grove's beer log

Live in Oslo and need malt?

2009-04-15T17:28:00.005+02:00

Then you might be interested to know that there is an initiative to collectively order 2000 kgs of various Thomas Fawcett malts from the UK.

More information here (in Norwegian).

Norwegian Homebrewing Competion 2009

2009-03-06T20:58:00.006+01:00

What: The annual festival where homebrewers serve their own beers to the public, which get to vote for their favourite beer of the evening. Homebrewers also compete in five other categories (bottled entries submitted earlier), including strong/specialty beers, light lager, dark, larger, light ale, and dark ale. The winners are announced towards the end of the evening.

When: Saturday March 28th 2009, 19:00-00:00 CET
Where: Studentersamfunnet Bislet, Pilestredet 52, Oslo, Norway.
Cost: 130 NOK (100 NOK if you're a member of Norbrygg)

This year's event is going to be a great one as the best beer from the strong/specialty category will be brewed at Nøgne Ø and will later be available at Vinmonopolet (the government liquor shops). Cred to Nøgne Ø for doing this! Also, the 30 best beers served at the event will be awarded with 12 liter brand new Cornelius kegs. Plus there'll be lots of other prizes. In another words, there is no reason not to participate this year.

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I'll be there serving my beer. This year I'll have the Imperial Kölsch (brew #66), Russian Imperial Stout (brew #67 with Madagascar Bourbon vanilla beans and MacAllan 10 yo cask strength single malt whisky) and Raspberry Melomel (brew #70) on. See you there!

Brew #70: Raspberry Melomel

2009-03-06T20:45:00.002+01:00

I have been planning to make a mead for a long time, and have had 4 kgs of Argentinian honey lying around for almost a year, and I have now finally done something with it.

It went pretty well, but I made a couple of mistakes along the way. First I miscalculated the final volume. Originally I had aimed for 13 liters of water and honey, but ended up with 18 liters (21 liters after adding the raspberry). I also ended up fermenting the mead a too little cold and the sweet mead yeast crapped out at 1.060 (I suspect because of the pH level), so I had to add some really old Lalvin D-47 from 2005(!). That boosted the fermentation, and it went down to 1.008 just a couple of days later.

The melomel is now in the secondary, but I'll keg it soon. From the samples I've had so far it is promising, and I'm sure I'll try making more meads in the future. I plan to serve it not carbonated.

The batch was brewed 2009-02-06.

Style:
Raspberry Melomel
Type:
21 liters. No heat.
Ingredients:
4200g Argentinian honey
500g Norwegian Raspberry honey
2840g Red Raspberry puree, Oregon
1.5ts Fermaid K (day 0)
1ts Fermaid K (day 2)
1ts Fermaid K (day 5)
Yeast:
2 packs Wyeast 4184 Sweet Mead, and 2 packs of Lalvin D-47 after a few days
Boil:
180 min
Fermentation:
17 C and 22 C

OG: 1.085 FG: 1.006 abv: 9.0% (estimated)

Brew #69: Russian Imperial Stout

2009-03-06T20:29:00.002+01:00

This beer is a straightforward Russian Imperial Stout, which I gave a long three hour boil. Because of that I got a reasonably good mash efficency given that I only did two batch sparges. I have bottled a couple of liters, but will put the rest of it in a keg with two Madagascar Bourbon vanilla beans infused with MacAllan 10 yo cask strength single malt whisky.

Added 1ts CaCO3 (calcium carbonate) and 1ts to boil.

The batch was brewed 2009-02-03.

Style:
Russian Imperial Stout
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
100 EBC (Black)
Bitterness:
49 IBU
Malts:
4500g Golden Promise, Thomas Fawcett
4100g Pale malt, Pearl, Muntons
800g Aromatic malt, Dingemans
500g Roasted Barley
500g Special B
500g Flaked Barley
300g Crystal malt, 150 EBC, Thomas Fawcett
150g Carafa I Special, Weyermann
350g Wheat Malt Extract (for OG correction only)
Mash:
65C, 75 min
62% efficiency
Hops:
50g Magnum pellets, 14% 60 min
40g East Kent Goldings pellets, 4.8%, 10 min
30g East Kent Goldings pellets, 4.8%, 1 min
Yeast:
2 packs Safale US-05 (rehydrated)
Boil:
180 min
Fermentation:
19 C

OG: 1.092 FG: 1.026 abv: 8.7%

Brew #68: American Pale Ale

2009-03-06T20:23:00.000+01:00

I love hoppy beers, and here we have another one. I haven't really dry hopped my beers for a long time now. I did it on two IPAs earlier, but was not happy with the results. This time, I can say after having tasted the result, the result of dry hopping is quite impressive. The beer ended up with a great hop aroma and flavour. I guess I could have left the dry hops on the beer for a longer period, but I'm very happy with the result, and will definitely dry hop many more beers in the future. This is also the first time I've dry hopped with pellets. I've been a little afraid of getting too much hop debris in the beer, but that seems to be no problem as the hop pellets sank to the bottom quickly. The beer is still young, but there is quite a bit of yeast still in suspension in the keg, so I'll leave it in the kegerator a little longer before a draw a final conclusion. The FG is surprisingly high, even though the beer does not taste sweet at all.

Added 1ts CaCO3 (calcium carbonate) and 1ts to boil.

The batch was brewed 2009-02-03.

Style:
American Pale Ale
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
23 EBC (Amber)
Bitterness:
39 IBU
Malts:
5700g Pale malt, Pearl, Muntons
400g Melanoidin malt, Weyermann
400g Crystal malt, 150 EBC, Thomas Fawcett
Mash:
67C, 90 min
65% efficiency
Hops:
40g East Kent Goldings pellets, 4.8%, 60 min
40g Centennial pellets, 9.1%, 15 min
40g Centennial pellets, 9.1%, 1 min
60g Amarillo pellets, 8.4%, 1 min
56g Columbus pellets, 12.2%, dry hop for 4 days
Yeast:
1 pack Wyeast 1272 American Ale II (0.9 liter starter on magnetic stirrer)
Boil:
75 min
Fermentation:
19 C

OG: 1.053 FG: 1.017 abv: 4.7%

A summary

2009-02-27T23:54:00.004+01:00

Courtesy of Wordle.

Homebrewing event at Nøgne Ø

2009-02-08T18:09:00.032+01:00

Last weekend the kind people at Nøgne Ø, the Norwegian microbrewery, had invited home brewers to an event at their brewery. I went there together with about 40 other home brewers.

The goal of the day was to brew 800 liters of Nøgne Ø Saison. The batch was then to be split 40-ways, so that everybody could take 20 liters home to ferment and alter it at will. The attendes were encouraged to make the most of it. My twist will be to add a can of Oregon Apricot puree and use a Belgian yeast blend (not Saison yeast).

When registering for the event one had to decide which yeast from the White Labs catalog to use. This yeast had arrived just a few days before, so it was very fresh. I chose this yeast:

WLP575 Belgian Style Ale Yeast Blend
A blend of Trappist type yeast (2) and one Belgian ale type yeast. This creates a versatile blend that can be used for Trappist type beer, or a myriad of beers that can be described as 'Belgian type'.
Attenuation: 74-80%
Flocculation: Medium
Optimum Fermentation Temperature: 20-24°C (68-75°F)
Alcohol Tolerance: Medium-High

Nøgne Ø uses WLP400 Belgian Wit Ale Yeast in their own version. Interestingly, quite a few also ordered vials of wild yeast and bacteria. It'll be interesting to try out the end results.

If I remember correctly the recipe contains lager malt and wheat. The hop additions are East Kent Goldings for bittering, Hallertau (Mittelfrüh I presume) for flavour and Saaz for aroma. OG was 1.057 and the FG usually 1.015 (something they thought was a little too high for a Saison). They ferment the beer at 25°C from the start to the finish. Their web site also says 25 IBUs and 6.5% abv.

The agenda looked like this:

10:00 Welcome and a walkthrough of the brewery
11:00 Introduction to brewing
12:00 Transfer wort to sparging vessel
12:30 Sparging
12:30 Lunch and beer
14:00 Introduction to yeast and yeast handling
15:00 Boil wort
16:30 Transfer to whirlpool
17:30 Chilling and transfer to fermentation tanks

After the brewing session quite a few went downtown to have dinner and drink more beer.

On 21st of March there will be another event where everybody meets at the brewery and tastes each others beer.

I enjoyed the event immensely. Meeting other enthusiastic home brewers was a lot of fun. And I'm looking forward to the tasting next month. In any case this is a great thing for Nøgne Ø to be doing. I like their attitude and their eagerness of being open about everything. There are no secrets in brewing, quite the attitude of most home brewers. Cheers!

Brew #67: Porter/Crowberry Porter

2009-01-26T17:11:00.011+01:00

It has been a while since I made a dark beer, and it has been too long since I made a porter. With its 7.0% abv this is a fairly robust porter.

Knut Albert has been kind enough to mention that crowberries might do well in a porter. I agree. Last year I had a sample of Haandbryggeriet's lingonberry porter, an experimental brew that they had made but did not put into production. It was an excellent beer with an interesting bittering quality that balanced the roasted malts in a nice way. It is sad that they decided not to take it further. The reason was supposedly the high production costs. Crowberries should be quite similar in flavour.

I found 330 ml bottles of crowberry juice at a Helios store here in Oslo. 1 liter juice to 11 liters of porter in the secondary. Interestingly I could not see any visible fermentation activity in the secondary, so I guess there's not much fermentable sugars in the juice. It is anything but sweet, but I think it'll lend a nice balance it the beer. The juice is organic and should not contain any preservatives.

Added 1ts CaCO3 (calcium carbonate) to mash and 1ts to boil.

The batch was brewed 2009-01-26 and bottled 2009-02-10.

Style:
Porter
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
76 EBC (Very dark brown)
Bitterness:
35 IBU
Malts:
6000g Pale malt, Castle
850g Aromatic malt, 100 EBC, Castle
800g Münchener malt, Weyermann
300g Crystal malt, Castle
300g Special B, Dingemans
300g Chocolate malt (Special II), Weyermann
100g Coffee malt, Castle
Mash:
66C, 90 min
68% efficiency
Hops:
35g Cascade pellets, 5.8% 90 min (first wort hops)
35g East Kent Goldings pellets, 4.8%, 60 min
25g East Kent Goldings pellets, 4.8%, 10 min
Yeast:
1 pack Wyeast 2450 Denny’s Favorite 50, 1 liter starter
Boil:
180 min
Fermentation:
19 C

OG: 1.073 FG: 1.020 abv: 7.0%

Brew #66: Imperial kölsch

2009-01-22T09:34:00.013+01:00

The imperial pilsener beer style is a fairly new phenomenon, so why not make an "imperial kölsch" now that I had a fresh kölsch yeast cake? The recipe is pretty much a scaled up version of the kölsch/Czech pilsener hybrid. The Saaz hops have been replaced with Riwaka (formerly known as D Saaz), a very aromatic Saaz breed from New Zealand. It contains twice the oil content of Czech Saaz. As the hop contains a lot of cohumulone (a harsh bittering oil) I thought it best to use Magnum, a cleaner bittering hop for bittering. As I've never used Riwaka before I look forward to see how it compares to its ancestor. The descriptions I've seen sure sounds like it'll do well in a strong and bold pilsener.

Added 1ts CaCO3 (calcium carbonate) to boil aiming at 50 ppm carbonates.

The batch was brewed 2009-01-21.

Style:
Strong kölsch
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
11 EBC (Golden)
Bitterness:
51 IBU
Malts:
8000g Pilsener malt, Castle
500g Wheat malt, Weyermann
200g Melanoidin malt, Weyermann
Mash:
65C, 90 min
69% efficiency
Hops:
35g Magnum pellets, 13.5% 60 min
60g Riwaka whole hops, 5.9% 10 min
100g Riwaka whole hops, 5.9% 1 min
40g Riwaka whole hops, 5.9%, dry hop for 4 days
Yeast:
Wyeast 2575 Kölsch II (batch #65 yeast cake).
Boil:
75 min
Fermentation:
19 C

OG: 1.072 FG: 1.014 abv: 7.6%

Brew #65: Kölsch/Czech Pilsener hybrid

2009-01-04T17:32:00.010+01:00

This is an experiment that I've wanted to do for a long time. The beer is a hybrid between a Kölsch and a Czech Pilsener. It is brewed with Kölsch yeast and a lot of Czech Saaz hops. There is 10% wheat in the recipe, so the fermentables are closer to a Kölsch than a Pilsener. The batch was split in half, and is fermenting with two different Kölsch strains. I look forward to seeing whether there will be any significant differences between the two strains. It will also be interesting to see if one can make a decent pilsener with an ale yeast.

Added 1ts CaCO3 (calcium carbonate) and 0.5ts CaSO4 (gypsum) to enhance the hops.

The batch was brewed 2009-01-04 and bottled 2009-01-21.

Style:
Kölsch/Czech Pilsener
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
8 EBC (Pale yellow)
Bitterness:
42 IBU
Malts:
5300g Pilsener malt, Castle
500g Wheat malt, Weyermann
200g Cara-pils, Weyermann
Mash:
67C, 90 min
72% efficiency
Hops:
110g Saaz pellets, 3.4% 60 min
40g Saaz pellets, 3.4% 15 min
30g Saaz pellets, 3.4% 1 min
Yeast:
1 pack Wyeast 2565 Kölsch (0.7 liter starter on magnetic stirrer) and 1 pack Wyeast 2575 Kölsch II (1.0 liter starter).
Boil:
90 min
Fermentation:
19 C

OG: 1.052 FG: 1.011 abv: 5.4%

Brew #64: Barley wine

2008-11-17T16:25:00.008+01:00

At first I wanted to make an English barley wine, but I soon found out that the Centennial hops used for bittering impose a really strong bitterness, so this beer came out like an American barley wine. I'm very happy about it and think that it is a good one. When I tasted it two weeks after bottling I was scared by how harsh the bittering hops were. Another three weeks later the beer has mellowed and now present itself as a nice and very drinkable barley wine. I look forward to see how this one develops the coming years.

I hope to be making a new barley wine every year. Next year I'm considering something similar to North Coast Old Stock Ale.

Added 1.25ts CaCO3 (calcium carbonate) and 0.5ts CaSO4 (gypsum) to enhance the hops.

The batch was brewed 2008-11-17 and bottled 2008-12-03.

Style:
Barley wine
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
37 EBC (Brown)
Bitterness:
60 IBU
Malts:
10600g Pale malt, Weyermann
2400g Aromatic malt, 50 EBC, Dingemans
300g Crystal malt, 150 EBC, Weyermann
Mash:
65C, 90 min
56% efficiency
Hops:
120g Centennial pellets, 9.1% 60 min
40g East Kent Goldings pellets, 4.8%, 10 min
Yeast:
2 packs Safale US-05 dry yeast
Boil:
180 min
Fermentation:
19 C

OG: 1.095 FG: 1.018 abv: 10.1%

Brew #63: American IPA

2008-10-03T22:15:00.005+02:00

This being my favourite beer style, I do brew it quite often. This particular recipe is for an IPA that is easily drinkable and not too complex. The bitterness is crisp and dry. It is very aromatic with strong notes of grapefruit and hints of pine. There is little malt complexity. I'll add more crystal malt next time.

Added 1.25ts CaCO3 (calcium carbonate) and 0.5ts CaSO4 (gypsum) to enhance the hops.

The batch was brewed 2008-10-03.

Style:
American IPA
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
19 EBC (Amber)
Bitterness:
65 IBU
Malts:
6100g Pale malt, Weyermann
400g Cara Münich malt, Weyermann
200g Carahell, Weyermann
Mash:
67C, 60 min
68% efficiency
Hops:
30g Columbus pellets, 12.2%, 60 min
40g Warrior pellets, 13.5%, 10 min
70g Columbus pellets, 12.2% 5 min
120g Centennial pellets, 9.1% 1 min
Yeast:
1 packs Wyeast 1272 American Ale II, 1.5 liter starter
Boil:
90 min
Fermentation:
18 C

OG: 1.061 FG: 1.015 (estimated) abv: 6%

Brew #62: Traditional Bock

2008-09-24T21:53:00.007+02:00

Last year I made a spiced Christmas. This year I wanted to drop the spices and make something more plain, so I ended up with an attempt at a traditional bock. The result is very drinkable, but I feel that it has little bitterness. Next time, I'll add more bittering hops and a little flavouring hops to cut the malty dullness. A higher alcohol content would not have hurt it either. I'll drop the mineral additions as well.

Added 2/3ts NaCl (salt) and 1/3ts NaHCO3 (baking soda) to enhance maltiness.

The batch was brewed 2008-09-24.

