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, 3rd 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.
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.
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