Bottle Washing Day

Last Tuesday, I had an epic bottle washing session. My normal bottle washing routine is to wait until I have about four cases of bottles that need washed and do it the day of or the day before I am bottling a batch. Four cases is enough, give or take a few bottles, for two normal five gallon batches. So I provide bottles for the batch I’m packaging and enough for one more. Between not bottling anything recently and getting a bunch of new bottles, this was not a standard session and I still have more that I didn’t get to.

I ended up washing all of my twelve ounce bottles, a little over seven cases and starting to work on a couple cases of wine bottles that were in less than ideal condition. I have more wine bottles (and the ones I did aren’t actually ready to use yet), a couple cases of twenty two ounce bombers and a bunch of half liter swing tops still waiting to be washed. About two cases of the twelve ounce bottles were still labeled from commercial breweries, another case or so had my (much easier to clean) homebrew labels and the rest were unlabeled. Unlabeled bottles that have been rinsed as soon as they’re emptied are quick and easy to clean. Any part of that not being true adds to the hassle.

Most of the bottles I use have been through this process before and fit the description of easy work. I have amassed a huge collection of all kinds of beer bottles and haven’t been adding to it much lately, but that is starting to change. I’m working on replacing the deteriorating beer cases I keep most of these bottles in with much more durable and all around easier to deal with milk crates. Twenty five twelve ounce long neck bottles fit perfectly, all the oddball bottles (Sierra Nevada, Anchor, Red Hook, etc.) don’t play as nice. I put out the call that I was again on the hunt for beer bottles and got a bunch of new ones to replace all those Torpedo and Celebration bottles I’ve been saving. This is great, but it meant more labels to scrape off.

For the easy bottles, I use a simple two step washing process. I rinse the bottles with a sink attachment designed for just that and then I soak them briefly in a bucket of Star San solution. Star San is an acid sanitizer. Following the instructions on the bottle, I add the appropriate measurement to a five gallon bucket of water. Star San does not require rinsing, so it is ideal for bottles that are already free from dirt and debris that just need sanitized. The bottles from which I’ve drunk my own homebrew are normally in this condition. Soak them briefly and put them straight on the rack for drying. For dirtier bottles and ones that need labels removed, though you need to do more.

In cases where I have bottles with my own homebrew labels, which are normal printer paper I put on with water soluble school glue, I use warm water with dish soap. This takes the labels right off but does require a thorough rinsing before moving on to the Star San bucket.

 

For bottles that have commercial labels, I’ve found that PBW, another product from Five Star Chemical, the same company that makes Star San is the best solution. PBW is an alkaline cleaner that is used to wash all kinds of brewery equipment, including all that beautiful stainless steel. Given enough time, it will take off even the toughest to remove labels (Tröegs…) as well. Star San is supposed to sanitize almost immediately, but I usually give it a little time to be safe, PBW on the other hand tells you right on the label to give it time to work. For removing labels, thirty to forty minutes of soaking seems to do the trick. Bottles coming out of the PBW solution usually look perfect, but it is a cleaner, not a sanitizer and they should still go through the Star San after they’re clean.

Bottles that were never rinsed and have dirt, yeast residue or whatever other grossness dried on may or may not come out of the PBW clean. If they don’t, you can always break out a bottle brush. Most beginner brewing kits seem to come with bottle brushes and they work well for these soiled bottles. That said, I almost never use them and I doubt that many people ever invest in a second bottle brush when that first one is worn out. When I started out and was still building the castle of beer bottles that now takes up a large portion of my basement, I was forced to tediously wash individual bottles with this tool. Now that I have bottles to spare, the effort does not seem anywhere close to worth it. If a bottle doesn’t come clean from a spray of water after soaking in PBW it goes straight to the recycle bin.

After the bottles are cleaned and sanitized, they need to dry. There are two bottle drying systems that are popular with homebrewers. The old stand by is the bottle tree and the new sensation is called Fast Rack. I have one of each and I’ll post my thoughts on both later this week. Tomorrow is brew day for Elkland Amber Lager and I’ll be posting about how it goes.

Bottling Week

Between several lagers, an old ale and two meads, I’ve been doing a lot of brewing and not a lot of packaging the last couple months. That is all changing now. I’ve already bottled two batches of beer in the last week and I’ll be doing a lot more in the weeks to come.