Style:
Traditional Bock
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
26 EBC (Deep amber)
Bitterness:
22 IBU
Malts:
4600g Münchener malt, Weyermann
2200g Pilsener malt, Castle
400g Cara Münich malt, Weyermann
200g Dark Crystal malt 300 EBC, Thomas Fawcett
200g Melanoidin malt, Weyermann
Mash:
68C, 60 min
74% efficiency
Hops:
20g Magnum pellets, 13.5%, 60 min
Yeast:
2 packs Wyeast 2663 Octoberfest, 2.5 liter starter
Boil:
90 min
Fermentation:
9.5 C

OG: 1.066 FG: 1.016 abv: 6.5%

Brew #61: Extra Special Bitter

2008-09-10T16:12:00.005+02:00

This beer was made for an event at work. I was hoping for something easily drinkable. As I had little time to make it I had to skip the yeast starter and throw in some dry yeast. In the end I think that the recipe worked out well. The beer was light and refreshing with a crisp dry EKG hop bitterness. It was far from complex, but it had a dry and grainy mouthfeel with a crisp bitterness. Not really what I would consider an ESB, but rather more like a really dry Special Bitter.

The batch was brewed 2008-09-10.

Style:
Extra Special Bitter
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
26 EBC (Deep amber)
Bitterness:
45 IBU
Malts:
4500g Golden Promise malt, Thomas Fawcett
350g Aromatic malt, Dingemans
200g Cara Amber, Dingemans
200g Carapils, Weyermann
150g Dark Crystal malt 300 EBC, Thomas Fawcett
Mash:
67C, 60 min
70% efficiency
Hops:
60g Challenger pellets, 6.7%, 60 min
40g East Kent Goldings pellets, 4.8%, 10 min
60g East Kent Goldings pellets, 4.8%, 1 min
Yeast:
1 pack Safale S-04, rehydrated dry yeast
Boil:
90 min
Fermentation:
21 C

OG: 1.048 FG: 1.012 abv: 4.7%

Interesting use of Randall at the Blind Tiger

2008-08-20T20:11:00.010+02:00

There is a really cool event at the Blind Tiger, NYC, this evening. They are serving Dogfish Head 90 Minute Imperial IPA through six different Randalls. What is interesting is that it is not just hops in the Randalls this time. Instead they are going to serve the beer through a lot of different things that'll lend flavour to the beers.

Here's the list:

Simple Thai: lemongrass
Mint Julep: mint & bourbon balls
Summer Fresco: melon & assorted fruits
Northern Winter: pine & spruce
Italian Seasoning: pine nuts & dried oregano
Hoppy Giant: warrior & columbus hops

I wish I could be there, but as its on the other side of the pond its going to be difficult for me to get there in time. I'll have to try something like this myself sometime.

Brew #60: Rye IPA

2008-07-20T15:40:00.000+02:00

This is an adaptation of Denny Conn's popular Rye IPA. I had to change the recipe somewhat as I did not have some of the ingredients.

The batch is already kegged, but as the CO2 tank ran out yesterday I have not yet been able to taste it carbonated. Will have to get it refilled on Monday. It tastes promising though.

As this was the first time that I used the outdoor brewery this year the brew day was ridden with errors on my part. I had problems with a leakage close to the pump, so that air got sucked into the pump causing the pump to stall. I spent about half an hour trying to locate where the leakage was. In the end I realized that the silicone tubing was torn near the hose clamp. This extra time lowered the mash temperature to about 63C. Fortunately the beer did not dry out as much as I had thought. I have struggled with the pump before, but next time this problem should have been elimiated.

The batch was brewed 2008-06-16.

Style:
Rye IPA
Type:
40 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
30 EBC (Copper)
Bitterness:
62 IBU
Malts:
9200g Maris Otter malt, Thomas Fawcett
2000g Rye malt, Weyermann
1500g Wheat malt extract 55%, Muntons
900g Carahell malt, Weyermann
500g Dark Crystal malt 300 EBC, Thomas Fawcett
Mash:
65C, 60 min
50% efficiency
Hops:
150g Cascade whole, 6.8%, 60 min
100g Cascade whole, 6.8%, 10 min
80g Simcoe whole 13.0%, 1 min
15g Amarillo whole 8.0%, 1 min
Yeast:
2 packs Wyeast 2450 Denny’s Favorite 50, 2.5 liter starter
Boil:
90 min
Fermentation:
21 C

OG: 1.063 FG: 1.013 abv: 6.6%

Brew #59: Weissbier

2008-07-20T15:36:00.009+02:00

I have not been very happy with the Weissbiers that I have made from all-grain, so I decided to make a quick malt extract batch as I have been successful with extract wheat beers before.

Unfortunately the fermentation stopped a little too early making the beer a little too sweet. I forgot to add yeast nutrient, so I suspect that that might have something to do with it. Another thing is that this beer was made in the middle of a (minor) heat wave, so the fermentation temperature fluctuated quite a bit. For this reason there is quite a bit of flavour. Doh.

The batch was brewed 2008-06-12.

Style:
Weissbier
Type:
25 liters. Extract, batch sparge
Colour:
15 EBC (Amber)
Bitterness:
10 IBU
Malts:
3800g Wheat malt extract 55%, Brewferm
Hops:
50g Saaz pellets, 2.0%, 45 min
20g Hallertauer Mittelfrüh pellets, 2.1%, 15 min
Yeast:
1 pack Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan yeast, 1.5 liter starter
Boil:
60 min
Fermentation:
22 C

OG: 1.055 FG: 1.015 abv: 5.2%

Brew #58: American Brown Ale

2008-04-13T15:35:00.007+02:00

I have always enjoyed the impressively rich and malty beers from American microbreweries. I've so far only found that kind of malt flavours in American beers. Some of them have an incredible maltiness. I have so far not been able to get even close in my own beers. This beer is hopefully a step towards something more resembling. There is a whopping 21% specialty malts in this recipe, of which most of them are very aromatic and flavourful malts. Lets just hope that is doesn't come out too cloying. There is also a bit of bittering hops in there to cut some of the sweetness. The mashing efficiency came out a little low this time. Not sure why. It could of course have something to do with the specialty malts.

I have not found any information on the attenuation of the Fat Tire yeast, but Brew #57 came out at 80%, so it is pretty high.

The batch was brewed 2008-04-13.

Style:
American Brown Ale
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
44 EBC (Dark brown)
Bitterness:
36 IBU
Malts:
3000g Maris Otter malt, Thomas Fawcett
2300g Münchener malt
500g Biscuit malt, Dingemans
300g Aromatic malt, Dingemans
300g Special B, Dingemans
200g Dark Crystal malt 300 EBC, Thomas Fawcett
100g Pale Chocolate, Thomas Fawcett
Mash:
66C, 60 min
69% efficiency
Hops:
65g Cascade pellets, 5.8%, 60 min
30g Styrian Goldings pellets, 3.2%, 10 min
Yeast:
Wyeast Fat Tire yeast, on Brew #57's yeast cake
Boil:
90 min
Fermentation:
19 C

OG: 1.056 FG: 1.013 abv: 5.6%

Brew #57: American Pale Ale

2008-03-27T21:57:00.008+01:00

This is the first brew of the year, an American Pale ale. It actually ended up more like an India Pale ale as the mash efficency came out at 78%, something I'm really happy about. I used a new batch sparging technique, which I'll say something about in a future post.

The batch was brewed 2008-03-27.

Style:
American Pale Ale
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
15 EBC (Amber)
Bitterness:
40 IBU
Malts:
5400g Maris Otter malt, Thomas Fawcett
270g Crystal malt 80 EBC, Dingemans
230g Caraamber, Weyermann
200g Biscuit malt, Dingemans
Mash:
66C, 60 min
78% efficiency
Hops:
30g Simcoe whole, 13.2%, 60 min
30g Cascade pellets, 5.8%, 10 min
60g Cascade pellets, 5.8%, 1 min
Yeast:
Wyeast Fat Tire yeast, 2.7 liter starter on magnetic stirrer
Boil:
90 min
Fermentation:
19 C

OG: 1.060 FG: 1.012 abv: 6.3%

Norwegian Homebrew Competition 2008

2008-03-24T20:59:00.011+01:00

What: The annual festival where homebrewers serve their own beers to the public, which get to vote for their favourite beers of the evening. Homebrewers also compete in five other categories (bottled entries submitted earlier). The winners are announced towards the end of the evening.

When: Saturday April 5th 2008, 19:00-00:30 CET
Where: Studentersamfunnet Bislet, Pilestredet 52, Oslo, Norway.
Cost: 130 NOK (100 NOK if you're a member of Norbrygg)

View Larger Map

I'll be there, but I won't be serving any beers this year as I'm judging the finals of the five other competition categories (light lager, dark lager, light ale, dark ale and strong beers). For the same reason I won't be able to partake in any of the competitions either (doh).

A brewing tip from Norway's Julia Child

2008-03-21T22:47:00.012+01:00

"Kjøkkentips", a book by Ingrid Espelid Hovig and Scott Givot contains a lot of practical tips about doing smart things in your kitchen. One of the tips that caught my eye that might be useful to brewers is how one can cool down a pot of hot liquid in the sink. They say that if you place a spoon upside down beneath the pot that would allow it too cool down quicker. Simple, and just brilliant, as this would expose the pot to more surface. If you chill your hot wort in the sink then this might help you cool down your wort faster.

Getting the temperature right

2008-03-21T12:38:00.012+01:00

You may remember that I have had some issues with mashing at too low a temperature. Because the beers were mashed too low they were thin bodied as this produced more fermentable sugars. I recently bought a new thermometer (the one on the right), and that helped a little. The recent beers have had more body, but the doppelbock I brewed just before Christmas still was a little thinner than expected. It meant that I still had some problems with the mash temperatures.

Interestingly, I was offered to have my thermometers calibrated at a local brewery using professional calibration equipment. That was exactly what I needed as this would let me know exactly by how much the thermometers were off.

The temperature calibrator system that was used was a Tek Know TC2000 from Scan-Sense. The results from calibrating the two thermometers at 55C, 65C, 70C and 80C can be seen below. Click the thumbnails to see the full-sized photos.

The digital thermometer on the right is clearly the most exact of the two as its readings are the most consistent, but they are still off by 1.5C or so. It was this thermometer that I used for the last few brews, so the dobbelbock was mashed at 67.5C instead of 69C. The old white digital thermometer (now broken) must have been off by at least 3.5C as it read 2C lower than the new one. That is a quite significant difference.

In all this is very useful information to me and it will allow me to hit the mash temperatures much more precisely than before. If you have doubts about the readings from your thermometer then having it calibrated is much recommended. Even small variances on the readings in the mashing range can lead to significant differences in fermentability.

Ulrikke

2008-03-21T11:52:00.004+01:00

Eight weeks ago Kristiane and I adopted Ulrikke, a beautiful 23 months old girl from Guangdong, China. This has worked out very well and we're now a happy family of three. I have spent the last six weeks on paternity leave, so things have been busy. Things have settled down nicely, so I should now have more time to spend on my brewing efforts. Not to mention that I now have a brewing assistant. :)

Is homebrewing beer legal?

2007-12-29T21:54:00.000+01:00

Adam recently discussed the U.S federal limits on home brewing on his Beer Bits 2 blog, and I thought that it might be interesting to compare this with the legislation here in Norway. I have had several inquiries about the laws here in Norway, so this might be useful information for more people.

Up until July 1999 home brewing was illegal in Norway, unless you malted your own grains. Of course, malting is out of reach for most amateur brewers, so they brewed at home anyway. There is a page at the Norwegian Homebrewer's Association (which was started in 1997) site that has some detail about the recent changes. It is also worth mentioning that there were no such restrictions regarding making your own wine at home. Growing your own grapes might have been an option, but it's rather difficult this far north. Interestingly, there is one single winery in Norway making red wines, but that is besides the point.

Anyway, since 1999 it has been legal to brew beer at home without unreasonable restrictions. As far as I know there are no limits on how much you can brew either. As distillation or using various techniques to increase alcohol content, other than fermentation, is illegal one has to rely on fermentation alone, which is fair enough as most beers are made that way.

The current legislation is pretty straightforward: you can make as much beer as you like at home, and you can serve it to anyone you like, but you cannot sell it. You can even let someone with a license serve it, but they will then have to pay the associated taxes (including taxes on alcohol and VAT, and probably some more).

The home brewing legislation in Norway is surprisingly liberal given that alcohol is otherwise heavily taxed and is strictly regulated.

My own beer production has been 405 liters this year, which is a personal record. I guess it will be standing for a while, as we're getting our first child soon, and the brewing frequency will be reduced for obvious reasons.

Brew #56: Doppelbock

2007-12-20T20:10:00.001+01:00

I kegged the German Pilsener today, and since I had a fresh and healthy yeast cake in the fermenter this was a perfect opportunity for brewing a strong doppelbock for the spring. The recipe should hopefully result in a rich and malty bock. I mashed quite high, so there should be lots of complex non-fermentable sugars. Interestingly the mash efficiency seems to have increased. I'll leave this in the fermenter for about three weeks.

The batch was brewed 2007-12-20.

Style:
Doppelbock
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
45 EBC (Brown)
Bitterness:
26 IBU
Malts:
6000g Münchener malt
1500g Vienna malt
350g Carapils
350g Caravienna
350g Dark crystal malt
100g Chocolate malt
Mash:
69C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
76% efficiency
Hops:
70g Spalter Select pellets, 4.5%, 60 min
30g Spalter Select pellets, 4.5%, 10 min
Yeast:
Wyeast 2206 Bavarian Lager, on Brew #55's yeast cake
Boil:
90 min
Fermentation:
In the fridge at 9.0 to 10.5 C.

OG: 1.078 FG: 1.021 abv: 7.5%

Brew #55: German Pilsener

2007-11-29T20:18:00.000+01:00

This is a straightforward simple pilsener with hopefully quite a bit of hop flavour and aroma. I just realize that I forgot to add the sulphates required to enhance the hop crispness. Not sure how much it'll matter as I'm sure it'll be fine anyway.

I added a little specialty malts to increase the malt complexity somewhat.

The plan is to brew a doppelbock in about two weeks that I then rack on top of the yeast cake from the pilsener. The Bavarian lager yeast is supposed to be very well suited for rich and malty lagers. Pitching on top of the yeast cake from another batch is a nice way to make sure that one has enough yeast for a healthy fermentation. That is important for strong lagers like doppelbocks.

The batch was brewed 2007-11-29.

Style:
German Pilsener
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
11 EBC (Golden)
Bitterness:
32 IBU
Malts:
5800g Pilsener malt
150g Carapils
150g Aroma malt
Mash:
64C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
66% efficiency
Hops:
20g Warrior pellets, 13.8%, 60 min
40g Hallertauer Mittelfrüh whole, 3.8%, 10 min
60g Hallertauer Mittelfrüh whole, 3.8%, 1 min
Yeast:
Wyeast 2206 Bavarian Lager, 2 packs, production date 2007-04-30, 2.5 liter starter on stir plate
Boil:
90 min
Fermentation:
In the fridge at 9.0 to 10.5 C.

OG: 1.048 FG: 1.011 abv: 4.8%

Magnetic Stir Plate

2007-11-15T21:10:00.000+01:00

This is one of the better brewing investments I've made in the last year. The magnetic stir plate is very good at kick-starting the beer yeast. I typically create 2 liter yeast starters from a single pack of liquid yeast.

I have three erlenmeyer flasks, in 1 liter, 3 liter and 5 liter sizes. The 3 liter one can be seen in the photo above.

Creating the yeast starter is straightforward: Fill the flask with water from the tap. Put it on the stove, turn on the heat and wait until the water heats up. Then add 1 tablespoon of dried malt extract per dl of water. Then add 1/2 teaspoon of yeast nutrient. Stir well and let it boil for about five minutes in the erlenmeyer flasks. This makes sure that both the yeast starter and the flask is properly disinfected. Cover the opening of the flask with aluminum foil or plastic wrap to prevent things from falling into the pristine wort. Cool it down to about 20 degrees C in a cold water bath before adding the yeast. Then spray the scissors and the opening of the yeast pack with a strong alcohol solution to make sure that no bacteria gets in contact with the yeast on its way to the yeast starter. Wait for the alcohol to evaporate before opening and pouring the yeast into the erlenmeyer flask. Finally, add the stir bar (make sure that it is disinfected) and put it on the magnetic stirrer. The stirring will provide the yeast with lots of oxygen.

It usually take a day or two before the yeast has fermented out the yeast starter.

Brew #54: Christmas Ale

2007-11-15T15:09:00.000+01:00

Inspired by the upcoming season I've decided to make a strong and malty brew with a subtle hint of spices. This brew should be a nice sipping beer for Christmas. I suspect that it'll end up similar to an English Old Ale because of the muscovado sugar.

The yeast pack was smacked on Sunday and it had not really expanded fully when I made the starter wort on Tuesday evening. Anyway, after about 12 hours there were lots of activity on the magnetic stir plate. The yeast is known for its impressive capability of flocculating. After the fermentation was over large clumps of yeast where spinning around the erlenmeyer flask. When the stir plate stopped all yeast fell straight down to the bottom. Kind of cool, but I hope it ferments out my beer before deciding to clump together in the bucket.

The batch was brewed 2007-11-15.

