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.

12-10-11 English Brown (Mild) -- Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zianasheff and John J. Palmar (2007)

I very much thank James for opening up his home and his mental vault of experience to allow us to brew and ask a ridiculous number of questions.  I learned a great deal and I think we got a pretty damn good beer out of it.

December 10, 2011

Today Tony and I joined James at his place for a brewing session.  We decided to brew an English Brown (Mild) recipe we found on page 146 in Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zianasheff and John J. Palmer (2007).  James normally does all-grain brewing, so this served as my first opportunity to take part in an all-grain brewing process.

James had already sanitized everything before we got there.  He uses Star San for sanitizing and Straight A for cleaning.  Essentially, anything that is going to come into contact with the wort or the beer needs to be sanitized, including tubes, spoons, scissors, packets, fermenters, buckets, etc.

For this recipe, we used the following malts:

Maris Otter – English Pale Ale Malt – 7 pounds

Crystal 60L – caramelized malt – 0.5 pounds

Crystal 120L – caramelized malt – 0.4 pounds (120 is darker than 60; the range is 10 to 120)

Pale Chocolate Malt 200L – 4 ounces (much more of a burnt flavor)

Black Patent 500L – 2 ounces (very burnt flavor)

We put all of these whole grains through a grinder to crack open all of the grains.  It is important to only crack the grains, as opposed to grinding them into small pieces or a powder.

James uses a converted insulated water cooler as his mash tun.  It is important to use a vessel for the mash tun that can hold in heat for long periods of time so that you are able to maintain the temperature of the mash.  We poured water into the mash tun that had been heated up to 166 degrees F.  We then poured in the ground malts, which are approximately 66 degrees F at this point.  We mixed these together, aiming for a target temperature for the mash of 154 degrees F.  The initial mixing of the malt grains with hot water is called the “strike.” 

We left this mixture covered for one hour, stirring gently about every 10 minutes to allow for the enzymatic reactions to occur.  It is important to maintain the temperature of the mash between 149 and 158 degrees F for the full hour, which is why the heat-preserving element of the vessel you use as your mash tun is so important.  If necessary, you can add more hot water to keep the temperature stable.

At this time we smacked 2 yeast packets to allow them a few hours to swell.  For this recipe, we used the Wyeast 1968 London ESB.  You have to smack the packet in order to break open the nutrient packet inside of the yeast so that the yeast can feed and start to become active.

After the one-hour mash was complete, we drained the liquid into the brew kettle.  This is referred to as “malt tea” or wort.  Then we went through the process of “sparging” the mash.  We sparged the mash in order to get as much of the flavor out of the mash as we could.  We sparged the malt by taking water at about 175 to 180 degrees F and running it slowly through a strainer over the mash.  It is important to not just dump water in as you don’t want to displace the malt in such a way that the water won’t run through all of the malt since you will miss a lot of the sugars.  We continued to sparge until we had the amount of wort that we needed.  We sparged until we had collected about 7 gallons of wort.  We did not start with all of the water we needed when we first did the strike as the malt to water ratio during the mashing process enables the enzymes to break down properly.

Once we completed the sparging, we added 0.85 ounces of US Goldings hop pellets to the wort.  These hops have 5.3% alpha acids.  This percentage indicates the bitterness of the hops being used.  These hops have a moderate amount of bitterness, as alpha acids in other hops can go as high as 13-14%.  We did not use any aromatic hops at the end of the boil as they were not called for in this particular recipe since it is not meant to be a particularly hoppy beer.  We then actively boiled the wort for 60 minutes.

Next, we needed to cool down the wort.  We used a wort chiller to do this.  A wort chiller is a large copper coil apparatus with 2 tubes coming out of it – one tube for cold water to go in, and one tube for hot water to come out.  We placed the wort chiller into the wort in the boiler, connected one tube to a hose producing cold water and stuck the other tube into a bucket for the hot water to exit.  We ran the cold water through for about 30 minutes until the wort was cooled to about 65 degrees F.

Using a siphon device, we then transferred the cooled wort from the kettle into the carboy, running the liquid through a strainer in order to remove any hop bits and granulated proteins from the wort.  The substance is now called “sweet liquor.”  We also put a small amount of the sweet liquor into a small cylindrical vessel and took a hydrometer reading.  The original gravity at 64 degrees F was 1.042.