I don’t keg (yet) and the Party Pig as close as I’ll likely come to cask conditioning, so it’s all bottling for me and that’s what I’ll be posting about this week. I had a huge bottle wash last week. I’ll post about that and what my bottle washing methods are as well as the bottle drying systems I use. I’ll do a batch update, which will include three batches being bottled.

Bottling isn’t the most complex part of the brewing process, so not all my posts this week will be about it. I’m planning to brew my perviously mentioned batch of Elkland Amber Lager this week, so I’ll be posting about that as well.

Water Filter

Every contest I’ve entered, most of the judges remarks have revolved around water quality. I’ve read tons of brewing books and the water chemistry sections always go over my head. This is the biggest part of brewing that I have for the most part ignored.

I’ve always been of the opinion that it was better to pick one thing and really dig in and figure it out rather than trying perfect the entire process at once. Water chemistry, however important, is not the most immediately interesting part of the brewing process. As a result, it has taken me longer than it probably should have to get to it.

I started brewing with extract and specialty grains. Water chemistry becomes a lot more important when mashing. I got a tub of pH stabilizer when I started all grain brewing and started getting my water ready the night before brew day to dechlorinate. It is time to get more serious, though. The first step was getting a water filter. The next step will be doing some testing on my water to see what the rest of the steps will be.

I’d already put off buying a filter for too long, and after some limited research, I decided to just go with this one from Midwest. A lot of the water filters I found came in pieces and required buying hoses separately. This isn’t a big deal, but I just wanted to get it and be done. The price difference was minimal so got the one that was all ready to go.

Last year, I requested a water report and received it from the borough office. I looked at it briefly with a pile of brewing books next to me, but was immediately overwhelmed. If I want to take my beer to the next level, I need to start paying more attention. The carbon filter I bought is an easy first step, but now it’s time to dig in and do the research.

Smoker Thermometer

Measuring the temperature of the mash is something that can cause a lot of headaches for the all grain homebrewer. The more you open and check the temperature in your mash tun, the more likely you are to throw it off. If you’re less neurotic than me, you may be able to trust your cooler mash tun to keep it’s temperature like it should, but if you’re willing to give up that control you may be less likely to try homebrewing in the first place.

Floating thermometers are standard for those of us with coolers converted to mash tuns. They are cheap, easy and accurate, but you still need to open the top and pull the thermometer out to check it, which is inevitably going to drop the temperature of your mash. The solution is a digital cooking thermometer.

These devices usually have a probe to insert into the food you are cooking with a wire connecting to a digital display showing the temperature picked up by the probe. The probe can be placed in your mash tun with the wire coming through the lid without disturbing it’s seal. The only problem is that the wire is usually not safe to submerge in the liquid of the mash. The probe will have to be inserted to a shallow depth, leaving room for heat pockets and for the general rule that your mash is probably hotter in the middle than on the fringes. Your floating thermometer likely suffers from the same problem, though.

The gadget I <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000DIU49/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0000DIU49″>picked up</a>, found once again on <a href=”http://www.homebrewfinds.com/2014/03/heads-up-maverick-et-73-wireless.html”>Homebrew Finds</a>, takes this idea one step further and offers a second, wireless display allowing me to roam the house and backyard while still indulging my OCD side and constantly checking my mash temperature. It is meant to be a thermometer for monitoring a smoker, which is usually outside and left on for very long periods of time.

This model also has a second probe. The first, like the version I mentioned, is sharpened to stick into a piece of meat and check it’s internal temperature while the second is rounded and meant to check the temperature inside the smoker. So far, I’ve been using both probes, the sharpened one stuck into the actual mash and the rounded one just inside the lid of the mash tun. I was interested to see what the difference would be. The variance in temperature is much wider than I expected and it makes me wonder how different various pockets inside the mash may be. In summary, it makes me even more nervous instead of assuaging my fears. Other than stirring the mash thoroughly at the beginning, what can you really do, though? So basically, I’m going to start just skipping the second probe and trust the first one.

