Brew #51: Imperial Porter

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.