I’ve brewed a few Belgian Dubbels over the years. To be honest, I haven’t been totally “in love” with the recipe I’ve been using. I have practicing minimalism in brewing recently, but for this brew I decided to build a more complex recipe.

Here is what I came up with:

11lb 15oz of Belgian Pilsner Malt
2lb 4oz Belgian Cara Malt 15L
2lb Biscuit malt
2lb cara Munich malt 50L
2.4oz Chocolate malt
6oz Belgian candy sugar – dark
1oz German Norther Brewer 60min
1.5 oz styrian 30min
.5 oz German tettneng 20min
Wyeast 1762 Belgian Abby II

I struck a little later than usual, getting rolling at 10am. I held 150f (target was 149) for an hour and sparged with 3.5 gallons at 175. The grain bed got up to 168, but not the whole time and I did not mash out.

The volume was low so I needed to add 1qt at cool down. The pre-boil gravity was 1.066 and the OG was set for 1.080, but after the addition of the 1qt of water is was 1.074, right on my target. My efficiency was 65% so I’m happy.

At the end, I had plenty of wort at the end, but decided to hit my target and water the volume down. The color looked good and I’m excited for this brew. I was lazy and skipped my starter so we’ll see what impact that has. I have a spot in my house that should get 75+ for temp so I should have a good environment for those yeast.

• 7lbs US 2Row Pale Malt
• 5lbs Wheat Malt
• 4.2oz Flaked oats
• 1lb Belgian candy sugar (45min)
• 1oz UK Goldings Hops (60min)
• .5oz Czech Saas (15min)
• 1oz Bitter Orange peel (half at 15min and half at 3min)
• .5oz  ground coriander (15min)
• .25tsp crushed cumin seeds
• 1tsp crushed grains of paradise
• Wyeast 3944 Belgian Witbier

Since it was going to be a rainy Sunday anyway, I decided to take my time and brew later than usual.  I started not long after 10:30am and finished at about 2pm.  This was a 5 gallon batch with relatively simple set up so I was lazy and decided to skip the starter.

I still set my recipes at 65% efficiency although it seems like I am doing better than that with my new grain mill.  More to come on that…

I struck with 4 gal of water at 175f which made my mash about 153f, slightly above my target 151f, but I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it.  I ran a fly sparge with an additional 4gal of water at 185f which successfully raised my mash bed temp to 168f.  My sparge ran for about 25min before finishing off.  For the second time since I got my pH meter, I did a pH reading.  This one was 5.9.  I am not quite at the point of doing anything about, just trying to get the reading process into by brew day.

I was able to reach a boil not long after the sparge was finished because I have been keeping my wort on heat while I run off.  This is a huge help on time and its made a lot easier when only brewing 5gal.  Everything else pretty much followed schedule, but there was one thing that kept throwing me off.

Like many brewers, I am paranoid that something is broken so I take readings with multiple devices.  I use a hydrometer and a refractometer, I used a digital and a dial thermometer and so on.  In this case I took a readying of the pre-boil gravity with my refractometer and saw that I was at 15brix or about 1.060 (way above the projected 1.044).  However, when I took a hydrometer reading, I was at 1.044.  I was puzzled but just assumed that I had measured the refractometer too hot or something.

Later, when I was getting the OG, my refractometer was reading 1.066 (16brix) while my hydrometer was reading 1.046.  Suddenly I noticed that the paper in the hydrometer had slid out of place, thus explaining the discrepancy.  With that in mind, my efficiency was more in the ball park of 80%, an obvious huge difference.  This seems a little out of place so I am going to start to scale my recipes slightly to the more accepted 75% given the change.  This explains a lot because my last few brews seemed a little stiff.