Style:
English Old Ale
Type:
25 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
63 EBC (Dark brown)
Bitterness:
30 IBU
Malts:
4000g Pale malt
1400g Amber malt
1000g Rauchmalz
830g Münchener malt
400g Crystal malt
300g Dark crystal malt
300g Special B
100g Pale chocolate malt
Sugars:
500g Billington's Unrefined Dark Muscovado Cane Sugar
Spices:
6 cm cinnamon bark
1 small vanilla bean
Mash:
68C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
72% efficiency
Hops:
40g Northern Brewer pellets, 10.0%, 60 min
30g Saaz pellets, 2.0%, 10 min
Yeast:
Wyeast 1968 London ESB Ale Yeast, production date 2007-04-30, 2 liter starter on stir plate
Boil:
90 min
Water treatment:
2 ts calcium carbonate
1/2 ts calcium chloride
OG: 1.081 FG: 1.024 abv: 7.5%

The Hop Stopper

2007-11-08T21:31:00.000+01:00

One of the gadgets I got for my new brewery is The Hop Stopper. It is quite nice, but I have had some problems with it. It is being advertised as being able to remove both whole and pellet hops. Unfortunately it does not work very well with pellet hops when using an impeller pump. I'm sure it would work better with a different kind of pump though.

As you can see from the photo above the mesh is very fine and stops even the tiny fragments of hop pellets. This means that the hop pellet debris ends up as a thick layer all around the hop stopper restricting the flow of the wort.

Both of the times I have used it has clogged and has been almost impossible to get any wort out of the kettle, mainly because the impeller pump does not create a suction. I was lucky and in the end able to get most of the wort out by various means, but I had to leave a lot of it in the brewpot as it was impossible to get out the rest.

It is pretty clear that with my setup I must use only whole hops. I have not tried this yet, but I see no other option. As far as I can see that should work a lot better. In the worst case I'll just have to put the hops in a hop bag.

The primary reason for using the Hop Stopper is to avoid the hop debris from ending up in the plate chiller. Hop pellets shouldn't be much of a problem as long as the chiller is properly cleaned after use, but whole hops would be a nightmare.

I'll keep you updated once I get try it with whole hops in the spring.

The new brewery

2007-10-21T17:14:00.000+02:00

In the house where I live there is a nice terrace and a little garden. It is great for brewing. The above photo was taken on the day when I brewed the weissbier. As you can see it was raining a little that day but that didn't stop me from brewing. In fact a little rain isn't a problem on brew day, at least as long as the burner or the pump doesn't get wet.

The new brewery consists of the following pieces of equipment:

A robust 100 liter stainless steel brew pot. The thickness is 1.2 mm. It is 50.8 cm wide and 50.8 cm tall. There are two 7/8" holes in it, one 1.5" above the bottom and the second 7" above the bottom. As you can see from the photo the holes are there for the weldless thermometer and the weldless spigot.

Bayou Classic Kick A Banjo Burner, a propane burner that outputs 65kW (210.000 BTU). This is definitely overkill by far, but it works great at [much] lower output. It can be adjusted all the way down, so that you can keep a cup of coffee warm. In my experience with two 40 liter batches it uses about 3.5 kg of propane per batch.

Two 11 kg propane gas containers. I bought two as it is nice to have a backup if the first one runs out. Then I can just go and get the second one from the shed. It also means that I can refill between brew days instead of having to do it on brew day. Or in worst case bringing the brewday to a halt if the propane shop is closed.

Hop Stopper, all stainless steel construction. It is installed inside the brew pot and works as a hop filter.

Therminator, a very effective plate-chiller. It is probably overkill for a brewery of this size, but it can't hurt. In any case it is very cool.

March H315 High Temperature Polysulphone Pump, a 230 volt impeller pump. I bought this one used from someone who had just recently upgraded to a much larger pump. It works nicely, but I find the fact that it needs to be primed a little annoying. If it had generated just a little suction it would have simplified the process of moving the wort.

5 meters of 1/2" silicone tubing, cut into 1, 1, and 3 meter pieces.

The brew stand is home made. The garden furniture works nicely, and was cheap too.

I bought the brew pot and the burner from Austin Homebrew Supply. As the brew pot was too big to ship through US Postal Service I got it shipped with boat freight via JetCarrier. I took advantage of the $5.99 shipping to their shipping hub in New Jersey. It took about a month before it arrived at my doorstep.

Austin Homebrew Supply:

1x	Super Stainless Steel Stock Pot (100 qt)	$239.99
1x	Two holes drilled	$19.99
1x	High Output Propane Burner	$99.99
1x	Therminator Wort Chiller	$195.00
1x	BrewVint - Plate Chiller Backflush Adaptor	$16.99
3x	Blichmann Stainless Steel 1/2" QuickConnector	$19.99

Innovative Homebrew Solutions:

Hop Stopper, All Stainless Steel Construction

$90.00

Northern Brewer:

Weldless Deluxe Plus, S/S Kettle Valve Kit w/barb

$39.99

Morebeer:

Thermometer (3'' Face x 2" Probe)

$34.95

A quick update

2007-10-17T18:39:00.000+02:00

Alright, enough procrastination. It has not been much of a summer this year as it has been cold and raining most of the time. Better luck next year I guess. A lot of things have happened since the last post though.

First of all I've built a whole new brewery. This one is dedicated to outdoors brewing. The plan is to use this brewery when the weather is OK and when it makes sense to brew bigger batches. In this part of the world this means early spring to late autumn.

The brew pot holds 100 liters, which in theory should make it possible to brew 80 liters of beer at a time. I have brewed with it twice this summer, an American IPA and a Weissbier. I'll post the recipes and my experiences with this new brewery shortly. In the meantime you get a photo of the brew pot and gas burner in action.

Brew #53: Weissbier

2007-10-10T23:05:00.000+02:00

The batch was brewed 2007-10-10.

Style:
Weissbier
Type:
40 liters. All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
10 EBC (Golden)
Bitterness:
12 IBU
Malts:
7300g Wheat malt
5000g Pilsener malt
500g Melanoidin malt
500g Pale malt
400g Münchener malt
Mash:
67C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
74% efficiency
Hops:
100g Hersbrucker pellets, 3.1%, 45 min
30g Styrian Goldings pellets, 3.2%, 15 min
Yeast:
Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan Weizen Yeast, production date 2007-04-16, 2 liter starter
Boil:
60 min
OG: 1.052 FG: 1.016 abv: 4.8%

Brew #52: India Pale Ale

2007-08-19T20:23:00.000+02:00

The batch was brewed 2007-08-19.

Style:
India Pale Ale
Type:
40 liters. All grain, continuous sparge
Colour:
29 EBC (Reddish brown)
Bitterness:
52 IBU
Malts:
8000g Pilsener malt
1000g Crystal malt
1000g Amber malt
700g Biscuit malt
300g Wheat malt
Mash:
67C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
55% efficiency
Hops:
60g Cascade pellets, 6.1%, 60 min
40g Centennial pellets, 9.4%, 15 min
40g Simcoe pellets, 12.1%, 15 min
70g Centennial pellets, 9.4%, 1 min
70g Simcoe pellets, 12.1%, 1 min
Yeast:
Safale US-05, 2 packs, dry yeast, best before date 2008-11-01.
Boil:
90 min
Water treatment:
2 ts calcium carbonate
OG: 1.045 FG: 1.011 (estimated) abv: 4.5%

Malt varieties and terroir

2007-07-14T20:35:00.000+02:00

Stan Hieronymous has written a couple of really interesting blog postings that I find particularly interesting. He draws lines between what the wine industry call terroir and the fact that the malts used by breweries have individual characteristics.

There is something to be said about the characteristics of a beer and what kinds of ingredients were used and where they were grown. The malt characteristics both depend on where it was grown and what malt variety it is. For beer's sake, at least for now, I think it is most to be said about the distinctions between malt varieties than than in which field it was grown. It is just too much of an unexplored field for anybody to say anything about terroir. The distinctions between malt varieties are much greater than between the same variety being grown in different locations.

The individualities in flavour of malt varieties is something that has not been considered by breweries and their marketing departments as something of interest. Great flavour has not been the primary reason for growing a malt variety -- economy has. A combination of how much barley could be produced per acre, the brewing efficiency, and the consistency of the malts have been the primary drivers.

Few people have thought that there have been any relationship between what malt varieties have been used to brew a beer and what the actual end result was. There are actually a lot of families of barley out there, most of them almost distinct and others grown on a very small scale. Large breweries have been mostly concerned about consistency and efficiency -- all for economic reasons. This has led to a reduced diversity of mass-produced malt varieties grown on a larger scale.

Fortunately, with the craft brewing revival, there is a new interest in traditional barley varieties. Traditional barley varieties like Maris Otter and Golden Promise are now being considered to be malt varieties that add an extra dimension to a beer.

I think that there is a lot of more things that is to be said about this subject.

Read what Stan said here:

Not all barleys are born equal
Malt (and barley) matters: Part II

Balancing draft beer systems

2007-07-10T22:49:00.000+02:00

So far I have been very satisfied with the kegerator I built at the end of last year. It has been performing really well.

I am happy about the fact that the line balancing worked that well. There has been no problems balancing the CO2 pressure in the draft system. It seemed to me like rocket science when I started out, but in the end it was actually quite straightforward as long as I kept track of the various parameters involved. Most of the insights I got from this article. If you are planning on building your own draft beer system I highly recommend the article as it helped me a lot when designing the draft lines in the kegerator.

The fact that the beer line is only 3/16" ID, and relatively long, makes it possible to have quite a bit of pressure in the keg without excessive foaming. There is also about 60 cm of height difference between the center of the kegs and the faucets and this increases the friction in the beer lines and reduces the foaming.

I keep my CO2 regulator at a pressure of 1 bar and there does not seem to be much of a problem adjusting the pressure so that the whole system with four kegs is balanced.

Brew #51: Imperial Porter

2007-06-17T16:12:00.000+02:00

This porter is pretty much a replica of the porter I did two months ago. This time there is less black malt and a little more münchener malt. I liked the previous one a lot, but I thought that it had a little too sharp bite from the black malts. This is an attempt at making it a bit rounder. The increased mash temperature should also make it a little richer.

The single pack of dry yeast seems to have been plenty as the fermentation started soon after pitching and it is currently very vigorous.

The batch was brewed 2007-06-17.

Style:
Imperial Porter
Type:
All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
76 EBC (Black)
Bitterness:
41 IBU
Malts:
4500g Pale malt
1500g Münchener malt
550g Dark crystal malt
500g Amber malt
250g Crystal malt
250g Dark crystal malt
250g Carafa I, debittered chocolate malt
150g Carafa II, debittered black malt
Mash:
67C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
72% efficiency
Hops:
30g Warrior pellets, 13.8%, 60 min
20g Warrior pellets, 13.8%, 10 min
Yeast:
Nottingham, 1 pack, dry yeast, best before date 2008-09.
Boil:
90 min
OG: 1.067 FG: 1.016 (estimated) abv: 6.7%

Brew #50: Roggenbier

2007-06-17T12:49:00.000+02:00

I am quite excited about this beer. A roggenbier is like a dunkelweizen, except that the wheat malt has been fully replaced by rye malt. Not having tried a German roggenbier before I do look very much forward to doing so. It is going to be interesting to compare this batch with a commercial interpretation of the style -- once I get hold of one.

The mash smelled absolutely wonderful when I mashed in. The predominate aromas were rye bread and nutty chocolate. I am not particularly fond of pumpernickel bread, but I do like other kinds of rye bread.

When I started brewing I thought that I had 3 kg of rye malt on had, something I did not, so 750 grams were replaced by wheat malt. This means that the rye content is 40% and not above 50% as dictated by the BJCP style definition. But, who cares. I had absolutely no problem mashing the rye.

German wheat yeasts are supposed to be pitched a little low so that the clove and banana characteristics can develop more, so this time I did not make as starter. Instead I just poured the contents of the swollen smack-pack into the wort. I really wanted to try this out in a weissbier, but this will have to do for now.

The batch was brewed 2007-06-17.

Style:
Roggenbier
Type:
All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
32 EBC (Copper)
Bitterness:
12 IBU
Malts:
2250g Rye malt
1500g Münchener malt
1000g Pale malt
750g Wheat malt
250g Caramünich malt
250g Dark crystal malt
50g Carafa I, debittered chocolate malt
Mash:
67C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
72% efficiency
Hops:
40g Tettnanger pellets, 2.7%, 60 min
18g Tettnanger pellets, 2.7%, 15 min
Yeast:
Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan Weizen Yeast, production date 2007-04-16, no starter
Boil:
90 min
OG: 1.053 FG: 1.013 (estimated) abv: 5.2%

Brew #49: Witbier

2007-06-07T21:30:00.000+02:00

Witbier is, along with IPAs, a very popular beer style in this household. It is summer afterall and I just had to make another. This time I did a few twists of the earlier recipes. The recipe was different in that it used zest from two oranges and a lemon, ground coriander from a glass, steeped chamomile tea bags and dried yeast.

Fermentis, the producer of the Safbrew S-33 dried yeast packs, seems to be recommending the yeast for Belgian wheat beers, which I can only understand to be Witbiers. This is an experimental brew, so I've gone ahead and created a Witbier with it. In theory it doesn't sound that bad. Literature I've read say that the yeast is the Edme strain, which is seems to be a British yeast strain. What its origin is I do not know. There seem to be other dried variants of this yeast strain as well.

The batch was brewed 2007-06-05.

Style:
Witbier
Type:
All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
7 EBC (Pale yellow)
Bitterness:
14 IBU
Malts:
3000g Pale malt
3000g Raw wheat kernels
500g Oatmeal
300g Dry light malt extract
Mash:
66C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
67% efficiency
Hops:
40g Styrian Goldings pellets, 3.2%, 60 min
30g Saaz pellets, 3.3%, 15 min
Other:
10g ground coriander
2 bags of chamomile tea
zest from two oranges
zest from one lemon
Yeast:
Safbrew S-33, 1 pack, dry yeast, best before date 2008-11-01.
Boil:
90 min
OG: 1.050 FG: 1.012 (estimated) abv: 5.0%

Update: Oslo is experiencing a heat wave this week. The fermentation temperature has reached 26C during the day, and thoughout the night it falls to about 21C. The outside temperature has been in the vicinity of 30C the last few days. The primary fermentation was over after two days and the fermentation bucket now sits idle. I'll leave it there for another week before kegging. The houses here do for obvious reasons not have any air conditioning systems, so there is not really much that one can do about this other than hoping for the beer not being ruined. This weekend's double brew, a German pilsener and a Roggenbier, has been postponed until the weather returns to something more normal. In the meantime I'm enjoying the nice sunny weather on the terrace.

What is the USPS thinking?

2007-06-05T22:37:00.000+02:00

For some odd reason the US Postal Service has decided to drop their low-cost international shipping services. This leaves Global Express, Express and Priority, which all cost a fortune. I noticed this when I placed an order at Morebeer today. The shipping cost, which I had calculated to USD 70 suddenly became 164 USD. That's an incredible price hike. Heavier packages now effectively cost more than twice of what they were before May 15th this year. A positive side of this is that shipping now takes seven days instead of four weeks. But sometimes the money saved is worth waiting an extra three weeks for. Well, not anymore.

Dear old faithful USPS, what were you thinking? Why? Aaaaaargh...

Fermentation buckets: pros and cons

2007-06-04T20:48:00.000+02:00

The India Pale Ale is fermenting happily in one of the new fermentation buckets. Since the buckets hold 32 liters there is quite a bit of head space in there, so I do not have to worry too much about the fermentation overflowing.

After having tried one of these fermentation buckets I have found a few things that are good and bad about them:

Pros:

Easier to clean as one can reach into them by opening the lid. One has to be a little careful so that it does not pick up any scratches. A soft non-scratching cloth is needed.
The bucket has a flat top which means that one can stack them on top of each other saving a little space while fermenting. On the other hand this also means that the cat can sleep there.
The stackability is even more useful when storing them between use. Four buckets take up just as little space as one of them do.

Cons:

A bucket does not fit very well in my kegerator. The old fermentation tanks was just a little wider that a cornelius keg, so I could fit one of them in the fridge with three cornelius kegs. Not so with the new fermentation buckets. From what I can gather there is not room for any kegs together with a bucket. I'll have to try and find one of the old type, so that I can ferment my lagers in it.
It is harder to oxygenate the wort as one cannot vigorously shake the bucket. With the old tanks I could just close them with a lid and shake hell out of them. Pouring the wort from the siphon from a height did seem to work nicely, but it is not perfect. I'll have to look into getting hold of an aquarium pump and an oxygenation stone.

Anything else?

Brew #48: India Pale Ale

2007-06-03T17:05:00.000+02:00

The IPAs I make seem to disappear rather quickly, so I do have to make them quite often. In order to keep the hop levels in the blood stream up throughout the summer it's time to make another one.

This one is intended to be a little nutty and somewhat on the rich and malty side. I used the new digital thermometer, so we'll see if the fermentability is a little lower this time. When comparing the measurements with the old thermometer there seemed to be a 2C difference between the two, with the new one giving the lower result. Given the recent experiences that makes sense.

There is quite a bit of finishing hops in this beer. Since I had reached the bottom of the big bag of Warrior hop pellets I thought that I just as well might add the rest of it. I have a 1.5 kg bag left, so it's going to take quite a while before I run out of Warrior hops. In my opinion there can never really be enough aroma hops in an IPA.

