This brew session would also serve as an educational session for my friend John.  The two of us played college lacrosse together and it has been 14 years since we saw each other.  So, what better way to catch up than over a brew day.  John is a new homebrewer and was very excited to come down and learn the processes for all-grain brewing.  We put him to work right away by having him help us measure grains.  While he was measuring out the grain, Palmer and I explained what effects the grain would have on the finished beer and why we used malted barley.

After the grains were measured out, it was time to crank up the Barley Crusher.  In the past I have had the grains crushed at the local homebrew shop.  However, since we had a brand new grain mill we “had” to use it.    With John manning the drill, we crushed close to 30 pounds of grain.  The Barley Crusher produced a nice crush with it’s pre-set gap.  There wasn’t a lot of flower in the crush and most of the hulls were intact.  When we took a closer look at it, I had a good feeling that our efficiency numbers were going to be pretty high.

Ok, so let’s take a quick step back for a second and talk about the Chugger Pump.  While we were prepping the grain, I had setup the boil kettle and filled it up with a few gallons of a StarSan & water solution to start my sanitation process.  I like to run this hot solution through my counterflow chiller for a few minutes, then I trap the sanitizer in the chiller until the beer is ready to be cooled.  With the pump all hooked up, I started to circulate the sanitizer so the pump and my chiller would be sanitized and ready to go once the wort’s boil was over.  This thing is just awesome!  Hooking it up was super easy with the stainless quick disconnects.  It is also pretty quiet and powerful.  If I were to rate the pump’s performance in the circulating, I would give it a 10 out of 10.

We had heated up our strike water and emptied the HLT into the mash tun for preheating.  Next, it was time to dough in the grains.  We let John dump in the grain and stir it up to make sure there were no dough balls in our mash.  This is one of my favorite steps of the entire process.  I love to smell that sweet barley once it hits the hot water…now, if I could just bottle that smell.  Our rest period for the mash today was 60 minutes.

After we doughed in, it was time to sit back and enjoy a few beers.  The Christmas Ale from Anchor would be the first of many on the day.  It would also be the only one where I took a picture.  After the Anchor Christmas, we all sampled a few homebrews starting with the Pumpkinator 3,000 then moving to the Black Stone Stout and a barley wine from 2008.  We did check our mash temp periodically to make sure our temperature was still holding at 152 degrees.  We did loose a couple degrees over the hour, but all-in-all the mash period went as planned.

I have a 10 gallon Rubbermaid mash tun and it only holds 24.5 pounds of grain.  So, in order to make this double batch we had to employee another mash tun.  For this to work right, we have to get a little creative in a few of our steps.  For example, we grind up two identical 5 gallon grain bills (one for each MLT).  Next, we have the same volume of strike water in each tun.  Finally, for sparging, we use fly sparging but have to move the drain hose (from the HLT) back and forth in the mash tuns so we maintain a 1.5″ – 2″ layer of water on top of the grains bed.  In the picture at left, you can see our collaborative setup where we use my TopTier and my buddy’s mobile station.  It works pretty well and we made a few adjustments from the first time we brewed on this setup.

Once we collected our boil volume and completed the 60 minute boil, it was time to chill this wort down to pitching temp.  Since this was an IPA, I wanted to use my Blichmann HopRocket for the first time.  I have had this thing a year and never used it; I was waiting till I had a pump in my system.  The HopRocket will hold up to 5 ounces of hops, but I just put in 1 ounce of Cascades to pull some of the hop’s citrus flavor.  You can only use leaf hops as the screens inside of the HopRocket are not fine enough to hold in hop pellets.  Once my ounce was in, it was time to engineer this into my brew system.

Now, the HopRocket can be used in a couple different ways in your system.  For this batch, I used it as a hop back (to add some hop characteristics back into the wort).  I hooked it up as you can see at the left, just off of my boil kettle and before the pump.  The wort would be pulled from the boil kettle and it will travel through the HopRocket, picking up the citrus notes from the hops before being chilled.  In this configuration, it also acts as a filter by utilizing the whole-leaf hops (as a filter bed) to strain out the gunk produced by the boiling wort.  This prevents my chiller from being clogged up and it provides a cleaner wort for fermentation.  It will be interesting to see how well it works as a filter and if the fermenter’s trub cake will be smaller once fermentation is complete.