All and all it was a great brew day; fairly uneventful and productive.  I am interested in seeing how this one turns out.  More to come!  Cheers

My recipe was simple enough, I had some 2-row English Pale malt and some domestic 2-row pale malt left over from past brew days so I used those supplies along with my hops from time past.  The recipe is here:

• 11.5lbs English 2-row
• 7.7lbs Domestic 2-row
• 1lb 90L Crystal malt
• .25lb flaked barley
• 2oz Cascade hops 60 min
• 2oz Cascade hops 30 min
• 12.5oz fresh picked Cascade hops from my yard!
• Wyeast 1056 – American Ale

After doing some research, I found two consistent aspects of a harvest ale; one is that the base recipe is generally a pale ale, two is that the fresh hops are added at flame out.  Now initially I was going to just put all my cascade hops I had grown into it just because I figured with them being wet, I would need a lot to get something out of them.  However, after researching more, I found that most people used a 5-1 ratio for adjusting to the wet hops from normal dried hops, this means that if you would normally put 2oz of hops in at flame out, add 10 of wet hops.

One important aspect to keep in mind is that the fresh hops really suck up the wort, because of this, I squeezed out the hops when I was done.  I did this by using a hop sack for my hops.

This was a 9.5 gal target batch where I was looking for somewhere in the 1.04’s for my gravity, I wanted something light that would really accentuate the fresh hops flavor.  In the end, I wound up with about 10 gal and was 1.041 for my OG.  It reads at about 38 IBU’s but hopefully the only thing that you get is a big fresh hops bunch in the mouth.

With this one, I am going to use the Po-Boy IPA malt profile and utilize some of my hops purchased from Tim at Pompey Mountain Hops Farm along with the hops I grew this summer should make for an interesting “Empire State of mind” (Go Yankees!) Po-Boy.  I will be updating this post with the hops additions once they’re ready, but here is the malt profile and I am going to be using my Irish Ale Yeast from Wilford’s Best Stout so it should make for some variations on the original:

• 25lbs US 2 Row Pale
• 1lb Crystal 20L
• .75lb Crystal 60L
• .65lb Cara-pils

Again, the hops will be a mix of whole leaf cascade and cenntenial hops with pellet cascade.  I have almost 4lbs of hops so I will not be stingy with with my hop additions.

Best picture I found about oatmeal

That’s right, beer isn’t just for dinner and lunch anymore, now it’s for breakfast.  My friends over at the Brew Dudes have also been in on the Oatmeal Stout and I haven’t brewed one since I used to kit brew.  I think it’s time to re-visit this classing breakfast drink.

Seriously though, I am going to be continuing on my path of less is more in my brewing.  This is a simple stout with some flaked oats to hopefully give the beer some body.  I am currently at 3lbs of flaked oats, but I might be splitting that half flaked oats and half flaked barley.

Here is what I have so far:

 Amount Item Type
26.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (3.0 SRM) Grain 
3.00 lb Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM) Grain
3.00 lb Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) 60 min
1.00 oz Warrior [15.00 %] (60 min) Hops 30 min
1.00 oz Northern Brewer [8.50 %] (30 min) Hops 10 min
1.00 oz Fuggles [4.50 %] (10 min)
Irish Ale Yeast (1085)

This is going to be a single mash infusion held at 154 for 60 min with two batch sparges.  In case it wasn’t obvious by the recipe, this is a 10 gallon batch.  I want to treat the water with some calcium, but we’ll see how the brew day goes.

Cheers.

I know, all my brew day pictures look the same.  Sometimes I wonder why I take so many of the same stuff.  Oh well.

Saturday I got up at a reasonable hour and started off on a relaxing brew day.  This was a 10.5 gallon batch with a target OG of 1.047.  A simple Pale Ale for some refreshing some summer beers. 

I struck 7.2 gallons at 170f for 55min.  I did a double batch sparge with 4.5 gallons each sparge, the first at 185f for a perfect 168f and the second at roughly 170f. 

The first runnings were 19brix (1.076), second running (first batch sparge) was 10.5 brix (1.042).  Finally the last sparge was 9 brix (1.036).  I collected roughly 13 gallons that boiled and cooled down to 11gallons.

In the end the OG was a perfect 1.047 but I wound up with and extra half gallon (need to keep playing with Beer Smith to get my settings right).  The hops I used on this pale ale was 1.5 oz UK Goldings for 60 min and 1.5 oz of Columbus for 10 min.

