Brad's Brewing

Here's what I spent most of my day making, in preparation for Yard City Cask Fest: a Beer Engine.  No comments about my messy kitchen.

A Beer Engine is simply a self priming positive displacement pump that pulls beer out of a cask (or keg), while air is allowed into the cask to fill the space left behind by the beer you just pumped out. This is the traditional English method of dispensing "cask ale" or "real ale." The typical kegged beer dispensing system at every bar, pub, and tavern pushes beer out of the keg, through the beer lines, and out the faucet using CO₂ pressure. Cask ale is less carbonated than kegged beer, and often times served a little warmer (around 50­°-54°F).

Commercial beer engines cost upwards of $350, but you can build your own for right around $60. I followed the basic instructions found in Brew Your Own magazine, both the May 1997 and Jan/Feb 2005 issues. Essentially, you just build a box to house a hand pumped water faucet, like you might find in an RV or a boat.

I used the Valterra Rocket Hand Pump, which you can find online for $25-$40. I didn't want to wait around for it to be shipped, so I found it at the local RV parts store for about $40. I had some scrap oak-veneer plywood lying around and bought a few feet of beer line and a corny beer-out fitting at my LHBS. That, some screws and glue, and a few hours in the garage w/ my table saw and drill are about all it took. It was so simple that I won't bother to describe the construction. The pictures pretty much speak for themselves.

Click on any of the pics for a larger view. The dimensions of the box are 12" high, about 5 1/2" wide and 6" deep.  I definitely could have gone with a shorter box, as short at 5" or so.  I may actually cut it down at some point, but it will probably be clamped to a table at YCCF, so it may be just the right height.

I notched both the back of the tower and the base, so I can run the beer line out the back or the bottom.

Brew day went off without a hitch yesterday. I hit an OG of 1.042, which is lower than I formulated for but within style and I was more concerned about being too high than too low on this one. With that in mind I assumed a pretty high extraction eff of 85% in my calcs. This is quite possibly the smallest beer I've ever brewed and next time I'll know what my system's efficiency is in this gravity range for recipe formulation.

I mashed right at 150°F for about 75 minutes. Woulda mashed shorter, but it took that long for my sparge water to heat up. Recirc'd while raising the temp to 170°F then rolled right into the sparge. Collected ~13 gallons, boiled 90 minutes, and chilled directly into two carboys. Oxygenated for about 30 seconds per carboy with pure O₂, then pitched an Activator pack of 1028 in one carboy and 1098 in the other.  1098 half was foaming up after about 14 hours, and 1028 about 3 hours after that. Nice thing about these small beers: there's really no need to make a starter.

This beer should be done in a week or less, and according to Matt I'm going to naturally condition half of it in the keg, so it will be ready for Yard City Cask Fest-YCCF- (or the "Yard City Real Ale Party" as I like to call it) in early March.

I'm planning to brew this Saturday, February 6, and decided to go with a style I don't have a lot of experience with, BJCP Style 8B - Special/Best/Premium Bitter.  I've brewed several ESBs, but never it's smaller cousin. Why am I brewing a Bitter, you ask? Lately I've had a craving for sessionable, quaffable, beers that I can drink two or three pints of without feeling the effects. I've got gallons of big beers, commercial and home brewed, taking up space in my basement but all I ever feel like drinking lately are the session beers. Go figure.

Matt helped a little bit with the recipe formulation, and here is what we came up with:

Stats

• 11 gallons
• 1.046 OG
• 36.5 IBU
• 9 SRM

Grain Bill

• 14# Maris Otter
• 1.5# Carastan
• 4 oz. 80L Crystal
• 4 oz. Aromatic

Hops

• 3 oz. Fuggle, 4.9% AA (90 min.)
• 1 oz. Fuggle, 4.9% AA (30 min.)
• 1 oz. Fuggle, 4.9% AA (2 min.)

Yeast

• Batch split between Wyeast 1028 & Wyeast 1098

Procedure

• Mash ~152°F until converted
• Mashout @ 170°F
• Recirc until wort runs clear
• Sparge @ 170°F to collect ~13.5 gallons
• Boil 90 minutes, adding hops at the appropriate times
• Chill, split into two carboys, oxygenate, pitch yeast, and ferment @ 68°F

That's about it. Here's a link to the recipe on the club's BrewBlogger site, where you can download the recipe in BeerXML format: Brad's Premium Bitter. I'll post an update after brew day, and after tasting to let you know if it's crap.