This batch will be fermented in one of the brew fermentation buckets.

The batch was brewed 2007-06-03.

Style:
India Pale Ale
Type:
All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
24 EBC (Deep amber)
Bitterness:
64 IBU
Malts:
5500g Pale malt
700g Munich malt
500g Carapils
300g Wheat malt
300g Crystal malt, 130 EBC
250g Victory malt
Mash:
67C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
72% efficiency
Hops:
30g Warrior pellets, 13.8%, 60 min (first wort and bittering hops)
30g Warrior pellets, 13.8%, 10 min
30g Palisade pellets, 9.3%, 10 min
140g Warrior pellets, 13.8%, 1 min
70g Palisade pellets, 9.3%, 1 min

Yeast:
Safale US-05, 2 packs, dry yeast, best before date 2008-11-01.
Boil:
90 min
OG: 1.068 FG: 1.017 (estimated) abv: 6.7%

The last four

2007-05-14T21:35:00.000+02:00

All of the last four beers have been pretty good beers. Unfortunately they have all been a bit too dry. I blame this on the two thermometers I use, one digital and one alcohol thermometer. The alcohol thermometer did measure two degrees Celsius lower than the digital. I did trust the digital one, but it does seem like the analog one is the more accurate one.

Two new high quality thermometers have been ordered, so I hope to have better results in the future.

Because I have used the digital thermometer all since I started brewing all-grain all of my beers have been fairly dry even though I have tried to make more sweeter beers. The attempts haven't been wholehearted, but I would think that a saccharisation rest at 69C should end up with a predominantly sweet beer.

#44 India Pale Ale, 7.6%: Light copper colour. The beer lacked the same roasted and nutty complexity that the previous IPA had. It was pretty good, but it was lighter in colour and ended up with much more alcohol than the previous one. I wasn't particularly satisifed with the hops. The Columbus provided as harsh bitterness and the Amarillo a pungent grassy flavour. Not what I find appropriate in an IPA.

#45 Altbier, 5.1%: Dark copper colour. In my opinon the best one of the four. Drying hop flavour from the Spalt hops. I had expected it to be more bitter, but the hops did lend more flavour than bitterness. Spalter Select is a nice hop which I'll use in other beers. The flavour also had quite a bit of caramel and chocolate.

#46 Weissbier, 6.4%: Cloudy pale golden colour. This one ended up way too dry and subsequently with a way too high alcohol content for the style. The alcohol level was not obvious in any way, but the dryness and the light body did not fit the style well. There was quite a bit of clove character in the beer, which I also tried to enhance by doing an acid rest. Unfortunately it is pretty obvious that the problems I had trying to raise the temperature to the saccharification rest did have an effect on the fermentability. There was next to no banana flavour in the beer even though the fermentation was very vigorous and the ambient temperature passed 22C at one time, but at an average the temperature was 19C.

#47 Imperial Porter, 6.8%: Pitch black. The soft water in Oslo has been playing tricks with me before and even this beer had some astringent characters from dark malts, but far from as strong as the previous porter I made. This time I used 500 grams of dark malts, chocolate malt and black malt, both debittered varieties. The beer has a distinct and somewhat sharp roastedness. The hops where pretty subdued, but balanced the malts nicely. This was a pretty clean and dry beer with the distinct character of darker malts. Would have been better with some more malt complexity.

New fermentation buckets

2007-05-06T16:32:00.001+02:00

New fermenters have been acquired. I ended up with four 32 liter fermentation buckets. They cost me 80 NOK each. I really had thought that I should get hold of the same kind of fermenters that I had earlier, but the LHBS did not have any. He didn't have any glass carboys either, so I had to do with these.

The buckets have markings going up to 27 liters, but by extrapolating I estimate that they will hold at least five more liters. The old carboys were only 28 liters. Given that I make 25 liters of wort at a time they did not have much head space. For vigorous fermentations that's certainly a bit tight. The recent weissbier and the imperial porter did both cause a big mess as the carboys overflowed. That has happened a lot of times earlier also.

This is the imperial porter. The weissbier was even more vigorous and I lost almost three liters of beer this way. With the new buckets I should be able avoid this, saving both beer and not having to clean up the mess.

The buckets should be easier to clean as they are much more accessible. With the old carboys I had to use a carboy brush, which worked reasonably well once I had soaked the carboys in washing soda (sodium carbonate) overnight. Given the better accessibility I would think that they would more easily pick up scratches. We'll see.

I have another five such buckets which I use to soak and clean equipment and bottles in. They have been treated pretty roughly, so they are full of scratches and cannot be used as fermentors. As you can see on the above photo I have marked the buckets so that I do not mix them up.

To be honest I really do want to upgrade to a couple of 55 liter Blichmann Fermenators, but because of space constraints I have to wait until I have somewhere to put them. There just isn't anywhere to place them in our current apartment. Someday maybe...

Time to replace the fermentation vessels

2007-04-26T19:14:00.000+02:00

The ESB had a slight bacterial infection. It had lost all of its malt flavours and there were next to no hop aroma, making it monotonous, grassy and slightly dry. It also had an astringent yeast-like character, but I don't think that has got anything to do with the yeast at all. The infection started out as just a hint of altered flavours, but has over the last couple of weeks become much more evident. It is without a doubt an infection. At this rate I pick up an infection every 35 batches. This is the second time it has happened.

I judged a couple of flights at this year's Norwegian Homebrewing Championships and noticed that a couple of the entries had the same defect. At that time I suspected that it was a fermentation issue, most likely caused by autolysis or bad yeast health. I'm now confident that it is indeed a small bacterial infection, or the beginning of one.

There's nothing that one can do about a bacterial infection other that to discard the beer. I'm sure you could drink it, but life's too short. Unlike other defects there's actually no steps you can take to improve the beers drinkablity. So the ESB is going to make do as fertilizer in the garden.

Interestingly the three beers I have brewed after the infected one do not have any signs of infection. This has led me to suspect that it is the fermentation vessel that has caused the infection. It could of course also have been a mistake made by yours truly.

Plastic has the unfortunate characteristic that it easily get scratched over time, and those scratches can harbour bacteria. I have four plastic fermentation vessels and I do think I used all four on those last four beers, so it seems that none of the other beers touched the infected one.

Anyway, my plastic fermentation vessels are five years old. I should have replaced them earlier, but they have now for sure reached their end of duty. They were thrown out yesterday together with the plastic tubing.

New fermenters will have to be bought ASAP as I have more work to do before the summer.

How to clean a picnic faucet

2007-04-19T22:22:00.000+02:00

Did you know that you can take the picnic faucet apart? I didn't. It came as a surprise to me when I saw Richard rip one apart and explain that that would expose all the surface that the beer touches. It consists of two individual pieces. That's great as I had suspected that just running cleaner and sanitizer through wouldn't be enough to clean it.

I am a bit scared of what I'll find when I open one, especially the older ones. I can't say I've had any off-flavours when using them, but I fear the worst. In any case they can all expect thorough cleaning before being used the next time.

Brew #47: Imperial Porter

2007-04-16T17:11:00.000+02:00

Too many of my recent brews have been brownish in colour, so it was now time to make something really dark. The intention was to make a normal strength robust porter at around 6.0% abv, but the mash efficiency was pretty good for a dark beer and it came out as an imperial porter. Things could have been worse.

I have had terrible mash efficiencies when making dark beers earlier. Fortunately things went better this time.

An extraordinarily fine crush made by Frode's Crankandstein (or is it Crankenstein monster?) must have contributed somewhat, but not enough to replace the Barley Crusher though. I noticed a lot of dry grain balls in the mash as I doughed in, but a few minutes of stirring made them go way. So it was clear that the crush was much finer than what I have had earlier. There were no hints of any run-off problems, so the crush is fine. I also tried to sparge a little slower than at full speed making it more likely to extract more sugars. Each sparge took about 10 minutes, which is still a reasonably short time. I'll consider reducing the gap my own Barley Crusher for the next brew. It is currently set to the default.

The water in Oslo is extremely soft, very much like the water in Plzen, something that makes it perfect for light beers like pilsener. At the same time this makes it harder to make dark beers. Soft water is really the perfect brew water as it is a lot easier to add minerals than it is to take them out. So to emulate the water of other famous brewing cities one can just add minerals.

I made a porter with 500 grams of chocolate malt and black malt about a year and a half ago, which turned into something very harsh and astringent. I blame the pH of the water. A low pH means a lower mash efficiency and extraction of undesired characteristics like tannins. This time I added 2.5 ts calcium carbonate and 2 ts of 5.2 powder. The recipe also use dehusked dark malts, which should keep the sharp edges out of the beer. I also added the dark malts 45 minutes into the mash, giving the base malt a better chance of converting itself before the pH gets lowered by the dark malts.

The batch was brewed 2007-04-16.

Style:
Imperial Porter
Type:
All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
80 EBC (Black)
Bitterness:
40 IBU
Malts:
5000g Pale malt
1000g Munich malt
500g Amber malt
400g Crystal malt, 300 EBC
400g Crystal malt, 130 EBC
250g Carafa I, debittered chocolate malt
250g Carafa II, debittered black malt
Mash:
68C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
72% efficiency
Hops:
30g Warrior pellets, 13.8%, 60 min
20g Warrior pellets, 13.8%, 10 min
Yeast:
Nottingham, 2 packs, dry yeast, best before date 2007-01-15 and 2007-12-01.
Boil:
90 min
OG: 1.068 FG: 1.017 (estimated) abv: 6.7%

Brew #46: Weissbier

2007-04-11T17:27:00.000+02:00

It has been a really long time since I brewed a German weissbier. Too long, in fact two years ago. That's even before I started kegging my beers. Heck, it is one of my favourite beer styles, and perfect for the upcoming warm season.

The recipe is straightforward. I did an acid rest this time as it will improve the clove flavours. I used the Wyeast 3068 yeast, which in my opinion is the best weissbier yeast that there is. It'll generate little banana, but that depends a little on the fermentation temperature.

The wheat malt percentage is quite high at 59%, which is quite high, but still quite common. Wheat malt can be notoriously difficult to sparge as it easily clogs up the mash. I have been impressed by the Bazooka screen in my mash tun as it seems to work really well even with malt bills that are hard to sparge. I tried to batch sparge as quickly as possible and opened the ball valve fully from the start. The mash soon compacted on itself and the grains moved about 3 cm from the walls towards the Bazooka. Alright, a stuck sparge, but it was really easy to get the flow going again. Cutting into the grains with a knife released the vaccuum and the sparge continued at a nice rate. I can very much recommend the Bazooka screen. It's pretty impressive. It is also quite cool that a stuck mash is nothing to be afraid of as one can just cut or stir the mash to start the sparge again.

I decided to add a little melanoidin malt to add some complexity and fill out the body.

The batch was brewed 2007-04-11.

Style:
Weizen/Weissbier
Type:
All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
9 EBC (Golden)
Bitterness:
14 IBU
Malts:
3500g Wheat malt
2500g Pilsener malt
200g Melanoidin malt
Mash:
44C, 15 min (acid rest)
64C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
73% efficiency
Hops:
50g Tettnanger pellets, 2.7%, 60 min
20g Tettnanger pellets, 2.7%, 10 min
Yeast:
Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan Weizen Yeast, production date 2007-01-15, 1 liter starter
Boil:
90 min
OG: 1.055 FG: 1.013 (estimated) abv: 5.5%

Brew #45: Düsseldorf Altbier

2007-03-26T21:38:00.000+02:00

Altbier is a beer that I have drunk on several occasions while visiting Germany, and I have enjoyed all of the variants I have tried. I have not been to Düsseldorf yet, but it sure is on my short list of beer cities to visit. Commerical examples seem to range from malty sweet to intensely bitter.

This recipe is for an Altbier that is on the upper end of the OG and bitterness ranges. I have tried to make it a bit sweet and with some complexity, and balanced by 35 IBUs. That should make it a nice spring beer I hope. It will have to be lagered in the fridge for a few weeks before drinking though.

The brew day lasted 5 hours and 50 minutes, of which 40 minutes was spent trying to get the wort into the fermenter. I will never ever again use whole hop cones with my current brew setup. The easy-siphon clogged and it was almost impossible to get a siphon from the brew kettle. I have used whole hops before, and do remember that I have had similar problems, but never this serious. The Spalt hops were quite small, so that might have something to do with it. I literally had to pump the wort, and that didn't always work either until I had cleared the opening. Anyway, lesson learned.

The batch was brewed 2007-03-26.

Style:
Düsseldorf Altbier
Type:
All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
34 EBC (Light brown)
Bitterness:
35 IBU
Malts:
2500g Pilsener malt
1500g Vienna malt
1300g Münchener malt
700g Cara-münich malt
50g Debittered chocolate malt
50g Debittered black malt
Mash:
67C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
73% efficiency
Hops:
60g Spalter Select whole, 5.2%, 60 min
40g Spalter Select whole, 5.2%, 10 min
Yeast:
Wyeast 1007 German Ale Yeast, production date 2006-11-17, 1 liter starter
Boil:
90 min
OG: 1.054 FG: 1.013 (estimated)

Brew #44: India Pale Ale

2007-03-25T16:57:00.000+02:00

The previous IPA was a success. We ran out of it last Saturday, so my wife asked me to make another preferrably using the exact same recipe. That was easier said than done as I had no more Crystal (135 EBC) and no more Safale US-56 dry yeast. I adjusted the recipe to use some Cara-münich malt and the Rogue Pacman yeast. I also took out the Chinook hops and added Columbus. The Amarillo also got upped a bit. In the end I think it is going to taste much the same.

Being somewhat feverish at the time I also forgot to add the mash hops, so I decided to make up for some of it by first wort hopping the 60 minutes addition of Amarillo.

The mash efficiency improved a bit this time as I tried to crush the grist a little finer. Still no sparge problems through, so there is more to go on I think.

The batch was brewed 2007-03-25. The brew day lasted 5 hours and 10 minutes.

Style:
American IPA
Type:
All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
33 EBC (Light brown)
Bitterness:
61 IBU
Malts:
6000g Maris Otter pale malt
1000g Amber malt
450g Crystal malt
400g Wheat malt
300g Cara-münich malt
200g Melanoidin malt
Mash:
66C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
69% efficiency
Hops:
50g Amarillo pellets, 8.4%, first wort hops and boiled 60 min
30g Columbus pellets 12.2%, 30 min
30g Warrior pellets 13.8% 10 min
80g Amarillo pellets 8.4%, 1 min
Yeast:
Wyeast Rogue Pacman Ale Yeast, production date 2006-11-17, 1 liter starter
Boil:
90 min
OG: 1.072 FG: 1.018 (estimated)

Building your own Randall

2007-03-18T21:19:00.000+01:00

If you want to build your own Randall then you may find this shopping list useful. I bought all the parts from Morebeer, except the 1/2" OD stainless pipe that I drilled 20 small 1.5mm holes in. I'm sure you'll find the parts elsewhere also.

MoreBeer:

1x	FIL32A - Filter Housing - 10"	$23.00
1 ft	D1710 : Beverage Line (1/2" ID)	$0.80
2x	H616 - Stainless - 1/2" mpt x 3/8" Barb	$4.95
2x	D1260 - Faucet - Hand Held	$3.25
1x	KEG720 - Ball Lock Bev Out, Black Flare	$5.95
1x	KEG610 - Flare Fitting - 1/4" Tee	$6.00
4x	KEG600 - Flare Fitting - 1/4" Swivel Nut	$0.75
4x	KEG604 - Flare Fitting - 1/4" Barb	$0.95
4x	KEG630 - Flare Fitting - 1/4" Male Flare x 1/4" Barb	$2.50
4x	KEG602 - Flare Fitting - Washer	$0.25
8x	H950 - Hose Clamp (Small)	$0.65
6 ft	D1700 - Beverage Line (3/16" ID)	$0.50
6 ft	D1702 - Beverage Line (1/4" ID)	$0.50

Using the Enamel Animal

2007-03-18T15:34:00.000+01:00

The Randall has now been tested and used twice. It worked surprisingly well on both occations. The first time with 50 grams Centennial and the Scottish Export 80/-. The second time with 40 grams Amarillo and 10 grams Sorachi Ace and the India Pale Ale. Thanks to Frode for bringing the Sorachi Ace, a Japanese hop with an intense citrus aroma.

There were no leaks and the dual-serving system was well balanced. I had expected a little more resistance in the filter housing and the hop bed, but there was nothing wrong with the flow.

50 grams seems to be just the right amount of hops to use in this filter housing. It seemed a bit too little at first, but the hops soon swelled and filled the entire volume. The pressure in the keg started the flow of beer as soon as the line was connected to the keg. The Randall got filled about half full before the flow stopped as the air could not escape. Pressing the release valve replaced the air with beer. Note that it makes sense to let the hops soak a little while first.

The resulting beer is pretty amazing. There is an extremely intense hop aroma and flavour. You really need to enjoy hops to appreciate it. I felt that the aroma and the flavour of the two were somewhat different. The Centennial appeared much more oily and pungent than the Amarillo and Sorachi Ace did. This may have something to do with the kind of beer it was served through. My impression is that it is better to serve beers that have a higher alcohol content and more bitterness as this will help balance the end result. Otherwise the result is way over the top with regards to hop aroma.

