02-05-12 Traditional Bitter (cask) - Muntons PLC's Connoisseurs Range

This is the third beer we have made at home.  This is the second beer we have casked.  As we casked this beer in conjunction with the William’s Brewing English Bitter, we ran into the same issues.

Sunday, February 5, 2012: Brewing Day

Today we are brewing a Traditional Bitter from Muntons PLC’s Connoisseurs Range.  The Bitterness EBU of the malt extract is listed as 35 to 45.  This kit is designed to yield 5 Imperial gallons which means we are going to get 6 US gallons.

We boiled 5 gallons of purified water in the boiler.

We used the packet of dried yeast that came with the kit.  We mixed the dried yeast with about a ¼ cup of purified, room temperature water to hydrate the yeast.  We left this to hydrate while we performed the brewing process.

We put the can of malt extract in hot water for several minutes to soften up the malt extract.   The malt extract contains malts and hops.

Once the water in the boiler was boiled, we turned off the boiler and added the malt extract and stirred it into the water.  As a note, pouring warmed malt out of a can is considerably easier then pouring it out of a plastic bag!  Also, we were able to put a bit of the hot water into the can and swirl it around and dump it back into the boiler in order to get every bit of the malt within the can – something that, of course, would pretty much be impossible with a plastic bag.  We brought the water back to a boil to add the other ingredients.

We added 4 ounces of Dextrin Powder (The Beverage People – AD23).  This is supposed to give lower alcohol beer a more substantial mouth feel and body.  It is a non-fermentable sugar.  The recipe said we should add no more than 8 ounces.  We only had a 4-ounce package anyway, so we chucked it all in to see how it would go.

We then added additional powdered malt extract, Brewcraft’s Briess Dry Malt – Brewers Gold Light.  The recipe called for adding 1 KG (2.2 lbs) of sugar.  Alternatively, we could add the same amount in powdered malt extract.  We decided to go for the malt extract.  We added 2 lbs 4 ½ ounces of the powdered malt extract.  We then boiled it for 5 minutes.

We then connected the wort chiller to bring the wort down to below 85 degrees F.  Then we emptied the boiler into the fermenter.  We did this without a guiding tube so that the wort is aerated in the process.  We had just shy of 5 gallons.  The kit makes 5 Imperial gallons, which means it makes 6 US gallons.  As such, we had to add purified water until we reached the 6-gallon mark.  An interesting note about this racking session: with the use of the malt extract syrup and dried extract, there was basically no slurry whatsoever as can be seen by this photograph.

We then needed to take a hydrometer reading.  This was slightly complicated by the aeration as there were lots of bubbles.  We sanitized a spoon to move some of the bubbles and take the hydrometer reading in the fermenter. 

The original gravity is 1.041.

We then added 1 teaspoon of water treatment and Yeast Nutrient (The Beverage People).  This is to give the yeast additional nutrition on which to get going, as well as a bit more salt for the purified water (Burton salts).  We then pitched the yeast we had prepared earlier, gave it a final mix and put the lid on the fermenter.  We filled the airlock with a bit of vodka and secured it into place.  It is now ready to do its fermentation dance.

We decided to put the fermenter upstairs since we only have one warming jacket (and another beer is using that at the moment) and the upstairs of the house is actually staying at a pretty good fermentation temperature at the moment (60-68 degrees F).  The directions say 65 – 70 degrees F, so that will work well.

The instructions also say that the fermentation should be complete in 4 to 6 days, so we should be ready to put the beer into a cask at that point – at the same time we do the Mild.

Completed at 4 PM.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Casking day!  We are 7 days into fermentation – which is a day longer than the instructions dictated.

We pounded in the keystone with the mallet.  Then we rinsed out and sanitized the cask by filling it with water and adding 1 ounce of StarSan.  We sanitized 2 spoons and 2 measuring cups and the hydrometer.  We boiled a few gallons of water to have sanitized water available for rinse outs and various other activities.  We used the boiled water to rinse out the sanitized cask. 

We then took a hydrometer reading, which came out to 1.015. 