This was a simple enough brew that let to a very relaxing brew day.  I reused my 1056 yeast from the barley wine I brewed a few weeks back and it started firing within 8 hrs of being pitched.  Meatball even had some time to relax…

• 20lbs – US 2 row pale malt
• 1.5lbs Crystal 40L
• .5lbs Munich
• 1.5oz UK Goldings
• 1.5oz (umm I forgot)

I am using the 1056 from my barley wine (I tasted it, and it was awesome!!!).  I am going to be single infusion at 158f for 45min with two batch sparges.

Simple enough brew, what can I say?  This is a 10 gallon batch for sustenance, but I am excited about this brew.

cheers.

As for the brew day, there was room for improvement.  Don’t get me wrong, I think that our pilsner will be a fine beer, but for the second week in a row, there were brew volume issues.  Allow me to explain.

The recipe was pretty simple, 42.75lbs pilsner malt, 2lbs cara pils dex.  With a total malt bill weight of nearly 45lbs, I planned a total brew volume of 29.5gallons.  The idea was to have a 24.5 gallon pre-boil volume, thus giving us 5 gallons of absortion on the mash.  This was split up as a 14gallon strike at 135f with a 126f step for the protein rest, a 6 gallon addition at 188f to raise the temp to 158f, and a 4.5 gallon dection to get the mash up to 168 for mashout.  I was going to sparge with 9.5 gallons of water at 175f to add up to my total volume desired of 29.5 gallons.

There were a few temps that we missed on and I had to add an extra rest to ensure that all our conversions happened, but in the end, all that was fine.  When the time came to run off into our fermentors, we were each a gallon short of our desired 10 gallons.  Now the gravity wound up at 1.054, well above the target 1.048, so we were extracting the proper gravity, we just did not get the volume we needed.  The solution is easy enough, but the more important question is; why are we short on volume?

Last night I took some time and reviewed Ray Daniels book Designing Great Beers to try and get some insight on where I might be going wrong on my water volume calculations and it didn’t take long to figure the problem out.  According to Ray, my volume calculations should have been as follows:

45lbs grain weight x .2= 9 gal of water lost in absorption

I took and adjusted everything else in my system through my other calculations and it all worked out.  This appears to be the problem area.  I use Beer Smith so I’ll have to figure out if there is something in the settings that is causing the problems.

In other news, I found a great little corner of my basement that is a nice steady 54f, prefect primary lagering temp, to keep my babbies bubbling in.  Excellent!

Cheers.

Making Beer

Today was another glorious brew day in Central New York!  Normally I use my brew day posts to review the stats on our session, but this morning I was thinking that this might be a good opportunity to review some of my brew day practices in greater detail.

Living close to a homebrew shop can be a blessing and a curse all at the same time.  I am the person who is always charged with getting the grain for the weekend brew day.  This requires a little light planning for me because I have to make sure that everyone is in for the weekend session.  It can be a little stressful at times trying to make sure that I get the grain, yeast and hops for the weekend, I wouldn’t trade being close to a brew shop for being far away.  It’s nice to be able to make a quick run to visit Ed.

We’re morning brewers.  We do this because it helps the relationships with our significant others and brewing doesn’t take us out of commission for a whole day.  Because we start brewing at 7am on a Sunday, I am always looking for ways to keeping me in bed for as long as possible before I have to get up to fire up the water.  I like to set up my coffee maker so that I just flip the switch in the morning.  Brew-day coffee is the mother’s milk of our morning brewing. 

While obviously I have to fire up the starter the night before we brew, I also like to draw the water into my brew buckets.  This is especially helpful on our 20 and 30 gallon brew days.  It may not seem like a big time saver, but at 7am, every little bit helps.  Last night I turned my truck around because I use the tailgate for part of out “brew-tree”, again, every little bit helps.  In the morning, all I have to do is flip on the coffee maker on my way out to open the garage door and pull my truck out to the driveway.  From there, I set up my burners and keggle.

