The last four

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.

Time to replace the fermentation vessels

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.

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

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.

It's alive...!

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.

#38 and #39: Kegged and bottled

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.

Belgian Amber

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.

#36 and #37: Kegged and bottled

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

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.

Pictures: Beers fermenting

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.