OK, so beer isn't the only thing we brew around here. We also brew (and roast) coffee. Here's a snap of Sweet Maria's Espresso Monkey Blend, roasted to about the Vienna/Light French roast range. Maybe a little darker. I tell ya', I didn't mean to go that dark but I got distracted and it seemed to progress from first crack to second crack in a heartbeat. By the time I got there to hit the cool button second crack sounded like a Snap! Crackle! and Pop! convention and smoke was pouring out of the Behmor. Good thing I had it under the range hood with the fan on high.

Click the pic for a high res version.

Yes, it has been many many months since I have posted anything on this website.  Who's got the time?  But Matt's recent proliferation has me feeling guilty about the neglect, so here goes.

November 7, 2009, was the AHA sponsored Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day.  As a West Sound Brewers club event, I hosted several people at my house for an All-Grain demonstration. The intent was to expose extract brewers to a couple different approaches to all-grain brewing. With that in mind, I brewed a batch on my 10 gallon single tier rig, and Matt brew a batch on my old 5 gallon converted cooler rig.

I thought I'd try my hand at a dubbel this time around. Matt helped out a bit with the recipe formulation.  Here's the recipe:

Specs
Style: 18B. Belgian Dubbel
Yield: 11 gal
OG: 1.067
FG: 1.007 (Wyeast 1214)/1.010 (Wyeast 3787) (1.5L starters in each 1/2 batch)
Color: 14.8 SRM
Bitterness: ~26 IBU
ABV: 8%

Grain Bill
19 lb Belgian Pilsner Malt
1.75 lb Melanoidin Malt
1 lb Special B

Adjuncts
1.56 lb Corn Sugar
1.5 lb Dark Candi Syrup (I used D2)

Hops
2 oz Saaz, 5.1% Alpha Leaf, 90 minutes
1 oz Saaz, 5.1% Alpha Leaf, 30 minutes

Procedure
-Mash at 148°F until converted
-Mash out at 168°F for 10 minutes
-Recirc until wort runs clear
-Sparge at 168°F
-Boil 90 minutes
-Chill to 64°F, oxygenate, and pitch yeast

Fermentation
Batch split into two 6 gallon carboys. Split batch between Wyeast 1214 and Wyeast 3787, pitching slurry from 1.5L starters of each. Started fermentation at 64°F, increasing 1° per day after active fermentation started up to 72°. Trasferrred to secondary after fermentation complete and cold conditioned at 35° for at least 3 weeks.

Packaging
Kegged the 1214 half. Bottled 3787 half using Wyeast Pasteur Champagne (4021) at bottling. Conditioned bottles at 68-70°. Beer was well carbonated after two weeks.

Tasting notes
I have had a love/hate/love relationship with this beer.  I loved every sample I took during fermentation, up until the last. They were spicy and flavorful, especially the 1214 half. After fermentation was complete it just seemed blah. Mildly spicy, no complex "dark" flavors I'm used to tasting in commercial dubbels. The 3787 half seemed to be even more boring. I even sat down w/ a bottle of Westmalle Dubbel and my beer and compared them side-by-side. That just made me more discouraged.

Then one day my in-laws were over and I gave my F-I-L a sample.  He doesn't typically appreciate Belgian styles, so I wasn't expecting him to like it. To my surprise he really liked it. That forced me to change my perspective. It's a good beer. It may not taste like a Belgian Dubbel, at least the commercial examples available, but it's a good beer. Maybe even a good introduction to Belgian styles for people who don't typically like them. So I broke out of the "it's a dubbel" paradigm and now I'm just calling it an abbey style beer. It is tasty, very drinkable, and you'd never guess it was 8%, so be careful.

Next Time
OK, so I still want to brew a dubbel that tastes like a dubbel. I'm thinking maybe half pilsner/half munich for the base, and Matt suggested maybe all dark candi syrup instead of half corn sugar. Also, I think it attenuated just a tad too much, so maybe up the mash temperature to 150°, or add a little more Special B.