Whether or not this any more accurate than my old floating thermometer (I think it is), it is still a lot easier to use. I would definitely recommend it, or something similar, to any all grain brewer. I am still wondering if there is a way to get the probe deeper into the mash, though. Does anyone have a suggestion for a way to submerge it deeper without breaking it? Is there a waterproof equivalent out there?

Using a Refractometer to Find Original Gravity

I recently purchased this refractometer. I’ve been wanting one ever since going to all grain brewing but the price has always pushed it to the back burner. They are $80 at my local homebrew shop and the big mail order places have them a little cheaper, but with shipping it’s not much different. A few weeks ago, though I found this one for around $20. I mentioned Homebrew Finds, but I will again because that is where I saw it and I’m very glad I did.

A refractometer is a tool used to measure the amount of sugar in a liquid solution, something that is often done by homebrewers with a hydrometer. The two instruments work in very different ways. A hydrometer is allowed to float in the liquid. It is calibrated and marked to float at a certain level when in pure water. The denser the water is, the more sugar is in it and the higher the hydrometer will float.

The refractometers that brewers use, there are other more advanced versions used in laboratories for other testing, measure the sugar content of a few drops of liquid over on a lens. Holding the refractometer up to the light and looking in the viewfinder, you can see a chart which shows the sugar content of the sample in Brix. It is measured by reflecting light through the sample and measuring how much the light is bent. Brix is not a scale most homebrewers use, but it can be converted to specific gravity fairly easily.

If you are just looking for a rough idea of the gravity, you can simply multiply your Brix measurement by four. Ten Brix is roughly 1.040 specific gravity. This is not exact and gets less accurate as the gravity is raised. To get an exact conversion there is a slightly more complicated equation. You can find it easily online, or use software to convert it for you.

Unfortunately, refractometer’s do not work the same on liquid that contains alcohol. There are more complicated calculations that you can make to find your final gravity and even find the alcohol content if you don’t know your original gravity. I just got my refractometer and don’t know nearly enough about how this works yet. I hope to learn more and use my refractometer for more in the future, but for now I just want it to check gravity throughout brew day.

With this extra complication, why use a refractometer instead of a hydrometer for your original gravity readings? There are two reasons that make it very handy for all grain brewers. The first and most obvious is that it only takes a few drops of wort. To measure gravity with a hydrometer, you have to fill a flask for it to float in which is usually about a cup of beer you will be losing.

The other reason, which is the main thing that made me want a refractometer is that the wort can be measured right out of the kettle without having to cool down to the appropriate temperature. Within thirty seconds of taking the wort, you can have an accurate gravity reading. This is crucial for all grain brewers during mashing and sparging. Since going all grain, I’ve basically been flying blind during the boil. I normally take a hydrometer sample before starting the boil, but by the time it gets to the right temperature, I’ve already started adding hops.

More experienced brewers may be able to trust their system and skills enough to assume they hit their expected efficiency, but I’m still working on this and, as with my recent batch of Mount Hoodie
, sometimes something goes wrong. If I had this tool on that brew day, I would have known before starting the boil that I didn’t get full conversion and could have either extended the mash to try to convert more, cut my batch size down or at least cut down on my hops to compensate for the lower gravity and keep from throwing the beer off balance.

I’ve only gotten to use my refractometer for two brew days so far, but it has been extremely helpful. It was especially appreciated yesterday while brewing Table Cat as I was returning to the Brew in a Bag method which I hadn’t done in a while. I was not sure what kind of efficiency to expect, but with the refractometer to test along the way for conversion, it was a very smooth brew day.

Table Cat

I wrote on Monday about my first attempt at a Belgian Table Beer. Today, I brewed my second effort. The only problem I had with last year’s version was that it was too bitter. To combat that, I completely skipped bittering hops in this year’s brew. Like last year, I used all Nelson Sauvin hops from New Zealand, but my first addition this year was fifteen minutes from the end of the boil. I’ve never done this before, but I wanted to keep this a single hop beer and at well over 10% AA, it’s just not practical to measure a small enough amount of these hops to be able to boil them for an hour and not throw off the balance of the beer. With two ounces split into three additions in the last fifteen minutes of the boil, this should be a hoppy and aromatic beer, but with only about fifteen IBU’s, half of what last year’s had.