The target for the beer is 1.008.   Also, in shining a flashlight through the beer, it is clear that there is still fermentation activity going on (bubbles) inside of the liquid.  As such, we have decided to let it ferment for a bit longer.  We gave it a bit of a gentle stir for about a minute and then resealed the fermenter.  We will take another hydrometer reading on Tuesday, February 14.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Another hydrometer reading showed 1.015 still.  It appears that the beer has stopped at this point.  In examining the activity within the liquid, it does appear that it has slowed down considerably from when we checked it on Sunday.  We have decided to go ahead and rack it and see how it turns out.  This means that the alcohol level will come out at just over 3.2%.  If it turns out to be a good tasting beer, then this is an excellent result.

Tony performed the actual racking of the cask on his own again due to some other pressing chores to be done.  For a more complete description of this process, please refer to the 01-29-12 English Mild (Cask) – William’s Brewing beer kits post just prior to this one.

When Tony banged in the shive, it cracked.  We left it for a bit and it did appear to seal, so we’ll see how it goes.

Also, as mentioned above, this kit actually yielded 6 US gallons.  As such, we poured about 5 US gallons into the cask and bottled the rest into 12-ounce bottles.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

We broached the shive by banging out the tut and then tapped the cask.  It appears that this beer is a failure.  As previously noted, the shive cracked when it was originally put in.  We thought it had sealed sufficiently.  However, the beer is a bit sour and we believe it has oxidized, which probably means that the shive did not actually seal properly.  We are still going through the motions with it to see if it improves at all from conditioning, but we do not have high hopes for this one.

We put a soft spile in the shive and carried the cask up the stairs very carefully and placed it on the counter.  We have put the jacket on it, but not the ice blanket yet.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Not a failure after all!!!  As the beer came up to condition, the previously mentioned oxidized flavor completely dropped out of it.  Additionally, the beer tasted quite pleasant, although under-conditioned.  At the cask party we held today, it was actually the favored of the two casks among our guests. 

Sunday, March 11, 2012

This beer improved immensely over the days following the cask party and was actually quite good (except for the under-conditioned issue).  We were very pleased with how this beer turned out, especially considering the inauspicious cracking of the shive and original tasting.  Much like the Mild, this beer was good until about Tuesday or Wednesday of the following week, at which point it became ullage.

The commentary below also appears in the “01-29-12 English Mild (cask) – William’s Brewing beer kits” posting.  I decided to re-post this as the issue occurred in this one as well since it was casked at the same time.

Tony has had a few conversations with Paul Pendyck from UK Brewing (based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania) at this point and seems to have gotten some ideas on how to fix our under-conditioning issue.  We purchased our pins from Northern Brewer.  Geenmacher is the make.  As it turns out, this brand is made in China and the shive hole is slightly too small for standard-sized shives.  As such, when Tony hammered in the shives with the wooden mallet, he had found that they did not go in quite far enough and did not go flush with the hole.  This also explains the struggles he had with the plastic shives described in the "01-29-12 English Mild (cask) - William's Brewing beer kits" posting.  So, while the pins were liquid-leak proof, we highly suspect they weren’t quite air-leak proof.  Of course, this would result in the under-conditioning of the beer.

­­­­Paul Pendyck had some shives that he had ordered specifically for this problem.  Tony ordered some of these shives from UK Brewing.  After experimenting a bit with a pressure gage, Tony believes that we have solved our problem.  We will be brewing another William’s Bitter brew kit and casking it in order to do a test run on a malt extract beer we already know has turned out well in bottles to test the effectiveness of the pin with the new shives.  Stay tuned.

01-29-12 English Mild (Cask) - William's Brewing beer kits

This is the second beer we have done at home.  We decided to try casking this beer.  This is another William’s Brewery malt extract beer – this time for an English Mild.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Tony started experimenting with the cask using water. 

Sunday, January 29, 2012

We are brewing a William’s Brewery malt extract English Mild today.  This beer will be the first beer that we cask.

We used the Wyeast packet of 1028 London Ale (mfg date: 12/06/11) that came in the packet.  We smacked the pack at around 1:45 PM.  We also put the bag of malt extract into lukewarm water to soften it up before we put it into the boiler.  We had an issue with this the last time as it was somewhat difficult to get the extract to come out when it was at basement temperature.

