Bay Area Homebrewing and Beer Appreciation

American Amber or Red Ale is definitely a West Coast classic, yet has a very wide interpretation. There are many commercial examples. Some that I think are similar to an ESB (or even called such), some with very complex malt profiles, and yet others that are closer to a somewhat darker interpretation of an IPA. Here is an attempt at not too complex of a grain bill, with perhaps a somewhat unique hop schedule. Will also attempt to reduce the attenuation (as compared to the Pale Ale) to balance out the slightly higher IBUs and accentuate the malt a bit more.

Follows is our recipe for 13.5 gallons of finished beer:

22.00 lb. American Two-row Pale Malt
2.50 lb. American Crystal 60L Malt
1.00 lb. American Victory Malt
0.50 lb. American Crystal 120L Malt
0.25 lb. American Chocolate Malt
(SRM ~ 14, target gravity 1.055)

1.00 oz. Newport 11.1% AA, 60 min.
2.00 oz. Amarillo 8.2% AA, 10 min.
2.00 oz. Columbus 12.0% AA, 5 min.
1.00 oz. Nugget (whole/leaf) 12.0% AA, Hop-back
1.00 oz. Amarillo (whole/leaf) 8.4% AA, Hop-back
1.00 oz. Nugget (whole/leaf) 12.0% AA, Dry hopped
1.00 oz. Amarillo (whole/leaf) 8.4% AA, Dry hopped
(IBU ~ 31)

2 vile WLP001 California ale yeast, 2000 ml. starter 24 hours on the stir plate

Straight forward single infusion mash:

alpha rest, target 155° F / recorded 156° F, 75 min.

The mash temperature is intentionally higher then the Pale Ale, to increase body and leave a little more residual (unfermented) sugar. The sweater finished beer should balance out the more aggressive hop schedule.

Do to the larger batch size and target gravity, batch sparging kind of pushed the limits of the mash tun. However, was able to collect about 15 gallons of sweat wort at around 1.053 Specific Gravity. This boiled down some during the 65 min. boil, and some lose in the hop back / crash cycle, was left with (again roughly) 13.5 gallons at an Original Specific Gravity of 1.058

Fermentation:

Crashed the wort down to 72° F and pitched. There were some temperature control issues with this batch. The 10 day primary fermentation (reportedly) peaked out at 78° F, which may result in stronger (maybe fruity, or alcohol) flavors. The two weeks of secondary conditioning were at a much more suitable 68° F. The dry hops being added in the last week / week and half. Final gravity coming down to 1.0145 Specific Gravity.

Racking beer off of free floating hops can be tricky, and has giving me a lot of trouble in the past. I need to post a picture, but I’ve found that one can slip the mesh lint traps found at your local home improvement stores (super cheap) over the business end of the racking cane. This strains the wort really great, with a very minimal amount of hop matter getting through to the keg.

Orig. Specific Gravity 1.058
Final Specific Gravity 1.015
Alcohol by Volume ~5.5 %

Here is an attempt at not only a homebrewing standard, but a staple of American Micro Brews. The American Pale Ale, perhaps of the hoppier West Coast verity. It is a little funny to think that I have rarely (if ever) taken a stab at this style of beer, taking into consideration how much I enjoy drinking it. Will employ my homemade “hop-back” in an attempt to capture as much hop aroma as possible. Perhaps dry hop as well, but undecided at the formulation stage.

Follows is our recipe for 10 gallons of finished beer:

16.00 lb. American Two-row Pale Malt
1.50 lb. American Victory Malt
1.00 lb. American Crystal 40L Malt
0.25 lb. CaraPils Malt
(SRM ~ 7, target gravity 1.052)

0.50 oz. Cascade 6.3% AA, 60 min.
1.00 oz. Amarillo 8.2 % AA, 15 min.
1.00 oz. Cascade 6.3% AA, 15 min.
1.00 oz. Amarillo 8.2 % AA, 5 min.
1.00 oz. Cascade 6.3% AA, 5 min.
2.00 oz. Amarillo (whole/leaf) 8.4 % AA, Hop-back
(IBU ~ 29)

2 vile WLP001 California ale yeast, 1800 ml. starter two days on the stir plate

Straight forward single infusion mash:

alpha rest, target 153° F / recorded 153° F, 70 min.

Shooting for a somewhat lower temp. to promote fermentability, and hopefully a drier finish. Batch sparged, collecting about 12 gallons of sweet wort of 1.045 specific gravity. The mash started to stick a little on the last (third) draw. Starting to consider adding a small percentage of rice hulls to every mash from now on. Better safe then sorry I think.