So, what other things can one put inside the Randall other than hops?

Brew #43: Extra Special Bitter

2007-03-14T18:29:00.000+01:00

This beer is a fairly bold ESB, both in original gravity and hops. It also has quite a bit of specialty malts, much more than I've had in any of my earlier attempts. I used mash hops with this brew, and it is the first time I try this in a British beer. The few times I've done this, with good results, have all been with hoppy American beer styles.

Again, I'm trying to get rid of my stock of old, but still usable yeast. I have a couple of vials of liquid yeast that I just have to throw away, but with this brew I should be left with a pretty decent set of fresh yeast packs, especially if I manage to squeeze in a double brew on Sunday. I used both the 11 grams packs I had just to be on the safe side. Even though it was past its best before date I'm sure it is more than enough of vital yeast for a beer like this. I store all my yeast, both dry and liquid, in the kitchen fridge.

The incredibly useful Mr. Malty's Pitching Rate Calculator™ says that the yeast in this particular beer must have a viability of minimum 67% for the two packs to be optimal. Go check it out. I'm sure you'll soon realize that you're underpitching. I sure did when I first tried to calculate the amount of yeast to pitch in my own beers. Since then I've tried my best to improve my pitching rates. Also make sure that you read Jamil Zainasheff's (Mr. Malty) Proper Yeast Pitching Rates article. It's almost scary how much vital yeast you need. Anyway, it is very helpful and makes you realize that yeast is extremely important to the quality of your beers.

The batch was brewed 2007-03-14.

Style:
Extra Special Bitter
Type:
All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
30 EBC (Copper)
Bitterness:
40 IBU
Malts:
5200g Maris Otter pale malt
750g Ambermalt
400g Wheat malt
450g Crystal 60L
200g Crystal 40L
250g Melanoidin malt
Mash:
66C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
73% efficiency
Hops:
50g First Gold pellets 7.3%, mash hops
50g Fuggles pellets 5.1%, 60 min
50g First Gold pellets 7.3%, 10 min
50g Fuggles pellets 5.1%, 1 min
Yeast:
Safale S-04, 2 packs, best before 2007-01
Boil:
90 min
OG: 1.066 FG: 1.016 (estimated)

You know you're a brewing nerd...

2007-03-12T21:14:00.000+01:00

...if you can spot the two logical errors in the photo below:

The mistakes I've made won't necessarily prevent the device from working, but they are clearly incorrect. Can you find them? (Click on the photo to see more details.)

I'm taking the device for a trial run on Thursday evening btw...

Update: The two logical errors were: 1. The red release valve button on top of the filter housing is placed next to the IN-connection, so having the tap mounted on this side is wrong. 2. The gray ball-lock quick connect is to be used for the IN-connection on the cornelius keg, since I want beer to flow through it I should have used a black ball-lock quick connection instead.

Bring on the hops!

2007-03-07T20:17:00.000+01:00

I'm proud to present my latest homemade brewing gadget, a Randall. Its full name is Randall The Enamel Animal, and is also known as an organoleptic hop transducer module. The contraption was first invented by the Dogfish Head Brewery. It has later been bought by many pubs serving their beers, all in the the U.S. unfortunately, but they are to my knowledge only used for special events.

I have never tried it myself, but it sure looks like I good idea. I love hops and what couldn't be better than having beer pushed through lots of delicious hops cones on the way to your glass? Yummy!

As far as I know there are no places in Europe where one can try it. So, what was there to do other than to make one myself?

The device is made from one filter canister housing with threaded barbed fittings on both sides. Inside the filter there is a stainless steel pipe with twenty small 1.5 mm drilled holes. I had to get hold of and adapt this one myself. It wasn't easy as getting hold of a 1/2" stainless steel pipe was harder than expected. I ended up buying a towel rack from IKEA(!) and sawing it into pieces with a hack saw. Drilling the holes wasn't easy either as stainless steel is a pretty hard material. I ended up using five titanium covered HSS drills.

I have installed a dual system with two picnic faucets, so that one can serve the beer from the keg directly or from the Randall. That way it will be easy to find out what effect the hops have made to the beer.

The plan is to serve the keg of India Pale Ale through it at this year's Norwegian Homebrewers Festival. So, if you'd like to try it yourself you now know where to be on March 17th.

Homebrew shops in Norway?

2007-02-23T21:07:00.000+01:00

Well, unfortunately there aren't that many options. In fact, there is just one single place where you can get a decent selection of brewing ingredients like malts and hops in this country. Yes, you heard right, just a single shop that sells hops or malts(!).

There are a lot of amateur wine and beer extract shops, but none of these provide anything close to what a non-newbie beer brewer would need. You cannot do without hops, and even malts if you're an all-grain brewer.

Petit Agentur is the place to get your brewing fix. They are located in Bergen on the west coast, something like 500 km away from where I live.

I understand that it probably isn't easy to run a small scale shop like this in a country of only 4.6 million inhabitants. So, I appreciate that there is at least someone who is willing to provide a great service to homebrewers in Norway.

Since I live in Oslo this means that I have to get orders shipped to me via the Postal Service. This is inconvenient especially when ordering sacks of malt. The shipping cost is approximately the same as the cost of the malt itself. For other brewing ingredients and other smaller items this is [almost] perfect.

The alternative for most homebrewers is to do their shopping in Sweden, Denmark or even the US.

But, if you're a homebrewer stuck in Norway this is the place.

Extracts -- good or bad?

2007-02-13T09:38:00.000+01:00

Is the use of extracts in beer brewing a good thing?

It is actually quite common for commercial breweries to use hop extracts. Even Belgian Trappist breweries do it(!). And their beers are considered among the best in the world.

In my opinion it is not necessarily a detriment to good beer. Same thing with malt extract, from which you can actually make some damn good beer. But it won't give you the same flexibility as all-grain would.

The reason the big commercial breweries use them is because they strive for consistency -- and hop extract give them just that. It is very predictable. That said they do also put a lot of effort into making beer cost-efficiently. On a larger scale the little things have a big influence on cost. Note that the reason they aren't using malt extract is that it is much more expensive than all-grain, which lets them squeeze the last drop of malt sugars out themselves.

This shouldn't stop them from making good beer though, as there is no defense against making bad beer.

Probably the best aroma in the world

2007-02-12T21:39:00.000+01:00

..or perhaps not.

I've had a 60 ml glass of liquid aroma extract that is intended to be used by commercial breweries for a while. Now this is a lot of hop extract. Well, the label does not actually say hops, whatever. The glass has been left alone in the fridge as I have had no idea what to do with it. I haven't been particularly tempted to actually try it out in one of my 25 liter batches. I do quite a bit of experimentation, but this wouldn't count as one that would be worth it.

Today I found a 500 ml can of lager lying around and found that I should give the extract a try.

Well, how much extract to use? I had no idea. I suspect that these glasses are meant to be used in pretty big batches. In retrospect I wouldn't be surprised that we're taking about something like 25.000 liters of, ahem, definitely not the best beer in the world, Danish lager. After all, there isn't that much hop aroma in a bland commercial lager.

The smallest measuring spoon I have is 1 ml and I decided to just go ahead and add that to half of the contents of the can. I did that so that I could dilute the mixture with the remaining beer, if neccessary.

The extract itself isn't particularly viscous like syrup, but is instead more like cough medicine. It smells really strong. There is an intense floral and grassy aroma that melds into an almost unbearable pungent syrup.

I stirred the extract in the 1 ml spoon into the beer. It didn't quite mix with the beer, but instead formed drops of heavier yellow clumps. If you look closely that the image above you can see these yellow drops forming.

The one sip I had from the glass almost made me puke. The experience was just too intense. It was just like drinking gasoline. I decided not to waste the remaining beer.

Well, that's enough experimentation on my part. If anybody would like to try it out in a 25 liter batch please let me know. There's still 59 ml left.

#40, #41 and #42: Kegged and bottled

2007-02-08T17:24:00.000+01:00

This time it came to a fairly short fermentation for all three brews. Both the Bohemian Pilsener and the Belgian Strong Dark fermented quickly and below their FG targets. The India Pale Ale did also ferment quickly, but didn't quite reach the target which I believe is because of a higher than intended mash temperature, complex malts and a cold fermentation.

The Belgian Strong Dark ended up with a whopping 11.3% abv. Wow. The FG was 1.011, which was 5 points below where I thought it would end up. I blame the simple sugars. Spot on with the Rochefort 10, a beer which the sample I had brought images of. I also found the beer to be a bit lighter in colour than I had expected. The same thing happened with the Belgian Amber I did a while back. The liquid candi sugar is clearly not as dark as stated on the bottle. Because this is a really strong beer it should keep for a while, so I bottled all of it. Having a 11.3% beer on tap is not optimal, it would have been fun, but not good for the keg rotation.

I mentioned earlier that there was a sulphurous smell from the Pilsener fermentation. That did go away after a couple of days. In all the fermentation was really quiet, almost no krausen on top and no bubbles through the airlock (because of a leak in the lid I guess). The FG was 1.013, exactly as estimated.

The final gravity for the India Pale Ale was 1.019, which is 3 points above the estimate. There is quite a bit of specialty malts in this beer, and some of them are not entirely fermentable. The aroma is also surprisingly nutty, likely because of the amber malts. The small uncarbonated sample I tried had a slightly sharp bitterness, but was overall not that bitter. And as expected, there was quite a bit of hop aroma. Life is good.

A brew day

2007-01-26T19:27:00.000+01:00

In order to give you a rough overview of what my brew day looks like I've created the schedule below that shows the order and the timing of the various steps that I go through when brewing a batch of beer.

00:00 weigh grist, heat mash water
00:15 crush grist (using barley crusher)
00:30 mash-in (add 80C water)
01:30 mash-out (add 100C water)
01:40 first batch sparge
01:55 add sparge water
02:05 second batch sparge
02:10 90 min: big kettle reaches boil, weigh hops
02:20 80 min: small kettle reaches boil (a little later as this contains the second sparge)
02:40 60 min: add bittering hops
03:25 15 min: add flavour hops, insert immersion chiller
03:30 10 min: add irish moss or whirlfloc, add yeast nutrient
03:40 0 min: add aroma hops, flame-out
03:45 start chilling (submerge small kettle in cold water. run tap water through chiller)
04:25 siphon wort into fermenter (splashing)
04:45 add yeast, oxygenate wort
05:30 done cleaning

A brewing session usually takes somewhere between 5 and 6 hours depending on how good I am at multi-tasking. I also get a couple of longer breaks, the first one throughout the 1 hour mash and the second between the addition of bittering hops and flavouring hops. I usually spend that time reviewing the recipe and the process itself.

As you can see above I mash for 60 minutes. The mash itself lasts 60 minutes, then boiling water is added to raise the mash to about 76C. I'm not always successful hitting that temperature, but that really depends a little on how much water there is in the mashtun already. Then I wait 10 minutes so that the mash can settle, making it less turbid. I then open the ball value and vorlauf about 1 liter, which I then pour on top of the mash through some aluminum foil.

I boil for a total of 90 minutes, but add the bittering hops 30 minutes into the boil. I do this to get a better hot break. The proteins coagulate more easily when there are no hops in there. This should in theory give clearer beer. The difference in bitterness extraction is minimal, so this a pretty good trade-off.

My chilling procedure is perhaps not the best one. I use a home-made immersion chiller which is decent. Since I have to boil in two pots I can only insert the chiller into the biggest one (20 liters). This means that I have to chill the small pot (12 liters) in the sink with cold water. This is not the most efficient way to chill wort, but it works. Chilling the wort as quickly possible is a good thing. The longer the aroma hops are steeped in the wort the more likely it is to extract vegetal flavours. Once I get my new kettle going I'll be able to chill all the wort in one go. I think the immersion chiller should work. If not I'll look into getting a plate chiller or a counter-flow chiller.

When transferring the chilled wort into the fermentation vessel I try to splash the wort as much as possible to get some in oxygen into it. The yeast needs lots of oxygen during the reproduction phase. Once everything is transferred I close the lid and shake it vigorously for a minute or two. Combined with lots of yeast this seems to work just fine.

It's alive...!

2007-01-23T18:21:00.001+01:00

Well, as you can see, the Belgian Dark Strong Ale got off to a good start. It came rushing out of the fermenter after about 18 hours. The fermenter had about 23 liters of beer in it, leaving a head space of about 5 liters. I actually had to pour out a couple of liters so that I'm able to add the remaining sugars. Even with the extra 2 liters there was still not enough room.

You can see handfuls of foam being pushed out of the fermenter as if it pulsates.

I always place my fermenters in a bucket, so that any overflow does not end up on the floor. This thing has happened before, and I've learned my lesson.

When I thought the most vigorous fermentation was over I rinsed the fermenter and the bucket. It wasn't over, so when I woke up the next morning the airlock was full of gunk. It is now in need of some serious cleaning.

The Bohemian Pilsener is also actively fermenting in the fridge, but not this vigorously. On the other hand it is emitting strong sulphur aromas (think rotten eggs), so they are both doing their best to keep my wife happy.

Brew #42: Belgian Dark Strong Ale

2007-01-21T22:13:00.000+01:00

The last beer of the day was a strong Belgian ale. I'm a bit excited about this one as it is the biggest beer I've ever made. When it is done it should have reached 11% abv (depending on how it attenuates). That's quite something, but there's not just alcohol. It will be a complex beer with significant esters and a rich sugary malt complexity. I hope. It should end up in the vicinity of the classics Westvleteren Abt 12 and St. Bernardus Abt 12.

The malt bill is quite simple, but has been extended by dark liquid candi sugar and simple sugars. The candi sugar should add complex sugars and caramel, while the simple sugars will dry it out preventing it from being cloyingly sweet. The recipe should be quite traditional -- and straightforward.

I used a big yeast starter so it should get off to a good start, but 11% is a lot of sugar and alcohol, so it puts a big burden on the yeast. It is hard to survive in such an environment. Having thought this through a little I decided to leave out the simple sugars (~1100g). This to make it a little easier for the yeast in the beginning. The plan is to add the remaining sugars after three days when the yeast have multiplied and adjusted to the environment. This particular yeast strain is a sturdy one and known to ferment up to 15% abv.

The batch was brewed 2007-01-21.

Style:
Belgian Dark Strong Ale
Type:
All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
38 EBC (Brown)
Bitterness:
29 IBU
Malts:
6500g Pale malt
1000g Pilsener malt
500g Caramünich
700g Liquid dark candi sugar
575g Demerara sugar
225g Dextrose (aka glucose)
300g Dry light malt extract
Mash:
64C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
66% efficiency
Hops:
50g Northern Brewer 10.0%, 60 min
50g Tettnanger pellets 3.8%, 15 min
30g Tettnanger pellets 3.8%, 1 min
Yeast:
White Labs WLP 530 Abbey Ale, 2 vials, best before 2007-03-03, 3.0 liter starter
Boil:
90 min
OG: 1.097 FG: 1.016 (estimated)

Brew #41: Bohemian Pilsener

2007-01-21T22:04:00.000+01:00

This beer is my first ever pilsener, or pale lager for that matter. I used a lot of hops, so I expect it to be hoppy, quite bitter and really aromatic. It wasn't intended to be like an average commercial pilsener, but something more traditional and with a lot more punch. The beer is within the style guidelines, except perhaps for the aroma hops of which there are a lot.

In an interview with Charlie Papazian, by the generous people at Basic Brewing Radio, he said that it was possible to achieve much the same kind of malty flavour produced by traditional decoction mashing by instead adding 3-4% aromatic malt to the mash. So in this beer there is 200g of melanoidin malt. I hope that that will provide a richer malt complexity than just what pilsener malt will add.

Pale lagers are quite sensitive and not able to hide flaws very well. It is supposedly hard to make a good clean lager because of this. So from what I've gathered the devil is in the details. Here are some of the things that I tried to follow when making this pilsener:

Use lots of vital yeast
Ferment cold to get a clean fermentation profile
Get rid of the hops and the break material (mostly proteins)

To brew a good lager you need a lot of yeast, thus a really big yeast starter is neccessary. For my ales of medium gravity I usually make 1 liter yeast starters from a single vial. For this one I made a 3.5 liter starter from two vials. Given that the yeast was quite old I was a bit sceptical and planned to use Saflager W-34/70 as a backup if it didn't wake up. I was wrong (read: lucky). The yeast starter was surprisingly vigorous. Liquid yeast can survive a while, especially if stored properly. Having said that, I know that is always best to use fresh yeast. I need work on my yeast logistics so that the yeast is as fresh as possible.

The beer is fermenting in the fridge between 9.2 and 10.2C. I guess I would have used an even colder setting on my thermostat, but from watching how it behaves I've seen the temperature fall down to 8.0C before it gets warmer. The reason might have something to do with where the thermostat sensor is located. Anyway, this should give a pretty clean fermentation profile.