We boiled 4 gallons of purified water (we purified 5 gallons of water last week and stored it sealed in preparation for the brewing as our water purifier can only purify so much at a time.)  Water was boiling by 2:12 PM.  Wort was added at about 2:15 pm.  While it was easier to pour it out warm, these plastic bags are not ideal for pouring out malt.

Malt was brought back up to a boil and boiled for 5 minutes.  Bittering hops were added at 2:36 PM.

Aromatic hops were added 5 minutes before the end of the boil.  Once we finished the boil, we washed the wort chiller and put it in the wort, connecting one end to the faucet and securing the other end into the sink.  We brought the temperature of the wort down below 85 degrees F.  We started the wort chiller at 3:41 PM.  The wort dropped to 84.9 degrees F at 3:59 PM.  It took 18 minutes.

We transferred the wort from the boiler to the fermenter, this time without a guiding tube and stirring it vigorously in order to properly aerate it.  Then we poured in boiled and cooled water to bring it up to 5 gallons.

We pitched the yeast at 4:12 PM.  We gave the beer a final vigorous stir and secured the lid onto the fermenter.  We then moved the fermenter into the basement, put it on top of another bucket, installed the airlock and filled 1/3 of the way up with vodka, and put the heating jacket on the fermenter.  We realized at this point that we forgot to get the Initial Gravity, so we reopened the fermenter and took the hydrometer reading.  Then we resealed the lid and let it do its business.

Initial gravity: 1.038

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Casking day!  Tony casked the beer on his own today.  The following are Tony’s notes on what he did.

As the batch of beer was 5 US gallons it was exactly the right volume to fill a pin with an appropriate breathing space. (A pin has a capacity of 4.5 UK gallons – 5.4 US gallons).

The beer in the fermenter was confirmed to be quiet and a sample of about 1/3 of a cup was taken from the tap in order to provide a rinse for the nozzle and for testing.

Final gravity was not taken, however, it was expected to be in the range of 1.018.

The sample tasted remarkably good with nice clarity. It was free of yeastiness in the taste and had a surprising level of body and complexity considering it was a green beer straight out of the fermenter.

I installed a plastic keystone to the pin and filled the pin fully to the shive hole with hot water and sanitizer. I let it stand for about 10 minutes, then I rinsed the pin with pre-boiled hot water.

The pin was placed adjacent to the fermenter and allowed to cool down. I cut a short length of plastic tube and sanitized it and fitted it to the fermenter tap with the other end entering the shive hole of the pin.

Then I added 1 tsp of Isinglass finings to about 1/3 of a cup of cool pre-boiled water in a sanitized measuring cup. I stirred the Isinglass solution to an even consistency.

Then I added 3 oz of the Williams priming sugar to just under ½ cup of hot pre-boiled water in a sanitized measuring jug. I stirred until all sugar was dissolved.

I then opened the fermenter tap fully to rack the beer into the pin. During racking, the priming sugar solution was added. When the beer had outflowed down to the level of the tap in the fermenter the fermenter was carefully stooped to extract the remaining beer. Racking was concluded at the point where yeast sediment could be seen to be approaching the tap within the fermenter.

Finings solution was then added to the pin.

Experimenting with the other pin it was found difficult to install a plastic shive satisfactorily. Therefore a wooden shive was installed to the pin. Pin was then shaken quite vigorously. Some fobbing/leakage was noticed around the shive. I left the pin alone for 10 minutes and shook and rolled over again. No leakage noted as shive had apparently swollen naturally and sealed successfully.

Pin placed on stillage in guest bedroom to undergo secondary fermentation at room temperature.

Saturday, February 25, 2012, 3:30 pm

We broached the shive by banging out the tut and tapped the cask.  Very little CO2 seemed to come out.  Tony was a bit disappointed by this.  The beer tasted fairly good and there does appear to be a slight bit of conditioning on it, but perhaps less than we would like.  We’ll see how the conditioning goes.

We put a soft spile in the shive and carried if very carefully upstairs.  We placed it on the floor for dispense from the beer engine.  We will probably be serving this one at the party tomorrow.  We have put the jacket on it but not the ice blanket just yet.