 

My malt bill is also significantly different this year. I used rye malt for half of the grist and American 2-row pale malt for the other half. I have never brewed with rye malt before, for some stupid reason. I am a big fan of the rye beers I get to try and I don’t think there are enough of them around, so I’m finally doing my part. I have a couple more planned, but I thought this would be a good first time as I wanted to keep the grain bill simple and it should allow the rye to shine.

In my post about Biere De Table Cat, I mentioned that I was nervous about the various strains of saison yeast and that was the reason I used the one I did. This year I opted for White Labs’ WLP566 Belgian Saison II strain. Similar to the Wyeast French Saison yeast I used last year, this is said to finish quick, not stall out and be generally less finicky than some saison strains. It is also said to give a lot of fruity esters with some light phenol. I am looking for the fruit in this beer, hopefully to compliment the fruity hops. I don’t have a lot of temperature control, but I’m leaving this carboy by a heat vent to keep it as warm as possible and up the esters even more.

All of these elements, a single but exotic type of hop, spicy rye malt and a fruity yeast strain, are my attempt to keep this low gravity beer’s recipe simple and not muddle the elements but still make it interesting. Most of the table beer recipes I found online when researching for last years batch included spices. I wanted to avoid that and keep to the four basic beer ingredients.

In addition to all of these changes, I’ve gone with a slightly higher gravity this year. I don’t think it is necessary, I love the idea of a beer with less than 2% ABV, but I am returning to BIAB for this batch and am using it as sort of a test for future batches. Biere De Table Cat was my first all grain beer. I would like to do more all grain brew in a bag beers. When I was using this method, it was to dip a toe in the mashing water. I did partial mashes for about six months until I built up the courage to splurge on my current all grain setup. Now, I’m hoping to brew some more session beers for the Summer and simplify my process as much as possible. I used eight pounds of malt in this beer, more than I liked to when I was partial mashing, but with my new, bigger boil kettle, it is now easy and, as I learned today, still leaves quite a bit of room to grow. My efficiency wasn’t much better than it was in my original BIAB days, but I hope to improve it with the next couple batches I’m planning. I will post more specifically about my BIAB process as I amend it over the course of a couple more brew days.

Aside from the ingredient changes, I also decided against the extra long boil. Last year, I boiled the wort for over three hours while I brewed another beer. It worked then but any small benefits were not worth the extra time today. It is said that these extended boils will caramelize the sugars in the wort, giving it a more complex flavor and a darker color. I’m not sure how much flavor complexity I picked up, but the beer didn’t seem to gain any color. I don’t think the low gravity prevented it as I didn’t conduct a full volume boil. The wort was a fairly normal gravity. The water added post boil may have negated some of the change, though. My only other guesses are that three hours just isn’t enough for this technique or that it is a very subtle change that I built up expectations for in my head. The long boil certainly didn’t hurt the beer last time, but I’m too busy to bother now.

Despite stepping it up from last year, this is still an extremely low gravity beer. I brewed a six gallon batch because with my eight gallon bucket being tied up with adjunct lagers for the next few weeks, that is the biggest I have room for. Anyway, my basic recipe is below and I’ll post tasting notes when this is ready to drink, which will be only a few weeks away, one of the great advantages of low gravity brewing.

Table Cat
Style: 16E. Belgian Specialty Ale (Table Beer)
Brew Date: 3/26/2014
Estimated Serve Date: April, 2014
OG: 1.024
Expected FG: 1.004
Approximate ABV: 2.6%
IBU: 15

Fermentables:
50% American 2-row Pale Malt
50% Rye Malt

Hops:
10 IBU 15 min Nelson Sauvin, .5 oz 11.4% AA
5 IBU 10 min Nelson Sauvin, .5 oz 11.4% AA
0 IBU 0 min Nelson Sauvin 1 oz 11.4% AA

Yeast:
WLP566: Belgian Saison II Yeast

Process:
BIAB: mash at 152º for 75 minutes
One hour boil, three hop additions at 15 min, 10 min and flame out
Ferment warm until activity stops, 10-14 days
Bottle

Val’s Portly Porter

This was my seventh batch overall and my first fully original recipe. It was also kind of a mess. It is a porter with molasses. A lot of molasses. Way too much molasses. It was not terrible, but the molasses was overpowering. I enjoyed it at first, but got sick of it real quick. I decided to see if the molasses would age out at all. Not much. I still have a few bottles of this sitting around. Once I get through the initial descriptions of all these batches, I will go back and do review posts of the ones that I still have. This should actually be one of the more interesting ones to revisit. The last one I remember drinking was several months ago, but it still mostly tasted like molasses.

