Tumbler Bottling

After our failed El Jefe tasting and the dunkel racking snafu, it was great to have a smooth and successful home brew night with bottling our Tumbler clone.

As part of troubleshooting the lack of carbonation in the hefeweizen, we went with corn sugar this time. In order to mix the priming sugar with the beer, we put the priming sugar solution into a bottling bucket, then siphoned the beer from the secondary into the bucket. This also made the bottling itself easier than using the siphon straight from the secondary. We ended up with 28 bottles of beer, but we probably could have gotten 29 or 30. I wonder if the 3-gallon carboy actually holds a bit more than 3-gallons.

The final gravity ended up at 1.016, which should put the ABV at about 5.8%. The taste was still nicely smokey and chocolaty. I'm not sure it's much of a clone of Tumbler, but as long as the final beer tastes good then that's all that matters. Can't wait to taste it with the carbonation! We also still need a fun name for it, but I'm sure Amy is working on it.

[ Tumbler Clone Brew Day ] <--- | ---> [ Black Mo Tasting ]

Dunkelweizen Racking

Since our dunkelweizen brewing buddies were here for the El Jefe tasting, we decided to rack the dunkel to the secondary fermenter. When we took the lid off the primary fermenter, there was a slightly funky smell. The hope is the yeast will take care of the funk. We made a two gallon batch and since they don't make 2 gallon carboys, we racked it into two one gallon carboys. Racking should have been an easy process, but I didn't know my own strength. After the beer was put into the carboys, I was putting the airlock in one of the stoppers and I pushed too far. The stopper ended up in the neck of the carboy. Then, in the process of trying to rescue the stopper, the glass on the carboy broke. So, we decided to call it a loss. Lessons were learned. At least we had made two gallons and one gallon is still going strong. The hydrometer reading was 1.017 so the current ABV is 4.7% before going into the secondary. Hopefully the gravity will still drop a few points by the end of secondary fermentation.

[ Dunkelweizen Brew Day ] <--- | ---> [ Dunkelweizen Bottling ]

El Jefe Tasting

We finally got to taste our first batch of home brew! We had family over and expanded the tasting with more family using Google Hangouts. Lots of fun was had by all. El Jefe had one fatal flaw: no carbination. Overall the beer tasted good, but it was a little sweeter than it should have been. It seems the yeast didn't process the priming sugar to produce CO2, leading to a slightly sweet, flat beer. So, we have some debugging to do. Thankfully we haven't bottled any other brews, so we have a chance to get it right with the Tumbler clone. There's a possibility that the yeast just stalled out and some more time conditioning in the bottle will produce better results. Hopefully if we do El Jefe again, it will come out perfectly.

[ Hefeweizen Rack to Secondary ] <--- | ---> [ El Jefe Tasting - Part 2 ]

Dunkelweizen Brew Day

With the hefeweizen almost ready to drink and the Tumbler sitting patiently in the secondary, we brewed our third batch of home brew - a clone of Weihenstephaner's outstanding dunkelweizen. We decided to go for a two gallon batch size this time. Unfortunately they don't make two gallon glass carboys, so it meant buying a second one gallon carboy and the secondary fermentation will just be split between the two carboys. I saw someone at the home brew store with a rewards card, so I asked about it and signed up. If only they had told me about it from the start, I would have already racked up some $10 off coupons!

The dunkelweizen brew day was easily the most fun of the three so far. For starters, it was our first Friday brew day, so there was less of a time crunch since we didn't have to wake up at 4 the next day. And, we had family over for dinner and beer beforehand, and to hang out and help with the whole brewing process!

We started the brew day with steeping the specialty grains at 150 for 30 minutes. While we were waiting for the water to come up to temperature, I noticed a few bugs walking around the grain steeping bag. I think they must have come from the grains we got from the home brew store! I got rid of the few bugs I saw, and couldn't find any more in the grains. I'm not sure if there were more in there, but at the very least the grain wasn't teeming with them. Nobody else seemed concerned, so into the water it went.