Sunday, February 26^th, 2012

We tasted a bit the previous evening and again this morning.  The beer’s flavor is gradually improving and we are anticipating for this to be a decent beer.  The beer is under-conditioned and we will have to look into this.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

The beer went over very well with the guests at the party.  We continued to have pints of it until about Wednesday after the party.  The beer continued to improve quite a bit over the next day or two after the party.  After that, it did start to go south a bit.  Given this experience, for the next party, we plan to broach the shive two days before the party as it appears this amount of time gives the best result for the readiness of the beer.

Tony has had a few conversations with Paul Pendyck from UK Brewing (based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania) at this point and seems to have gotten some ideas on how to fix our under-conditioning issue.  We purchased our pins from Northern Brewer.  Geenmacher is the make.  As it turns out, this brand is made in China and the shive hole is slightly too small for standard-sized shives.  As such, when Tony hammered in the shives with the wooden mallet, he had found that they did not go in quite far enough and did not go flush with the hole.  This also explains the struggles he had with the plastic shives described above.  So, while the pins were liquid-leak proof, we highly suspect they weren’t quite air-leak proof.  Of course, this would result in the under-conditioning of the beer.

­­­­Paul Pendyck had some shives that he had ordered specifically for this problem.  Tony ordered some of these shives from UK Brewing.  After experimenting a bit with a pressure gage, Tony believes that we have solved our problem.  We will be brewing another William’s Bitter brew kit and casking it in order to do a test run on a malt extract beer we already know has turned out well in bottles to test the effectiveness of the pin with the new shives.  Stay tuned.

12-31-11 English Bitter - William's Brewing beer kits

This was the first beer we brewed with our own equipment at home.  We decided to stick with malt extract brewing for our first several brews just to get accustomed to the process and perfect some of the easier things before we move into a more complicated process with more variables.  This is a malt extract kit for an English Bitter from William’s Brewing.

Monday, December 26, 2011

The kit came with a Wyeast packet.  We ended up taking a risk here because we had the kit for awhile and the Wyeast packet was close to the date when Wyeast says it probably isn’t optimal anymore.  At any rate, one would still expect the yeast to work if somewhat slower.  Additionally, Wyeast says that once you smack the pack it should be ready in about three hours.  However, the William’s Brewing directions say to give the packet 1-7 days, specifically saying not to use it until the packet has become an inch and a half thick.  I decided to smack the pack and make sure to give it at least 5 days before we brewed.  The packet hardly swelled at all for the first few days.  Curious and nervous, I decided to email William’s Brewing to ask about their directions as opposed to Wyeast directions.  Here is the response:

It varies greatly on how long the package takes to swell.

Sometimes it takes a few hours, sometimes several days. 

We highly recommend letting the yeast pack swell fully before brewing the kits as this is your proof of healthy and active yeast.

Pitching  a non swollen yeast pack into your unfermented beer may result in a beer that doesnt ferment well, or at all--possibly ruining the batch.

Williams Brewing will replace any defective or dead yeast pack for free, but our warranty requires that the customer wait the full seven days before contacting us for a replacement.

This is because, although infrequent,  we have seen packages that take that long to become fully swollen.

 Cheers, Thomas

When Tony check the Wyeast packet on Friday, December 30, he reported that “the yeast is bulging.”  And he was not exaggerating!   We planned to brew the following day so we placed the packet in a pot just in case it actually exploded.  Luckily it did not.

Saturday, December 31. 2011

Brewing Day!

The morning started with brewing’s darling: sanitization.  I have filled both of our fermenters with 1 oz. of sanitizing solution (Five Star Star San) and 5 gallons of water.  Within the fermenters, I have placed the siphon, airlock, various food grade plastic tubes, a spoon, and the tops of the buckets.  I have left everything sitting in sanitation solution for about 2 hours.  This amount of time is not necessary, but we had a few other things to do before we could brew, and the extra time for sanitizing of the equipment doesn’t hurt. 

We then went through and tested the boiler by boiling some water in it.  This also gave us an opportunity to burn the paint off the boiler.  And, it gave us an opportunity to test out and clean the wort chiller since we used that to cool the water we had test boiled.  We decided just to let the wort chiller water empty into the utility sink, thus saving us from having to fuss about with buckets.

We filled the pot with 4 gallons of water and set it on the boiler to bring to a boil.  Once it was boiling, we turned off the boiler and added the malt.  Since the kit came with malt in a big plastic bag, this was quite the process.  I had to let the malt leak out and then squeeze out the remnants.  We were thinking for next time, we might put the bag into warm water for a few hours before we are ready to add it so that it comes out faster.  We then stirred it until all of the malt had dissolved into the hot water.

After we boiled the wort for 5 minutes, we added the flavoring hops.  We then set it to boil for another 50 minutes.  At that point, we added the aromatic hops and allowed it to complete the last 5 minutes of boiling. 

Once the boiling was complete, we carted the pot of wort into the utility room and used a wort chiller to cool the wort to below 85 degrees F.  We used Tony’s electronic temperature gage rather than the floating gage because #1) we didn’t have to stick a big thermometer in the wort, and 2) it is much easier to read. 

We then lifted the boiler onto a platform and used a plastic tube to guide the wort out of the spigot and into the sanitized fermenter.  We then added tap water to the fermenter to bring it up to 5 gallons.  (After starting this process, we thought it might be a good idea for the sake of sanitation to boil a bunch of water several hours before starting the brewing process and then allow it to cool – or use the wort chiller to cool it – and set it aside for this step.) We had to let it sit for a few minutes until the foam had dispersed before we could get a hydrometer reading.

Initial Gravity reading: 1.044

We then sanitized the Wyeast packet and the scissors, cut open the yeast packet and pitched the yeast.  We made sure to fully sanitize the lid and the airlock, poured boiled water over both, snapped on the lid, snapped in the airlock, filled the airlock to the “fill” line with vodka, snapped on the cap, and moved the fermenter to where it will sit and ferment for the next 12-14 days.  The current temperature in the room right around the fermenter is 64.7 degrees F.  Recommended temperature for fermentation according to the instructions is 60 to 65 degrees F. 

We pitched the yeast between 3 PM and 3:30 PM.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

We have not observed any sort of noticeable fermentation occurring in the beer.  After doing some research, we found out a few things:

1.            While most beers generally get going on fermentation within the first 24 hours, some take as long as 36 hours to really become active – often due to variability in yeast.

2.            In Brew Your Own British Real Ale, 3^rd Edition, Graham Wheeler speaks to great length about the importance of wort aeration and rousing.  Tony had mentioned that he often stirred the wort for a bit just before pitching the yeast in order to get more oxygen into the wort back when he brewed a few decades ago.  We did this, but it was only just a bit of stirring.  As Wheeler states, “Wort aeration is important to give the yeast the oxygen it needs during its formative hours to build up its energy reserves and multiply sufficiently to do some useful work.” (p. 30)  He further states, “Aerate the wort before or just after pitching the yeast by vigorously stirring for five minutes.” (p. 81)  This is much more extensive aeration than we performed yesterday.  All is not lost however.  He goes on to discuss “rousing”, stating, “Some yeasts…require frequent rousing as well as aeration, and most yeasts will benefit from a rousing about 24 hours after pitching.  If a brew slows, or stops fermenting early, a rousing will almost always get it into step again…As long as there is plenty of fermentable material remaining in the beer, it is safe to rouse.  If the beer is at, or close to, the expected final gravity, it is important to keep air out of the beer and it is not safe to rouse” (p.30-31).

By 2 PM (over 22 hours after pitching), there was still not one single sign of fermentation beginning, so we decided to give rousing/aeration a try.  We sanitized a long-handled plastic spoon, opened the fermenter, and gave the beer a good vigorous stirring for about 5 minutes.  We then replaced the lid.

We have also set up the heating pad we bought in order to stabilize the temperature of the beer.  It is a plastic sheet that wraps about 2/3 of the way around the fermenter.  It is connected to a heat source.  We have it set up now to stabilize the temperature at 68 degrees F.  We expect this to result in a stable temperature for the liquid of about 66 degrees F (some heat is lost due to having to transfer through plastic).  We hope that this will also assist in kick starting the fermentation process.  While the basement generally stays around 63 to 66 degrees F, it does change a bit throughout the night.  Hopefully, with the use of the heat pad, we can keep the temperature stable towards the higher end of the 60s to assist with the fermentation process.

We will check on it later this evening to see if we have any results from this step.  If we still see no signs of activity, we may have to consider pitching more yeast.

We checked on the beer just before bed and found that the vodka in the airlock was starting to bubble!  We are on our way!