The new improved hop-back:

The boil went pretty much as planned. Allowed about 10 minutes of rolling boil before starting the hop additions, for a total boil time of around 70 minutes. I don’t believe we had a boil over this session. Does that even count as a proper brew session then? Or, maybe we are starting to get a little better?

Anyway, here you can see the improved hop-back in action. A hop-back is a vessel that allows hot wort to come in contact with hops right before cold crashing, imparting mostly the aroma of hops. My previous design was more or less what you see in the picture, but the top was simply the original top of the mason jar, with the plumbing sort of glued in place. This was a compromise, for at the time of original construction was unable to locate a sheet of copper and rubber to fabricate a better lid and gasket. By chance, ran across a plumbing supply house in the city, and found every thing I needed. With the in and out pipes sweated in place this is a much more stable, sanitary, and air tight set up. It is so air tight in fact I think now I’ll need to add some kind of bleeder valve. For as you can see in the picture the wort never completely fills the jar, but only rises to the level of the output.

Fermentation:

Had a little bit of an equipment failure (the kettle manifold fell off) so employed a bit less then perfectly sanitary procedure to collect the final gallon or so of wort (Orig. Specific Gravity 1.052). Also, pitched at what seems a rather low temperature, ~64° F. Though, good activity was observed after about a six or eight hour lag time. The temperature naturally rose and peaked at ~68° F. Racked to secondary after 1 week. Activity still seemed solid, and did not want the beer to dry out completely. Specific Gravity at 1.011. A little taste, seems more bitter then I expected and the “biscuity” flavor of the Victory malt too strong. The beer has some ways to go, but already thinking about adjustments for batch 2.

Orig. Specific Gravity 1.052
Final Specific Gravity 1.011
Alcohol by Volume ~5.3 %

i meant to write this up last night, when i thought the matter was settled. the matter was not settled.

on monday i brewed up a 4.75G batch (a bit of a volume screwup, as usual) of 1070 pale ale. into it i pitched a healthy looking 500ml starter of WLP001. i filled my 3 piece airlock with vodka and stuck the carboy in the closet.

by the next morning, the beer had sucked half of the vodka into itself, and the airlock was bubbling, but not especially frantically. i thought nothing of either matter; i’d had vodka loss before, and maybe the yeast was just a little slow starting (though I didn’t quite believe that, considering what a monster WLP001 is, but I had no other explanation for the lackadaisical airlock).

yesterday evening when i arrived home from work, i was very surprised to find the kreusen had risen all the way to the neck of my 6.5G carboy — recall that I had only 4.75G of beer! this was a first for me.

i had dinner and then went back to check on the beer again. by now, the yeast was actually in the neck of the airlock, and i could see it pumping up and down, prepping for a jump into my precious bodily fluids — er, vodka. i grabbed a couple paper towels and my trusty bottle of vodka, doused the towels in the least interesting of all spirits (sorry, comrade!), yanked the airlock out of the bung, and capped the bung with my vodkatowel. there was an audible “poot” as i removed the airlock. huh.

a tragedy narrowly avoided, i sat back and thunk. perhaps the pressure is enough to lift the plastic piece through vodka but not enough to lift it through air. so what was needed was… more vodka. i wiped the airlock down as best i could and added more cheap vodka inside it, and stuck it back on. it appeared to work, as it began bubbling furiously. at the same time, the kreusen retreated some. i got back on the computer and made some jokes to my buddy about kreusen retreating in the face of vodka. har!

i relaxed for a little bit and commenced not worrying, but i did not have a homebrew. that was a mistake. when i was ready for bed, i checked the airlock “one last time”. it was full of yeastgoo. d’oh! i did the thing with the paper towel again, yanked the airlock, but this time, i replaced it with an S-type bubbler airlock. that has a longer neck for the gunk to climb, and i figured it would be easier to blow off gas because there’s no plastic to lift.

half a minute after i had attached it, it was bubbling so violently that it was shooting vodka out of the top (i had not overfilled it). a couple minutes later, the yeast was in the airlock. nuts!

so i gave up and decided to use a blowoff tube. i’ve never used one before and i have high hopes for this beer, so i worried a little, and became a little un-relaxed, and i still was not drinking a homebrew. i was doing everything wrong!

if there’s one thing i have in abundance, it’s tubing. someone once said about homebrewing, “how did i ever get involved in a hobby that involves so much plumbing?” i’m with you buddy, plumbing and tubing. and i’m just scratching the surface, so far.

