My fourth batch of beer
I haven't done a ton of writing about individual beer batches. And that is largely because the first 3 were all basically pre-hopped wort kits with a few minor additions.
Batch #4 (as of yet unnamed) was a HUGE departure. I went looking for a clone recipe for an IPA I had never tried before, but which my parents swear by, this way I would be less disappointed when mine doesn't taste the same :). And then I converted it to an extract recipe, removed the steeping grains (next batch is when I plan to try that for the first time), scaled down the ABV, tweaked the hops to scale the IBUs down a bit as well, and then made it all work for a partial boil.
So, the thing most intact from the original recipe would be the hops schedule, and types of hops. Everything else I chose on my own.
Before I dive into details. The good is that I learned a ton, feel a little more confident, the beer smells PHENOMENAL and I have new equipment to play with. The bad is that departing from the pre-hopped concentrated wort, my brew day went from 15 minutes to 2.5 hours (including cooling and cleanup). I also can't draw any final conclusions until the beer is actually ready to drink. With dry-hopping in the equation we are still 9-13 days from even bottling.
Now, before I did this I grabbed an 8 gallon brew pot with spigot and thermometer. But, I still stuck with the partial boil for a few reasons. Mainly, working indoors on a stove which likely would never even succeed at boiling a larger volume, but also because the boil gravity of the final product would have required more hops and more tweaking of the recipe than I had already done. It also would have slowed down the cooling process.
This is also the first of my beer batches where I did a starter. The ingredients ran me $70+ this time around and I didn't want a weak ferment ruining things. So, I tossed a 1/2 lb of my DME in some water at my target pitching temperature, mixed it, tossed in the yeast and put a wet piece of paper towel around the opening. About 24 hours later was when I pitched.
Yesterday (brew day) I started by pouring my start volume of water into the pot. Given that I was concerned about even being able to get 3.5 gallons to boil on my stove, I started with the hottest I could get the tap water and had the oven on full while I was adding. Probably took 20 minutes (if not more) to get it to a boil, even with a lid on most of the time. Given the prevailing fears around boiling over this was incredibly boring as I stood there an either watched or checked every few minutes. Eventually, if did boil and the hop additions were added.
Now, being that this was my first batch and my wife wasn't watching anything on TV, I waited out the full 45 minutes of my planned boil adding hops exactly on schedule... this was relatively easy and more or less exactly what one might expect. It took exactly 45 minutes :P and consisted of dropping measured amounts of hops into boiling wort.
Once the boil was over I exploited Canada. Which is to say, I cooled the wort in the heap of snow on my deck. But, I neither wanted to sit and watch it for all that time nor leave it and run the risk of it getting too cold for the yeast. So, I cooled it for a bit, then added my top up water. I was still a bit high on temps so at that point I left it covered in the sunroom beside an open door half an hour while I prepped the kitchen to clean up my brew equipment. Frankly, I'm disappointed by how inefficient winter is as a cooling technique. In the long run it doesn't sound like submerging the pot in snow was much faster than most people who use a tub or large sink. So, needless to say, that took longer than expected.
Then I racked it off to the primary fermenter, topped up with a little more water (still coming in under my target ferment volume, but didn't want to dilute things too much) and pitched my yeast. The pot has a spigot, but I knew I was using a lot of hops, so the first time around I wanted to get an idea of how bad it would be. And I'm glad I did. Using 9.5oz of hops results in a LOT of plant matter on the bottom of the pot. Enough, that had I opened the spigot I would have gotten tons in my primary (and/or plugged the spigot). Had I not been using so much hops, draining through there may have made sense. Would have provided more than ample aeration for the yeast.
And leads to the next big bucket of time. Cleaning the brew pot. I don't have a burner and it is the middle of winter. Ergo, my detritus is staying in the house, as am I. Well, once I saw just how much the hops had expanded and how much volume of that and other stuff was on the bottom of the pot, I knew I needed to filter that out and throw away most of the solid matter. Otherwise, I wouldn't have working plumbing for long. If I were outside, that is all bio-degradable, I'd just hose it down and dump it into the garden.
So, my takeaways from this adventure are simple. I probably want an immersion cooler as quickly as possible. I also probably want to stick to even smaller boil volume batches and those using less hops until it makes sense to brew outside. At which point I should get a burner and maybe even consider doing full boil volumes... part of the reason I grabbed an 8 gallon pot to begin with. Much as it pains me to say so, it may even make sense to go back to modified kits until the weather is nicer. I don't think I'm that smart though :) Already planning on an Amber Ale with steeping grains.
