My new(ish) conical fermenter

This summer has been insanely hot here in Austin, with tempatures reaching into the triple digits nealry every day. This kind of heat makes it difficult to brew so I haven't produced a batch since May. Cooling Wort quickly when the water coming out of the tap is nearly 80 degrees is not exactly easy. Hopefully it will cool down within a month and I can get back at it. In the mean time I've been doing alot of reading and formulating recipies. I've also been able to pick up a few pieces of equipment that I'm very excited about.

Roughly a month ago AHS aquired the inventory of a homebrew store that had gone out of business. The bulk of the items were used. Amongst them was an 8 gallon minibrew conical fermenter. It was in good shape and I was able to pick it up for an excellent price.

It cleaned up easily. I replaced the 1" ball valve with a plastic one and the half inch valve with a stainless steel one. I also added a dial thermometer and used EcoFoil to insulate it.

I can't wait to get some brew in it and watch the airlock bubble away.

Before

After

AHS conical fermenter giveaway!

Austin Homebrew Supply is giving away a Blichman 14.5 stainless steel conical fermenator. Every order placed online during the month of June and July will be entered into the drawing which will be held on August 5th. In-store customers will need to fill out an entry form to be entered into the drawing, you can also fill a form to enter without making a purchase here.

This thing retails for nearly $600! If only I were eligable... damn.

Round beverage cooler sale

After a few happy hour libations and several sushi rolls my wife and I took a short walk around the Domain. While taking a short cut through Dick's Sporting Goods I noticed these 7 gallon round beverage coolers on sale for $29.97. They're shorter and wider than the normal 10 gallon coolers. I think that this would make the ideal for mashing All Grain 5 gallon batches. They should be large enough to mash 15lbs of grain yet small enough to maintain temperature rather well.

Austin Homebrew Supply Stainless steel kettle sale

Austin Home Brew Supply has stainless steel kettles (including Polar Ware) on sale until the end of the month. Direct link can be found here.

Cheers,

 - Jay

Austin Homebrew Supply kegging equipment sale.

Several different kegging kits are on sale now at AHS. Great deals, click.here.

New toys.

44 quart stainless steel kettle with spigot and 55,000 btu propane burner with 16" frame. Both from Bayouclassiccooking.com shipped to me for under $170 in only three days.

If you're interested the kettles with spigots are available in two sizes 36qt and 44qt. There are also many sizes available with out spigots and a wide variety of propane burners to choose from. I did alot of shopping and this kettle is definately the best value that I could find. Its a nice thick gauge steel and feel much nicer than others I have seen and cost less than half of what Blichman or Polarware kettles go for. Use discount code bcc10 for 10% off of your entire order.

Cheers,
 - Jay

Still hunting

Like many recent grads I'm looking for work. I spent the afternoon driving around the greater Austin area handing in resumes and filling out job applications. I really want to start working again. I've got 2 1/2 years worth of drive stored up waiting to fuel a business.

I had two specific destinations on my employment hunt;  Austin Homebrew Supply and St. Patricks of Texas . St. Patricks of Texas sells commercial fermenting and brewing equipment mainly to wineries. Austin Homebrew Supply is exactly that. A homebrew supply store. They have a very large and impressive facility that I was not expecting. The place was huge. Really cool store. I was in full beer geek mode while I looked around. I couldn't leave a place like this empty handed but I didn't have much to spend so I picked up the latest copy of Zymurgy and a new book that caught my eye. Beer Captured by Tess and Mark Szamatulski. I'm particularly excited because there is a section entitled The marriage of food and beer. This section has several recipes but there is one I can't wait to try called Yeasted beer pizza crust. I've been loving my new pizza oven and this makes it even better. I'll bake one up and post how it went next week.

It is my goal to find a job that I enjoy rather than just collect a paycheck. I know the statement sounds idealistic and naive (especially in the current economy) but I assure you that it is neither. I am passionate about beer and I know that I will be an asset to whomever hires me. I'm aware that jobs are hard to come by now a days. I also know that I didn't walk away from an established and secure position to spend the next three years in college only to come out and head right back into something that I do not enjoy. This is my chance to start fresh and I'm going to capture it.

Cheers,
 - Jay

33 Bottles of beer

Way back last February I posted about a cool pocket sized tasting journal named 33 Bottles of beer. The note book is sold in a package of three (which worked out perfectly at one for each of us). My first entry was on March 11th 2010. It was Lagunitas Hop Stoopid in a 22oz bottle. It's been a while so I don't remeber it all that well. I commented that it was good for the price but not the smoothest IPA. I haven't had it since so it must not have left that great of an impression on me.

