English Pale Ale Brew Day

Brew Day came and went this past Sunday. This brew day was especially nice since the Southern Division was accompanied by the Northern Division brewmaster to brew an English Pale Ale kit from Northern Brewer. As we prepared to begin brewing we had help from the youngest member of the Southern Division team (as captured in the picture to the left)!

In addition to having a brewing partner this time there were a couple of tricks that improved this brew day: First, we boiled 2 gallons of water in two pots (1 gallon each) which got our wort started much quicker than both previous brews. Second trick was A LOT more ice to improve the speed of the cool down. We used 15 pounds of ice plus a few cooler packs.

We used a liquid yeast over dry yeast this time (note liquid yeast may require a multi-day prep period before your brew day). We both really like using the liquid yeast because it was a lot easier to pitch and it also began the fermentation process a lot sooner than dried yeast.

Note the Northern Division recommends pitching liquid yeast through the funnel into the fermenter chased by the slightest amount of water to clean the funnel. This would have saved the small yeast spill we had during our pitch. This turned out to be the only hitch in the brew day.

We left the English Pale Ale in a dark closest with confidence that we greatly improved over our previous batches. I guess we'll see! Fermentation began within hours and has been very active even 5 days later.

Can't wait for the next sample during transfer to the secondary fermenter (hopefully this weekend).

Vienna Lager Tasting

This past Saturday evening members of the Northern Division joined the Southern Division for the first official tasting of Muckish Mountain HomeBrews. The Vienna Lager brewed by the Southern division had good lager qualities, very clear, carbonated, and smooth. Although the overall review was that aging still needs to occur (had only been in bottles for 7 days) the taste was encouraging.

We look forward to another review here at the 14 day mark to note any improvements after an additional week in bottles.

Brew Day

Just returned from a visit to the Southern division BrewHouse. While there, I assited the Head Brewmaster in brewing an English Pale Ale. I must say that the entire process went very, very well. Brewmaster Scott will be posting additional info.

We also had the opportunity to sample the first batch, a Vienna Lager. In short, it was very mellow and smooth, although only conditioned in the bottles for one week. Brought a six-pack up to the Northern divsion for future sampling after additional conditioning.

Today, the Northern division is brewing a Chocolate Milk Stout. At the moment, I am waiting for my brew buddy to get out of bed. Will report later on today's events.

The first batch, our English Pale Ale, is still in the secondary fermenter. Expected bottling date is February 22nd. Hardest part of brewing is the waiting

Cheers!

Beer Class

Steve and I attended a beginners brew class (free) sponsored by Mr. Steves
in Lancaster yesterday. Good session and very informative. We picked up a
few tips that we will share here. I am glad that we had actually brewed our first
batch before the class because we were able to ask more direct questions with
our vast (HA!) experience. Cool deal that they even served a homebrew during
the class, who knew?

Here are some of the tips:

- Best utensils are stainless steel, plastic is OK but stay away from
rubber or wood.

- When steeping grains make sure that the bag is not laying on the bottom
of the brew kettle, so as to avoid scorching. Also, do not steep over 170 degrees.

- Instructor recommended the use of hop bags when adding the hops
to your brew. Makes for an easier and cleaner pour into the primary fermenter.

- When using a secondary (5 gallon) fermenter add water to bring beer level up
to neck of carboy to eliminate as much air as possible. Only a little water
should be necessary, First time I heard this, so I will have to do a little
more research

- After your first few batch's are bottled, crack open one at various intervals
(1 week, 10 days, 2 weeks etc.) to experience the different taste. Take notes
to find out when taste is best.

I would recommend the class but advise to have either brewed a batch or have
some knowledge of the steps involved. It is a 2 hour course and the instructor
covers the entire process quickly. In our session, he actually brewed an
Irish Red Ale that he wanted ready for St. Patrick's day.

The last tip, which is mine,.....It is so much more enjoyable to do all this with
my brew buddies, Scott and Steve, and to have the support from the best
Wife(s)and Mother on our crazy adventure.