Now that this batch is complete; I would say that this day was a huge success.  John learned a lot and had a helping hand in every step of the brew session.  As always, we had a ton of fun and brewed up a batch of beer that hit all of our numbers.  With all of our numbers hit, the final beer should be fantastic!

The pump and HopRocket worked out really well and they both performed flawlessly.  I think that the pump addition was a huge upgrade as it will make my system more versatile and it will speed up a few steps.  We were able to chill 10 gallons in less time than I used to chill 5 gallons using gravity.

However, there was one little detail that I left out…  After all of this talk and planning around my grapefruit, that’s the one thing I left out!  When we were about halfway through filling the fermenters, it hit me.  The fruit was sitting right on my table along with the zester that I had planned on using.  I guess I got to talking and forgot.  No big deal, I’ll add the zest in the seconday in a couple weeks.

Look for an update on the beer in the next couple weeks.  If you have any questions about the pump, HopRocket, setup, etc… please let me know.

Now, on to the pump…  I researched brew pumps till my fingers bled and finally decided on a Chugger pump.  This pump has a stainless steel head and was priced real reasonable.  Also, the reviews that I read were all positive and the performance seemed good as well.

After ordering the pump, it was delivered to my door in two days!  The pump was actually here before my disconnects and my other fittings.  When all of my parts arrived, I started figuring out where to mount the pump on my stand.  Since this is not a self priming pump, it would need to be mounted below the lowest vessel on the stand (so gravity can pull the liquid into the pump).  For me, that is my boil kettle and it also meant taking the stand apart.  I have been meaning to re-tape my gas manifold, so what better time than now to disassemble the stand.  With the burners off the stand, I put the pump on the bottom of the stand’s aluminum mast.  The pump mounts to a bracket that is secured into the T-slots.  Then, it was time to put things back together.

My next brew day is this weekend (1/28) and will be the first run with the pump.  I have ran a few tests with the pump and it seems to work really well…  Look for an update in my next blog post on the brew day.

• Could my mash tun hold the grain bill?
• How would my boil-off rate be affected?
• Would it take a considerable amount of time to brew a double batch?

I started planning this day a few weeks ago with one of my regular brewing buddies.  The first thing we did was decide “when and what are we going to brew?”.  After throwing around different beers that we could brew, we finally decided a seasonal beer would appropriate.  Now, we decided to brew the last weekend of October.  So, being that it was very close to Halloween, we decided that a great way to celebrate would be to brew a nice, spicy, pumpkin beer.  With the date and style set, what was next…

So, let’s get onto answering some of the questions…. Could my mash tun hold the recipe for a 10 gallon batch of Imperial Pumpkin Ale.  Short answer, NO.  Our grain bill was close to 32 pounds!  Using my math, I figured that I can only hold 24 pounds of grain (with 1.25 qts of water/pound of grain).  Now, we ‘could’ tone down the base malt and add some DME into the boil.  Nah, why would we do that?  We decided to use two 10 gallon mash tuns and split our grain bill equally between them.  Basically, we purchased two, 5 gallon recipes to accomplish this.  You’re probably asking yourself, “how the hell is he going to sparge two mash tuns?”.  Yeah, this was not thought about until brew day.  Well, we used the fly sparging technique and ran half the sparge water through one tun and half through the other.  Our efficiency did not seem to be affected.  If we go this route again, I will pick up some sort of splitter so we can run them both at the same time into the boil kettle.

Next question, boil-off rate…  The boil off rate did not seem to be affected too much by brewing a double batch.  We started with 12.5 gallons of wort and boiled it down to 10 gallons.  Our boil time was increased a touch, but I normally boil off close to 1.5 gallons an hour with my current setup.

Finally, total brew time.  Our brew day lasted around 8 hours.  It was a long time, but I do not consider it excessively long.  As a comparison, my normal brew day lasts between 5.5 – 6 hours.  Remember, we did not sparge both mash tuns at the same time, we filled two mash tuns, and collected double my normal boil volume.  I believe that the next time we do a 10 gallon batch, we’ll fine tune the mash & sparge process so we can work with both tuns at the same time.  With some adjustments, I think we can easily knock off an hour.