On January 21st 2011 I logged my 33rd entry in true Texas fashion with a bottle of Lone Star beer. I know that it's cheap and not exactly complex but you know what? It's easy to drink and true to its style (American Lager). I like this stuff. I know it isn't the type of thing that beer geeks would get excited about but that doesn't discredit it one bit. I'm sure I'll be consuming many a Lone Star come summer. 

So many new beers to try here in Texas that are not distributed back in NY. I'll be ordering some new journals shortly. I doubt it will take me as long to fill one up this time around. At 3 for $10 these things should be in the pocket of every beer geek.

You can get your own here.

Cheers,

 - Jay

From keg to kettle

We have begun the adventure of all-grain brewing (update to follow), but before we could start we needed even more new equipment. The most important being a large vessel to boil in. Stainless steel kettles are a bit pricey. The alternative is a modified keg. So we decided to make our own. Aaron legally procured a 15.5 gallon stainless steel keg which was in excellent shape. For this project we refered to Brew Ware - Lutzen & Stevens to guide us through the process.

We decided to base the diameter of the opening that we cut into the top of the vessel on the diameter of a spare lid from a 3 gallon kettle (which was 9") that we had sitting around. The paln was to purge the keg of any pressure and use a drill to make a hole on the line laid out for the opening. Then we would use a reciprocating saw to cut the opening by inserting the blade into the hole that we had drilled.

This proved to be much harder then anticipated for several reasons. First stainless steel is strong, seriously strong (I know that sounds like a no shit kind of statement but it was extremely difficult to work with and neither Aaron nor myself really anticipated just how difficult it was.). Even the 8.0 amp drill we used had a bit of difficulty getting a start into the material. The second reason was that the reciprocating saw that we had was good and power full but ran way too fast and had no speed adjustment capability. It wanted to jump around all over the place before it would beging to make a cut. Which intimidated me a bit too much for comfort. Safety was a major concern here for both of us. We took all the precautions that we found to common sense and that we recommended by the authors of the referance book (Safety glasses! Take it slow!). Neither of us wanted to risk injury (or for that matter ruining the keg), so when we reached this point we decided it was time to take a different approach.

I called my Grandfather, Joe Trinkwalder a man who has profoundly more experiance with such things than either Aaron or I. He suggested that we use a small saw with specialty blades that he had and some cutting oil to keep the blades cool while cutting (Brew Ware suggests that you may go through up to five blades). So we got started. I kept a constant flow of cutting oil on the blade while my Grandfather made the cut.

A messy, smokey process.

Making the cut.

Cleaning up the oil.

Drilling the holes for the thermometer and ball valve.

The process for cutting the main hole took about twenty minutes. Drilling the holes for the brewing thermometer and the ball valve took just a few minutes more. Two blades and a quart of cutting oil were the only casualties. Everything went smooth and safely. I later used a small angle grinder to clean up any burrs left on the holes. I also used it to widen the main opening just slightly so that the lid fit nice and snug.

Installing the ball valve.

A cold OV to celebrate!

The kettle screen installed.

The finished product.

In Primary:

• Blonde Ale (update to follow)

Lagering:

• Genther Bock

 

Busy Busy Busy

We've kept ourselves busy lately, creating some new gadgets and brewing regularly. Aaron put converted two igloo coolers into lauter and mash tuns. He found a great way to make the lauter tun in the newest issue of Zymurgy. It involved using two braided stainless steel plumbing hoses by cutting off the ends and removing the rubber lining. Then they were looped and secured to a brass T fitting which is attached to a ball valve. This will allow the wort to flow out but none of the grains. The other conversion simply involved removing the plastic spout the cooler originally came with and adding a brass ball valve.

The Barley wine and Stout have both finished fermenting and have been transferred to 5 gallon soda kegs. I was nervous about the Barley wine because it sat in secondary fermentation for a while longer than I would have liked after the airlock stopped bubbling. I also read after the fact that dry hopping should only be done 3 to 4 days before bottling. We dry hopped (and added oak chips) for almost 3 weeks. Upon tasting at the transfer from secondary fermentation to the kegs Aaron we both pleasantly surprised. The Barley wine was awesome. I can wait to taste it once it has aged for 9 months. It was hoppy but not too much, nor was it bitter or astringent. The flavor from the oak chips was nice as well. I'm glad we took the liberties that we did with this recipe. We plan on bottling both batches this week. For the barley wine we plan on using 22oz bottles.
Here's a few quick specs on both.