Bottling Vienna Lager

Today was bottling day. Start to finish took about 2.5 hours. That only leaves 7+ days until consumption begins! I found bottling to be the most laborious part of brewing so far and the best step to have a brewing buddy. Bottling is a total assembly line process of sanitizing bottles, filling, and capping. Being limited to just two hands renders the process significantly less efficient. I think my setup will require some revision the next go around too. I placed bottles in the kitchen sink filled with sanitizing solution. Next to the sink was the bottling bucket. I filled bottles on the seat of a chair and capped them on the floor before placing the bottles on a towel. That resulted in tasks at 3 height levels. The Muckish Mountain ergo-specialist would be none to happy with that.

In all, the first batch resulted in 34 12oz bottles and 6 32oz bottles (about 50 12oz bottles equivalent) for just over 2 cases of home-brewed vienna lager. Be sure to check back for the first tasting scheduled to occur on sat. Feb 12 when the Brewmaster from the Northern Division makes a site visit.

Northern Division Report

OK... Just learned how to blog so here goes....

Steve and I brewed a batch on January 31st. We started with an English Pale Ale. The day went well and from start to clean up and was about 4.5 hours. A couple things we learned. First, it takes a loooonnngg time for 2.5 gallons of water to come to a boil. Second, warm the extract to make it pour easier. Third, it's great to have a brew buddy.

Our batch went in to the primary fermenter about 4:30 in the afternoon. When I checked it about 6:30am the next morning, the air lock was bubbling quite vigorously with a nice looking krausen on top. Of course, this led to all kinds of panic, as I was expecting it to take a few days for the yeast to get started. We then thought that we needed to check often as we were expecting to have to go into blowoff mode. Never happened.

So today is Day 4 and we needed to consult with our Southern division (Scott) for some advice. He assured us that thing were progressing as he had experienced and not to worry. Here is a pic of our fermenter in its special place.

Looks good, (I think), who knows.

Vienna Lager Fermenting

Quick Update: The Vienna Lager continues to ferment! It took nearly 4 days to start bubbling which had me researching if I had killed off all the yeast. Turns out I just needed patience. I read that many experienced home brewers enforce a policy of not evening visiting their beer for 3 complete days, 72 hours. I still visit everyday :) Here is some footage from one of my recent visits.



Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpV70wHyprM.

My (Southern Son's) First Brew Day

Sunday, January 9th 2011, was my first brew day. I brewed from the Brewer's Best Vienna Lager kit. It took about 3-3.5 hours to go from cleaning supplies to fermenting beer. Granted, there was a lot of "first timer" time built into those 3.5 hours. I stuck to what I learned in How to Brew, the Northern Brewer instructional video, and the included directions in the kit.

Here are the steps I followed with caveats for improving efficiency.

1. SANITIZE EVERYTHING. So much of the advice I've received from other home brewers and all instructional materials stress the importance of good sanitization (80% of brewing is sanitization they say). I realized this by probably overdoing the sanitization a bit - I used half the easy clean sanitizer that came with my brewing equipment - about 3 times more than i probably needed. Anything that was going to come in contact with ingredients, the wort or beer. This includes the pot, the fermenter, stirring instruments and even scissors to open the packaging. Throughout the brew day I kept my bottling bucket and a large mixing bowl filled with sanitizing solution to store equipment until it was needed. I immediately returned equipment after use to the same sanitizing solution (a tip i picked up from Northern Brewers video).

2. Get Water in the Pot on the Heat. The directions suggested using 2.5 gallons ( i eyeballed this and wished I had measured it out in the end). The Vienna Lager kit came with some steeping grains that steep as the water heats for 20 minutes.

3. BOIL. Turns out a watched pot will eventually boil. Who knew? I kept constantly measuring the temperature and added my malts around 200 degrees cause I wasn't patient enough. Next time, I will be patient, I will be patient, I will be patient. The Vienna Lager called for a 60 minute boil time.

4. ADD HOPS. The Vienna Lager had both bittering hops and aroma hops. The bittering hops were added early in the 60 minute boil, right away. With 5 minutes left I added the aroma hops.