The brew day turned out to be a big success.  We were shooting for a 1.087 original gravity and over shot it; as our original gravity was 1.090!!!  This is the highest O.G. beer that I’ve ever brewed.  I had to make sure that I used my blow off setup as I knew this one would shoot the normal airlock into orbit.    I’m pretty excited to get this batch fermenting.

UPDATE (11/1/11):  My blog post is a touch behind so I’ll give you an update of fermentation…  This beer was fermenting like crazy on Monday morning.  That was a great sign as we pitched a 1000 ml starter into each fermenter.  The color of the beer is a nice caramel color (so far).

Till next time, Cheers!

Eric

To start things off, I created a keg cutting jig (which you can see above).  Here is my parts list:

• Angle Grinder
• Two .045 grinding discs
• One 80 grit flap sanding disc
• A piece of 1 1/4″ PVC pipe
• One 1 1/4″ coupler
• Three 5/16″ hex nuts
• One 5/16″ x 12″ threaded rod

The angle grinder support is the 1 1/4″ PVC pipe cut a 1/4″ shy of the keg height.  I then added the 1 1/4″ PVC coupler since it fit perfectly in the keg collar with almost no amount of play.  As an FYI, there is a tiny lip inside the keg collar, so a 1 1/2″ PVC pipe will NOT work.  Next, I put a 3″ piece of the 1 1/4″ PVC pipe on the top side of the coupler.  After the pipe was assembled it was time to figure out where to drill the hole to mount the angle grinder.  It should be noted that your angle grinder must have a threaded connection on top for this to work.  The Porter Cable one (from Lowe’s) has this connection.  I sorta winged it by putting the disc on grinder and holding it perpendicular to the cutting surface.  I made note where to drill in my PVC pipe and put a 5/16″ hole in the pipe.  The jig is pretty self explanatory by looking at the picture, but if you have questions please let me know.

The next step is to cut these tops off.  You don’t want to bear down on the grinder as you’ll cut a flat spot in your keg top and possibly shatter the disc.  So, you work your way around the keg using light pressure.  After the initial scoring, the grinder wheel will ride in the groove.  Take it slow as your cutting the top off.  It will take a few minutes, but your patience will be rewarded with a nice clean cut.  You’ll also get to see some cool sparks, though since it was very sunny outside the camera didn’t pick any of them up.  It should go without saying, but wear eye protection and ear protection if it’s too loud.  I filled the kegs up with a little water to deaden the sound a bit.

After a quite a few turns around the keg, you’ll end up with a nice round hole.  Each keg took me about five minutes to cut.  The top of the keg will slide down the PVC pipe.  At left, you’ll see the rough unfinished hole.  Be very careful as there will be shards of steel and it will cut you.  Before using it, you should finish it with a sanding disc on the grinder or a stainless steel file and some sand paper.

I used an 80 grit flap disc and spent a couple minutes hitting the edges.  To start, I went around the top of the cut a few times, then the under side of the cut.  I finished off the sanding by hitting the inside of the cut edge.  This really smoothed it out and it will not cut your arm when you put it in the kettle.  So, after about 2o minutes total I’ve completed both kegs.  Here is picture of the two finished kegs.

Now, I’m ready for the next step in my keg conversion project…  Stay tuned!

I had invited quite a few people over to the day’s session.  All in all, I think there were close to 15 people here.  I just hoped I wouldn’t disappoint them.  Some, it would be the first time they saw beer made from scratch… others, well, they’re pretty experienced in the brew session game.

There was one new addition to the brewery for this brew day, my in-line water filter.  Read more about it in this post.  My initial plan was to use a shutoff valve (attached to the water filter) to regulate the flow…  Well, that plan was nixed about 10 seconds into the brew day when I realized that I had two male ends.  So, that wasn’t going to work.  To get around it, I just screwed the hose into the filter and controlled the flow by the spigot.  Not the most ideal way, but it worked. This filter worked really well and I’m hoping that the quality of my finished beer will increase as well.