i selected a tube, cleaned it up a little, swabbed the business end with the remainder of my bottle of rotgut, and jammed it right through my carboy hood. the other end went into the rest of the vodka, poured into a saucepan sitting in a large mixing bowl.

i dunno the ID of the tube, i think it’s 5/16″ or something. pretty small. probably not great for a blowoff tube, but it certainly worked. immediately, in fact. it sounded like a really bad case of the runs, bloorp bloorp bloorp bloorp. the bubbles came fast and furious, and quite loud i might add. before long, some yeast junk came shooting through the 4 foot tube. i went to bed, satisfied that i had protected my beer *and* my brewing closet.

i sleep with earplugs. even with my earplugs in, i could hear the intermittent blurp blorp blarp! of the blowoff. i had to put the bowl into the closet (no small feat — it’s a small closet) and close the bedroom door. even then, i could still hear it. i relaxed, don’t worry-ed, and had a nice sleep (but alas, still no homebrew).

this morning, the blowoff bowl was pasty with yeast junk. but it was still bubbling and there was no mess on my carpet. success!

Not long ago, I was digging around in the back of my fridge and came upon a bottle of beer #4. The records from those days are sketchy, you know, on account of The Incident. It appears that #4 was bottled on May 6, 2006. It was a partial boil extract batch, since that’s what I did back then, with the following recipe:

.5lb carafoam
1.0lb chocolate malt
.25# munich malt
.25# honey malt
.5# special B
3lb light DME
6lb dark malt extract syrup
1oz kent goldings (6.2% AA) (45)
1oz kent goldings (6.2% AA) (5)
wlp500

I am kind of proud of this one, it’s the first recipe I formulated on my own. Back then I thought that “stout” meant “having an OG of not less than 1.080″, and the records show that this one had an OG of 1.094. The yeast is a Belgian strain: I was attempting to make something fruity and estery, but also more brooding and chocolatey than a dubbel. I called it a “Belgian Stout,” and it’s a concept I tried again later (to limited success).

Anyhow, I was sitting there drinking #4, and enjoying tremendously the raisiny, heavy chocolate notes, and thinking to myself, “self, why don’t we make another one of these?” And I said to myself, I said, “self, that’s a fantastic idea. also, for some reason, i’m feeling sentimental right now, so why don’t we dedicate it to our parents?” We both agreed that this was a great idea, and then hit upon a swell witticism, because every batch of beer needs a witticism (in case the beer comes out poorly, it can at least have a funny name or story behind it). The witticism (term used with permission) was this: beer #4 got better and better with age, so in honor of my folks, I’d make a reproduction of #4, intending to age it, and advertise widely that it, like my parents, gets better with age.

Get it?

Anyhow, it’s called Fifth Commandment Belgian Stout, it’s number 18, and here’s the final recipe:

Grain : rice hulls 1 lbs
Grain : dark munich malt 6 lbs
Grain : roast barley 0.5 lbs
Grain : special b 1 lbs
Grain : chocolate malt 1.5 lbs
Grain : belgian pale malt 10 lbs
Grain : carapils 0.5 lbs
Grain : carafoam 0.5 lbs
Grain : honey malt 1 lbs
Hop : willamette 2 oz whole
Hop : amarillo 2 oz pellet
Yeast : Wyeast 1214

Mash was 90 minutes at 155F, 1.25qt/lb.

There are several things of interest to note. First, it’s all-grain. I’ve sunk so much cash into my all-grain setup that I can’t ever go back to extract, except for the batch I’m going to do real soon with the cluster hops I got. Also, since brewing #4, I’ve decided that I really don’t much care for the English hops, which turns out to be a good thing these days since they’re damned hard to get. In any case, the recipe calls for boiling the heck out of the hops, then aging the beer for a year, so after all that, it almost does not matter what hops you use. Almost: since #4, I’ve decided I like a hoppier beer, so I upped the hopbill for this one (also because I have a freezerful of the green buggers, thanks to my stockpiling nature).

I wish I could say the brewday went uneventfully. You’d think that I’d have it down by now, being on #18, but every brew provides me with a new learning experience. Last time, the learning experience was “don’t dry-hop with unbagged pellets”. This time, it was… well, read on.

My on-again off-again brew assistant, ChefJef, dropped by for the assist on this one. This is especially appropriate, as ChefJef is my brother, and this beer is dedicated to our folks. It was his third brew assist.

