Crashy crash crash.
Successfully avoided a starter-overflow catastrophe. A second stir plate is on the table for the near future though.
Starters made Sunday, so if they’re not entirely done with fermentation they’re at least through the growth period. But for a Sunday brew day, that’s plenty of time for crashing, so instead of pitching 2L of starter wort, I can get away with pitching a max of .5L of slurry, if not less.
Really happy I thought of it beforehand.
Picked up a small auto-siphon for the pepper porters. I’m glad I did. I don’t know where my racking cane went (and even if I knew where it was I hate using it), and my regular auto-siphon will not fit the mouth of my 1 gallon carboys.
I have another auto-siphon that will. However, that’s my Brett/bugs auto-siphon. And I’m not going to chance that with this beer.
I also grabbed two packs of caps. Should last me for a little while at least.
In addition to brewing this weekend, I’m also going to bottle the pepper beers. That’ll make it about a week on the peppers.
And once these peppers are done, I think I might take a crack at mead and do another couple ciders in the 1 gallon carboys. Since neither mead nor cider really produce much of a krausen (or whatever it’s called in the appropriate terminology) I can put nearly a full gallon in there, as opposed to headspace needed for beer.
I could also do a handful of super small batch sours. Maybe 3/4 gallon, do them BIAB. Or something like that. But I’ll let that wait until after we eventually move. We’ve decided we will stay here no later than April of next year when our current lease expires. Even if that means moving in the with inlaws if nowhere else is available when we need it to be.
Conceptual recipes I’ve put together over the course of time but haven’t pulled the trigger due to the moving question… (I would be tweaking the recipes before I actually brewed them)
If I opt to move forward on either of them in the immediate future, it’ll be the last two, as I was planning on doing a sour mash followed by boil on each, and actually leaving the cold side bug-free. No worries of cross contamination and no additional souring time needed, so much faster turnaround.
I’ve also never experimented with 100% Brett before, only as a supplement to Saccharomyces (and other bugs), but if I understand correctly 100% Brett for some reason moves a lot faster and doesn’t super-attenuate like it does when used in conjunction with other microbiota, meaning that instead of a year plus, the two 100% Brett batches could be done in a couple months.
In any event, the Lambic (and eventual Gueuze) and Flanders Red will wait until next summer at the earliest, when I know they have a minimum 18 months to sit undisturbed.
Well, appears I lucked out. What little krausen formation there was to be had on the Tripel starter on the stir plate has already subsided. The Saison start foams a little with some swirling but not enough to overflow (although close) Enough to know that it’s working, though. I’m going to refrain from more vigorous shaking as that will undoubtedly foam it over.
Could have posted this a few hours ago when I was actually done with the starters, but oh well.
These are full. And I mean FULL. I ended up with ~2L in the Saison starter, and 2.3 or so in the Tripel starter on the stir plate. Overshot the volume a bit when making them (usually undershoot it and overcompensated). Both are dangerously full. If my experience holds out, the Erlenmeyer on the stir plate (the starter for the Tripel) should be ok, but I went with foil in place of foam stopper just in case. I’ve accepted the fact that the Saison starter in the growler may foam over as it hits high krausen. However, I’m close to the “simple starter” volume for that one, so I may opt not to shake it further (I’ve been shaking sporadically already), and I’d prefer to underpitch than overpitch it anyway. At “intermittent shaking” I’m overpitching, simple starter I’m underpitching, so I should be about where I want to be. The tripel I’m in good shape.
In any event, I’m still in that 1.030-1.040 starter wort range, just on the 1.030 end instead of 1.035-1.037 where I usually aim. Should keep the pitching rates a little lower, which is what I want.
I’m planning on brewday of Sunday, but may do Saturday or Monday depending (3 day weekend and such). This will give pleny of time for the starters to finish up so I have a least a couple days of cold crashing in between.
I also picked up a new heated blanket today. I probably should have picked up a Fermwrap and Johnson controller and done it properly since I could use both down the line, but a heated blanket will also have other uses in the mean time. I’m not surprised the one I already had crapped out, since I’ve had the thing since the 1990’s. I should be good to go to ramp the Saison into the high 80s/low 90s after a day or two into fermentation.
I really need to find one near me.
Nice thing about doing multiple large starters. You can make one big batch of starter wort, big enough to make using an immersion chiller practical. Normally if I’m doing one starter at about a liter, a simple gallon kettle gets used. Too small for the IC. However, I’m making two starters each just shy of 2L. The stir plate one I’m not worried about- I don’t seem to get any real foaming with the stir plate, probably because all the CO2 that would support it is driven off by the constant stirring. The other one I’ll be shaking is going to be a different story.
Joining a homebrew club is another of those things I highly recommend.
But all those aside, really handy to be able to say “I ran out of this and the LHBS isn’t open. Does anyone have some extra?”
Grains, hops, sanitizer, ingredients, equipment, whatever it may be.
Long story short, I got the extra caps I need for the Tafelbier. Will go in bottles today.
This is why, regardless of the cost, I will continue sticking with PBW. A simple overnight, not even 12 hour soak, and a THICK, HEAVY layer of krausen falls right off with absolutely ZERO scrubbing required. This thing was krausen coated from around the top of the tape line to the mouth of the carboy.