While the Hot Liquor Tun was being filled up with the filtered water, it started to drizzle a little.  No big deal, I’ve brewed in the rain and snow before.  However, the rain started to come down a little harder and I didn’t want to get soaked while brewing.  So we moved our chairs into the garage to stay some what dry and watch things happen with the brew system.  You can see the wetness in the picture on the right.  As summer showers tend to do, this one vanished in a few minutes and we were back out in the Carolina heat.

After hitting the strike temp, I started my mash procedures.  Things were progressing rather well until my mash temp ended up 8 degrees to low.  The low mash temp will net a beer that is slightly dry and maybe more alcoholic.  Not a big deal, but it did irk me that I missed it by that much.  Oh well, guess I should have paid more attention to the mash tun than filling my pint glass. 

I like to time my brew day so I (and whoever is over) can enjoy a few pints of homebrew, some pizza, and a cigar over the sparging process.  Normally, if there aren’t any problems, I collect about 5 gallons per hour sparging.  It’s a nice break and it gives us time to enjoy the food and beer.

Today, instead of pizza, I fired up my Big Green Egg and we all had brats with sour kraut! Unfortunately, I don’t have a pic of the Egg loaded up with lunch…  The brats were awesome and I believe everyone enjoyed them.  There were times I should have been duplicated as I tended the grill and the brew system.  I’d like to thank my buddies for the excellent help on the brew system; the day couldn’t have been possible with out you!

Once I collected the 6.25 gallons of wort by fly sparging, it was time to get the boil on!  The wort was brought to boil with no big surprises, as the boilover stayed in check and all additions were made with ease.  The wort was chilled down using the counterflow chiller and into the fermenter it went…  Success!

So, to cap it all off I’d say this was a very successful brew day.  My only mishap was the mash temp being 8 degrees low.  We’ll have to see what effects this actually has on the beer.  Everyone had a great time, even the kids…though they tore up my daughter’s bounce house so I’ll have to patch a few holes…

Recipe Specifics:
1 lbs     Rice Hulls
6 lbs     White Wheat Malt
4 lbs     Pale Malt (2 Row) US
0.50 oz     Cascade (60 min) 9.0 IBU
0.50 oz     Cascade (15 min) 4.5 IBU
1.00 oz     Cascade (5 min) 3.6 IBU
0.25 oz     Orange Peel, Bitter (Boil 5.0 min)     Misc
0.25 oz     Orange Peel, Sweet (Boil 5.0 min)     Misc
1 Pkgs     American Wheat Ale (Wyeast Labs #1010)     Yeast-Ale
Estimated OG:  1.054
Actual OG:  1.046
Estimated FG:  1.012
Actual FG:  1.010
ABV:  4.7%

UPDATE (5/31/11):
The beer is very nice!  It’s a very light, easy drinking summer beer.  The wheat ratio may need to be adjusted if I re-brew it as it doesn’t have that ‘wheaty’ taste that some wheat beers have.  Some may like this beer over the big commercial brews because of the taste.  I guess, you could say it’s an ‘intro to wheat beer’ beer.  Even with the slight wheat taste, it is a very good beer and I don’t think it will last too long in the keg.

Till next time,
Cheers!

There wasn’t a water filter bracket that I could buy commercially to fit the TopTier stand.  So, my mind went to work and I created this little solution that I think worked out really well.  One big decision was to figure out where to put this filter and holder.  Also, how am I going to attach the filter to this base?  I thought of a cup holder concept because of how easy it is to remove the filter for cleaning.  Let me tell you, it doesn’t get any easier than this.

Here’s how I put this thing together.

