What a Week of Brewing

Well a lot sure has happened in my brewing sphere this week.  First off, I took the Hefeweizen that I had fermenting the past 3 weeks, and racked it ontop of 6lbs of blueberry puree.  Yes, I know that it was supposed to be blackberry nectar this time around, but a dear friend of mine is moving to Virginia, and she hadn't gotten to try the Blue Eyed Wheatie.  For this particular batch, I doubled the amount of puree that I used.  I did this for a couple reasons.  First I wanted to add a bit more blueberry flavor to the beer.  The first batch I did only had 3lbs and you couldn't really taste the blueberry until the finish.  Second, I wanted to add more berry color to the beer.  I used all pale color base malts along with the wheat, so that it would help take more color from the berry in the finished product.  It is going to sit on the puree for about two weeks, and then I will rack it off to an empty keg, and let it age a week before putting it in the beer fridge, and carbing it up to 2.3 volumes.  The next thing that happened in my brewing this week was the introduction of a friend to the hobby.  He had always enjoyed drinking my beers, and was interested in seeing how it was done.  For our brew,  I chose to brew an All Grain Dunkelweizen from Northern Brewer.  I walked Bill through all of the steps of a Brew Day from Mashing In, Sparging, Boiling, Hops, Chilling, Pitching, and finally Sanitization, and all the work that goes into producing a quality brew.  At the end of the day, we spent a few hours outside on a 30 degree Indiana night, tossed back a few home brews, and checked our troubles at the door.  On the Dunkel, we had a decently successful mash.  For some reason I am only able to get about 60 percent efficiency out of my current cooler setup.  I think it may have something to do with the SS braid floating up into the mash, and I'm leaving some thick malty wort in the bottom of the 5 gal rectangular rubbermaid cooler.  I'm open to any thoughts on ways to get that number up.  I'd really like to get 70 percent efficiency.  On the next batch, I am going to ask for a finer crush from NB.  I'm interested in seeing if that would help make a difference.  Anyways, we ended up 5.25 gallons of sweet dark wheat wort in the fermenter, and pitched some Wyeast 3068 that I had harvested from the recently completed Hefeweizen that is now on the blueberries.  So, it's been a successful brew week.  

Cheers!

This week's evil plan!!! Muhuhahaha!

Ugh, it's been below freezing here or raining for what seams like two weeks. I'm ready to crash this Hefe, and put it into secondary with some blackberry puree. That's all well and good, and doesn't require any good weather to do, as its pretty much an all in the house job. I do however want to reuse the massive yeast cake that I have been nurturing for the past two months for one more rodeo. I have an excellent dunkelweizen ready to get mashed, and I want to use this large pitch of Wyeast 3638 as my primary fermenting microbe. I'm actually contemplating dumping the wort straight from the boil kettle, cooled of course, into the primary that this Hefe has been occupying for the past two weeks. Give the vessel a really good shake to bring the yeast back into solution, and then cap her off. Should be interesting.

Recipe for my Blackberry Wheat Nectar

Blackberry Nectar

20-A Fruit Beer
Author: Andrew Murrey

Size: 5.76 gal
Efficiency: 55%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 105.3 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.032 (1.026 - 1.120)
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Terminal Gravity: 1.008 (0.995 - 1.035)
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Color: 3.21 (1.0 - 50.0)
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Alcohol: 3.12% (2.5% - 14.5%)
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Bitterness: 14.6 (0.0 - 100.0)
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Ingredients:

5.5 lb Pale Wheat Malt
4 lb 2-Row Brewers Malt
1 oz Tettnanger (4.5%) - added during boil, boiled 60 m
1 ea WYeast 3638 Bavarian Wheat™
5 lb Blackberries (pureed) - added dry to secondary fermenter

Schedule:

Ambient Air: 70.0 °F
Source Water: 60.0 °F
Elevation: 0.0 m

Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.5.19

Breaking in the Boilermaker

Brew Night - RyePA

It's Brew Night!  I have a liter starter of Wyeast American Ale ready to rock and roll.  It's been sitting in some 1.045 wort for about 36 hours now.  I purchased the NB RyePA kit that features their new Rye Malt Extract.  I still enjoy doing some extract brewing here and again.  It's very simple, and typically takes me a couple of hours from start to finish.

