Monday, February 24, 2014

2/15/2014 NHC Cream Ale

Brewday photosphere...turned out alright
Looking back, I should have just stuck to one beer on this brew day. I had a birthday party to get to that evening which put a time limit on the brewing. Everything had to go perfectly to make the time window I allocated for myself. I've been brewing long enough that I should have known better. I ended up running into some issues and the second brew was rushed and I'll be rebrewing the hefeweizen as a result. I won't even write it up. In short, as a result of rushing around, getting more propane mid-mash, and stupidly adding an additional 3-4 gallons of sparge water that I didn't need, I ended up with a beer that was 10 points below target OG. Still within the style guidelines, but not the beer I want to submit to NHC.

I'll still be submitting my gold medal award winning "Minerva" cream ale to the first round of the National Homebrewing Competition in March. From start to finish, this beer went smoothly. Maybe one of the best brews I've had, process-wise. I made a few adjustments to my original recipe to make it stand out a little more and to brew it within the 4 week timeline that I have.

  • I'm going with WLP001 to ferment as opposed to Wyeast 2112 - California Lager. I found that the yeast produced a clean beer, but only dropped the overpowering sulphur flavors after a month or more of lagering. I didn't have that kind of time and I've been thinking about changing the recipe for some time now, so I switched the yeast for this brew.
  • Added some complexity to the malt bill: I added a pound of biscuit malt and two pounds of Munich malt. Previously I had been using two pounds of Victory malt, but found it was not strong enough of a flavor to get any bready, toasty notes in the beer.
  • Bumped up the flaked corn by a pound, up to 5lbs. I want the beer to remain in the style, so I figured if I added more malt complexity, I ought to also bump up the corny sweetness to balance the flavors.
Water treatment:

5ml lactic acid
5g gypsum
5g calcium chloride
1g baking soda

Calcium: 73
Magnesium: 5
Alkalinity as CaCO3: 79
Sodium: 25
Chloride: 74
Sulfate: 82
RA as CACO3: -27

My second time using the pH meter, I hit 5.2 squarely on the head. Not bad.


Notes: 

Mashed in at 152. It was initially a little high, but it corrected itself within ten minutes.

Collected 13.5 gallons of wort at 1.042 PB OG, then mid-boil I added what was left in the mash tun. Rather than play a guessing game with wort collection, I'm starting to transfer everything from the mash tun. In all, I probably ended up with 14 gallons of wort. I figure that if I consistently do this and then tweak the numbers in Beersmith, I'll be able to consistently collect 12 gallons of beer for fermentation and therefore have ~ 11 gallons for packaging. I had too many beers where I was packaging less than 10 gallons of beer.

I mashed out over 10 minutes then sparged with 9 gallons of treated water at 168 degrees.


Boiled for 60 minutes then chilled to 50 degrees. Pitched 3L starter of WLP001 harvested from NHC Amber Ale 1.1. And set in the fermenter at 60 degrees. Original Gravity stood at 1.050.

After 5 days, the beer was at 1.020. I bumped the temp up to 64 degrees to allow it to clean up and to encourage it to dry out to the target FG. The taste was very corny with some biscuit and toast depth. The hop balance was spot on. I'm looking forward to seeing what lagering will do to it.

On 2/24 I crashed the beer to 38 degrees where it will sit for a week or two before kegging and additional conditioning until it is bottled to ship off to NHC in mid-March.

Update:

3/7/2014: this has been lagering now for about two weeks. The flavor is really nice - crisp, clean, slightly corny - with ample malt to give it complexity. It's very drinkable and it's a great cream ale. I'm slightly worried that the judges will ding it for the extra malt flavor, but it could just as easily set it apart from a more standard iteration of the style.

