Black IPA Racking

Tonight we racked our Black IPA and did the dry hopping for the secondary fermentation. We had a three gallon batch and decided to rack into three separate one-gallon carboys so that we could try different varieties of hops. Normally I don't bother with a blog post because racking is usually smooth and uneventful. Though not our most epic racking disaster, tonight still had enough twists to warrant the post.

When we took the lid off the primary fermenter, the krausen still hadn't fallen in the beer, so that was a little concerning. Ideally we would wait for the krausen to fall before racking, but with the plastic bucket there's no way to know without opening the lid and risking contamination. I think we're going to get a clear plastic fermenter so that in future brews we can see what's going on during primary fermentation. I don't know why the krausen still hadn't fallen after a week - maybe it was too cold in the room we had so the fermentation was slow. The gravity was down to 1.021. Ideally it would still drop a few points, but it is up to 8% ABV so at least that part is good.

We're using Cascade, Sorachi Ace, and Galaxy for our three hops. Since the three hops have different levels of alpha acid, I adjusted the amount of hops added to each carboy to balance them out. The goal is for each beer to have roughly the same level of hop aroma and flavor from the dry hopping. The alpha acid numbers are used to adjust bitterness levels when using hops during the boil. I'm not actually sure it will translate to the levels of aroma and flavor from the dry hopping, but that's all I could think of.

The original recipe called for 21.8g for each hop addition during the boil, then 21.8g of Cascade for the dry hopping. Based on the different alpha acid levels, 21.8g of Cascade translated to 13.1g of Sorachi Ace or 10.5g of Galaxy hops, which were the amounts we used. The only catch - those numbers were for the whole batch! I should have divided by three, giving 7.3g of Cascade, 4.4g of Sorachi Ace, and 3.5g of Galaxy in their respective carboys.

Not only did we use three times as much hops for the dry hopping as we were supposed to, I also forgot that we were supposed to do the dry hopping a week before bottling, not right at the start of racking to the secondary. I even have it on my calendar to do the dry hopping next Tuesday then bottle the following Tuesday.

I'm not sure what to do next to avoid totally overpowering the beer with the hops, since now we have three times as much hops sitting on the beer for twice as long as it was supposed to. Maybe we can rack the beer off of those hops in a week, or just go ahead and bottle in a week and give it longer in the bottle to continue the conditioning process. Or we can leave the hops in there for the next two weeks and possibly create some seriously face-slapping hoppy beer.

[ Black IPA Brew Day ] <--- | ---> [ 409 Tasting ]

Black IPA Brew Day

Today Desert Penguin ventured into a type of beer I never thought we'd brew - an IPA! To change it up and make it not all about the hops, we decided on a black IPA. It's the brew recommended for January by our new 2015 home brew calendar. We also wanted the ability to experiment with some flavors and see if we could come up with something different and interesting. The black IPA recipe we're using requires some dry hopping during secondary fermentation. We picked up a new 1 gallon carboy and we're going to do a different dry hop in each of 3 different carboys. Hopefully each gallon will have different qualities given the different hops that we chose.

Brew day went very smoothly again. We headed to Annapolis home brew in the morning and got all the supplies. They were out of some of the grains we were hoping to get, but Paul saved the day with some quick rework of the recipe. The combined grains weighed about 10 lbs.

We started brewing at 4:30 pm and were all finished at 8:30 pm. This recipe is another all grain brew using brew in a bag. The new pot and brew bag worked perfectly again. We started off with 5.7 gallons of water and we brought it up to the strike temp of 159. When the water was at the ideal temp, we added the brew bag and grains. About 5 min after we started the mash, we remembered to add the pH stabilizer to help improve the efficiency. It was a 90 min mash. After the mash finished, we pulled out the bag of grains and let it drain in the strainer while bringing the wort to a boil. We were just a little shy of the ideal amount of water after the mash. We added about 2 cups of water strained through the grains.

It was a 60 min boil and we added hops at 5 different points. At the start of the boil, we added summit hops. The summit hops had a really nice smell. With 15 min left, we added chinook hops; then at 10 min left, we added centennial hops; with 5 min left, cascade hops went in; and finally more centennial hops went in at the end of the boil.

With the outside temp keeping the incoming water very cold, it only took 12 min to cool the wort to 70 degrees. We racked the wort to the primary fermentation bucket, pitched the yeast, and took it downstairs to begin the alcohol making process.

The efficiency of this batch was slightly higher (66%) than our previous BIAB brew (60%), so it resulted in a higher gravity than expected. Not a bad thing in my book. :) The goal is to hit 8.16% ABV, but it might come in slightly higher. Another very fun and successful all grain brew in a bag experience!

