Rites of Passage

I was doing some cleanup after our last batch and noticed that one of my Better Bottles had some cracks in the bottom rim. It's not the first piece of equipment I've had to retire. I had another Better Bottle which I've designated for Brett fermentation only, an autosiphon which has visible scrapes and scratches all over the inside of it which I pitched, a few beakers which were process casualties and at least a couple of stir bars which made their way down the drain. And not to mention Jeremy and I have started following Jamil's recommendation and replacing all of our soft plastic tubing every year.

All in all, equipment casualties do seem to be par for the course in order to maintain proper sanitation. Given space to "cellar"beer (at least to the best that my basement can maintain cool temperatures during these Chicago summers) we've seen infection crop up in beers after they sit for a while. I know that there's some wild yeast and bugs floating around in my back yard and basement, but changing out equipment seems to have bought us more stable beer for now.

It's not just equipment that starts to fall by the wayside as you get better. Once we hit the point where our beer started to consistently taste really good, it stopped making sense to stretch ingredients. Old hops which had sat warm or grain which had not been properly stored got pitched, as do anything which doesn't taste or smell right before a brew day. Ultimately it's a little less economical on the front side, but I'd rather spend a few extra bucks on equipment and ingredients than end up dumping a whole batch because of contamination. And I'm pretty sure we're all in this hobby to make good beer, right? 

Equipment Notes : Fermentation Heater / Brew Belt

Chicago winters are cold. This one hasn't been as bad as they usually are, but it's still cold. And since I chose to live in an old two flat built in the 1920's (before the advent of modern insulation) that means my basement is cold. I keep the thermostat down there set to 65, but based on the little temperature recording thermometer I keep with the "cellar" beer, the air temp at ground level can get as low as 45F.

So all of this produces great conditions for making lagers (duly noted for next year's brew calendar), but Jeremy and I decided to brew a saison so it'd be ready right as the first signs of spring are appearing. And saison yeast likes it hot. I'd initially thought fermenting at 67 - 68 for the first 48 hours and then turning the fridge controller all the way up to 80 would result in a decent free rise and get the 80-85% attenuation appropriate for a saison.

OG: 1.072
Target FG: 1.010
Original Volume: 5.5 US Gallons

Reality: at 72 hours from pitching, the beer was around 1.036 and 61 degrees F. Damn lazy yeast!

Since brew belts are only about $20 from Brew Camp (my awesome local homebrew store), it seemed like a reasonable piece of equipment to experiment with. Particularly since Saison yeast are tolerant of high fermentation temperatures and I only have a controller suitable for cooling which means the brew belt is just going to be on without a controller.

So this past Wednesday night I bought one and wrapped it around my better bottle per the instructions.

In about twelve hours, it raised the temperature up to 70F and by this morning (36 hours later) it was up to 81F. These bad boys actually work really well. If I were to use it on anything besides a Belgain yeast strain that can handle the heat, it'd be necessary to get a digital controller to prevent it from overheating the beer.

I'll post some stats on the finish beer as well as some tasting notes when it's ready.

Wort Chiller Test

My march pump showed up on this past Monday and I finally got a chance to put it all together tonight. Apparently my limited DIY soldering experience did me pretty well. It didn't leak and fired up a pretty vigorous whirlpool! (It's tough to see in this short video, but there were little flecks of crap in the kettle which all started to settle in the center.)

I can't wait to see this thing in action with real wort and the chiller on!

Better Bottle Hack

After listening to many, many episodes of Can You Brew It on the brewing network, the standard volumes they use are a part of my process.

For a 60 minute boil:

• Mash and sparge to 7.2 gallons
• Boil down to 6 gallons
• Transfer 5.5 to the fermentor
• Finish with 5 gallons of clear, drinkable beer

Since none of my boil kettles have a sight glass on them, I decided to do something I'd been thinking about for a while. I measured out a half gallon of water, put the better bottle on a flat, level surface and started marking. After the first half gallon, I did full gallons up to 5.5. (It's actually a bit higher up in the Better Bottle than I thought it would've been. Regardless, after the massive blow-out I had earlier this year in a Russian Imperial Stout, I've started adding fermcap to my fermentation now as well.)

Here's the end result. It made it a whole lot easier to top a partial boil extract batch up to the correct volume at the end of the process and should make it a hell of a lot easier to transfer out exactly five gallons of finished beer.

I could've gone with the fancy vinyl stickers I've seen elsewhere, but a sharpie seems to have worked just fine this time around.

Oak Aging Experiment (Setup)

At some point while I was sitting at the Bears game and freezing my ass off last weekend, my thoughts drifted to how nice it would be to have a flask of something strong and brown to warm me up. Naturally I then drifted on over to beer and how it'd be nice to oak-age some of the Russian Imperial Stout we've got left after the angriest fermentation I've ever witnessed...

Thankfully, I had some medium toast American oak cubes left over from the Firestone Double Barrel Ale clone Jeremy and I brewed towards the end of the summer. So after a bit of researching proper oak handling and the appropriate quantities to use for aging on a homebrew scale, here's what I did.

• The consensus seems to be that 1-2oz of cubes per 5 gallon batch is about right. Since I'm going to be aging in 1/2 gallon growlers, I measured out 4 x .2oz (6g) portions of oak cubes. (The thought here is also that cubes give a more complex, layered flavor than chips. Since this is already a big, complicated beer I wanted that complexity instead of just straight oak flavor.)
• I boiled some water and poured enough over each portion to cover the cubes and monitored the temperature to make sure it stayed over 180F for 20 minutes to pasteurize the cubes
• At the same time, I sanitized the jar which would hold half of the cubes and a generous measure of bourbon.
• While the chips were pasteurizing, I sanitized two growlers, complete with stoppers and airlocks.
• I also sanitized the shiny new beer gun Jeremy and I went in on...
• Back upstairs, I transferred half the cubes into each of two sanitized jars and added some Maker's to one set to soak for a few days.
• Set up the beer gun and filled the two growlers, adding 6g of cubes to each.

And now we let them age for a couple of months. It's going to be difficult to stare at those growlers and wonder what delicious chemical magic is going on inside of them, but I'm sure that the end result will absolutely be worth the wait.

I'll repeat with the bourbon soaked cubes this weekend when we bottle off the rest of the batch. More to come on the Blichmann Beer Gun, but my initial take is that it f'ing rocks.