Recipe below:

Recipe: NHC Minerva Cream Ale
Brewer: Adam Keck
Asst Brewer:
Style: Cream Ale
TYPE: All Grain
Recipe Specifications

--------------------------

Boil Size: 13.50 gal
Post Boil Volume: 12.50 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 12.00 gal
Estimated OG: 1.052 SG
Estimated Color: 5.8 SRM
Estimated IBU: 18.3 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 80.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 81.7 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------

Amt Name Type # %/IBU
13 lbs Pale Ale Malt 2-Row (Briess) (3.5 SRM) Grain 1 61.9 %
5 lbs Corn - Yellow, Flaked (Briess) (1.3 SRM) Grain 2 23.8 %
2 lbs Munich I (Weyermann) (7.1 SRM) Grain 3 9.5 %
1 lbs Biscuit Malt (23.0 SRM) Grain 4 4.8 %

1.50 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 5 16.6 IBUs
0.50 oz Saaz [4.00 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 6 1.1 IBUs
0.50 oz Saaz [4.00 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 7 0.7 IBUs
1.0 pkg California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) [35. Yeast 8 -

Mash Schedule: Temperature Mash, 1 Step, Medium Body

Total Grain Weight: 21 lbs












Friday, February 14, 2014

Bavarian Helles 1.2

I loved this beer so much the first time that I decided I'd get another one in the pipeline. The first one left me wanting more. I made a few changes:

  • Add some Munich malt. I chose Avangard Munich.
  • I want to get it to attenuate more, since my last one stuck at 1.020. I'll let it ferment for 3 weeks and pitch more yeast.
  • I want to use distilled water to see what difference building the water profile from scratch would make.
  • Add a protein rest to the mash. I'm going to make this a habit for German beers that I'd do a decoction mash for if I wanted to do a decoction mash.



This is also the first time I'll get to use my new pH meter after having read Water from Brewers Publications.

My profile ended up looking like this:

Calcium: 58
Magnesium: 0
Alkalinity as CaCO3: 10
Sodium: 5
Chloride: 102
Sulfate: 0
Effective Hardness as CaCO3: 41
RA: -31

Water treatment: 12g Calcium Chloride, 1g baking soda (to bump up the sodium slightly)

I hit a 5.4 pH. Not bad for my first crack at using the meter.

It was still going up. It settled at 5.4. The temperature reads 81 degrees, but I ended up cooling it to room temp and getting the same reading of 5.4. I intend to do room temperature readings.
I chose a double infusion mash to keep the brew time down. I added all of the brewing salts and mashed in at 130 for 30 minutes, 150 for 40 minutes, then raised the temp to 168 and sparged.

Transferred 13.5 gallons to the boil kettle over 30 minutes.

Preboil OG: 1.049. Way high for where I wanted this to be. I added another gallon or more from what was sitting in the bottom of the mash tun. If I had an extra gallon of distilled water I would have added that as well.

Boiled hard for 90 minutes. Added 4oz of Hallertauer Hersbrucker at 75 minutes. Pitched rehydrated Irish Moss and 1 tsp of yeast nutrient at 10 minutes.

I chilled to 40 degrees, gave the wort 150 seconds of pure O2, then pitched a 3L starter of WLP 820 salvaged from my last batch into ~11 gallons of 1.060 wort. I'll be brewing a doppelbock in three weeks and I will use this yeast cake directly.


It's a breeze doing lagers in the winter time. I don't even need to pick up ice, just have the snow shovel handy. Once my well water gets the wort down to about 80 degrees (takes maybe 15 minutes), I will switch over to my keg cleaner bucket, which has a little suction pump attached. I simply recirculate this ice cold water through my wort chiller. From the 80 degrees, it takes another 15 or so to get down to pitching temps.

The brew couldn't have gone smoother, save for the higher than anticipated OG. I should have lowered the malt bill - my logic that I'd collect an extra gallon didn't pan out - or had some extra distilled water to top it up in the middle of the boil. I really need to dial in these calculations.

Recipe later.



Sunday, February 2, 2014

NHC Amber Ale

I'd like to enter the American Ale category in the 2014 National Homebrewing Competition. Looking at past winners and the style guidelines, it seems that the playing field is skewed towards more complex entries. I thought to myself, why would I brew a standard American Pale Ale or IPA when I can give it a nice malt body that can set it apart?

I've been really itching to brew something like Modern Times' Blazing World. With Simcoe, Amarillo, Apollo, and Columbus sitting in the freezer, I thought I'd put together a hoppy, west coast style amber ale featuring two of the most popular hops in the IPA/pale ale category and use the whirlpool and steeping techniques that I've been hooked on lately to extract tons of aroma and flavor from them. I'm aiming for a balanced, yet assertive amber ale with a formidable malt body. To get a nice amber color, I'm adding a pinch of midnight wheat. I'm adding it at vorlauf to avoid extracting acrid flavors from it.