Could have gone a little smaller with the batch size on the Smoked Porter, but only a tiny bit. It worked out just about perfect. With a 5.5 gallon batch size, assuming about a half gallon of lost to the yeast and trub (as is usually the case), I was able to all 5 of of my 1 gallon carboys almost to the brim- just enough room for the stopper and airlock. Peppers added a little volume, but miniscule. And after all 5 to the brim, I still had enough to pull a full uncarbonated pint for me to drink, and was just barely above the layer of the cake. Probably could have pulled a bottle or two.
The problem is that I didn’t prep adequately. Got bottles all sanitized to bottle the Tafelbier. Went to sanitize my caps. Realized I had a small fraction of what I thought I did. Enough to do 26 bottles. If I had a full 2 cases of 22oz I could manage that. But I don’t. I only have one case of 22oz that’s available.
So Tafelbier won’t get bottled until Wednesday. A little longer than I wanted it to sit on the cake, but not a big deal.
First batch ever put into a keg. Brown Ale is kegged. Recleaned and sanitized the cane and siphon and about to keg the Cream Ale.
I wish I could do this every time. SO much easier than bottling.
Edit: Stupid Tumblr deleted all my text here. Hah. Here’s more or less what I originally wrote that it deleted:
For those of you also going to the National Homebrewer’s Conference, the seminar schedule is posted. Some really good stuff on there.
I’m looking at the following. Out of all of those available, this lineup seems to cover everything I’d want to attend. Some seem interesting. Some more than others. Bolded are the ones I’m REALLY excited about.
Thursday:
Friday:
Saturday:
The sulfur should go away when it’s lagered for a little while.It’s not an overpowering note, not even an off-flavor. Rather, it’s that hint of sulfur that kind of tells you “this is a lager”. I’ve never gotten that from 1056 before. I know folks who’ve taken it well below the recommended range (fermenting it into the mid 50s) have reported sulfur, but I fermented this in the mid 60s, where I usually use the strain.
Well what do you know…
Unfortunately they’re not mine. On loan from a club member and ready to be filled up. Cleaned and full of sanitizer. Just need shake, empty, rack and seal. He couldn’t find his charger canister, so I won’t be able to purge with CO2, so I’ll have to be especially careful taking them back over so any little bit of remaining headspace doesn’t get all shaken up into the beer.
Meant to get the Tafelbier bottled last night. Didn’t happen, and won’t happen tonight either. But I’ll get that bottled tomorrow night. I’ll also get the Smoked Porter into secondaries tomorrow night.
The Cream Ale and Northern Brown both get kegged Saturday night or early Sunday morning. Then Sunday AM I’ll run them back over to the owner who’ll carb them up for me and have them ready to go for the NHC. I’ll see if he can’t keep the Cream Ale on cold storage for a “lagering” period until then.
I pulled samples of both today to make sure they were ready to go prior to kegging (don’t wanna dump an infected batch in someone else’s keg, not that I was worried they’d be infected).
Forgot to snap photos, but they’re looking good, and both have dropped brilliantly clear (any chill haze remains to be seen). The Cream Ale tastes almost like an American Lager, including a slight sulfery note. It’s amazing how similar they are. The only difference is the slight presence of Cascade hops. I initially smelled skunk, which was alarming, but it faded and I don’t know where it came from. Perhaps the mind associating the sulfery pils malt corn character with skunked hops? It was gone as soon as I detected it. And I’ve never once had a problem with a beer getting skunked through a plastic bucket.
Anyway, Sunday is another club brew (doing a big batch to put into a 15 gallon keg). We’ll be brewing an ESB to round out our contributions for Club Night.
And Sunday night I’ll get starters going for the Tripel and Saison I’ll brew over the coming long weekend.
Took about 10 minutes to set up (and I was taking my time). Tap water goes in (left), with left coil in ice water bucket. Flows into right coil in wort, and then back out.
I’ll look around for a good cylindrical item I can use to shape the left coil properly. It’s soft copper, and very malleable, so shaping by hand is not a problem, just have to be careful not to kink it.
I don’t expect a night and day difference between using only my old immersion chiller and the addition of a prechiller, but it will definitely help, especially when it comes to those last few degrees that I can never get down to in the summer.
Shopping day.
Knocked an item off of my “to buy/build” upgrade list. $30 or so bucks thrown down between 20 feet of copper coil, some vinyl tubing, and some screw hose clamps. Will take no more than a minute or two to assemble, and I’ll have a small immersion pre-chiller. From tap through prechiller in a bucket of ice water then through wort chiller then out means my ~78F summer ground water will now be ~40F water running through the immersion chiller. Actually able to cool as far as I want, and should be substantially faster to boot.
Also replaced the Erlenmeyer I broke with my laziness.
Then ingredients for my next two batches (Saison and Tripel).
And then I finally decided to start doing what I should have been doing a long time ago, and buying base malt in bulk. The LHBS was out of the regular Weyermann Pilsner, so he instead gave me the substantially more expensive floor-malted Bohemian Pilsner at the same price. So now between leftovers from the Cream Ale and this, I have 60 lbs of Pilsner malt to burn though. 18 lbs between the Tripel and the Saison, another 10 lbs going in next month’s Quad. So that’s already about half of it.
Next month when I grab Barleywine ingredients, I’m gonna also grab a 55lber of Crisp Maris Otter.