We then sterilized the yeast packets and a pair of scissors in order to pitch the yeast.  We cut open the yeast packets and slowly poured them into the sweet liquor in the carboy.  At this point, we needed to let the beer ferment for 14 days at about 62 to 68 degrees F.

December 16, 2011

On this date, we were six days into the fermentation process.  Using a siphon, James transferred the beer to another fermenter in order to clarify the beer.  The beer is clarified as a result of leaving the inactive yeast on the bottom of the first fermenter.  The beer in the second fermenter still contains yeast as the active yeast is still suspended within the liquid eating away at the sugars.

December 23, 2011

On this date, we were thirteen days into the fermentation process.  James and I bottled the beer.  James used a siphon to transfer the beer from the fermenter into another fermenting bucket in order to leave behind the inactive yeast.  At this point, we measured the final gravity and found it had settled to 1.014 at 64 degrees F.  This gives us an alcohol percentage of 3.7%.  As Milds generally fall between 3.2% and 4.0%, this was pretty accurate.

We also tasted a bit of the “green” beer.  At this point, I found it a bit thin and sweet, but still rather nice. 

James then boiled 2/3 of a cup of corn sugar in 1 pint of water to sanitize the priming sugar.  After boiling this solution for 15 minutes, he then added it to the beer.

We filled the sanitized beer bottles from this fermenting bucket using a tube with a filler at the end of it that could reach down to the bottom of each beer bottle.  It is important to fill from the bottom of the bottle in order to prevent air from getting into the beer.  We filled 26 22-ounce bottles, and had a bit left over, so we filled two jelly jars as well and gave them to Tony to drink later.

We expected at this point to give the beer about a week to a week and half in order to condition in the bottles.

January 2, 2012

Nine days into the bottle conditioning process, we decided to open our first bottle and try the beer.  All three of us concluded that it was a wonderful success.  The beer has a full mouthfeel, a heavy, sweet malt presence, a touch of hops, and very light, natural carbonation – the way a Mild should be. 

We brought home half of the bottles for our own sharing/consumption.  I will definitely be opening another bottle a week from now to find out how it is after another week of bottle conditioning.

January 7, 2012

Fourteen days into the bottle conditioning process, we decided to open another bottle to see if the beer has benefitted from further conditioning.  Although, Tony liked the beer so much originally that only 6 of our bottles have survived to this weekend.  I believe the beer definitely benefited from another week of conditioning.  The taste became fuller and richer with the sweetness of the heavy malt presence becoming a bit more subtle.  It is a shame that we didn’t save a few bottles to condition for a bit longer, but, alas, it was such a success that they are all gone from our household.  James still has a few in his household though, so I may be updating this entry with another remark.

11-24-11 Australian Bitter - Cooper's Brewery Beer Kit

The description below is my very first experience with home brewing of beer.  While the ultimate result was less than satisfying, it was a great deal of fun and an extremely valuable learning experience.  I have a great deal of gratitude for Vic for opening up his home, his heart, and his home brewery to me so that I could dive into my first home brewing experience!  Also, I learned a great deal that has already proven itself to be quite useful in my endeavors following this one!

November 24, 2011

My foray into beer brewing began with my dear friend Vic and my boyfriend Tony!  On Thanksgiving Day of 2011, we showed up a bit early to the party in order to brew.  Unfortunately, I took virtually no pictures (very unusual of me – I have no idea what I was thinking!) and very few notes, so this article is purely from my corruptible memory bank with a bit of consultation with other more or less equally corruptible memory banks.  Also, Vic was able to supply a few pictures, which are what is included.

Vic provided a selection of 3 brew kits he had available.  I decided to use the kit for Thomas Cooper's Australian Bitter.  

 

A little note on Cooper’s Brewery itself: Cooper’s Brewery is Australia’s only remaining family-owned brewery.  This brewery was founded by Thomas Cooper in 1862.  This brewery is also the largest producer of home brew kits in the world – and aren’t we grateful to them!

 We started out boiling water in a very large metal pot on the kitchen stove.  While that grew to a boil, we sanitized the equipment using an iodine solution and water at 200 p.p.m.