I already introduced Grim, so I guess I should mention that this beer is named for my other cat, Valor. It was brewed right around the first anniversary of his adoption day. To be clear… I just have the two cats. I won’t be revealing another one every few weeks.

Val’s Portly Porter
Style: Robust Porter
Brew Date: November 2011
Serve Date: December 2011

Fermentables:
1 lb Flaked Oats
.5 lb Flaked Barley
.5 lb Crystal 90L
.5 lb Black Patent Malt
6 lb Dark DME
1 lb Molasses (added at flameout)

Hops:
.75 oz Pearle @ 60 min
.25 oz Pearle @ 30 min
.25 oz Willamette @ 30 min
.75 oz Willamette @ 2 min

Yeast:
Danstar’s Windsor Dry English Ale Yeast

Bier De Table Cat

Last Summer, I was planning to take my first stab at brewing a saison. At the same time, I was reading about the English tradition of parti-gyle brewing. This is the practice of using the same mash to make multiple batches of beer. An extra large grist of basically as much grain as possible is added to the mash tun and the first bit of strong wort is hopped and boiled for a strong a beer as subsequent sparging results in lower gravity worts that are used for smaller beers. This practice was standard for centuries in England and is still practiced by some brewers, notably Fuller’s for their ESB and London Pride.

I have used this method a couple times and plan to use it again, but for this beer, it was simply inspiration, I didn’t actually employ it. I was brewing partial mash with brew in a bag mashes at the time, which doesn’t really lend to parti-gyle brewing. Instead, I just used the same grain bill for the saison I was brewing and for this beer. I brewed Bier De Table Cat and Honey Gold Saison on the same day. I started with the BIAB mash for Bier De Table cat and when it was done, I began boiling the wort on the stove top. It was, by necessity, not a full volume boil. Because I was brewing both the same day, I had the boils going on simultaneously and this batch was on my stove top, which can’t boil more than about three gallons at a time.

Once the first mash was done and the wort was boiling, I began the second mash with a new grist of the same grain bill. From there, I basically just brewed the saison and let the table beer boil away until I was done. To add more caramelized character and malt complexity, I boiled this beer for three hours. I have read that extended boils will darken the beer, but I didn’t experience this, the beer was very light. Maybe it was just too low gravity to matter.

The first two hours of the boil, I just let this beer go while I worked on the other. I didn’t add any hops until there was only one hour left. I used Nelson Sauvin hops for all additions. Additions at sixty, ten and zero minutes added up to about twenty eight IBUs. This turned out to be way too bitter, but the flavor and aroma from the one ounce added at the end of the boil were very nice. For the first time in homebrewing career, I didn’t add any extract. I didn’t mash any differently from other beers I was making at the time, but because of the extremely low gravity, I was able to make this my first all grain batch.

Once the boil was done, I added pre boiled and chilled water to take the volume up to six gallons. This water addition was all it took to chill the wort. I added a smack pack of Wyeast 3711 which is French Saison, and the same yeast I used for the other beer. I had to order this yeast online as none of the homebrew shops in my area carry Wyeast. I read a lot online before brewing these two beers about how finicky saison yeast can be. This one is supposed to be the easiest to work with. I am always concerned about this, but even more so with this beer than normal because of the extremely low gravity. I had to make sure that the yeast got right to work and finished strong all the way to very low terminal gravity I was hoping for. The starting gravity was under 1.020, lower than some beers finishing gravities. I was afraid if the yeast stalled out early, which some saison yeasts are notorious for, it would be very hard to get it going again without giving it some extra food. I was trying to stay under 2% ABV with this beer, but if it didn’t finish low there seemed to be a threat that it wouldn’t even resemble beer. Luckily, this was not a problem.