Filter Setup:

• Whirlpool whole-house water filter (WHCF-DWH)
• Whirlpool .5 micron filter
• 3/4″ to 1/2″ (I. D.) barbed fitting.
• 5′ of 1/2″ (I. D.) reinforced vinyl tubing
• 1 – RV water supply hose

Holder / Bracket:

• 4″ PVC coupler
• 4 – 5/16 square bolts (to fit in the TopTier T slots)
• 4 – 5/16 x 2″ stainless hex bolts
• 2 – 5/16 x 1.5″ stainless hex bolts
• 12 – 5/16 x 1 1/4″ flat washers
• 2 – 5/16 fender washers
• 12 – 5/16 hex nuts
• 1 – 9 x 3 1/2 x 1 piece of solid oak

Ok, all parts purchased and four holes drilled appropriately to match the T slots.  Now, how do we mount it on the stand?  Well, I used the same method of attaching the filter holder as the manual recommends you attach the gas manifold.  The following is the pattern for the four bolts holding the filter to the stand:  Square nut (in the t-slot)… washer… hex bolt… hex bolt… washer… holder base… washer… top of bolt.

With the filter stand is mounted on the TopTier, how are we going to attach this PVC coupler to hold our filter?  Originally, I had an idea to ‘strap’ it to the oak board.  I figured that wouldn’t hold it long term as I saw the coupler slipping off the base in the middle of a brew session.  To get around this, I drilled two 5/16″ holes in the PVC coupler and in the wood.  Next I used the four fender washers and bolted the coupler (with the two 1 1/2″ x 5/16″ bolts) to the wood base.  From the picture at left, you can see how the coupler is bolted to the board and how the whole contraption is bolted to the stand.

I had quite a few ounces of loose, whole leaf hops laying around so I decided to use them up.  Some of these hops were not available at my local brew shop so I was excited to see how they would smell and taste in the beer.  The brew day went pretty well, no real issues or problems.  I think I’ve got the TopTier stand all dialed in now.  My numbers and temps were hit or with in a degree or two.

Anyway, onto my recipe update…
Hops:  I think there’s plenty of bitterness here for the style.  However, the hop aroma I was hoping for is not present.  I don’t know if the hops were a little old (since I got them second hand) or if I just need to try a different combination.  If I wanted to get crazy, I guess I could run this through my Blichmann Hop Rocket packed with hops.  However, that may be a waste of hops and time since it would be a one shot, one night / day deal.

Malt:  The malt bill doesn’t really support the bitterness as I don’t think it’s very balanced.  I think I need to make this beer a little more complex by adding some Victory or Munich.

Overall Impression:  It is an easy drinking beer with a  fairly dry finish.  The color is a nice, deep straw color with a vaguely off-white head.  While the citrus aroma may be missing, there is a subtle citrus flavor that’s nice and not overpowering.

I think I will brew this beer again with my malt bill modifications.  If anyone has any other suggestions, please let me know.  I’m always looking to improve my recipes.

Recipe:
9 lbs     Pale Malt (2 Row) US
1 lbs     Cara-Pils/Dextrine
1 lbs     Caramel/Crystal Malt – 60L
1.00 oz     Pearle (60 min)  26.9 IBU
1.00 oz     Pearle (15 min)  13.4 IBU
1.00 oz     Motueka (0 min)
1.00 oz     Pacific Gem (Dry Hop 7 days)
1 Pkgs     California Ale (White Labs #WLP001)     Yeast-Ale

Beer Stats:
IBU:  40
OG:  1.060
FG:  1.010
ABV %:  6.52

Asheville – 9 breweries

Charlotte – 3 breweries

Fayetteville – 2 breweries

Greenville – 2 breweries

Nags Head – 1 brewery

Raleigh – 9 breweries

Rockingham – 1 brewery

Wilmington – 1 brewery

The bitterness from the hops was very prevalent in my sample tonight.  It will be a little bit deceiving if you look at what you’re drinking.  There are still 2 more ounces of hops that need to be added to the secondary in a week.  I cannot wait to drink this beer!

Here are the beer’s specifics:
IBU’s (bitterness units):  132!!!
Original Gravity:  1.086
Final Gravity:  1.016
Total ABV:  9.17%

As of now, this beer is unnamed.  So, if you have any ideas please let me know in the comments.

Cheers,

Eric

This would be my biggest beer yet on all fronts; from grain bill to ABV%.  The grain bill was comprised of three different grains totaling 17.25 pounds.  I would be boiling this beer for 90 minutes, which would mean a larger boil volume.  This beer will finish off at 8.5% ABV; by far my largest beer to date.  I’m ready, let’s get this batch going.