I don't know what my dry hops will be yet, as I plan to sample the beer then decide which hops to use based on what I think it needs.

This batch will be brewed as a pilot. I'll push it a bit to get it out in 2.5 weeks. That should give me enough time to brew another batch for the March 10th shipping time for NHC.

Water:
Calcium: 69
Magnesium: 5
Alkalinity as CaCO3: 121
Sodium: 44
Chloride: 32
Sulfate: 131
Effective Hardness as CaCO3: 52
RA: 69

Water treatment: 5g baking soda, 10g gypsum.

I had some trouble getting the water profile for this. Darker, hoppy beers are difficult for my water because I need to add alkalinity via baking soda, but I also need to keep my sodium down so that it the doesn't outcompete the hop flavor. It is a balancing act to add enough gypsum to get my sulfate and calcium levels up enough, enough baking soda to get my alkalinity to where it needs, and keep my sodium levels down. I'd like to see more calcium and even more sulfate, but to keep the alkalinity down, that would have required more baking soda and an unacceptable level of sodium. This was the best compromise.

Notes:

Mashed at 152 degrees. Treated strike water with 1/2 campden tablet, 7.5 grams of brewing salts.



Sparged and transferred 13 gallons to kettle over 20 minutes.

Preboil OG: 1.050

I added the other half of my brewing salts at the start of the boil.

My final runnings were about 10.22. I added about a gallon of wort from my tun because my volume was looking low and I knew I'd lose a gallon or so to hop trub.

Rehydrated 2 tsp of Irish Moss and pitched it in at 5 minutes. Added 1 tsp of yeast nutrient at 15 minutes.

Whirlpooled for 30 minutes at 180 degrees.

I bagged the Magnum whole leaf hops to keep them from clogging up my hop blocker...no avail

Cooled to 60 degrees then allowed it to sit for 20 minutes to settle.Collected ~11 gallons of wort. I think my wort chiller bumped my hop blocker when I put it in and hop debris got into the chamber. It started gagging right at the top of the hop blocker and I probably had to leave a full gallon or more of wort in the kettle.

Pitched yeast, set in fermenting chamber for 64 degrees (17.7C).

The color is looking muted. I'd like to get a bit more bright red out of it. I also think I wasn't boiling vigorously enough at the time of my irish moss addition, since I didn't see a very good cold break. Hopefully I can clear this beer despite that.
Update 2/14/2014:

I racked this to kegs last night after 2 days of crash cooling at 38 degrees. It dropped out crystal clear at 1.011 SG. The aroma was muted Simcoe/Amarillo - tangerine and tropical. The flavor was well balance between hop and malt, with maybe a little malt dominance. I think with carbonation and dry hopping it will be about perfect. The malt was biscuity, slightly roasty. The hop flavor was mostly the Simcoe citrus coming out, with hints of grapefruit and dank. I decided that I didn't want Simcoe to overpower this beer so I ended up dry hopping with 4oz Columbus for depth and dank-ness, 2oz Amarillo to accentuate the non-Simcoe citrus notes, and 2oz Cascade to round out the grapefruit character. So in each 5 gallon keg went a nylon garment sock with 2oz Columbus and 1oz each of Cascade and Amarillo.

I'll let the hops do their thing for 5 days then crash cool the beer with finings to clear it out. I'm looking forward to having a pint next weekend and potentially brewing this once more for the 1st round NHC in mid-March.

The fresh Columbus hops I just got from Yakima Valley Hops had a pronounced onion aroma. Much more than Columbus usually does. I've read that that Columbus can lend some undesirable onion character. I'm thinking with just a 5 day dry hop and only 2oz in there it shouldn't be an issue.

Nice clarity after two days of crashing. Dad in back for reference.

Current recipe below:

Recipe: NHC Dreams American Amber Ale
Brewer: Adam Keck
Asst Brewer: 
Style: American Amber Ale
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (30.0) 

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 13.00 gal
Post Boil Volume: 11.75 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 11.00 gal 
Estimated OG: 1.062 SG
Estimated Color: 13.7 SRM
Estimated IBU: 54.8 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 80.00 %
Boil Time: 75 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt                   Name                                     Type          #        %/IBU         
10.00 g               Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate) (Mash 60.0 mins Water Agent   1        -             
5.00 g                Baking Soda (Mash 60.0 mins)             Water Agent   2        -             
20 lbs                Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (3.0 SRM)           Grain         3        84.4 %        
2 lbs                 Munich I (Weyermann) (7.1 SRM)           Grain         4        8.4 %         
1 lbs                 Caramel Malt - 40L (Briess) (40.0 SRM)   Grain         5        4.2 %         
8.0 oz                Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM)   Grain         6        2.1 %         
3.2 oz                Midnight Wheat (550.0 SRM)               Grain         7        0.8 %         
2.00 oz               Magnum [14.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min         Hop           8        54.8 IBUs     
3.00 oz               Simcoe [13.00 %] - Boil 0.0 min          Hop           9        0.0 IBUs            
2.00 oz               Apollo [17.00 %] - Boil 0.0 min          Hop           10       0.0 IBUs      
2.00 oz               Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 0.0 min      Hop           11       0.0 IBUs      
2.00 oz               Columbus [14.00 %]- Steep/Whirl 30m      Hop           12       0.0 IBUs
2.00 oz               Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] - Steep/Whirl 30m Hop           13       0.0 IBUs      
1.0 pkg               American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) [124.21 Yeast         14       -             


Mash Schedule: Temperature Mash, 1 Step, Medium Body
Total Grain Weight: 23 lbs 11.2 oz
----------------------------
Name              Description                             Step Temperat Step Time     
Saccharification  Add 29.62 qt of water at 163.7 F        152.0 F       60 min        
Mash Out          Heat to 168.0 F over 10 min             168.0 F       10 min        

Sparge: Fly sparge with 8.44 gal water at 168.0





A thought or two on malt

Since I started brewing in 10 gallon batches, I've purchased malt and hops in bulk whenever possible to save money. I have always tried to keep a sack of pilsner malt, wheat malt, and 2-row on hand at all times so that I could simply stop by the brew shop, pick up my specialty grains, yeast, and any hops I don't have on hand, then go brew.

I've always purchased Briess base grains probably because that's what the home brew shop has in stock. For me, I always assumed that the specialty grains were where I'd get my malt character and the base grain was there as a sort of blank canvass. Occasionally I'd pick up a sack of Maris Otter or use English malt when trying to make an authentic English beer.

A few weeks ago I brewed a Munich Helles with a 100% German Avangard Pilsner malt bill and I was blown away by the malt character in the beer. Then last week on the Brewing Network's Brew Strong podcast, I was really surprised by the conversation between Jamil Zainasheff and Colin Kaminsky on malts. It boiled down to this: the big American producers of malt give their best yield to the large craft brewers and the megabrewers in the form of contracts. The big brewers demand a higher standard of product because of their bargaining power. This leaves the smaller craft brewers with the rest of the stuff. The home brewing industry, with zero organization and relatively speaking, zero buying power, is left with the rest. They recommended going with small maltsters whenever possible. Since that's an industry that's still in its infancy in this country, they recommended going with smaller European malting companies that have been providing smaller, more discerning operations with quality malt for decades.

For my latest brew, I decided to pick up a sack of Crisp Malting Group "Best Ale Malt," which is their standard Pale Ale malt. I put samples of the Briess 2-row and the Crisp malt side by side to see the difference.

Crisp on the left, Briess on the right
The Crisp Pale Ale malt is slightly darker. The L rating is higher too, so this isn't a surprise. The aroma is way different: the Briess has a papery smell to it while the Crisp has a bready aroma, like a freshly unsealed can of oatmeal. And the flavor, no surprise, puts the Crisp way out ahead as well. Basically, it has flavor. The Briess has a "green" sweetness and only a hint of bread flavor, the Crisp has a sweetness that really jumps out and a depth of bread flavor with a slight bit of toastiness.

If you asked me if I've been unsatisfied with the malt character of my beers prior to this revelation, I would have said no. But when you stack these base malts side by side and actually taste them, it's a no-brainer of which I'd rather use in my beer.

I did the same simple test with Briess Munich malt and Weyermann Dark Munich (which has a lighter L than the Briess). Same result: the Weyermann had depth, the Briess tasted papery and light. Not to mention the Weyermann is 2-row and the Briess is 6-row.

Will I ever use Briess again after my stock runs out? Maybe in a pinch. This has been pretty telling though and I'm looking forward to seeing the difference in my beer.