The only problem, which I already mentioned, was that this beer was too bitter. It was crisp and refreshing with some nice saison yeast flavor and fruity New Zealand hop aroma, but the finish was a bit harshly bitter. Similar to my Grimmuss Dry Stout, this was another low gravity beer that, against popular wisdom, aged well. Some bottles that I kept around for six or so months lost the hop character but also the bitterness and kept the yeasty goodness.

Despite the bitterness, I was pretty happy with this beer overall. At 1.8% ABV, it was still definitely beer. That may sound like a strange compliment, but I wasn’t sure what to expect and I was pleasantly surprised. I’m brewing something similar in a couple days, but I’ve also made a lot of changes. Check back Wednesday to see what I’m trying this time, but for now, I’ll post the recipe for this batch below.

Bier De Table Cat
Style: 16E. Belgian Specialty Ale (Table Beer)
Brew Date: 4/6/2013
Serve Date: 5/1/2013
OG: 1.018
FG: 1.004
ABV: 1.8%
IBU: 28

Fermentables:
91% 5 lb Belgian Pilsner
9% .5 lb Belgian Munich

Hops:
60 min 18 IBU Nelson Sauvin .4 oz 12.5% AA
10 min 10 IBU Nelson Sauvin .6 oz 12.5% AA
0 min 0 IBU Nelson Sauvin 1 oz 12.5% AA

Process:
BIAB mash with all grains in a mesh bag in three gallons of water at 154º for one hour.
Temperature raised to 170º before grains were removed and discarded.
Wort brought to a boil, maintained for two hours with no other changes.
After two hours, the hop additions were started as the wort was boiled for another hour.
After three hours, previously prepared chilled water was added to take the volume to 6 gallons.
Yeast was pitched directly from smack pack into a six gallon carboy.
Carboy was kept next to an external heat source for a quick, warm fermentation.
Bottled after ten days.
Conditioned in bottles for two weeks before serving.

Week Five

Similar to last week, I’ll be posting about some of my early batches as well as a new one that I’m planning for this week. The week’s batch, Table Cat, is an update of one that I made last summer, so I’ll be skipping around in my early batches to cover that beer.

Last year, Biere De Table Cat was my first all grain batch. It was an extremely low gravity Belgian style table beer. This year’s batch is similar but with some major changes as well.

In addition to those beers and some earlier batches, I’ll be writing about some new toys I recently added to my collection. I have already mentioned my new water filter briefly, but I’ll write more about that as well as my new refractometer and cordless smoker thermometer. I got these second two after seeing them on Homebrew Finds which I recently discovered. Check it out and follow them on Facebook for constant updates, if you want find yourself justifying the purchase of things like cordless smoker thermometers.

Buddy’s Stinky Dog Stout

I’m going to skip a few beers in my chronicle of every batch and come back to them at a more seasonally appropriate time, so my sixth batch was from this kit: http://www.midwestsupplies.com/peace-coffee-java-stout-kit.html

This was my favorite, and most popular with my Dad and buddy Kory (my two go taste testers) batch up to this point. I added more bittering hops than the recipe calls for, because they ask for half an ounce, but send the normal, prepackaged one ounce size and I didn’t know what to do with an extra half ounce. Surprisingly, this didn’t seem to be an issue. The kit came with some coffee to be ground, brewed and added in secondary. I also added a some more coffee that I had on hand.

I’m not sure what kind of coffee or even how much. These are the kind of things that I hope I’ve already gotten better about recording, but want to get even better at with this blog. Anyway, as a result of the extra coffee, I had close to five and a half gallons for this batch. I set one gallon aside for one of the aforementioned seasonal beers, Black and Orange. Black and Orange was half coffee stout, half pumpkin ale, but I’ll write more about that in the fall. The rest of this batch disappeared quick. I bottled some of this beer in big 750 ml bottles. This was my first time using larger than 12 oz bottles.

Stinky Dog Coffee Stout
Style: Coffee Stout
Brew Date: September 2011
Serve Date: October 2011

Fermentables:
8 oz Chocolate
4 oz Flaked Barley
4 oz Crystal 60L
4 oz Roasted Barley
6 lb Dark LME

Hops:
1 oz Challanger @ 60 minutes (recipe calls for .5 oz)
1 oz Tettnang @ 2 minutes

Other:
Peace coffee and additional coffee