While the grains were steeping in about a gallon of water, I realized that we didn't measure out and mark the target pre-boil volume of 3.5 gallons. We had to just eyeball it between the 3 and 4 gallon marks on the kettle.

At the end of the steep, we poured a gallon of hot water through the grain bag to get the last bits of sugar, then added the extract and boiling water to get up to the pre-boil volume. Between the hotter water and the smaller batch size, it definitely came up to boil quicker than the last batch.

After 60 minutes we were only down to about 3 gallons instead of the 2.78 we were shooting for. I think we didn't have a vigorous enough boil and then fell short of our estimated boil-off rate. During the boil I had to run out and get two big bags of ice. Remembering to get the ice for each batch is a pain, plus cooling with the ice bath takes a solid 20+ minutes, so I'm wondering if it won't be long before we spring for a wort chiller of some kind.

After cooling and then siphoning to the fermenter, we had a trub loss of 0.4 Gal (more than the 0.3 we estimated) and still came in comfortably over our target batch size of 2.37 Gal. The gravity reading of 1.052 was a little less than the 1.056 we were shooting for, presumably because of the extra water.

The dunkelweizen has now been in the primary for a little over a day, and the airlock is bubbling like crazy. I'm hoping the timing works out that we can rack to the secondary on the same day that we taste the hefeweizen. Our dunkel brewing helpers will be over to taste the hefe and I'm sure they'd have fun participating in the next step of the dunkel as well.

Weihenstephaner Dark/Dunkelweizen clone attempt recipe:
Batch size: 2.37 Gal

OG: 1.056

FG: 1.014

ABV: 5.52%

IBUs: 14.0

Color: 19.4 SRM

0.48 lbs Caramel/Crystal 60 malt

0.36 lbs Honey malt

0.30 lbs Special B malt

2.82 lbs Wheat dry extract

13.4 g Hallertauer hops (4.1% alpha acid) @ 60 mins

0.4 tsp  irish moss @ 15 mins

Wyeast Weihenstephan yeast #3068

---> [ Dunkelweizen Racking ]

Tumbler Clone Brew Day

For our second home brew, we decided to try for a clone of one of my favorite fall beers - Sierra Nevada Tumbler. It's got a nice malty slightly smokey flavor, and apparently Sierra Nevada isn't brewing it any more. We're doing a three gallon batch this time, mostly to act as a test run for a Christmas beer, which we're also planning for three gallons. Our first beer is still in the secondary, and we don't really have a ton of time between our two trips out of town, but we're fitting in brewing and racking the Tumbler plus bottling the hefeweizen before we head out of town again.

The trip to the brew store was mostly just ingredients this time, but we did pick up a 3 gallon carboy, an airlock, thermometer, irish moss, and priming sugar. Another $100 trip at the home brew store. It'll be a nice little milestone when we brew a beer and actually only buy ingredients.

Brewing the Tumbler involved specialty grains, which we didn't use in the hefeweizen, so the first step was steeping the grains in 1.5 gallons of water at 150 degrees for a half hour. Next we pulled out the bag of grains, put it in a colander, and poured a gallon of water through to sparge. We put the dried malt extract in, stirred it up, then filled the pot to 4 gallons. So we used one of our lessons learned from last time to hit the pre-boil volume with the extract. But, another lesson learned - we should have made that additional water pretty hot first because it took forever to get that 4 gallons up to boiling. We also should have kept the lid on the kettle to get to boiling quicker.

At the end of the boil, we used our mixing spoon as kind of a dip stick to figure out the post-boil volume based on the depth of wort in the pot. It came out to 3.28 gallons for a boil-off rate of 0.72 gal/hour. We also measured the trub left over in the kettle after siphoning to the primary, which came to 4.75 cups. The volume left in the primary (2.98 gal??) was too low for the eventual rack to the secondary, so we added 4 cups of top-up water. Hopefully we now have enough to fill the 3 gallon carboy.