Optional Step 4.5. Consume beer and gaze in awe of your laboring. While the wort boils and you monitor for boil overs turns out to be the perfect time for a beer. Again, who knew?

5. Immediately following boil time the wort needs to be cooled to 60-70 degrees. Doing this quickly, my reading informs me, prevents bacteria growth. I placed the brew pot directly in the sink with running cold water and ALL the ice and ice packs I could find. I quickly got the wort down to 80-85 degrees before I ran out of ice. I will definitely be grabbing a back of ice or making sure I have ice reserves in the future to make the last 15-20 degrees a bit faster.

6. To the Fermenter (and beyond). I added the wort to the 6.5 gallon carboy (fermenter) using the supplied funnel. Previously (during the boil) I measured and drew a line at 5 gallons on the carboy. This was helpful and adding cool water to the wort bringing the volume up to 5 gallons. I took an initial gravity reading (OG - Original Gravity) at 1.060. This was a little high so I added more water and got it down to around 1.052 (still a little high, but I thought close enough for my first go - we'll see).

7. Add Yeast. Lastly I added the yeast and shock the fermenter vigorously. I placed the bung in the top of the carboy and added a airlock bubbler. I moved the fermenter to the garage where it is about 55 degrees lately.

8. Don't forget to clean up. I found other residents to appreciate a cracked window and burning candle at the conclusion of my brew day.

In the end, getting the experience of my first batch will definitely help subsequent batches. I know now that having more ice ready and being even more precise with measurements will also help. I can't wait to try it! In case you were wondering what it tastes like on brew day... sugary hops with luke warm water.

Step Three: Ingredients or Recipe Kit

The final necessity for brewing: Ingredients. There are any number of ways to build your own wort from an all extract kit to intermediate kits mixing extract and grains to all grain kits. Santa dropped off an intermediate kit for my first batch. The kits are definitely the way to go to get started. They have nice easy-to-follow instructions and the ingredients are all measured out, except for the water.

The ingredient kit I started out with was Brewer's Best Vienna Lager. More on brewing with this kit in my next post.

Brewing kits are available from the local brewing supply store, for those times when Santa is off duty, or any number of online supply stores. My hope is to brew through enough kits to get a feel for how much of this and how much of that goes into each type of beer before I eventually venture out on my own.

Step Two: Obtain Equipment

The Southern Son chose to start not too small but not too big either.

I went with the Deluxe Starter Kit from Northern Brewer. Not only was the price fairly competitive they also have a great shipping deal; $7.99 Flat Rate! They even have a YouTube video overviewing each piece of the kit. I found this particularly helpful when selecting which kit I wanted. Northern Brewer also throws in a nice little How to Brew DVD with brewing instruction geared towards the select kit... perfection. I haven't watched it yet, but I anticipate being thrilled by watching somebody brew with the same equipment I now have myself.

There are two pieces of equipment that did not come with the starter kit that I had to obtain elsewhere: a brew pot and bottles. I found a great deal on a 4 gallon brew pot from homebrewing.org. Obtaining bottles has been a bit more laborious. Instead of purchasing bottles I have elected to create my own empties. The toughest part of this task is that you have to buy beers that aren't twist offs. So, unfortunately I, with a little help from the wife, have been consuming some great microbrews... for the sole purpose of rounding out my equipment gathering. Sam Adams, Dogfish Head, Flying Dog, and Allagash have all been kind enough to market and sell brewing supplies pre-filled! One last note, the how to brew book recommended brown bottles to reduce the light pollution hitting your beer as it conditions in the bottles.

Step One: Reading

By far the most recommended book was How to Brew by John Palmer. This book has been a great introductory read thus far and has kicked off the new year right! Palmer's got a web site to go with the book that is work checking out too, http://www.howtobrew.com/. The first half has been a quick read and enough to get me to the point where I feel ready for Step Two: Buy Equipment.

Perhaps step 3 should follow quickly, maybe "Form a Plan"...