The mash and batch sparge went stunningly well, with no stress despite the massive 22lb mash. I had calculated that with 65% efficiency, I’d hit about 1.080 OG, but I achieved more like 75% efficiency (note: of my last 4 brews, two have been 75% efficiency, and two have been 65% efficiency. the 75-ers were made with crushed grains from Fermentation Frenzy, the 65-ers were from Williams. I suspect that the crush/freshness has as much to do with the extract as my technique.) which calculated out to a whopping 1.094 after the boil. Right on target for a faithful reproduction of #4!

After the sparge, we had 8.5G of wort. Now for the first mistake: I didn’t boil it long enough. I wanted to do a 90 minute boil, and that’s what I did. At the end of 90 minutes I had 6 gallons at 1.080 instead of 5 at 1.090. Lesson #1: boil for gravity, not volume. Lesson #1 is minor, because now I’m going to have 6 gallons of kickass 1.080 stout instead of 5 gallons of stunningly kickass 1.090 stout. I can live with that.

Yes, boilovers. I had 8.5G in my 9G brewpot. Part of the reason it didn’t boil down was that I simply couldn’t boil it vigorously enough without a wort eruption. They say there are two types of brewers: those who have had a boilover, and those who are about to. I am now quite firmly in the first camp.

The other problem: see those whole hops in the recipe? I dumped them in the boil, unbagged. No, I don’t have a false bottom, why do you ask? My wort chiller? Yes, it’s a Therminator plate chiller, why?

That’s right: I clogged the hell out of my wort chiller. We drizzled out about 1.5G before it stopped. Now, that was some ice-cold 1.5G. My last batch, I chilled 5G to under 70F in 11 minutes. I had my system down. That batch did not have unbagged whole hops. This one did.

After the wort stopped, my assistant fetched a stainless slotted spoon, and we sanitized it, and I kajiggled the pot and put the slotted spoon against the out hole. It did not work. After much despair, I began slotted-spooning out the whole hops and dumping them in a pot. This was futile, because as everyone knows, whole hops multiply, infinitely, when exposed to boiling wort. What had begun as 2oz of hops now amounted to 18 bushels, and nobody can remove 18 bushels of hops with a slotted spoon. Nobody. By the time we gave up on the futzing approach, we had maybe 2 gallons of 60F wort in the carboy. I looked at the carboy. I looked at the boil pot. I made an executive decision. I unscrewed the tube from the wort chiller and dumped the hottish (it was freezing cold outside (well, for the bay area… it was 50F or so) so the wort had chilled somewhat on its own) wort directly into the carboy. Five minutes later, I had 6 gallons of wort at 95F.

I shook it like a mofo who is too cheap to buy an oxygenator, grabbed my somewhat anemic starter, and dumped it in.

Now, many of you are saying 95F! Please, Mister Toad, that is too hot for yeast! To you I say: nuts! Yeah, I wanted to pitch at 70F, but you know? 95F is right about where I used to pitch before I had a fancy-pants chiller that can’t handle whole hops in the wort, back when I made… beer #4. That’s right, I pitched at 95F for authenticity. It was my plan all along. SUCCESS!

I bit my nails in anticipation of my success for nearly two days as I waited confidently (biting my nails) for the yeast to show some sign of having enjoyed the 95F pitch. After 2 days, I was rewarded with a massive kraeusen, perhaps the biggest ever, prompting me to fear a clogged airlock + explosion. It’s calmed down by now, all appears good, and though we may have oxidated and infected our hot wort with all that slotted spoon nonsense, there will be at least some alcohol in there — the yeast is alive!

Now I just have to wait another week to rack it, then a year to find out if it’s any good. By exercising such patience, I reckon I honor my parents even more. Cheers!

This is really only my second serious attempt at a Belgian Tripel. I put the half there for I have brewed a couple of Belgian-y Golden Strong Ales (or something perhaps like a Golden Strong), with the intention of making a Tripel. This is before reading Brew Like a Monk. A really good read I think for anyone interested in brewing strong Belgian-style ales. Possibly even for those simply interested in learning more about the Trappist beers of Belgium. For there is a lot of discussion not only on technique but also history and tradition. My subsequent attempts at brewing Trappist-like beers have been mainly influences by this book.

