Getting the temperature right

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.

Magnetic Stir Plate

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.

The Hop Stopper

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

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:

1x

Hop Stopper, All Stainless Steel Construction

$90.00

Northern Brewer:

1x

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

$39.99

Morebeer:

1x

Thermometer (3'' Face x 2" Probe)

$34.95

A quick update

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.

Balancing draft beer systems

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.

Fermentation buckets: pros and cons

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?

New fermentation buckets

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

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

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.

Building your own Randall

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

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?

You know you're a brewing nerd...

...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!

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.

Mashtuns - new and old

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

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

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:

1x

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

$3.90

Total cost: USD 57.80 (plus shipping and VAT)

Taking the new kettle for a spin

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.

My new brew kettle

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.

A fifth faucet. *sigh*

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...