Download this recipe: Promash | Beer XML (you may need to right-click & "Save As" the Beer XML file)

I entered two beers in the National Homebrew Competition this year; an Imperial IPA I brewed on New Year's Day this year (New Years D'Ale), and a barleywine I brewed on MLK day 2007 (I.H.A.D. Barleywine). The IIPA was thoroughly panned (hey, I thought it was good), but the barleywine advanced to the final round by placing 2nd in the Northwest Region in Category 19. I entered it as an English Barleywine (even though I formulated it as an American BW).

Category 19 Strong Ale Sponsored by Northern Brewer
1   19b   Michael Boos of Seattle, WA, Mountain Top Mashers [AZ]
2   19b   Robert Ginn of Poulsbo, WA, West Sound Brewers
3   19c   Mark Beck, Joe Germani of Walla Walla, WA, Blue Mountain Brewers Club

And here are a few stats from Cat 19 in the NW Region:

Max Score: 39 Min Score: 17 Avg Score: 31.3 # of Entries: 19

I scored 39, but since they use a mini-BOS to determine the winners the first place beer isn't necessarily the highest scoring entry. The barleywine had an OG right around 1.100 and didn't attenuate as well as I'd have liked. I think it stopped around 1.028. I bottled it and it never really carbonated to the level I wanted. Due to the higher than desired residual sugar the beer is a little more malt-forward than I was shooting for. That and the lower than desired carbonation level explain why it fits in the English category better than the American. In any event, it is aging well and was good enough to get past the first round. I don't expect much out of it in the finals, but I was surprised last year by how well my Tripel did, so who knows. Anything can happen. Here's the recipe, in both Promash .rec format and HTML: Promash | HTML

I wanted to give a little more detail on some mods I've made to the brewing stand. The first is a mod I made before I ever brewed on it the first time but haven't specifically mentioned. When I first built the rig I had hard piping everywhere, even connecting to the brewing vessel outlets. It became obvious right away that hard connections to the vessels required tolerances in pipe cutting and soldering that are very difficult to achieve in a garage without any special equipment. So shortly after assembling the completed plumbing system I cut out sections of the hard copper piping below each outlet valve and replaced them with high temp thermoplastic tubing. This reduces stresses on the pump heads and eliminates the need to have everything perfectly aligned when assembling the rig. The flex tubing below the hot liquor tank, mash tun, and kettle can be seen in the picture at the left.

The other modification is that I finally added switches for my pumps. Up to now I've been plugging each pump into an extension cord to turn it on and unplugging it to turn it off. Cumbersome at best, and confusing at worst when I'd get cords mixed up and plug or unplug the wrong one. So I bought a 2-switch switch box with switches, three cord grip connectors, and a cord. The cord grip connectors thread into the switch box and have a rubber grommet and compression nut that squeezes the grommet around the cord where it passes into the box. The switches are regular light switches and the faceplate of the box has actuators that flip the switch on the inside of the box when you operate the lever on the outside of the box. I bought all this stuff at Home Depot for around $25.

I cut the plug ends off the pump power cords, drilled holes in the plywood bottom shelf of the stand so I could run the cords beneath it inside the framing channel, mounted the switch box to one of the vertical pieces of framing channel, and wired everything up. Here are some details about the wiring. There are 3 wires in the pump cords; black (hot), white (neutral) and green (ground). The power cord I bought has the same three colored wires. The hot wires are connected to the switches so when the switch is open nothing in the pump is energized. If you wire the neutral wires to the switches they will function and everything will seem alright, but in this case the switches interrupt the circuit downstream of the pumps, so there is live voltage in the pumps even when the switches are in the off position. This isn't a particularly safe way to wire a circuit. All 3 white wires get connected together with a wire nut. All three green wires, plus a 4th which is connected directly to the switch box, get wire-nutted together as well. The 4th green wire ensures the switch box is grounded and is necessary for safety in case something shorts out. Also, since the box is screwed directly to the metal stand, the entire stand is now grounded. If you are wondering about a GFI, the outlets in my garage are GFI protected, so I didn't see the need to add a GFI to this circuit.

The switches work great and I'm looking forward to my next brew day and being able to start and stop pumps with the flip of a switch.