We took a bunch of measurements this time to help calibrate the settings in BeerSmith. Even with that, we got an original gravity of about 1.060 compared to BeerSmith's estimate of 1.051. I don't know if it's underestimating the sugars from steeping the grains, or the extract, or what. Next time I need to measure the gravity after steeping but before adding the extract to see if I can get a more accurate steeping efficiency and extract efficiency in the software. Still, even if our ABV is off by 0.5% or 1%, it's not the end of the world.

Tumbler clone attempt recipe (3 gal batch):
0.40 lbs Chocolate Malt
0.25 lbs Smoked Malt
0.65 lbs Crystal Malt 60 SRM
3.92 lbs Light Dry Extract
13.1 g Challenger hops @ 60 mins
13.1 g Challenger hops @ 15 mins
0.60 tsp Irish Moss @ 15 mins
13.1 g East Kent Goldings hops @ 10 mins
Wyeast American Ale yeast #1056

---> [ Tumbler Bottling ]

Hefeweizen Rack to Secondary

In the first couple days in the bucket, the beer foamed up enough that we had to clean and refill the airlock and wipe some beer off the top of the bucket. No big deal though, and the beer was fine for the remainder of primary fermentation.

After five days in the bucket, the bubbling in the airlock had slowed to two bubbles per minute. We moved the bucket upstairs, sanitized the siphon, piping, and carboy, and opened up the bucket. There was still some foam sitting on top of the beer, but it wasn't too bad. It was also smelling more like actual beer. :-)

We siphoned the beer into the glass carboy, filling almost all the way to the brim and dumping the rest into a measuring cup so we could see how much we had to spare at this step. The answer was "not much." We had less than a cup left over, and that was after tilting the bucket to keep the siphon going. It's not that there wasn't enough liquid in the bucket, but that the siphon can only pull liquid up until it gets so shallow that it's pulling in air. Seems like we basically need to shoot for a batch size that's a full quart more than the carboy size.

Also, during the filling the beer foams up a little, and in order to make sure you get the carboy full you have to just let the foam spill right over the carboy. Picture filling a somewhat heady beer so that beer is up to the brim, despite letting the head spill all over the sides of the glass. Next time we need to put the carboy in some kind of pan or something to catch the overflow and reduce the mess. :-)

We did have enough left over after racking to get a gravity reading, which was 1.018. Given the original gravity, the beer should now be at 5.3%. We also had enough left to taste it. It really tastes like a good hefeweizen! Flat and room temperature of course, but it does have some nice banana flavors from the yeast that we were going for. Now it's starting to feel like an excruciating wait for bottling and carbonation before we can actually try the final product. Excited that things seem to be going in the right direction though!

[ Hefeweizen Brew Day ] <--- | ---> [ El Jefe Tasting ]

First Home Brew - Hefeweizen Brew Day

For our first home brew, we decided to shoot for something along the lines of a Weihenstephaner Hefeweizen. After poking around for recipes online for a bit, it seemed like it was basically just wheat extract, hallertauer hops, and weihenstephan yeast. We used BeerSmith to figure out the quantities of extract and hops to use to get the desired original gravity and IBUs.

The first thing we did on brew day was run a test boil for an hour with our new brew kettle. BeerSmith has a place for incorporating the boil-off rate into the calculations, and I figured getting this drastically wrong one way or the other would mean we'd miss our target gravity and IBUs. After all the testing and guessing, we were shooting for a pre-boil volume of 2.26G, a batch volume of 1.22G, for a final volume in the carboy of 1.05G. The carboy volume was the critical part here, because too little beer in the carboy would mean too much air, which could increase the chances of contamination.

Time to start brewing! We measured out 2.26G of water, got it boiling, got our ingredients measured out, and threw the wheat extract and hops in there. It kind of tried to boil over when we added the extract. In retrospect, we should have turned off the heat, then added the ingredients, then brought it back to a boil.