Barley Wine
O.G. 1.079
F.G. 1.027
A.B.V. 7.13%
Yeast strain : Safbrew T-58
Recipie source : The Brewmasters Bible

Murpheys Irish Stout Clone
O.G. 1.056
F.G. 1.015
A.B.V. 5.37%
Yeast strain : Safale S-04
Recipie source : Clone Brews


Gene, Aaron and I brewed a bock this past Thursday evening. This was the first lager that any of has brewed. So naturally we needed to refresh ourselves. It may be March but it's still cold outside and brewing beer and eating pizza is hard work. I picked up a 22oz bottle of Lagunitas Hop Stoopid Ale that I had heard good things about on the Hopry. I was satisfied with it and it was a great value for the $4.79 I paid for it at Wegmans. On that note I was not exactly blown way (its no imperial double IPA) but I would pick it up again. I poured a nice amber color and had a good hop flavor but it was not very floral or aromatic. It did hold a decent head for an IPA.

So now that I've got myself thirsty I guess I can talk about the Bock brew. This was not only the first time that we have brewed a lager it was also the first time that we used tap water. I purchased an on-the-faucet Brita filter to get rid of all the impurities in the water. I also tested the ph level which was 5.6. We made no modifications to the water other than filtering it.

The recipe called for a whopping 8lbs of powdered malt extract! We started by boiling the specialty grains in 1 1/2 gallons of water. We then used a 1/2 gallon of water to do a bit of a pseudo sparge to extract as much as we could for the grains. I say pseudo sparge because we used the water at temperature, we did not heat it.

More first time methods on this brew included using the stainless steel conical fermenter and an aquarium air pump to aerate the wort before pitching the yeast.

New toy

Cool little notebook designed by these guys http://www.bsbrewing.com/blog/
Just picked up a three pack. One each for Aaron, Gene, and myself. Should be a handy tool for critiqing our own brews or whatever our refreshes palates.

Buy them here:
http://www.33beers.com/
or here:
http://www.scoutbooks.com/

- Jay

Super Brew Sunday

Our freshly stocked grain and malt supply.

We transfered the Barley Wine to secondary fermentation. Dry hopped and added oak chips (first time using that tecnique). Fermentation started up again after a short while. Hopefully the gravity will drop and so will the problems with this one.

It was also the first time that we used the new grain mill which works awesome when used with an electric drill.

Aaron (reading) and Gene (stirring) in my driveway while we brewed a Murpheys stout clone on sunday afternoon. I don't have any technical data about the brew at hand. Aaron is going to write a review of the recipe shortly, so I'll leave that to him.

 

Our new basement brewery

Aaron and I spent last evening cleaning, organizing, and arranging our new setup.  Things are looking good and we are both excited to use all of the new equipment. We now have a five gallon stainless steel conical fermenter and a very nice grain mill.

My Father gave us this great little glass front refridgerator that he no longer uses. It should work great for lagering and storing hops and yeast.

We also stopped at the Niagara Traditon Home Brew store picked up some various grains, hops, and yeast. I also Picked up a new book called The Homebrewers Garden. I'm excited to read this one.

I have big plans for the garden this year. I plan on growing veggies and having a seperate hop yard. I would like to grow Willamette, Nugget, and Cascade hops. I started a compost pile late last september. Hopefuly by jump starting it last fall I will have enough compost for both beds by spring. This will be the first time at attempting to grow hops.

We are both looking forward to using our own home grown ingredients and develpoing our own all grain recipes. This should prove to be a very challenging experiance with some ups and downs. Neither of us have experiance brewing all grain recipes so we've been reading up and honing our skills with extract brews.

Which brings me to the Barley wine. We've kept the temperature right around 68 degrees. We have a heating belt around the bucket and it is placed near both the hot water tank and the furnace. The O.G. was 1.079. It has been in primary fermentation for 16 days. The air lock stopped bubbling about 10 days in but the gravity was still way too high. Monday we tried aireting it and that did not work. Last night we added some high alcohol tolerant champagne yeast hopping that it would start fermenting again and lower the gravity. This morning I checked it at seven a.m. and it was not fermenting. Our only idea now is to transfer it to a carboy for secondary fermentation and hop that the gravity falls then.

Looking forward to getting things rolling full steam. Any and all feedback is welcome. This is a learning process for us that we wanted to share with like minded individuals.

In Primary : Barley wine

On the agenda : Sunday, February 7th - Stout brew. (Yes, I'm aware it's the big game that day.)