Once the wort was chilled and transferred into the fermenter I placed it in the fridge for about 6 hours (while I was brewing the next beer). I also poured out half of the yeast starter and added fresh wort on top of it. During this time the temperature had reached the target temperature and most of the hops and break material had dropped to the bottom of the fermenter. I then siphoned the clear beer into another sanitized fermenter leaving the non-desired material behind. The goal was to not let the fermenting beer pick up any off-flavours from it. I then added the now vigorous yeast starter to the fermenter. The airlock started moving within an hour. So, the fermentation got off to a good start. We'll see how it ends up. I'm optimistic.

The batch was brewed 2007-01-21.

Style:
Bohemian Pilsener
Type:
All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
11 EBC (Golden)
Bitterness:
44 IBU
Malts:
6300g Pilsener malt
200g Carapils
200g Melanoidin malt
Mash:
65C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
66% efficiency
Hops:
15g Warrior pellets 13.8%, 60 min
50g Liberty pellets 4.0%, 60 min
50g Saaz pellets 3.9%, 15 min
50g Liberty pellets 4.0%, 5 min
50g Saaz pellets 3.9%, 1 min
Yeast:
White Labs WLP 802 Czech Budejovice Lager, 2 vials, best before 2006-07-08 and 2006-10-30, 3.5 liter starter
Boil:
90 min
OG: 1.053 FG: 1.013 (estimated)

Brew #40: India Pale Ale

2007-01-18T20:11:00.000+01:00

I'm down to just two kegs with something in them, and that's the last two beers I made. That's two out of ten kegs. What a waste! I've been procrastinating for too long now, so I went head and brewed one yesterday. And I'm brewing another two this Sunday. Usually I make two at a time, but there is only time do one brew during the weekdays.

This beer is an India Pale Ale with only American hops, so I guess it is fair to call it an American style IPA.

Mash-hopping is a technique that I have tried once before in a Rye IPA that had a delicious infusion of hops. I have reasons to believe that much of the hop flavours and aroma are there because of this unusual, but simple, technique. What I did was basically just throw the Warrior hops into the mash, and then stir them in. I did not add any bittering hops at 60 minutes as I believe that the mash hops do indeed cause some hop particles to end up in the wort and hence be isomerized in the boil making the beer more bitter. Not everybody agrees it seems, but we'll see how this one ends up.

My previous attempts at India Pale Ales have been quite a bit thinner and have been lacking much of the malt complexity that I've found in U.S. versions of the style. So, to make up for this I this time used quite a bit of amber malt and melanoidin malts (now that I have gotten hold of them) in addition to the caramel and crystal. The wort sure smelled nice, so I think this one might end up nice and complex.

The new mashtun did the job brilliantly. I love it. It is really nice to just open the ball value and drain the vessel that way. As an experiment I found that I should just do a single sparge to see if that worked well or not. The mashtun has a capacity of 49 liters, but remember that once the grist is in there there isn't that much room for sparge water anymore. The grains will also absorb about the same amount of water as its own weight. So, with 8 kilos of grains in there, 32 liters seems to be the maximum volume of wort that you can get out of it with just a single sparge. Also, I only got 60% mash efficiency this time, which is below average. I suspect that this was because I did just this single sparge. Next time I'll do two batch sparges.

The batch was brewed 2007-01-18.

Style:
American IPA
Type:
All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
28 EBC (Light brown)
Bitterness:
56 IBU (a rough estimate because of the mash hops)
Malts:
6000g Maris Otter pale malt
1000g Amber malt
500g Carapils
400g Wheat malt
200g Crystal malt
200g Melanoidin malt
200g Dry light malt extract (to make up for the low efficiency)
Mash:
66C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
60% efficiency
Hops:
75g Warrior pellets 13.8%, mash hops (last 30 min of mash)
40g Chinook pellets 12.0%, 30 min
60g Amarillo pellets 8.4%, 15 min
80g Warrior pellets 13.8% 1 min
Yeast:
Safale US-56, dry yeast, best before 2007-12
Boil:
90 min
OG: 1.065 FG: 1.016 (estimated)

Ten beers for a beer list

2007-01-10T17:57:00.000+01:00

Knut Albert recently started an interesting series of blog posts about what would constitute a nice pub. Today he posted his list of 10 imported bottled beers that deserve a place on a beer menu. All the beers on the list must be available on the Norwegian market, but must not be Norwegian beers (that's for another list).

This makes for an interesting subject, so I've decided to create my own list. The beers are (in alphabetical order):

Note that this list does not constitute a list of my favourite ten imported beers, but more a diverse list that could be a beer list at a pub. Those would of course not be the same, but there are overlaps.

Creating such a list is really hard given its small size. A list of 20 beers would be a lot easier. One have to make sure that there's something for everybody, so a broad selection of beer styles is needed IMO. As the Norwegian market for imported beers is very small some bland beers like Guinness Draft and Hoegaarden Witbier ended up on the list. There are certainly other beers that I would have liked to see on it, but they are not available in Norway.

blog.geirove.org

2007-01-09T21:40:00.000+01:00

With the new Custom Domains feature in Blogger all links to this blog now resolve to blog.geirove.org
instead of geirove.blogspot.com. The old address still works, but redirects here. This is probably not very useful to you, but now you know.

Mashtuns - new and old

2007-01-08T17:52:00.000+01:00

New and old mashtuns together. The new mashtun will double my mash capacity. Another nice thing is that I can get away with just one sparge. With the old mashtun I had to do two batch sparges, each 15 liters, as there was not enough room for all the wort at the same time. The new one is more than big enough to hold all the wort. I'll have to do some testing to see if doing just one sparge affects the mash efficiency.

My old mashtun

2007-01-07T11:57:00.000+01:00

This is what my old mashtun looks like. It is a small Thermos Weekend Sky Cooler with an internal volume of 28 liters. I suspect that this also includes the space beneath the lid. With this one I've been able to mash up to 7 kilos of malt. It has been serving me well.

The cooler did not have a built-in spigot, so I had to make a manifold myself out of copper pipes. It must be left in the mashtun throughout the mash, and once the mash is done tubing can be connected to the pipe sticking out of the mash. It is then easy to start a siphon. I usually vorlauf the first liter of wort, or so, before draining everything into the kettle.

The copper manifold is made out of 4 elbows, 1 tee and about 1.5 meters of straight copper piping cut into smaller pieces. All the pieces are connected with teflon tape. I also used a hammer to tighten the connections so that they don't come loose too easily. It would suck if the manifold fell apart in the mash - fortunately that hasn't happened.

To be able to extract the wort I've cut small slots into the manifold with a hacksaw. There's about 1 cm between each slot. Creating a manifold like this actually quite straightforward.

My new mashtun

2007-01-06T10:58:00.000+01:00

The new Coleman Extreme 52 qt cooler has been retrofitted into a mashtun. It is now ready to replace my old mashtun. I bought it off eBay for USD 19.99 plus shipping. The cooler is a new-return, so it has a few scratches and a little dirt on it, but that does not really matter. The price was certainly right. This cooler is supposed to be extremely well insulated and will keep the mash temperature consistent throughout the mash.

The cooler came with a plastic spigot, but that one isn't very useful for any brewing purposes. So, I ended up getting hold of a weldless cooler conversion kit from Homebrew Heaven. The conversion kit is called Weld-B-Gone Deluxe Kettle Conversion Kit. Unfortunately the wall in this particluar cooler is about 2 cm thick, so I had to extend the nipple in the bulkhead with a longer one from Morebeer. Even this one was a tight fit.

Here you see the new converted cooler with the lid closed. The spigot can be seen on the left side. The cooler holds 52 quarts or 49.2 liters. This will allow me to do mashes of up to 15 kilos, which should be more than enough for my 25 liter batches. You'll see some big beers coming soon.

On my first attempt at installing the conversion kit I had quite a bit of problems getting everything watertight. No matter how hard I secured the spigot and the o-rings there was always some water escaping down onto the floor. Not good. The solution was to use silicone sealant. Silicone worked nicely, and on my second attempt everything was watertight. I've also used teflon tape on all threads. If you look closely at the photo above you can see the mashtun full of water. It didn't spill a drop of water. Let's hope that it continues that way when I do my first real mash.

The spigot includes a security lock that prevents it from being opened inadvertently. Click on the images to see more details.

On the inside I've connected a Bazooka Screen to the bulkhead fitting. This one works as the strainer, so that the wort can be separated from the grains. The screen is made from stainless steel and feels quite sturdy, so I think it should be able to hold a full mashtun without collapsing.

Here the Bazooka screen can be seen in more detail. There are 1/2" threads on it, so it can be screwed onto the bulkhead without problems. One of the nicer things about this cooler is that there is a lowered area at the bottom that drains the liquid down towards the spigot. This is great as the screen fits right into it. When I drained the water only 1.5 dl was left(!). That is incredibly little remaining liquid, so I can look forward to extracting pretty much all the wort in the mash tun (except the liquid absorbed by the grains, of course).

Homebrew Heaven:

1x	Weld-B-Gone™ Deluxe Kettle Conversion Kit	$36.95
1x	The Bazooka Screen™	$16.95

Morebeer:

H612 : Stainless Nipple - 1/2" x 1.5'' Threaded

$3.90

Total cost: USD 57.80 (plus shipping and VAT)

Beer and cheese - a perfect match

2007-01-04T22:24:00.000+01:00

Wine, and not beer, has been considered the customary drink to serve with cheese. Everytime I've had cheese at a dinner it has always been with red wine. A month ago, or so, I had beer with cheese at a local restaurant here in Oslo. That was a pleasant surprise. The proposed beers were Nøgne Ø Porter and Aass Bock. I chose the bock to go with the four cheeses. This was truely a mind-opener.

On New Year's Eve we tried a beer and cheese pairing with a couple of friends. Four cheeses and four beers. This was the third dish, served just before dessert and after the main course. This is what we had:

I am a bit disappointed with Brie as it can be very dull and tasteless sometimes. Quite a few of them are produced for the mass market, much like the yellow swill you can get in bottles. This one in particular was really dull and tasted almost nothing, but it did have the texture and oiliness of the style. The spicy saison handled the oiliness wonderfully, but it would have been nice with a more characterful cheese. Try a matured Brie instead, or perhaps even a Camembert.

The Taleggio had much more character and matched the sweetness in the Belgian amber ale nicely.

It seems really hard to get hold of good Manchego cheese here in this country. Either it is too dry or too rubbery. This one was too rubbery and had almost no flavour. The weissbier was thought to be a great match with almost any kind of cheese, even this one.

All cheese plates need a blue cheese of some sort, this one included. Since I knew that at least one of the diners did not like blue cheese I settled with a mild one, a Saint Agur. A characterful cheese needs a characterful beer to balance the sharpness. The porter handled the job nicely.

Knowing which kind of cheese goes with what kind of beer is not very obvious, but after having tried this I'd say that it is really hard to go wrong. Pairing cheese and beer is fun. Give it a try.

To get you started, here are a few articles on the subject: [1], [2], [3]

#38 and #39: Kegged and bottled

2006-12-30T18:26:00.000+01:00

It took the Citrus Grisette 20 days to reach its final gravity. Actually it went a little past to 1.008 (1.011 estimated), so the beer should hold around 4.8% abv. The WLP400 yeast has been slow every time I have used it. The foam in the fermentation tank came rushing out on the first day, but the fermentation soon slowed down. I therefore moved the fermentation tank to the bathroom at day four, so for the last 16 days it fermented at 24C. The high temperature didn't seem to affect the flavour in any way.

I always drink the sample that I take for the hydrometer jar. The beer seemed light and quite clean with a hint of coriander and citrus. It is always a bit hard to tell exactly how it will end up as there is still some yeast floating around and next to no carbonation in the sample.

The Scottish Export 80/- had an FG of 1.012 (1.011 estimated), so it was pretty much spot on. That should result in 4.2% abv. The yeast, WLP028, is an extremely fast fermenter as the entire beer fermented out completely in about three days. I didn't bother checking the gravity, but that's when the fermentation lock activity stopped. Lazy as I am, I waited for the Grisette to finish, so that I could keg them both at the same time. I've never had any noticeable side effects from leaving the beer on the yeast cake a few more days. I'll definitely use the Edinburgh yeast again.

The flavour is slightly biscuity from the amber malt. Quite nice actually. I was a bit curious about the effects of the amber malts, and 7% of the malt bill (400 grams) seems not to be too much. I'll probably use more of it in the next beer.

The cat ate my fermentation locks...

2006-12-14T17:54:00.000+01:00

Our cat is a notorious hunter, and interested in anything that moves. Surprised I was when I woke up one morning finding the cat on top of one of the carboys chewing on the fermentation lock. I had brewed the beers the day before. The little cat had seemingly been hunting bubbles throughout most of the morning. Fortunately, no beer was hurt.

So, this is the reason why I no longer tighten the cap on the carboys. Instead I leave the cap loose, so that the CO2 can escape without going through the liquid in the fermentation lock. Ever since I did this the cat has lost interest. So, if you have a cat: beware. You have been warned.

Taking the new kettle for a spin

2006-12-11T20:34:00.000+01:00

I thought that using the new kettle for the two batches yesterday was a little premature as I was unsure of whether the stove could actually bring 30 liters to a boil. Instead I used my old 20 liter and 13 liter pots to boil the 28-30 liters of wort retrieved from the mash. That has worked fine on this stove and it usually takes about 15 minutes to get the big pot to a boil from mashout temperature, and about the same time to get the little one to a boil, but that one is put on the stove 15 minutes later as it contains the output of the second [batch] sparge. As I boil the beer for a total of 90 minutes this works just fine as I can have both pots ready at a full boil for the first hop infusion at 60 minutes.

In order to find out whether the stove, on which the biggest element is 2000 watts (or 1800 watts for all I know), would be good enough for the job. I started out by filling the kettle with 30 liters of 12 degrees C tap water. This took exactly 2 hours to bring to a boil, at 100C, with the lid covering the the kettle.

Sugar solutions, like wort, have a slightly higher boiling temperature, so it will in theory require a bit more energy to reach a rolling boil. The stove was able to maintain a decent rolling boil even after I removed the lid. That's pretty good, but the time it took to reach a boil was substantial.

This all means that my stove is able to heat 30 liters of water at a rate of 0.73C per minute. In theory that means that it should be able to raise the wort from a mashout temperature of 76C to 100C in 17.6 minutes -- provided that there is no temperature loss between mashout and starting to heat the kettle. In real life I would expect something like 25 minutes.

So, given this, I think I'll give the brew kettle a try for my next brew, just to see how it behaves with actual wort and in a real setting. But, there is no doubt I will need a little more power to cut down on the time and make the boil more vigorous. One alternative might be to insulate the kettle.

Brew #39: Scottish Export 80/-

2006-12-10T20:31:00.000+01:00

Today's last brew is a Scottish Export, aka eighty shilling ale. It is a traditional Scottish session ale. The ale is somewhat dark and will hopefully have a malty and slightly nutty character balanced by crisp hops.

This is the first time I use Amber malt, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it affects the result. The yeast is a Scottish yeast strain, which is supposedly a real work-horse.

As per Charlie Papazian's recommendation I added 1/2 ts of cinnamon powder to the mash. This is done to prevent wort oxidization as cinnamon is an efficient antioxidant. I did this to the Grisette as well. The cinnamon should not have any influence on the flavour of the finished beer, at least that's what he said. We'll see. I also used 2 ts of 5.2 in the mash.

For the record: the pale malt was 3700 grams Muntons Pearl Pale Malt and 800g of Castle Pale Malt as I ran out of the first. The Amber malt is from Castle Malting and the Crystal malt from Muntons.

I got terribly low mash efficiency with this beer also. Now I suspect that the crush on the malt mill is too coarse. I'll try to reduce the roller gap for the next brew.

The batch was brewed 2006-12-10.

Style:
Scottish Export 80/-
Type:
All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
26 EBC (Light copper)
Bitterness:
23 IBU
Malts:
4500g Pale malt
500g Crystal malt
400g Amber malt
250g Wheat malt
Mash:
67C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
62% efficiency
Hops:
40g East Kent Goldings pellets 4.9%, 60 min
40g Fuggles pellets 5.1%, 15 min
30g Cascade pellets 5.9%, 1 min
Yeast:
White Labs WLP 028 Edinburgh Ale, best before 2006-09-16, 1 liter starter
Boil:
90 min
OG: 1.044 FG: 1.011 (estimated)

Brew #38: Citrus Grisette

2006-12-10T20:30:00.000+01:00

This is an interpretation of an old Belgian beer style called Grisette. It is generally considered to be a low-alcohol version of a saison. In fact this one is quite similar to a witbier, as you can see from the recipe. The Grisettes generally have less wheat in them than in this recipe. All the witbiers I've made so far have had dried bitter orange peel and sweet orange peel in them. This time I wanted to experiment with zest from fresh lemon and lime.

I'm still struggling to get a proper mash efficiency when brewing witbiers. This time I mashed all the raw wheat with 1/3 pilsner malts for about 20 minutes. Then I boiled the mix for about 20 minutes to gelatinize the wheat before dumping it into the mash tun with the rest of the malts. Still, the mash efficiency of 64% is much better than the 55% got the last time when I did not boil. It does indeed look like it pays for itself to boil the mix.

The batch was brewed 2006-12-10.