The boil smelled just like Flying Barrel. We were actually brewing beer in our own house! After 60 minutes, we were only down to about 2 gallons instead of 1.5. We let it go another 15 minutes to boil of some more, but we still didn't get down to the target post-boil volume. I think part of this is because the boil off is slower with a bunch of malt extract in the water than it is with just water. Plus, the 2.26 gallon pre-boil volume should have been with the extract, not 2.26 gallons of just water and then extract on top of that. Next time we'll add the extract then add more water to bring it up to the desired volume.

During the boil, we got everything sanitized and ready to go. We put the kettle in ice water in the kitchen sink to cool it down after the boil (we should have bought more ice), then siphoned the wort into the fermenting bucket, pitched the yeast, put on the lid, and put on the airlock.

We got an original gravity of 1.058, which was actually slightly higher than the 1.054 we were shooting for, despite using too much water. So it was a relief that the water difference didn't mess us up. We put the bucket down in the basement, which stays about 64 degrees, and the brew day was done!

---> [ Hefeweizen Rack to Secondary ]

Initial Home Brew Setup

Once we got the idea to make a one gallon batch, we bought most of our initial home brew supplies during one of our trips to Flying Barrel while making our wine. That first trip of stuff was:

sanitizer

6.5G fermenting bucket

auto siphon

airlock

wort aerator

bottle washer

grain steeping bag

Smack-pack of Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan

We had originally planned to buy a 1-gallon wheat beer kit from Northern Brewer, but at some point after the Flying Barrel trip, we decided to just buy the ingredients ourselves. I also read more about the benefits of racking to a secondary fermenter, and decided we needed a carboy. And we figured out that our scale wasn't specific enough for measuring the right amount of hops to go into a one gallon batch. The next trip was to Annapolis Home Brew:

Spray bottle for the sanitizer

1 gallon glass carboy w/ plastic top w/ hole

test tube for measuring gravity

dry wheat extract

german hallertauer hops

scale that measures to the tenth of a gram

And finally we had everything we needed! Actually, not quite. We stepped through the process looking over our equipment, and realized the auto siphon didn't come with any plastic tubing. I also started to realize that just using 8qt stock pot wasn't going to work, since all the boil-off and other losses meant we needed an initial boil volume of at least 2G to do a full volume boil. One more trip, this time to Maryland Home Brew:

5' of plastic tubing

2G fermenting bucket

20qt brew kettle

Okay, finally now we did have everything, and it was time for our first ever home brew!

Desert Penguin Origins

A penguin was driving through the desert...

In June of 2005, Paul and I went with a big group of friends from work to brew some home brew at Flying Barrel in Frederick MD. They have a brew on premise option where you pick a recipe, use their equipment to brew 5 gallons of beer, let it ferment in Frederick, then go back two weeks later to bottle. Paul and I teamed up to brew a red ale similar to Killian's Irish Red.

Paul bought some label paper and we designed a label for our first home brew collaboration. We picked the name "Desert Penguin" based on the very funny joke about a Penguin trying to beat the desert heat in a grocery store while his car was being fixed by a local mechanic.

In 2006, Paul also went to Flying Barrel with his mom and made a Belgian white. At some point, Amy had taken her dad to Flying Barrel and made a fairly good milk stout. In general, our brews didn't turn out too badly, but they clearly weren't world class craft home brews.  :)

We haven't brewed beer for years, but we've spent that time tasting and enjoying some pretty fine beer. Paul started listening to the BeerSmith podcast with no intent to get back into brewing, just for general beer knowledge and enjoyment. But, one podcast talked about small 1 gallon batches and the spark was lit! The one gallon batches are much more manageable for an in home brew setup and allows you to experiment with more recipes without having to drink 2 cases of less than ideal home brew.

So, we decided to get back into it on an easy, small-batch scale. We feel like we have the knowledge about good beers and what we like to aide us in setting tastier targets for our brewing. We'll be shooting much higher than Killian's!

Prost!
-Amy