer I can't wait to make it again.

Ding Dong the Bad Batch is Gone

There is nothing like having good friends - especially when you have 5 gallons of less-than-perfect brew to get rid of. Batch #3 fought us the whole way, but we persevered and won the day. Our spirits high, we celebrated with a pitcher (or was it two?) of the Weizen - ah so good! Maybe too good as I discovered the next day that, yes, we had all but killed what was left of that keg as well. I squeezed half a beer out of it before it gave up the ghost. Chalk it up as collateral damage.