Monday, January 2, 2012

It’s alive!  As of 10 AM this morning, the vodka in the airlock is now bubbling quite regularly and there is a lovely thick foam that has developed on the top of the beer meaning that the fermentation is well under way.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Bottling Day!

I ended up bottling by myself as Tony was out of town.  It turned out to be a rather messy process, but I got the job done.

I started out by sanitizing all of the necessary equipment, including all of the bottles.  I opened the lid on the fermenter and the smell was absolutely delicious!

I also practiced using the siphon a bit with water at first so that I wouldn’t make a mess with the beer.  I am very glad I did this.  I ended up soaking my socks and making a general mess – but only with water.  Once I did a little youtube video-watching and got the knack of it, I was able to use the siphon and bottle-filler properly.

Additionally, I boiled some water just in case I should need it.  I used some of this to rinse out the carboy after sanitizing it and managed to scald my left hand with said boiled water.  Suffice it to say, there was much swearing involved in this process!

I had intended upon measuring the final gravity of the beer in the fermenter itself.  However, once I actually dropped the hydrometer into the fermenter, I discovered that the fermenter is not deep enough to allow a proper reading.  The hydrometer hit the bottom.  As such, I used the siphon to fill a cylinder with the beer and used that to measure the final gravity of the beer.  At 64 degrees F, the final gravity was 1.013.

I siphoned the beer from the fermenter to a carboy.  I decided to use the carboy rather than another plastic fermenter as I figured the opening of the carboy would better stabilize the siphon once I was bottling the beer.  This stabilization issue was one of several reasons I ended up soaking my socks while practicing using the siphon with water.

Per the instructions, I added the priming sugar directly into the beer in the carboy and stirred it in with a long-handled plastic spoon.

I then got the siphon going and started bottling beer, being sure to put the tip of the bottle filler right down to the bottom of each bottle.  I believe that we need to do a little work on our siphon tubing as I was getting a fair amount of air in each bottle and the beer was foaming a bit, but I still successfully managed to fill each bottle.

I made the decision to bottle in 12-ounce bottles, rather than 22-ounce bottles about a week prior.  I figured this would make it easier to share out to others without giving away the majority of what we had made.  However, since I made this decision quite late, I only had so many 12-ounce bottles at my disposal.  As a result, I ended up filling 23 12-ounce bottles, 14 16.9-ounce bottles, and 4 22-ounce bottles. 

After filling all of the bottles, I capped all of the bottles with our handy capping machine.  I then placed all of the bottles on a shelf in our basement where I will leave them to bottle condition at about 64 degrees F.

Upon writing this, I suddenly recalled that the bottles were supposed to spend their first week conditioning at a slightly higher temperature.  Tony had a plan for this, but he is out of town.  As such, I have decided to simply run the risk of conditioning at 64 degrees F.  As this is a perfectly reasonable conditioning temperature, I’m sure the beer will be fine, although it may require more than the 3 weeks listed on the instructions.  I intend to try a bottle in 3 weeks to see how the beer had faired.

1.044 – 1.013 = 0.031 x 131 = 4.061%

Sunday, January 22, 2012

We found that the basement was getting down into the 50s degrees F and possibly lower overnight.  We decided to move all of the bottles upstairs where it would reliably be in the 60s degrees F.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Tony decided to try one of the beers this evening.  We are 2 weeks into the conditioning process.  The directions say 3 weeks; however, given the varying lower temperatures the beers have experienced, I am thinking that we will probably need to condition for about 4 to 5 weeks. 

The beer at the moment is still yeasty since it is still young.  Although still young, with yeast notes somewhat apparent, the flavor is pleasant and developing well.  We have good hopes for this beer in about 2 weeks.  The conditioning appears to be going well as the beer did hiss upon opening of the cap without being excessive.  The beer was also very clear with a lovely ruby red color.

Sunday March 11, 2012

Although this comment comes a bit late, I wanted to make sure to include it.  This beer proved to be excellent in the bottles.  It improved immensely with time and got lots of compliments from the people to whom I gave bottles.  If/when we do this beer again, we should definitely let the bottles sit for at least 4-6 weeks before we start drinking it, because that was when the complexity of the flavors truly developed and this beer became an excellent beer.