Style:
Grisette
Type:
All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
6 EBC (Pale yellow)
Bitterness:
14 IBU
Malts:
3000g Pilsner malt
3000g Raw wheat kernels
Mash:
64C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
64% efficiency
Spices:
zest from 1 lemon
zest from 1 lime
15 g coriander seeds
15 black pepper corns
Hops:
50g Tettnanger pellets 2.7%, 60 min
20g Tettnanger pellets 2.7%, 15 min
Yeast:
White Labs WLP 400 Belgian Wit, best before 2006-09-16, 1 liter starter
Boil:
90 min
OG: 1.045 FG: 1.011 (estimated)

My new brew kettle

2006-12-09T18:51:00.000+01:00

I got a new brew kettle in the mail today. I bought it from Brew 4 less for only USD 99. It holds 34 liters (9 gallons) and is made from type 304 stainless steel. That should be plenty of room for my 25 liter brews, but it is not big enough should I wish to step up to 40 liter batches in the future.

The kettle comes with a lid, a built-in thermometer gauge with Fahrenheit and Celsius scales and a brass ball value. Other similar kettles cost between 200 and 250 USD, so this is quite a bargain.

The thermometer is primarily useful when cooling the wort in the kettle. It will allow me to see when the wort is cold enough to transfer. The ball value has a 3/8" barb that lets me connect heat resistant silicone tubing, so that I can drain the wort directly into the fermenter.

Overall it looks quite sturdy. The only defect I've found is that one end of the lid handle had broken loose. It seemed like the glue had loosed. I've now added more glue, so we'll see if that fixes it or not. This is really a minor issue, and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to repair this.

Now the big question is whether my stove can actually bring 30 liters of wort to a boil.

Belgian Amber

2006-12-01T23:14:00.000+01:00

In May this year I brewed a Belgian Amber (aka. #33) at 6.6% abv. I originally intended it to be a Dubbel, but it ended up a bit too light in colour, hence the Amber designation. I used the much hyped liquid dark candy sugar that you now can get in homebrew shops, particularly in the U.S., but also here in Europe. The hype started because Stan Hieronymus wrote about it in his book Brew Like a Monk and later in a blog posting. Up until then people had thought that the Belgian brewers had used [expensive] crystallized candy sugar. According to his book the real ingredient is liquid, not crystallized, dark candy sugar.

The Belgian Amber was brewed with the WLP500 yeast from White Labs. This is supposedly the Chimay strain. I've brewed with it once before and it is indeed very characteristic with a lot of banana character, even when brewed at temperatures around 19-20 degrees C. After six months the banana aromas are now gone. It was a bit disappointing at first, but the beer has finally mellowed out and become a really nice Belgian style ale. The beer itself is slightly sweet and nicely balanced by hops.

In the near future I'm planning on making a stronger and darker Belgian ale, something resembling Westvleteren Abt 12 or St. Bernardus Abt 12. More about this in a little while.

A fifth faucet. sigh

2006-11-30T20:03:00.000+01:00

Sorry. When I got a tip about there being cheap stout faucets available on eBay I couldn't resist. The thing is called a Dalex Free-flow Tap with flow control. It's not particularly pretty, but I've got big hopes for the heads on my future stouts.

I managed to squeeze it in between the two middle chrome faucets. If you look closely at the photo taken inside the fridge you can see that there was just a small area where it could be mounted. The shank was also just long enough for the nut to get a grip. Next step is to hook up the new faucet to the keg containing oatmeal stout. Yummy. This hobby is clearly living its own life...

Kegerator: a walkthrough

2006-11-20T20:57:00.000+01:00

Here are a few photos illustrating what the kegerator looks like now and how all the pieces were connected.

This first photo shows what the fridge looked like right after I started on the project. I used brown tape to line up the faucets, measuring exactly how each of the taps were to be placed. The tape, a black marker pen and a measuring stick helped with keeping them in line with an exact distance between each. If you look closely you can see the second hole having been drilled, but the faucet not yet connected.

You can also see the temperature controller that is managing the temperature level in the fridge. A small black probe runs into the fridge through the door lining.

The remaining photos were taken after the kegerator was finished. The photo above includes the CO2 tank and the gas line running into the fridge through a small hole in the fridge wall. The gas line is about 2 feet of 5/16 inch ID (inner dimension). The gas line is connected to the CO2 regulator with a swivel nut and a 1/4 inch stem. The gas line is then thread onto the connecting barb. I had to dip the various gas and beer lines in really hot water to be able to get them onto the barbs. Without the hot-water trick it would have been almost impossible, especially with the 5/16 inch barb on the gas manifold below.

I had feared that there would be cooling lines running through the sides of the fridge, so I drilled very carefully when doing the hole on the right side. Fortunately there were no such lines. I had also heard mentions of such cooling lines only existing in really old refridgerators. Newer ones rely on cooling just in the back. I'm not sure if that means cooling lines in the back wall or just the metallic cooling plate inside the fridge.

Here we're inside the fridge and you can see the gas line coming in through the wall from the outside. You cannot actually see it here, but the gas line is connected through a quick connect before being hooked onto the [golden] manifold that you can see in the back. This is a four-way gas manifold with individual shut-off handles. From the manifold four gas lines run into a keg each. You can see one of the black ball-lock gas quick-connects attached to the gas-in connect on the keg below.

I added the quick connection to the gas line so that I later can disconnect the manifold and run the gas line directly to one keg. That would typically happen when I would want to carbonate a keg quickly at high pressure. I don't think it'd make sense to run that through the manifold.

The white ball-lock quick connect is attached to the liquid-out connect on the keg. Because the gas will be pushed in through the gas-in connect the beer will be pushed out though this one.

This is the fridge door and the shanks connected through it. The shanks are 1 inch thick, so the holes are also that size. The shank tail-piece is then connected to the beer line through a barb and an adjustable clamp. Note that I've used these adjustable clamps everywhere a line is connected to a barb. There should be twenty of them; 4 connected to the shanks, 4 to the beer line going into the kegs, 4 to the gas line going out of the kegs, 4+1 on the manifold, 2 on the gas quick connect and finally 1 on the regulator.

Here you can see all four shanks. Note that the fourth one, on the left, is not yet connected to a beer line, so only three beers are on tap at the moment.

This is a nice view from above of the four faucets and the drip tray on the fridge front.

Finally, two photos giving a somewhat fuller view.

Note that I've chosen to use swivel nuts and adjustable connects everywhere, so that all parts can be easily disassembled and cleaned. OK, enough kegerator postings for now.

Building the kegerator: finding the parts

2006-11-09T20:56:00.000+01:00

It has now been a few weeks since I installed the taps on the refrigerator, effectively making it a kegerator. I'm very happy with it so far and it has worked very well.

There are three kegs connected, serving a Witbier, a Christmas beer and an Oatmeal Stout. The fourth tap will have to wait a little as I'm missing a gas quick disconnect. I don't know why it got lost. The flow rate and carbonation levels seem to be quite alright, except that I seem to be having a leaky keg leaving the Witbier a bit low in carbonation. I tend to close the CO2 tank when the kegerator is not in use, just so that I don't end up with an empty tank without wanting to. I'll have to take a closer look at the keg to give it a better seal. A little lubricant and a tighter lid might help.

Much of the challenge of designing it has been to get hold of all the necessary pieces so that it would actually work. Below you'll find a list of all the components that I used. I bought the equipment from MoreBeer and Brewers Discount.

MoreBeer:

1x	D1413 - Drip Tray - 13" Wall Mount	$49.00
1x	D1810 - Gas Manifold - 4 Way	$47.50
12 ft	D1704 - Beverage Line (5/16 in. ID)	$7.20
16 ft	D1700 - Beverage Line (3/16 in. ID)	$8.00
1x	H550 - Beer & Gas Line QD Set - In-line W/ Shut-off	$13.95

Brewers Discount:

4x	Shank Assembly with 4 1/8" Shank	$118.00
4x	BL010-QD Gas 1/4" MFL	$15.00
4x	BL010-1-QD Liquid 1/4" MFL	$15.00
9x	H011-Swivel Nut and Stem 1/4"	$14.85

Total cost: USD 288.50 (plus shipping and VAT)

Hopefully the list is helpful and that it might help you get started on your own kegerator.

Update: After rechecking the setup I realize that it is a ninth swivel-nut and stem that I am missing, and not a gas-in quick disconnect. The reason is that I had to use one to connect the gas line to the CO2 regulator. I've updated the costs above accordingly.

Can't come up with a name for your beer?

2006-10-28T14:16:00.000+02:00

Then the Random Beer Name Generator is there to help you. Just press the button and it will propose a name. Here are some neat ones:

Old Mushroom Cloud Russian Imperial Stout
Hannibal's Grunting Red Squid Wit
Count Chocula's Craptacular Yellow Jellyfish Rauchbier
Spiderman's Poisonous Gloworm American Light Lager
Nuclear Rat Lambic
Hairy Pilsner
The Moose Formerly Known As Satan's Stumbling Tripel
Ancient Oud Bruin
Flatulent Stout
Curried Beazelbub Bière de Garde
Stinky Klingon Bock
Black Joyous Crackhouse Koelsch
Bald Barrel Wee Heavy
Buddha's Tubular Lemur Rauchbier

As you can see there's something for everybody.

WTF, a red Guinness?

2006-10-26T17:42:00.000+02:00

I didn't see this coming. It looks like they call it a stout, but I find that a bit strange. It is going to be interesting to see how it compares to their Kilkenny.

We've been taking our life in our hands and working hard on a really exciting new Guinness innovation. Called Guinness Red, it uses lightly roasted barley to give it the kind of rich red colour that you can already see at the bottom of a pint of Guinness Draught if you hold it up to the light. Its got a well balanced, bitter-sweet taste and still has all the hallmarks of the Guinness pint that you know and love - 2 part pour, surge and settle and a cracking creamy Guinness head.

More info on The Guinness Blog.

A beautiful beer label

2006-10-22T19:12:00.000+02:00

This is the prettiest beer label I know. It is designed by Tara McPherson.

The beer, Dogfish Head Fort, isn't too bad either I believe. In fact it is the world's strongest fruit beer at 18% alcohol by volume, and made from a "ridiculous" amount of raspberries.

I'm fortunate to have one of these bottles in stock as I found it at a Whole Foods store in New York City. The cashier was shocked by the fact that I was willing to pay $19.95 for a bottle. I told her - why not, as that's what people would gladly cash out for a not too special bottle of wine. We'll see what I think of what is inside the bottle. I'll probably open it within the next few weeks.

My new kegerator

2006-10-19T20:42:00.000+02:00

Yes, kegerator. I've had the equipment for some time, but I only now managed to get started on the project. It went surprisingly well. As the fridge can accommodate four Cornelius kegs, it could just as well have four faucets. That's perhaps a little overkill, but it sure looks nice.

I haven't actually tried dispensing anything through the faucets yet, because I need to think I little bit through how I should clean them. That'll probably be straightforward once I've figured it out.

(Click on the picture to get one with higher resolution.)

...and Beer flavoured potato chips

2006-10-18T22:59:00.000+02:00

Cheddar and beer chips have been available in the US for a while, but I recently learned about the fact that there is now also a UK variant made from Adnams Broadside, matured cheddar and potato chips.

Get it here.

Update: Here is another.

Beer flavoured lip balm

2006-10-18T17:54:00.000+02:00

Oskar Blues has come up with a great new product idea: beer flavoured lip balm. It is called Old Chub Lib Balm after their Old Chub Scottish strong ale, which is a very nice ale by the way.

Here's their product description:

"Chub Stick" is the world's first beer lip balm. Our small-batch, custom-made balm is made with almond and macadamia nut oils, beeswax, cocoa and other essential oils... and a dash of Old Chub beer and the malts and hops used in brewing Old Chub! It smells and tastes great (like Old Chub), keeps your kisser in sip shape, and it's SPF 15, too.

So when can we expect the Double IPA lip balm?

Brewers lingo, explanation of some terms

2006-10-11T20:15:00.000+02:00

If you are new to brewing I have probably confused you by using technical brewing terminology in earlier posts. I have been asked to explain some of them, so here you go.

EBC (European Brewing Convention) - a unit for measuring beer color. This scale is mostly used in Europe, while in the US the SRM (Standard Reference Method) unit is used. Higher values indicate a darker beer.

IBU (International Bittering Unit) - a unit for measuring the hop bitterness in a beer as contributed by the alpha acids in hops. IBUs of between 15 (less bitter) and 70 (bitter) are common.

OG, SG and FG (Original Gravity, Specific Gravity and Final Gravity respectively) - describe the concentration of sugars in the beer/wort. The value is a factor indicating the relative gravity (weight) to water. OG is the gravity before fermentation. SG is the gravity as measured at an arbitrary point during fermentation. FG is the gravity after fermentation, i.e. when all the sugars have been eaten by the yeast. Note that not all sugars will be depleted as yeast strains have relative merits for eating complex sugars. This means that the final gravity will rarely fall below 1.000, but usually end up in the 1.006-1.025 range. Higher values indicate a sweeter beer. Sugar is heavier than water. Alcohol is lighter than water, hence the possibility of the final gravity falling below 1.000.

Mash efficiency - a measure given in percentage indicating the efficiency of the mash relative to the amount of sugars than can theoretically be extracted from the malts. It is a goal for the brewer to achieve a high mash efficiency as it will lower costs, i.e. use less malts to achieve a higher original gravity.

Gelatinizing - grains/cereals that have not been malted have to be gelatinized to expose the starch, so that enzymes can break them down into simpler sugars. Boiling them will usually do this. They will not provide any enzymes themselves, so the enzymes will have to come from malts. In other words, the cereals will have to be mixed with malts so that enzymes can break down the starch.

Please let me know if you'd like to have other aspects of brewing or brewing terminology explained.

Travel: Edinburgh

2006-10-03T17:16:00.000+02:00

I spent last week in Edinburgh. It is indeed a beautiful city with its medieval buildings and the illuminated castle on top of a hill right downtown. The city is nice to look at, but it also offers a great number of excellent pubs that serve delicious cask ales.

A lot of pubs seemed to have the standard line-up with Belhaven Best, Guinness, Stella Artois, Tennents Lager and Strongbow, and if you were lucky Caledonian ales. Only a small number of pubs had cask-ales beyond one or two from Caledonian, typically Caledonian 80/- and Deuchars IPA.

My favourite pubs were:

Thompson's Bar
Cloisters
Guildford Arms
Halfway House
Blue Blazer
Bow Bar
Abbotsford

All of the above pubs had taps to please the swill-drinkers, but they also had a nice selection of cask ales in top shape. Most of them standard taps, but also a few of them dedicated to guest ales. I love the idea of guest beers as new ones will be put on as soon as the current ones are empty. Within a day or two the guest taps rotate, and the next time you visit the pub there is going to be new beers to try out. Very nice. I wish they would do the same thing here in Oslo...

Real ales typically have a soft mouthfeel, very little carbonation (condition), a subtle maltiness and a mellow hop aroma and bitterness. Some of them venture into more hop bitterness, but it never gets out of hand. The alcohol content of most of the beers I tried was in the 3.4 - 4.3% range. The various ales were surprisingly similar, which is a bit sad as I cannot see why brewers could not apply more creativity when making them. There is afterall a surging interest in craft ales. The only American influence I could see was the fact that a some of them used citrusy American hops.

Anyway, thanks to the half-pint, I managed to get through about 60 different real ales.

#36 and #37: Kegged and bottled

2006-10-02T22:41:00.000+02:00

After about four hours the two beers have now been transferred into bottles and kegs. This also includes removing the labels from two cases of beer bottles. I ended up with 23 bottles of the Christmas beer and 12 bottles of the witbier (each 330 ml). The rest went into two kegs. I used 50 grams of sugar in the bottles.

The FG of the Christmas beer was 1.022, quite a bit higher than I had expected. I assume that it has reached its final gravity as it was pretty active throughout the fermentation and there is a big yeast cake at the bottom. Three weeks of primary fermentation should be plenty. This is in theory a bit dangerous as the beer may continue fermenting in the bottle if there is actually more sugar left in the beer. I'll just have to keep a look at the carbonation level over the next few weeks. Another possibility is that the sample I used to measure the starting gravity was not representative. I've seen that before, but usually the other way around with the sample being higher in gravity.

The bottles of witbier are now to be stored in room temperature for about a week or two until all the sugars have been eaten up by the yeast producing [natural] carbonation. The bottles of Christmas have been placed in the fridge as the lager beer is to be lagered for a few weeks. They are in the fridge together with the two kegs. I'm targeting a lagering temperature of 1-2C. It should be down at that temperature tomorrow morning. At that time I'll also add some more CO2 to the kegs. The witbier should be ready to be served once it has been chilled and CO2 has been added.

I had a taste of the Christmas beer after measuring the gravity. It was warm and without carbonation, so it is not exactly like the final product, but the taste was promising.

#36 and #37: An update

2006-09-23T19:44:00.000+02:00

The specific gravity (SG) of the Christmas beer is down to 1.024. It has still got another 0.007 to go, so I can't keg it today. In any case I could't have done that as I haven't done a diacetyl rest[1] yet. I'm travelling the next week [to Edinburgh, Scotland], so I cannot do anything about it until I'm back. Sunday next week is the most likely option for kegging this beer.