---> [ Black IPA Racking ]

2014 Year in Review

The last six months have been a lot of fun for Amy and me, as we got back into home brewing after a very long hiatus. We brewed seven beers in 2014:

• El Jefe: 1 gal of hefeweizen that was extract-only
• Black Mo: 3 gal of Tumbler clone, which was our first use of specialty grains
• Bug Juice: 2 gal (which later turned into 1 gallon) of dunkelweizen
• Pumqueen: 2 gal of Pumking clone, which was our first all grain attempt
• Christmas Miracle 2014: 3 gal of Christmas beer with dried cherries, vanilla, and cinnamon
• 2 gal of oatmeal stout, with bourbon-soaked oak used in half the batch
• 3 gal of Belgian strong dark ale, our second all-grain brew

One of the fun things brewing this year was that we got to involve some of our family as well. We brewed the dunkel with Amy's Uncle Harold and the oatmeal stout with Paul's brother Craig. We also managed to get our finished beers (and sometimes our not-so-finished beers) into the hands of family and friends so that more people could share in the tasting. Amy and I are both looking forward to brewing more beers with family and friends in 2015.

Another fun thing about brewing this year was how much we're learning. It seems like there's a wealth of information out there, and it's so much fun to soak it all up - not just to apply to our brewing but also as beer lovers in general. I know so much more about brewing and beer now compared to six months ago.

The process of tweaking the brew setup with each beer has also been a lot of fun. The BeerSmith software has so many calibration options, and with each brew we get more information about how to set the numbers to get each beer closer to the desired result from the recipe. There's also a DIY aspect of home brewing that's really cool, with each person's home brew setup being slightly different. We started out with a pretty minimal setup, but have gradually worked our way up to a great set of home brew equipment for stove-top brewing up to 3-gallon all-grain batches.

As of the start of 2015, here is our current brewing equipment:

• Brew Day:
• 8-gallon MegaPot 1.2
• 5-gallon kettle
• BIAB bag from bagbrewer.com
• 5.2 mash pH stabilizer
• thermometer
• long stirring spoons
• 12" strainer
• scale (up to 11 lbs with 1g resolution)
• 2nd scale (up to 1.3 lbs with 0.1g resolution)
• irish moss
• copper immersion wort chiller
• sanitizer, bucket, and spray bottle
• auto-siphon
• hydrometer and test tube
• refractometer
• aerating stirrer
• Fermentation:
• 6.5 gallon bucket with lid
• 3-piece airlocks
• stoppers
• two 1-gallon glass carboys
• one 3-gallon glass carboy
• 5 cu. ft. chest freezer
• Johnson A419 temperature controller
• lasko personal space heater
• Bottling:
• bottle capper
• bottle washer
• bottle drying tree
• bottling bucket with valve
• spring tip bottle filler
• 12oz bottles
• 22oz bottles
• bottle caps

Here's to a fun half-year of brewing in 2014 and looking ahead to a great 2015 filled with more delicious beer!

Westvleteren Abt 12 Brew Day

With all the time we had off work for Christmas this year, we decided to spend a day brewing another beer. This was our first time brewing with our new 8-gallon MegaPot and BIAB bag (from bagbrewer.com). This was only our second all-grain batch, but we went big with Westvleteren Abt 12 from Beer Captured - a 10% ABV Belgian strong dark ale that involved over 12 pounds of grain.

We started the brew day at about 10:00 am with a 90 minute mash. We were shooting for a mash temperature of 150 F and had the water up to the strike temperature, but it took us a little bit to figure out the best way to hold the edge of the brew bag around the lip of the pot. We were also worried that the 6.25 gallons of water wouldn't fit in the pot with all that grain, so we started with only 5 gallons in the pot. It turned out all 6.25 gallons did fit, so that was a plus. By the time we got the grains in and all the water, the mash temperature ended up being in the mid 140s. I'm not sure if it's from the strike water being too low, or the added water being too cool, or the time it took to get the bag setup figured out.

The biggest test for our BIAB setup came at the end of the mash. Last time we tried BIAB, we didn't have a good strainer and the bag spilled a bunch of liquid over the sides of the pot onto the stove while it drained. This time, I got on a step-stool above the pot so I could lift the bag way up. The handles on the brew bag made it really easy to pull the bag up, despite the weight of the grains and all the water. I lifted it up and Amy put our new 12" strainer underneath. We let the bag drain while we brought the wort up to a boil and measured our ingredients. That whole part of the process was a million times better than our previous BIAB attempt.

After the mash, our pre-boil volume was somewhere between 5.25 and 5.5 gallons, which was a little higher than we were shooting for but we're still getting a handle on how much water we lose from getting soaked up by the grains. After the 90 minute boil, we were down to a bit over 4 gallons. That allowed us to put a little over 3.4 gallons in the primary and still end up with nearly 10 cups left over in the kettle.

We got a hydrometer reading of 1.088 and a refractometer measurement of 21.2 brix. A little lower than the 1.105 starting gravity we were shooting for, but I'm sure a big part of that is us still figuring out the efficiency and water levels for our BIAB setup. After a few more batches and rounds of adjusting the numbers in BeerSmith, we should get pretty good at hitting our target gravity.