While I draw the water the night before I brew, I still keep it in the basement because it would get cold in the garage and cause me to have to burn more propane than necessary getting it up to temp.  The same thing is true for the grain.  I also store my crushed grain in my mashtun the days before we brew so no mice catch a whiff of it and decide to find there way into my basement.  Another reason for drawing my water the night before I is that I can draw cold water and let my basement do the work of bringing it up a few degrees, this is good for energy and good for the hot water heater.

I am always trying to get the waterstarted as early as possible on brew day.  Raising the temp of our waterand lowering it are two of the factors that can save time on a brew day, I can fire the burner up and let the water heat up while I eat a bowl of cereal and wait for Nick and Bryan to fight through the snow to get here in time for brewing.

Once the brewing starts, we’re really pretty  on point.  We’ve gotten pretty good about adjusting our brew day temps to reflect the temp outside and our schedule of what to do when is pretty automatic at this point.  A few of my neighbors have been known to stop in and say hi (Dominic comes bearing homemade wine), but usually we just get waves and honks (especially in the cold).

We use a makeshift brewing tree that changes from week to week depending on what is laying around in my garage.  I’ve made some drawings of some structures to take the place of this, but I doubt we’ll build anything before the spring.  Our system works, although I STILL want to tighten up our sparging and mashouts.

We steep our hops in reusable grain bags.  This helps keep our volume up where we want it, some people say that our alpha acids might suffer, but we ring the sacks out pretty well at the end of the day to ensure that as little of that hoppy goodness is lost as possible.  This makes hopps additions a little tricky, but we have it down by now.

When it comes to cooling, I have a submersion chiller that works out pretty well.  Snow on the sides of the keggle helps to cool, though I would not recommend using this for the primary cooling as it is not real effective.  We use it to cool the outside of the keggle (and clean it a little) so that we can take it into the basement for cooling using the faucet on my basement sink.

When it’s all said and done, sanitize using the water that is coming out of the submersion chiller and fill our buckets using a mix of both keggles (if we’re making a 20 gallon batch).  When it’s all said and done, we usually have 5hrs wrapped up into the brew day, but we normally each take home 10 gallons of beer, so it’s well worth our time.

That’s about it in a nutshell for a brew day here.

Cheers.

Grain

40.2lb US 2-Row
3lb Crystal 40L
3lb Crystal 90L
2.75lb Vienna
2oz Brewers gold (60min)
1.5oz Target (60min)
3oz Cascade (10min)
1oz Cascade (1min-cool down)

Brewing

We struck with 15.3 gallons at 161f for a mash temp of 155f (panned out to 150 at the end due to heat loss on the big tun) and collected close to 10 gallons on the first runnings. The gravity for the first runnings was 21.5 brix (1.090) which was pretty high. After the second and third runnings, the pre-boil gravity was 1.052, well above the 1.045 I was expecting.

One quick note; last time we brewed with this large mashtun, we noted that we were not able to get up to mashout temp because Beer Smith’s temps were low for our needs. With that in mind I made some observations this time around and played with the temps:

Sparge 1 – Supposed to be 168f – I used 9 gallons of water at 175f – Grainbed temp was 158f up from 150
Sparge 2 – I used 5 gallons of water at 185f – grainbed temp was 168f making me pretty happy

Lesson learned was two-fold:

First off, we loose about 4-5f every hour we mash (this was a 75min mash). I need to make sure that I overshoot temps with that in mind. Second, when I want to mashout or sparge, 5 gallons at 185 will get me 10f in increased grainbed temp on ~50lbs of grain. Good stuff to know.

Anyway, besides all of that, we would up with an OG of 1.053 (I must be taking my refractometer readings too high because it’s not adding up with what I am getting in measured OG at the end) and a very hoppy brew. We used a qt starter of Wyeast California Lager yeast and mine were firing away within hours.

In the end this beer was $38pp for 10 gallons of beer, not too bad. Bryan volunteered to take care of the spent grains because I wasn’t sure of a good place to dump 50lbs of wet grain in the suburbs.

It was a damn fine brew day and both of us left happy. We had some burgers for lunch, my wife made some pancakes for breakfast and we hit all our brew milestones. What more is there to say?

Cheers!