But there you have it. Beer adventure #4 is well under way.
Batch #4 (as of yet unnamed) was a HUGE departure. I went looking for a clone recipe for an IPA I had never tried before, but which my parents swear by, this way I would be less disappointed when mine doesn't taste the same :). And then I converted it to an extract recipe, removed the steeping grains (next batch is when I plan to try that for the first time), scaled down the ABV, tweaked the hops to scale the IBUs down a bit as well, and then made it all work for a partial boil.
So, the thing most intact from the original recipe would be the hops schedule, and types of hops. Everything else I chose on my own.
Before I dive into details. The good is that I learned a ton, feel a little more confident, the beer smells PHENOMENAL and I have new equipment to play with. The bad is that departing from the pre-hopped concentrated wort, my brew day went from 15 minutes to 2.5 hours (including cooling and cleanup). I also can't draw any final conclusions until the beer is actually ready to drink. With dry-hopping in the equation we are still 9-13 days from even bottling.
Now, before I did this I grabbed an 8 gallon brew pot with spigot and thermometer. But, I still stuck with the partial boil for a few reasons. Mainly, working indoors on a stove which likely would never even succeed at boiling a larger volume, but also because the boil gravity of the final product would have required more hops and more tweaking of the recipe than I had already done. It also would have slowed down the cooling process.
This is also the first of my beer batches where I did a starter. The ingredients ran me $70+ this time around and I didn't want a weak ferment ruining things. So, I tossed a 1/2 lb of my DME in some water at my target pitching temperature, mixed it, tossed in the yeast and put a wet piece of paper towel around the opening. About 24 hours later was when I pitched.
Yesterday (brew day) I started by pouring my start volume of water into the pot. Given that I was concerned about even being able to get 3.5 gallons to boil on my stove, I started with the hottest I could get the tap water and had the oven on full while I was adding. Probably took 20 minutes (if not more) to get it to a boil, even with a lid on most of the time. Given the prevailing fears around boiling over this was incredibly boring as I stood there an either watched or checked every few minutes. Eventually, if did boil and the hop additions were added.
Now, being that this was my first batch and my wife wasn't watching anything on TV, I waited out the full 45 minutes of my planned boil adding hops exactly on schedule... this was relatively easy and more or less exactly what one might expect. It took exactly 45 minutes :P and consisted of dropping measured amounts of hops into boiling wort.
Once the boil was over I exploited Canada. Which is to say, I cooled the wort in the heap of snow on my deck. But, I neither wanted to sit and watch it for all that time nor leave it and run the risk of it getting too cold for the yeast. So, I cooled it for a bit, then added my top up water. I was still a bit high on temps so at that point I left it covered in the sunroom beside an open door half an hour while I prepped the kitchen to clean up my brew equipment. Frankly, I'm disappointed by how inefficient winter is as a cooling technique. In the long run it doesn't sound like submerging the pot in snow was much faster than most people who use a tub or large sink. So, needless to say, that took longer than expected.
Then I racked it off to the primary fermenter, topped up with a little more water (still coming in under my target ferment volume, but didn't want to dilute things too much) and pitched my yeast. The pot has a spigot, but I knew I was using a lot of hops, so the first time around I wanted to get an idea of how bad it would be. And I'm glad I did. Using 9.5oz of hops results in a LOT of plant matter on the bottom of the pot. Enough, that had I opened the spigot I would have gotten tons in my primary (and/or plugged the spigot). Had I not been using so much hops, draining through there may have made sense. Would have provided more than ample aeration for the yeast.
And leads to the next big bucket of time. Cleaning the brew pot. I don't have a burner and it is the middle of winter. Ergo, my detritus is staying in the house, as am I. Well, once I saw just how much the hops had expanded and how much volume of that and other stuff was on the bottom of the pot, I knew I needed to filter that out and throw away most of the solid matter. Otherwise, I wouldn't have working plumbing for long. If I were outside, that is all bio-degradable, I'd just hose it down and dump it into the garden.
So, my takeaways from this adventure are simple. I probably want an immersion cooler as quickly as possible. I also probably want to stick to even smaller boil volume batches and those using less hops until it makes sense to brew outside. At which point I should get a burner and maybe even consider doing full boil volumes... part of the reason I grabbed an 8 gallon pot to begin with. Much as it pains me to say so, it may even make sense to go back to modified kits until the weather is nicer. I don't think I'm that smart though :) Already planning on an Amber Ale with steeping grains.
But there you have it. Beer adventure #4 is well under way.
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