We didn't finish the brew day until close to 3 in the afternoon, but it was a great way to spend a day off. Overall our first all-grain with our new setup worked great though. It was fun doing a Belgian too. The Belgian yeast actually smelled good prior to pitching into the primary, which is quite a departure from some of the funky-smelling yeasts of other types. Unfortunately, the yeast (according to Beer Captured) is pretty temperature sensitive and needs to be around 70 F during fermentation. I'm not sure we have anywhere in the house that stays a consistent 70 F, so that part may be a trick. Beer Captured also says we should leave the beer in the secondary for 6 weeks, and in the bottle for another 6 weeks, so it'll be quite a while before we're tasting it. Hopefully it tastes good!

---> [ The Quad Of My Dreams Tasting ]

Oatmeal Stout Bottling

A couple weeks ago Amy and I bottled the Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout clone that we brewed with my brother Craig. This was our first chance to try the beer after the "bourbon oak" from the secondary, so we were definitely excited to see how it was tasting.

The first step for bottling is to prep the corn sugar solution that will be used for carbonation. The range for oatmeal stouts is about 2 to 2.5 vols of carbonation, so we went with a target of 2.2. Using BeerSmith software, we calculated that out to 16g of corn sugar per gallon of beer. After mixing the corn sugar in with some water, we boiled it up in the microwave and then threw it in the freezer to cool it down so that the heat isn't hard on the yeast.

The next step is getting everything sanitized and putting all the bottles on a big "tree" where the sanitizer can drain from the bottles. After that was done we poured the corn sugar solution into the bottling bucket, then siphoned the beer from the secondary into the bottling bucket.

Once all that prep is done, it's time to bottle! Amy filled the bottles while I capped them and handed her more empty bottles. We got nine bottles out of the first carboy, then ten bottles out of the carboy with the bourbon oak, including one 22oz bomber.

We marked the bottles that had the bourbon oak with "B" to make sure we could keep track. Finally with all the bottling done comes the best part - tasting! The regular (non-bourbon) oatmeal stout tasted really good. Nice hint of roast and maltiness you'd expect from an oatmeal stout. The oatmeal stout that had the bourbon-soaked oak spiral definitely had a strong bourbon flavor with some oak. It'll be interesting to see if it mellows out at all while bottle conditioning. If you like your bourbon-aged beers very bourbon-forward and strong though, at the moment this beer has it in spades. Can't wait to crack open a bottle or two on Christmas Eve and see what everyone thinks and how Craig likes the beer he helped brew!

[ Oatmeal Stout Racking to Secondary ] <--- | ---> [ If This Is Too Good For You I've Got Some Crap ]

Christmas Miracle 2014 Tasting

Our Christmas beer, dubbed "Christmas Miracle 2014" has been ready to drink for a couple weeks now. The beer has good carbonation and all the target flavors are there - predominately cherry but also cinnamon and vanilla. With the 8% ABV and the strong cherry flavor, it certainly fits right in as a Christmas beer. Personally, I feel like the cherry may be a bit overpowering for me, resulting in an almost cough-syrupy beer. Amy is a fan though, and certainly it does taste like a decently-made beer and doesn't really have any off flavors.

Every year our friends Steve and Valerie host a holiday beer tasting, where everyone brings a couple beers hidden in bags, and we do blind tastings of all the beers to see what we think. One of the beers we brought this year was our Christmas Miracle home brew. Nobody knew there was a home brew in the mix, and with the blind tasting people likened it to some of the other cherry-based holiday beers. People who liked that flavor liked the beer, and the fact that nobody even suspected the beer was a home brew was....... a Christmas Miracle!!!!

[ 2014 Xmas Beer Racking ] <---

Oatmeal Stout Racking to Secondary

This morning we racked the oatmeal stout into the two 1-gallon carboys. There didn't seem to be much activity in the airlock after the first few days, so I was nervous about what we'd find when we opened up the primary. Good sign #1: a nice rim of gunk above the beer, showing that the krausen was there at one point and had fallen back into the beer - both good things.

Before racking, we took the oak spiral that had been soaking in bourbon for the last week and dropped it into one of the carboys. When we first put the oak in the bourbon, it floated on top. By now, it was fully submerged in the bourbon so it must have really soaked up a lot!

Siphoning the beer into the secondaries was nice and straight forward. We had enough to fill both carboys and had a little left over to try a sample. It seems to be tasting nice so far. My brother wasn't here to rack with us, but we bottled a little bit of the leftover beer so he can try it when he's down for Thanksgiving.

Good sign #2 for the beer: the refractometer reading was 8.25 brix (equating to 1.017 specific gravity), down from 15 brix on brew day. That equates to an ABV of 5.4%. Right on target! I was worried with so little bubbling in the airlock that we'd have low attenuation, so it was a relief seeing the gravity drop to the right level.

If the beer sits for just shy of a couple weeks in the secondary, then we can bottle exactly three weeks prior to Christmas. Hopefully we'll have a carbonated tasty beer when we all get together for Christmas. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out!

[ Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout Brew Day ] <--- | ---> [ Oatmeal Stout Bottling ]