I had prepared a starter two days in advance since I knew there would be a lot of fermentable sugars in the wort.  The last thing I wanted was to under pitch my yeast and not ferment this batch properly.  The starter took off and within a few hours we were bubbling away.  So far so good… Now, how would the good luck continue into the brew day?

After getting my station setup, leveling the stand, heating up the specified amount of strike water, and pouring a beer it was time to get this show going!  I hit the strike temp dead on the money and drained the water into the mash tun.  After heating up the tun for a few minutes, it was time to mash in the 17.25 pounds of grain!!!  We doughed in and stirred it up pretty well, making sure we didn’t have any dough balls in the mash.  A few minutes later, I double checked my temperature.  I was, once again, right at the temp I needed to be.  So far, so good; hell, it was great!

Well, we were mashing at the right temp so it was time for beer number two!  This batch called for a 60 minute mash.  During this time we ordered some grub, chatted about brewing different beer styles, and some of our favorite brews.

Ok, time to drain the mash tun and start filling up the brew kettle.  I use a stainless steel braid to filter out the grain particles and normally I can achieve clear wort within a few minutes.  It looked clear, so it was time to dump those first runnings back into the mash tun and start filling the kettle.  Right away, I noticed something was not right since I saw a few grain particles…  What the heck, my day was perfect up till now!  So, I dumped the wort back into the mash tun and started over.  This time it was clear, but little did I know we had an “issue” deep inside that 154 degree mash!

I needed to collect close to 7.5 gallons of wort so my 90 minute boil time would net a touch over 5 gallons in the fermenter.  The sparging process was going to take a bit longer than normal to get this thing full.  However, it took a little longer than I expected due to my unknown issue (well, unknown at this point in the day).

Check out how dark this batch looks in the kettle, hence the ‘black’ in the Black IPA.  As you can see from the picture at left, I do not have a lot of room for error in the boil… and I’m not even at full volume.  For the record, that indented lip is 7.5 gallons.  Could a boilover be immanent?  I will need to watch this one super close.

Well, we have this BIPA boiling and the three ounces of hops (that’s right, three ounces) are added.  I had to keep a constant eye on this boil for the first 30 minutes.  After the 30, a little had evaporated so I was ok to step away.  But, during that first 30 we had a breach!  A little foam slipped over the edge.  I’m not going to classify this as a “boilover” just yet.  It’s more like a time for the foam to peek over the side just to see what life’s like outside that kettle. 

We added two more ounces of hops at the 5 minute mark.  That’s a total of 5 ounces in this beer…and we’re not done!  I have two more ounces to add once I move it to the secondary!  My Oatmeal Stout only has two ounces, total.

After I measured the gravity of this wort and hitting my mark (using the refractometer), it was time to chill this wort down to pitching temperature.  I still need to work on this part of my day as gravity can be a little thorn in my side.  It took about 15 minutes to get this batch in the fermenter and ready to pitch.  There isn’t much of a drop between the valve on my brew kettle and the top of the fermenting bucket.

A few weeks back I installed a dip tube into my brew kettle to get all of the wort out.  I’ve modified the tube a little so it sits closer to the bottom of the kettle.  After I siphoned all of the wort out, I was left with the trub and tiny bit of wort.  This was a good addition to the kettle and I recommend it to anyone who is tired of dumping the trub and all into the fermenter.

Remember my “issue” in the mash tun I referred to earlier?  While doughing in, the steel braid was knocked off of its valve connection.  Of course, I didn’t realize this when sparging or during the mashing process.  I at first thought I had a stuck sparge when it didn’t drain as it normally does.  However, when I went to clean out the mash tun, I dumped out my spent grains and the braid fell out with the grains…whoops.  I guess I need to address how the braid attaches to the valve.

To recap the day, it was one of the best brew days I’ve ever had!  My mash tun “issue” didn’t really have any impact on my brew day other than an increase in sparge time.  I was shooting for a 1.085 gravity and ended up with a 1.086!  Now, it’s a waiting game.

Till next time,

Cheers!