It's been awhile since I posted any updates on the evolution of my brewing stand. I recently made a major conversion to a HERMS. If you're not familiar with HERMS, it stands for Heat Exchange Recirculation Mash System. Basically what it means is that there is a heat exchanger in the HLT which wort from the mash tun is pumped through during recirc to raise the mash temperature. The biggest reason I went with HERMS is that I was paranoid about using direct heat to raise mash temps because I scorched one batch really bad and completely ruined it. Since then, I've been so cautious about direct heat that temp steps take forever. Infusion isn't a practical option because the mash tun isn't big enough to add enough water to significantly raise the temperature of the mash, unless I'm brewing a particularly small beer (which I almost never do).

So, here's how I went about converting my rig. I made a coil from 30 feet of 5/8 inch flexible copper tubing. I wrapped the tubing around a corny keg to get the proper diameter. I then soldered 90 degree bends on the ends of the copper coil with short sections of rigid copper tubing that would connect to the fittings in the side of the HLT.

To drill the holes in the HLT I used a step bit or "Unibit." The secret to drilling through stainless steel is to go slow and keep it cool. If you go too fast and let the steel get hot it will harden and make it nearly impossible to drill through. I actually did the drilling over my deep sink and ran cold water over the bit as I was drilling the hole.

For bulkhead fittings through the HLT wall I used the weldless fittings that are commonly sold at homebrew shops and online. Since space inside the HLT to make connections was limited, I turned the fittings around from the typical installation so that the stainless steel coupling is on the outside of the tank and the threaded nipple is on the inside. Connecting the coil to the fittings was just a matter of using 1/2" female iron pipe to 5/8" compression fittings. On the outside of the tank I used a 1/2 inch 90 degree street elbow with a hose barb to direct the flow upwards at the outlet of the heat exchanger and just a hose barb on the bottom fitting for the inlet.

I've brewed in the converted rig once since conversion. It was a simple mash schedule - saccharification rest at 150 and mash out at 170. To raise the temp for mash out, I heated the HLT to about 180 and started recirculating. The temp in the HLT quickly dropped to around 160 and I had to stop recirculating to raise the HLT back up to around 180. I think there was temperature stratification in the HLT and although the thermometer was still reading around 180, the temp was stratified and the average temperature was lower. When I started the recirc, I also stirred the water in the HLT to improve heat transfer, which gave me a more accurate temp reading. Next time I'll time things better and ensure the HLT is actually at 180 before I start recircing, and I'll also keep a flame on it when I recirc to help keep the temperature up.

I'm already considering some modifications to my newly modified rig. The biggest being a bypass in the recirc line that would allow me to recirc w/out running the wort through the heat exchanger in the HLT. When I was trying to raise the temp to mashout on my last brew I stopped the recirc for a while to let the HLT heat faster. If I had a bypass I could have kept it recirculating while the HLT heated.

Finally, I wanted to mention another minor mod. I don't think I pointed out that I removed the hard-piped connections to the brewing vessels. I did this before I even brewed on this rig the first time. I simply cut out short sections of copper pipe below the valves on each of the vessels and replaced it with flexible tubing (high temp thermo-plastic tubing). Along with the HERMS conversion, I also cut out a section of the hard pipe that cross-connects the discharge piping of the two pumps. This section of piping allows the wort pump to pump back into the top of the mash tun as well as kettle. Having all the hard piping connections was putting stress on the pump heads, which are made from plastic, and I was concerned that over time the stress would crack the heads. One added benefit of some of the modifications I made is that the liquor pump now does not lose suction at low flows. For some reason, before these mods, if I throttled down on the discharge of the liquor pump it would end up getting air bound. If I kept the discharge valve wide open it pumped fine. This is backwards from what you would expect if the pump were losing suction due to cavitation, so the behavior was a mystery to me. In any event, after the HERMS conversion I was able to throttle the sparge water flow to a trickle and the pump never lost suction. It doesn't make sense that the HERMS conversion corrected the problem because all it did as far as that pump is concerned is add 30 feet of piping to the system, increasing the head on the pump. The same effect could have been accomplished by throttling a valve on the discharge, which is exactly the situation where the pump would lose suction. I think that putting soft piping in the cross-connect pipe is what fixed the problem. My theory is that the stress on the pump head was warping it slightly and that air was getting sucked in past the O-ring seal on the back of the head. Or maybe through a threaded fitting on the suction side of the pump (which didn't leak with static head on it, so I don't believe that was the problem). In any event, my theory may be way off base, but it's nice to be able to throttle the sparge water flow. Now I can match flows in and out of the mash tun rather than having to cycle the sparge water flow full on and off manually.