The witbier is down to 1.012 and has reached its final gravity (FG). So this beer is done, but I didn't bother to actually keg it today, so it will have to wait another week. I don't think that will make much of a difference. I have had beers in the primary for more than three weeks before and that did not hurt them at all. People seem very afraid of yeast autolysis, but I believe that it is way exaggerated.

I tasted the samples from both. The wit seems really nice, mellow and well-balanced. The Christmas ale still have quite a bit of yeast in suspension and have a sulphur-like, perhaps it is diacetyl, aroma and flavour. I guess that will mellow out with the diacetyl rest and the lagering. This is my first lager, so I don't have much experience with how lagers behave throughout fermentation and lagering. So far things seem just fine.

[1] A diacetyl rest is to let the beer ferment at a warmer temperature so that the diacetyl build-up in the beer can be purged from the fermentation vessel. This usually take a day or so. It is only done with lagers as they are fermented at lower temperatures.

Extreme vs. wussy brewing

2006-09-22T17:58:00.000+02:00

vs.

Oh, come on! This is the dullest decision I've seen in a long time. Why underestimate your audience...?

I've been looking forward to reading this book by Sam Calagione, of Dogfish Head fame, for a long time now [and I still do]. It should be out by November 1st 2006.

If it is so that these two books are really the same, which it looks like, I must say I'm saddened. If they've changed the contents too then I'm even more worried. Anyway, I'll stay away from the UK version.

Pictures: Beers fermenting

2006-09-16T17:57:00.000+02:00

The Christmas beer and the wit started fermenting pretty fast. I was a bit worried about the lager yeast as it was very quiet and didn't seem to be alive, but not so. The first bubbles in the fermenation lock came after about 24 hours. So the conclusion is that the yeast spends quite a bit of time reproducing before starting off with a more active fermentation.

The wit was alive after just a few hours. As you can see from the picture below it got off to a rather violent fermentation. This happens with certain yeast strains. It keeps building up until the head reaches the top of the fermenter before it comes bursting out, either through the fermentation lock or through the cap. The fermenter is 30 liters, so the headspace is only 5 liters, not much really. I usually leave the cap open and loose, to avoid that something unfortunate should happen. I would hate to see the fermenter clog and then explode, so would my wife I think. Clogging would only happen when there are sizeable particles, like orange peel, in the fermenting beer. It is more a theoretical possibility, but I'd rather be too careful.

The two beers have now fermented for five days, but I plan to let them go on for a little while more before kegging. Usually I let them sit for anywhere between one and three weeks, depending on me being prepared to keg and whether the final gravity has been reached.

The lager is fermenting in my temperature controlled fridge which I keep at a temperature of between 9.5 and 10.5C (9.7C when the picture was taken). The white thermostat that you see to the right can be configured with a temperature range in which it keeps the fridge. From the thermostat there is a small external sensor cord that runs into the fridge.

The wit is fermenting at room temperature, which have been in the range between 20 to 21C the first five days. This is perhaps a tad too high, but the yeast specifications seems to indicate that this is just fine. We'll see. Other wits I've made have been fermenting at 19C.

Brew #37: Christmas Beer

2006-09-11T22:00:00.000+02:00

This is an interpretation of a modern Norwegian Christmas Beer, a malty sweet dark lager with red and brown notes. The batch was brewed 2006-09-11.

Style:
Norwegian Christmas Beer
Type:
All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
34 EBC (Light brown)
Bitterness:
20 IBU
Malts:
5500g Münchner malt
1000g Pilsner malt
400g Crystal malt
60g Chocolate malt
750g Dry light malt extract
Mash:
68C, 60 min
76C, 10 min (mashout)
70% efficiency
Hops:
30g Northern brewer pellets 10%, 60 min
20g Tettnanger pellets 2.7%, 15 min
Yeast:
White Labs WLP 838, 3 liter starter
Boil:
90 min
OG: 1.070 FG: 1.017 (estimated)

This is actually my first ever lager beer. We'll see how that goes. I tried to make a big starter, but I'm surprised to see that the starter is not very active. I even used two vials. The yeast seem to want to stick to the bottom, so I'm not sure if it is dead or just bottom fermenting. Well, I'll know soon.

The mash efficiency was 70%, so we're back to normal. I used a tablespoon of 5.2 this time. Didn't seem to have any significant effect, but I'll try it next time as well.

Style: Norwegian Christmas Beer

2006-09-11T21:23:00.000+02:00

The Christmas beers have a stronghold in Norway. Given the current state of affairs, that is kind of surprising. They are released the first week of November every year. There are two kinds, one at ~4.7% (class D) and one at ~6.5% (class F). It is the strongest one that is the traditional one, but it lost most of its market when strong beers where moved to Vinmonopolet, the government owned stores, about a decade ago.

They are all lagers, which I believe is a direct consequence of all the Norwegian breweries being lager breweries. Recently microbreweries have started making Christmas beers too, but they do not typically fall into this beer style.

If you've never tried one then expect something in-between a Münchener dunkel and a Doppelbock.

Norbrygg, the Norwegian Homebrewers Association, defines the style as follows:

OG:
1.060-70
FG:
1.014-22
Alcohol by volume:
6.0-7.0%
Bitterness:
20-30 IBU
Colour:
20-50 EBC
Bitterness, aroma:
Low to medium hop aroma, and a small fruity note. Malty rich aroma.
Appearance:
The colour spans from copper to dark brown.
Flavour:
The traditional Christmas beer is a lager with a prominent malt flavour and a medium bitterness and next to none hop flavour. A little fruitiness may be found.
Palate:
Medium- to full-bodied.
Commercial examples:
Aass juleøl, Ringnes juleøl.

For those of you who understand Norwegian I recommend this article.

Brew #36: Witbier

2006-09-11T18:23:00.000+02:00

This is a straightforward Belgian Witbier, a wheat beer with coriander and orange peel. The batch was brewed 2006-09-11.

Style:
Witbier
Type:
All grain, batch sparge
Colour:
9 EBC (Golden)
Bitterness:
23 IBU
Malts:
3300g Pilsner malt
3300g Raw wheat
Mash:
60C, 35 min
70C, 35 min
55% efficiency
Hops:
35g Perle pellets 6.6%, 60 min
5g Perle pellets 6.6%, 15 min
15g Saaz pellets 3.3%, 15 min
Spices:
15g Coriander seeds, 5 min
6g Dried bitter orange peel, 5 min
Yeast:
White Labs WLP 400, 1 liter starter
Boil:
90 min
OG: 1.050 FG: 1.012 (estimated)

Lessons learned:

I tried to do the mash without gelatinizing/preboiling the raw wheat. I have always done this in the past. It looks like it was a bad decision. The mash efficiency was extremely low at 55% (I usually get 68%), so I had to add 500g of dry wheat extract to hit an OG of 1.050. This time I had a new malt mill, a Barley Crusher, so I would really expect a higher efficiency. So, next time I will gelatinize.
Remember to buy enough coriander. I intended to add 15g coriander seeds, but had only 6g left. I guess that's fine as this beer is intended to be a straightforward wit anyway.

Brewing again

2006-09-10T18:55:00.000+02:00

I've had a small brewing hiatus this summer. The weather has just been too nice, and there's just been too many other things to do. A third reason is that I had to drink up some of the beers I had already made.

The last time I brewed was June 6th, i.e. more than three months ago. I then made a Rye IPA and an Amarillo IPA. Now it is time to get started again. I have several beer recipes lined up and the required ingredients have been collected.

When I brew I usually make two beers at a time. This is mainly to save some time. The thing is that when brewing more than one beer I can cut some corners, multi-task and do some things once instead of twice. An example is cleaning the brewing gear. I only need to clean it properly when the second beer is done. When making a single beer the brewing session usually take six hours, a two-beer session takes between ten and eleven hours. That's between one and two hours saved.

Anyway, my next two beers are:

a modern Norwegian christmas beer
a witbier

I'll post the recipes next.

Just released: Rogue Pacman Ale Yeast

2006-09-03T15:24:00.000+02:00

Wow! Wyeast has just released the legendary Pacman yeast from Rogue Ales as part of its Very Special Strain program. This is a seasonal strain available from September to December, so you'll have to move fast. Here's a quote from the announcement:

Rogue Pacman Ale Yeast™
Available to Homebrewers for the First Time!

John Maier, Brewmaster at Rogue Ales has generously agreed to release his proprietary Pacman Ale Yeast™ to the homebrewing public.

"Pacman is really great yeast; everything about it is good. Pacman attenuates well, is alcohol tolerant, and it produces beers with no diacetyl if the beer is well made. It's very flocculent, which makes it a great choice for bottle conditioning. I ferment almost all my beers at 60deg.F; once in a while for certain styles I'll ferment as high as 70deg.F, but never higher. Use lots of oxygen, and a high pitch rate. I never repitch past the 6th generation, and I always use Wyeast Yeast Nutrient."

- John Maier, Brewmaster, Rogue Ales

I love Rogue's beers and I'm really looking forward to trying out this strain in my own beers.

Podcast: Basic Brewing Radio

2006-09-02T15:32:00.000+02:00

There are a lot of resources about beer brewing on the Internet. A recent trend is that people make podcast which are audio and video streams that you can download and listen to whenever you feel like. I listen to a few of these regularly, and I'll present each of them here.

The first one out is Basic Brewing Radio and its sibling Basic Brewing Video. This podcast is lead by James Spencer and his co-host Steve Wilkes. Once a week they post a new audio programme between 30 to 70 minutes long. They talk about all aspects of brewing and do interviews with other homebrewers and professionals. What I like about it is that it is posted regularly and that it is not too long and that it is very much to the point. The video programme is more sporadic, and shorter, and typically helps fill in the gaps of the audio podcast. It is a great resource for home brewers. Check them out, I very much recommend listening to their podcasts.

They have also produced two DVDs, Basic Brewing: Introduction to Extract Home Brewing and Basic Brewing: Stepping into All Grain, which I'm sure is a great way to get introduced to extract and all-grain brewing.

Interestingly their latest video podcast is about brewing a harvest ale with homegrown fresh hops.

The hop harvest - a time for wet hopping

2006-08-26T10:31:00.000+02:00

September is hop harvest season. Fresh hops are picked off the bine and dried. The drying makes the perishable wet hop much more stable and useable all year-round. These dried hops are called dried whole hops, and this is the traditional way of handling hops, you just put them whole into the brew kettle. Recently more and more hops are being processed into pellets which makes them even more stable, in fact they can keep their quality properties for a much longer time. At the same time they also take up less space as they are more space efficient, meaning that it takes less to achieve the hopping qualities you need.

Recent years have introduced a new phenomenon: wet hopping (sometimes also referred to as fresh hopping or green hopping). Freshly-harvested wet hops are used directly in the brewing process skipping the drying process. This imparts much stronger, and different, flavour and aroma qualities to the beer than what dried hops would do.

Because wet hops is a perishable product it must be used very shortly after it is picked off the bine. This typically means that the brewers that do make wet hopped beers get shipments overnight from hop harvesters so that they can make their beer the day after. Because of this wet hopped beers is a seasonal product. In many ways this is similar to the beaujolais nouveau only this time for beer.

As far as I can tell this trend started in the hop-growing regions of California and the Pacific Northwest. There are even wet hop festivals! It is indeed a very nice way to celebrate the hop harvest.

I tried to get hold of some hop rhizomes this spring, but soon found that I had started searching for them too late, so I have to wait until next year to make my own wet hopped beer. But if you happen to have a hop plant, consider making a wet hopped beer. Now is the right time, unless you want to wait another year.

35 and counting

2006-08-23T19:55:00.000+02:00

In August 2002 I made my first beer. I had then been interested in beer for a long time, and had been curious about homebrewing for a few months. At the time I didn't actually know anyone who brewed their own beer, so I had to read a book and lots of articles on the subject before taking the plunge. The brewing process was frightening as there were a lot of unfamiliar things to worry about. As I had nobody to ask for help I was really nervous. But the brewing session went just fine and I didn't run into any surprises at all. It was actually quite straightforward. Having a brew day under your belt helps a lot. Today I can brew a beer blindfolded (well, perhaps not, but you get the point).

The beer was an Extra Special Bitter made from liquid malt extract, some grains for steeping, hop pellets and dry yeast. Since then I have brewed a total of 35 different brews. Each batch is 25 liters, which typically gives 23 liters of finished beer. Even though I try hard I cannot actually get through all of it myself, so I try to give beers to friends and family and all those who seem to have an interest in beer and homebrewing. This is of course a nice thing as it is great to get feedback (positive and negative).

To give you an indication of what kind of beers I brew, here's a list that includes the beer style and the alcohol level:

#1 Extra Special Bitter, 4.7%
#2 Weissbier, 5.1%
#3 Honey Pale Ale, 5.0%
#4 Robust Porter, 5.8%
#5 Dubbel, 7.3%
#6 India Pale Ale, 6.0%
#7 American Pale Ale, 5.1%
#8 Ale (The Norbrygg Experiment 2003), 4.7%
#9 Weissbier, 5.5%
#10 English Brown Ale, 4.6%
#11 Imperial Stout, 8.5%
#12 Bitter, 4.5%
#13 Dry Irish Stout, 4.2%
#14 Belgian Golden Ale, 8.5%
#15 American Brown Ale, 6.4%
#16 Witbier, 5.2%
#17 Extra Special Bitter, 5.9%
#18 Imperial IPA, 9.2%
#19 Bitter, 4.8%
#20 Weissbier, 5.5%
#21 Witbier, 5.1%
#22 American Pale Ale, 5.9%
#23 India Pale Ale, 5.9%
#24 Chocolate Porter, 6.6%
#25 Cider, 4.8%
#26 Extra Special Bitter, 5.0%
#27 Spiced Christmas Ale, 6.3%
#28 Witbier, 4.7%
#29 Witbock, 7.7%
#30 Extra Special Bitter, 6.0%
#31 Oatmeal Stout, 5.5%
#32 Kölsch, 4.2%
#33 Dubbel, 6.5%
#34 India Pale Ale, 5.6%
#35 Rye IPA, 7.5%

Beers #24, #25 (a cider), #27, #31, #32, #33, #34 and #35 are being served on draught. A few more are in bottles.

As you can see from the list above, Extra Special Bitter, Witbier and India Pale Ale seem to have been the most popular styles so far. All beers have been brewed to different recipes, even the beers in the same style.

The brewing process

2006-08-20T13:02:00.000+02:00

These are the steps you will have to go through in order to make beer:

malt
crush
mash
sparge
boil
chill
ferment
package

Malting is a process to let the malt develop its enzyme content and render it suitable for mashing. The process involves soaking, sprouting and then drying grain.

Unless you've got too much time on your hands you might what to skip the malting process as professional malting companies will do this for you at low cost. Their malting quality will very likely be much better than anything you could make yourself. So you typically buy premalted grains off the shelf instead of making it yourself. That said, it would of course make an interesting research project.

The malt quality have a big impact on your brewing efficiency. A low quality malt will get you a less flavourful beer and (fortunately) less beer. A high quality malt will be much more consistent and let you extract more malt sugars.

If you make your beer from malt extract you can skip the crush, mash and sparge steps as these have been done for you. The malt extract is the end result of these steps (plus the fact that it has been concentrated down to syrup or powder). With malt extract you can move right on to the boil. This will save you a couple of hours in your brew day.

The crush is when you take your malt and crush it in small particles exposing the inner starch granules. The purpose is to make it easier to extract the malt sugars. You will need a malt mill to do the crushing.

The mash is when you mix the crushed malt with hot water until it resembles a thick porridge. The hot water will trigger enzymes in the malt that turn the starch into malt sugars, simple ones or complex ones depending on the temperature. The mash will then typically be left alone for about an hour or so. This to ensure that all the starch have been converted.

To get a step further the sugars are then to be separated from the grain husks. This is done through a process called sparging or lautering. There are several ways to do this, but the easiest one is to just drain the liquid (called wort) through a filter and into the boil kettle.

Once the wort is collected in the kettle the next step is to actually boil it for an hour or so. Throughout the boil hops will be added in several steps to lend bitterness, flavour and aroma to the beer.

We're now almost ready to hand over the wort to the yeast so that it can turn all the sugars into esters, carbon dioxide and alcohol. To avoid killing the yeast the wort have to be cooled down to a lower temperature. The cooling process is typically done in a short period of time with the help of a wort chiller.

The wort is then transfered to a separate fermentation vessel where it can be fermented. The fermentation is typically done in a closed environment reducing the chances of infection. A carboy with an air-lock on it is quite common. The yeast is then added to the cool wort. It will now become beer as the yeast eat up the sugars. Once all the sugars and nutrients have been depleted the yeast will go dormant and settle out on the bottom of the fermentation vessel.

We now have beer that is ready to be packaged. The beer can be bottled or transferred to kegs. It will also have to be carbonated, either mechanically or naturally.

This posting gives a brief overview of the brewing process, but it has just scratched the surface. So I'll be posting [much] more detail about various aspects of the techniques, equipment and ingredients involved in future. If there is anything particular you'd like to have covered please let me know.