We then dissolved the syrupy contents (malt extract) of the can into the boiling water.  We also slowly added about a cup and a half of sugar to the boil.  Once that had all dissolved appropriately, we poured it into a five gallon carboy.  We topped it up with water, checking the temperature along the way.  Once we reached a temperature of about 75 degrees F., we pitched a 7-gram packet of dry yeast into the mix.  While at this point, Washington State considers it beer, I would not recommend pouring off your first pint!

The waiting begins.  Departing Vic’s the following day, we loaded the carboy with its precious contents into the car and drove it home to house it in the basement.  Protected from light, we let it ferment away for 2 weeks at room temperature ranging from 64°F to 69°F.  A thermostatically controlled heater was used to ensure the temperature did not drop below this range.

December 8, 2011

With busy and conflicting schedules, December 8^th, 2011 ended up being bottling day.  We filled the kitchen sink with water and half a capful of Five Star Acid Sanitizer.  We submerged over 40 16 –ounce to 22-ounce bottles into the sink (this was done in several batches as we certainly don’t have that big of a sink in our kitchen!) to sanitize the bottles.  Then we rinsed every bottle with hot water and set them to dry on a bottle tree.  Once dry, we added about a ¼ teaspoon of priming sugar to each bottle.  The bottles were now ready to be filled.

Using a bottle-filler that functioned as a sort of siphon device, we filled 33 16-ounce to 22-ounce bottles.  For some reason, we had quite a bit of trouble with the siphon.  Poor Tony had to suction out the beer with his mouth to get rid of air pockets.  An extension tube was used to do this so as not to risk contamination of the filling tube. This was a rather messy enterprise with lots of swearing and devising (by Tony!), but once we finally got it to function properly, the bottling finished up rather smoothly.  We filled each bottle to the bottom of the neck, making sure to give plenty of room for the secondary fermentation process.  If you do not give enough room for this process, you can end up with caps popping off of bottles long before you are ready for a pint!

The next step was capping.  We purchased a small capping machine for the job.  While the machine only capped one bottle at a time, it was fairly easy to use and went smoothly.  Once the capping was complete, we set the bottles of beer on a shelf in the basement to give them time to go through the secondary fermentation within the bottles.  Again, the temperature of the room at this time of year floats around in the 60s degrees Farenheit, so it is a reasonably good room in which to allow the secondary fermentation to take place. We plan to open a bottle and try the beer on New Year’s Eve.  This will give the beer 23 days to mature in the bottles.

December 17, 2011

Tony decided to open a bottle and try the beer 9 days into the bottle fermentation process.  He described it as a bit yeasty, very thin on flavor.  He tried it at basement temperature.  Rereading the directions at this point, we did discover that there was some additional light malt extract that was supposed to be added to the wort during the boiling process.  Of course, this was not added, and instead white sugar was added.  The additional wort probably would have given the beer a bit more body and more complex flavor.  The addition of the white sugar probably just increased the alcohol content without having much effect on the body of the beer or the flavor (aside from the strong alcohol taste that was added).  Lesson learned from this: follow directions!

December 25, 2011

I decided to open a bottle and try the beer 17 days into the bottle fermentation process.  I don’t believe there is much point in waiting until New Year’s Eve to open more bottles.  I believe this beer has improved as much as it is going to improve.  I put it in the fridge and allowed the beer to cool considerably (based on Tony’s comments from his previous tasting).  The beer comes across as relatively light and crisp.  It does have a bit of a malt presence in the mouthfeel, but you taste the malt a bit more in the after taste.  The main flavor I get is a bit of a sharp astringency.  I get the feeling this is a relatively high alcohol beer (no hydrometer readings were taken throughout the process, so I don’t actually know what the alcohol content is).

Basically, not a great beer.  It is light and crisp and seems like it would be refreshing on a hot day, but it leaves a bit of an astringent after-taste as well.  It sort of reminds me of Heineken – not a good association at all.

December 31, 2011

After testing the beer out on several people and having virtually no takers, we decided to empty out the bottles so we would have them ready for our next brew.  Tony decided he wanted to try it one more time, and concluded the drain was the best place to put it.  I had a few sips and concluded that it had become virtually carbonated water as the carbonation drowned out even the slight malt flavor it previously possessed – sigh.