I brewed a Tripel again on August 3rd. Why am I just posting about it now, you say? I'm lazy.

This time around I planned to use table sugar instead of corn sugar for 20% of the fermentables. Shortly before brew day I decided I wanted to try to make my own invert sugar instead of using straight table sugar. I searched the web and some books and couldn't find a definitive method for converting table sugar to invert sugar. I did find instructions for making candi sugar, but I wanted to make a sugar syrup instead of a hard sugar product. I decided on a combo/hybrid of various instructions I found online and from advice I got through the AHA TechTalk email forum. Here's what I did: I combined 2 parts table sugar and 1 part water (by weight) with about 1 gram of citric acid powder and heated the mixture slowly on the stove until the sugar was dissolved and the mixture was simmering. I simmered for about 15 minutes, until it was a very pale straw color. Then I cooled it to add to the fermenter. You may ask yourself, "Did he really make invert sugar?" That's a very good question, and I have no way of knowing the answer. At the very least I made a sucrose syrup which was easy to add to the fermenter. At best, I fully inverted the sucrose into fructose and glucose. I suspect the truth is somewhere in between, but I don't have any way of knowing to what extent the sugar was inverted.

The other difference between this batch and the last was that I split it between Wyeast 1214 and 3787. 1214 is an idiot-proof yeast that has attenuated very well without any extra fuss in every beer I've used it in. 3787 (supposedly Trappist High Grav) is a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a mystery. I love the flavors it imparts in a beer, but other than a small Belgian Pale I haven't been able to coax reasonable attenuation out of it. I used it in the quad-style beer that went into the club's bourbon barrel project, and it petered out at about 1.030 (from around 1.100). I learned later that it prefers incremental feeding of sugars (hence my desire to make a sugar syrup that was easy to add to the fermenter). This time around I held back all the sugar on brew day and added it later. I added all the sugar to the 1214 half of the beer a couple days after fermentation started. I added half of the required sugar to the 3787 portion after a few days, then the other half a couple days later. It still petered out at 1.030. Frustrated, I gave it a couple more weeks (and roused the yeast and bumped the temp up a tad), and it only dropped 2 more points. At this point I gave up on old 3787 and when I transferred both halves to secondary I poured the slurry from the 1214 carboy into the 3787 secondary. Active fermentation started up again within a day or two, and after a few weeks good old reliable chewed it down to 1.010. The straight-1214 half of the batch finished at 1.009 before I transferred to secondary.

After transferring to secondary I had about 1/2 gallon of the 1214 beer left over, which I put into a 2L PET bottle, chilled, and carbonated with my carbonator cap. I had about 1 gallon extra of the 3787 half, which I split between two growlers. I gave one of the growlers to Matt and kept the other for myself. I drank the leftover 1214 beer a few days ago, and I gotta say it was pretty tasty. I moved the 3787 leftovers into the 2L bottle yesterday, carbonated it, and had a glass last night. Again, pretty tasty. I can't wait to get these beers into bottles and compare them side-by-side. Bottling should happen within the next couple of weeks for the 1214 half, and a few weeks later for the 3787.

My recipe and procedures were essentially the same as my last tripel, so I won't go into the nitty gritty details. The only changes were I formulated for 1.080, used self-inverted table sugar instead of corn sugar, added it to the fermenters rather than the kettle, and split the batch between the two different yeasts.

I know, I know, you thought this blog was dead. It's been a busy summer, and when I have had time I haven't had motivation to update you on my brewing adventures. I've brewed several beers that I haven't posted about, and other beer & brewing related stuff has been going on as well. I've been meaning to post for some time about the schwag I got for the gold medal my Tripel won at NHC. Here's a picture of the haul. I got the 5 Star cleaning kit (big bottle of Star San and a big tub of PBW), an AHA glass, a Sam Adams chilling bucket, the book "The Best of American Beer & Food," a bottle of The Sixth Glass Quad from Boulevard Brewing Company, and the gold medal. Pretty cool. Also, recipes and mugshots for all the gold medal winners were published in the Sept/Oct issue of Zymurgy. You'll find my recipe on page 46. Here are a few more pics: