Plan B

So this post was supposed to be a recap of the IPA brew session. No IPA, welcome to Plan B.

The brew day started off well enough. We mashed in with a bunch of pale malt, some Ashburne, and some caramel 40 and 80. Mash temp was 152F, and ph 5.50. All just fine. I noticed when we started running off to the kettle that the level of the grain seemed a lot lower than last weeks oatmeal stout, even though they were both 425 pounds of grain. What this should have indicated to me was that the grain bed was seriously compacted. We had had such good run offs and efficiency on the last few batches that I didn't think it would be an issue.

When we were done sparging and the kettle was full, I opened up the mash tun and took a look at the grain bed. The grain was severely eroded all around the perimeter, which indicated the the sparge water had run around the edges and not through the center of the grain bed. I got a big spoon and dug down into the center of the bed and tried some of the grain. Lots of sugary goodness. Which at this point is a bad thing because it's supposed to be in solution in the boiling kettle.

We got the refractometer out and checked the amount of sugar in the wort. The reading translated to a specific gravity of  about 1.050, which is about 8 points lower than I wanted. This definitely put us out of IPA range which typically has a starting gravity of 1.060 or better. So I decided to go with Plan B.

I cut back on the initial bittering hop addition and completely revamped the flavor and aroma hop schedule. I put in Cluster for bittering, Willamette for flavor, and Cascade and Centennial for aroma.

The OG wound up being 1.054 which puts us solidly in American Pale Ale range and the hop schedule is perfect for that. In fact this beer will wind up being very similar to a pale ale I used to brew called Derailed Ale.

So I guess I'm still learning the quirks of this system, and I have too really pay attention to the subtle signs of the process. I could have salvaged the IPA early in the sparge by taking the paddle and cutting through the grain bed to force the sparge water to flow more evenly through it. But I didn't. Something to remember for next time.

Plan B is bubbling away nicely in the fermenter this morning, and every thing looks good. So don't worry, the beer will still be awesome.

Oatmeal Stout Recap

I think I'm starting to get the hang of this system. There were several times during yesterday's brew that I thought what am I forgetting because it seemed too easy. But that's a good thing.

The grain bill consisted of Pale malt, rolled oats ,roast barley, and caramel 120. There was a single hop addition of Cluster to provide a hop backdrop to beer dominated by roasty, malty, flavors.The color turned out great, a deep opaque black.

The whole process went great except for the fact that we might have sparged too quickly. The OG was 1.055 which I thought might be a little higher, but then again, you don't get a lot of extract out of oats and roast barley. I'll keep an eye on that next time we brew the Oatmeal Stout.

Next weeks brew - IPA

Tasting Notes

Okay, so I'm back from vacation (which was awesome) and today we brewed the Oatmeal Stout. I'll have a recap of that brew session tomorrow. The big news is that we have three of our beers on tap. Thanks to Luke for getting them ready and in the serving tanks.

First up - Vagabond Irish Red. I was worried that this beer would be too dark because of the roast barley I put in it, but I think the color is good. It's definitely a multilayered beer flavorwise. There is malty, caramel, roasty, toffee in the nose. It's pretty soft on the palette, with no cloying sweetness, or aggressive bitterness. The finish is clean with no lingering after taste or off flavors. Overall I'm very happy with this beer, but in the interest of perfection, I'll probably roll back on the roast barley to make that aspect more subtle.

Sunny Golden Wheat - The color is a nice deep yellow and the head is nice and lacey, thanks to the wheat. Subtle Mt Hood and Cascade hops come through in the aroma along with a slight sulphuryness, which actually works well in this beer. The flavor has a light maltyness and a crisp wheat character that is nicely balanced by the Glacier hops. I'm really happy with how this beer came out and the only tweak I'd like to make is to deepen the color a little bit.

Calibration Ale is a beer that is what it is. That being said, I really like it. The Vienna malt I put in it, in combination with the caramel malt, gives it a really unique malt flavor for a pale ale. Even though it wound up stronger than I predicted, it's still a nicely balanced beer with great hop flavor thanks to the Amarillo's.

So those are my thoughts on the first three beers. There will, of course, be more beer to come and if you've had any of these, please leave a comment and give me your feedback.

Irish Red Recap

With St. Patrick's Day fast approaching, Irish Red was a logical choice for brew number two. The grain bill consisted of Pale, Ashburne, Caramel 80, Special Roast, and a little bit of Roast Barley to deepen the color and to help combat the high alkalinity of the water here. The ph of the mash was 5.3, so it definitely helped pull the ph down, but I think it might have darkened the beer a bit too much. I'll wait until it's finished and I can asses it in a pint glass to decide if I need to reduce the amount of Roast.

Overall the brew seemed to go more smoothly than the first one. We had no problems with recirculating the mash and the sparge water flowed through almost too quickly during our one hour sparge. The starting gravity wound up being 1.046, which is a couple points lower than I was hoping for. Next time I'll keep a closer watch on the flow and sparge a little slower.

The batch came to a boil pretty quickly after the kettle was full and I remembered to turn off the bottom steam jacket, so no boilover. The one addition of Glacier hops went in with 60 minutes to go in the boil.

While the batch was whirlpooling, we cropped some yeast off the Calibration Ale. There was very little thick slurry, more like very yeasty beer. We pitched what we had, but I was concerned it wouldn't be enough. When I came in this morning it was bubbling, but very little. I pulled off some more yeast and pushed it into the fermenter with CO2. We'll see how it does, although I probably won't be repitching yeast out of this batch.

CA Update

I'm sitting here sipping on a Bell's Hopslam (and loving it) and contemplating what's up with the Calibration Ale. We're 9 days into fermentation and it's not done yet. Today's specific gravity is 1.017, which is good, but I thought we would get here sooner.

 So, what happened?  Last Thursday, four days into fermentation, I noticed the temperature getting a little warm (71.5F). Well that's what glycol is for.  I set the controller so it would pull the fermenting beer down to 65F, which it did. When it got down to 65F the controller did what it  is supposed to do, which is stop the flow of chilled glycol. The problem was that the jacket around the fermenter was full of 27F glycol, and that proceeded to pull down the fermenting beer another 3F. That brought us down to 62F.

Now 62F is not a bad temperature to ferment a beer. The problem with it was that it dropped the temperature around 10F in about 10 minutes. That rate of temperature change will shock the yeast and seriously retard fermentation. When I noticed the abrupt drop in temperature, I shut down the refrigeration and hoped for the best. It took several days, but vigorous fermentation resumed and the beer is now attenuating nicely. That learning experience added about 4 days to primary fermentation, and perhaps years off my life.

The sample I took today smelled great. The Amarillo was not overpowering, but present just the same. I was worried that the beer would be under hopped since the gravity was higher than expected, but the bitterness was at a nice level. Which means that hop utilization is better than expected, and that's a good thing to know before you brew an Irish Red Ale (tomorrow's brew) which is known for restrained bitterness.