Follows is my recipe for 5 gallons of finished beer:

12.00 lb. Belgian Pilsner Malt (Castle)
0.75lb. CaraPils
2.00 lb. homemade invert sugar
(SRM ~ 5, target gravity 1.080)

2.00 oz. Tettnager 4.1% AA (reduced a bit, for these are 2006), 60 min.
2.00 oz. Saaz 3.6 % AA, 10 min.
(IBU ~ 36)

1 vile WLP530 Abbey ale yeast, 1500 ml. starter two days on the stir plate

A few notes on the recipe. I have begun to notice (and am quite sure now actually) that my system’s mash efficiency drops to around 70% when I do smaller batches (5 gallons viruses 13). And, I’ll end up doing a 100 minute boil here, so there will be a bit of a gain do to evaporation. The IBU’s may be a little high for some, but I found that with my last attempt there was a really pleasant “herbal” quality. Which I attributed to an interaction of the hop flavors and the complex phenols etc. / flavors produced by the yeast.

To make the invert sugar:

Invert sugar is basically table sugar (sucrose) that has been broken down into the simpler (shorter) sugar chains glucose and fructose. This is done by heating the sugar in a slightly acidic solution. Brought to simmer two pounds of table sugar in 1 cup of water. Then added 1 teaspoon of Cream of Tartar, and simmered for approximately 10 ~ 15 min. For the Tripel didn’t want the sugar to contribute any color to the beer, however the syrup can be cooked longer to caramelize if so desired. I found this page to be a pretty good read on sugar (in a brewing context). Franklin Brew

Conducted a pretty simplified step infusion mash:

beta rest, target 145° F / recorded 145° F, 30 min.
alpha rest, target 154° F / recorded 152° F, 45 min.

Batch sparged again, collecting about 7 gallons of sweet wort of 1.044 specific gravity. Which I guess works out to around a 70% brew house efficiency.

The boil went pretty much as planned:

Added the invert sugar syrup (which had cooled significantly) to the boil around the 60 minute mark. Near the end of the boil (thinking the gravity might come in a little low) I added an additional 0.25 pounds of table sugar, and extended the boil by 10 min. Originally, I was only planning on a 90 minute boil. In hindsight, this was probably not necessary. Will want to come up with a better system for taking gravity readings on the fly. Crashed the wort down to round 69° F and pitched. The original specific gravity coming in right at 1.080.

Primary Fermentation:

This yeast seems pretty health, for there was vigorous activity early that evening (maybe 4 to 6 hour lag time). Over the first two days allowed the temperature to naturally raise to 75° F. For the next couple of days, the activity and temperature began to tapper off (70°~69° F). After 8 days for fermentation racked the beer to a carboy, and stuck it in the fridge for cold conditioning. At the time of racking there was still some activity and the beer had a healthy kräusen still present. Checking on the gravity, it seems that I may have allowed the yeast to go too far, specific gravity of 1.012. My previous Triple (that I was very pleased with) had a higher specific gravity when I racked it for cold conditioning, ~1.016. So this is a little bit of a concern. I have a refractometer (that I hardly ever use), and thought I might double check my observation. Unfortunately, this has lead only to more confusion. The refractometer reports 8.5 Brix, which I think works out to a specific gravity of ~1.034. This is a pretty big freakin’ discrepancy! Now I am not sure which measurement to rely on. I suppose there may be factors distorting the observation. The only thing I can think, is there was a pretty large amount of yeast still in suspension. Though have to admit this is pure speculation, for I am not certain on what needs to be considered for either instrument?

Secondary Fermentation / Bottle Re-Fermentation:

OK, with a tip from a fellow brewer, turns out I was off base in my mis-conception that one could use a refractometer to measure specific gravity of fermenting / fermented wort. Presumable the “refraction” is distorted by the alcohol in solution. And, further more refractometers are measureing sucrose in solution, not maltose. He claimed that there is a conversion chart somewhere out on the net, that takes original specific gravity and a Brix reading, and estimates current specific gravity. I have not found this, but did find this BYO article on refractometers that is pretty interesting. There is a lot to consider (calculate) when using a refractometer.

Once racked to secondary, I cold condition the beer in my refrigerator (set on the highest / warmest setting). The beer remains there from about two weeks at around ~42° F. Two weeks and a day in this case. Even though I am a total convert to kegging homebrew, for this style I prefer bottle conditioning. Follow a pretty standard bottling procedure, adding 4 oz. of sucrose (in a simple syrup) to the beer. However perhaps a bit more unorthodox, I add a small amount of bottling yeast to each bottle. This is to insure a high level carbonation, in such a strong beer. In this case I drop one or two “grains” of dried safbrew S-33 into each bottle prior to capping. Also, I store the bottle in a warm place (with a heating pad) at around 70° F for about two weeks, again to insure high carbonation.

Orig. Specific Gravity 1.080
Final Specific Gravity 1.012
Alcohol by Volume ~8.8 %