The recipe for the RyePA is available to the right.  I will pop the info into beer tools later this week, and post the pretty recipe breakdown to my blog tomorrow.

On the stir plate front, I've collected the following parts.

1.) Wooden Box - Pipe Puffers in Greenwood sells used cigar shipping boxes for $1.
2.) CPU Fan - Harvested from a 1999 Gateway 2000 computer
3.) Rare Earth Magnet - Harvested from 1999 WD Caviar 2GB hard drive
4.) Potentiomter (25 Ohm) - RadioShack - $2
5.) Toggle Switch - Radio Shack - $2
6.) Power Supply - I have a 5v Blackberry charger I was thinking about using.  More to come on this item.
7.) Quick Disconnects - For the inside wiring - RadioShack - $1.50

Not too shabby for $6.50 in total spend.  I also had to get a new $10 soldering iron.  Mine bit the farm.

New Project - Building a Stir Plate

I have a new homebrew project to occupy the next couple of weeks.

I am going to try my hand at building my own stir plate. I've seen nice commercial versions all over the web from $50 to over a $100 bucks depending on all of the bells and whistles that you have. I've started putting together my requirements, and what I think I need as far as a parts list. From looking over several posts in zymurgy, and a great walkthrough on www.donosborn.com, I think I should be able to do this pretty easily. So here it goes.

Requirements:
1.) Must be able to hold a 2 liter Erlmeyer flask.
2.) Must have an on/off switch
3.) Must have speed variability
4.) Must be aesthetically pleasing as possible.

Parts List:
1.) 6 Volt Power Supply - I think I have a few of these at the house.
2.) CPU Fan - I know I have at least ten of these!
3.) Wood Box w/ lid - I'm budgeting $10 for one of these at the local cigar shop
4.) Wire Quick Disconnects - $3 at Ace or Radio Shack
5.) 25 Ohm Potentiometer - $4 at Radio Shack
6.) 4 bolts
7.) 4 neoprene spacers - $1 at Radio Shack (So I can have room above the fan for the magnet)
8.) 4 neoprene washers - $1 at Radio Shack (Absorb vibration)
9.) Control knobs - $2 at Radio Shack
10.) Switch - $3 at Radio Shack (I want one I can mount nicely to the box)
11.) Rare Earth Magnet - I should be able to scavenge one from a dead hard drive at home.
12.) Stir Bar - $5 at Northern Brewer

So.  As I take this project on, I will take some photos, and put together a how-to blog post.  I hope to get it done by the end of November, and have it cranking away at building some great yeast populations by new years!

Empty Fermenters and a possible Attenuation issue

Well, Both of my fermenters are now empty. I kegged up both my Dunkelweizen and the CDA (Black IPA). The first task was doing a double keg clean out. I will fill one keg up with 5 gallons of easy clean, and then push that through my beer lines into keg 2. I then push it from keg 2 into a bottling bucket that has the tubing I plan to use while siphoning out the beer from the fermenters. The next step is to repeat the process with Star San.

It looks like I may have had my first brewing anomaly with the Dunkelweizen batch. The OG was 1.052 when I put it into the carboy. Last night when testing with my refractometer it finished at 1.028. Not even close to the 1.013 that I was expecting. The only thing that I can think of is that perhaps my Wyeast smack pack got too warm in shipping, and when I did the smack, I didn't have the proper number of yeast cells at pitching time. I think that from this point forward, even with the smack packs, I am going to get at least a 1 liter starter going the day before brew day. This is the first batch that I have ever missed my finishing gravity on. I do recall however that all three ice packs that were in the shipping container had melted by the time I got home and brought the package in the house. I always immediately refrigerate my yeast, so that may have saved enough to get to where it actually finished at.

I did take a quick taste of the dunkel, and I have to say, the sweetness lends pretty well to the roastiness of the dark wheat malt. It's going to be quite sessionable at the 3.18% ABV mark.

As for the CDA, it finished at 1.020 just as I had hoped. It's still got quite a bit of HOP AA zing, and should be quite a good beer. I'll be serving both of these beers at an upcoming Knights of Columbus fundraising dinners supporting the Holy Rosary Pro-Life group.

Special Thanks to Carlos for bringing me an extra Keg! Also, to my wonderful wife and brew assistant. Without her, nothing is possible.