Bottling Batch 013: The Killer Bee

Well, I bottled up batch 013, my honey based IIPA braggot that I brewed about 3 weeks ago.  Lots of honey, lots of hops, lots of flavor.  I figured since I had done a step by step on how I brewed my 1 gallon batches, I would do a step by step on how I bottle my 1 gallon batches.  I didn't get pictures of racking it to secondary and dry hopping, but that is fairly standard.  I racked to a 1 gallon glass jug and dry hopped in a muslin bag.

So on to the pictures, and as always, if you have any questions I am more than happy to answer them.


First things first, collect your beer, bottles, siphon, and sanitizer.

Next, I rack sanitizer into my clean bottles.  I fill them about half way and give them a good shake to coat the inside.  I will shake again before they get filled.

 I heat up about 4oz of water to a boil in the microwave with priming sugar mixed in.  I used 0.9oz of corn sugar for this batch.  I will use less or more depending on the size of the batch and style of the beer.  Be careful boiling water in the microwave because the water can become superheated and flash boil.  It happened to me on this batch for the first time in a long time.  If it does flash boil while you are holding on to it, it can and will burn you severely.  Its not a pretty site, so take care.

I pour that sugar solution into the empty, sanitized jug and then rack the beer to the new jug.  Carefully leave the sediment behind.

As you rack the beer, it will swirl in your jug mixing in the priming sugar.  If you are worried about it not being evenly distributed, you can gently stir the beer, but be careful to not agitate the top too much to avoid oxidation.

 As you are racking pull off another sample to test the gravity.  The reading it 11.2 Plato, but this is misleading.  Readings from refractometers get skewed in an alcohol solution, so you have to adjust for that.  Knowing that my original gravity was 23 Plato, I plug that 11.2 Plato into BeerSmith and get an actual reading of 3.2 Plato.  A very nice dry IIPA.  I am glad that I mashed as high as I did in anticipation of the honey drying it out.  The reading when I racked it to secondary my gravity was 4.8 Plato so I am glad I got those extra points out before I bottled.  After all is said and done. I have myself an 11.3% ABV IIPA.  It is a bit stronger than I was anticipating, but its not unheard of for the style.

 When you are done racking you will be left with a layer of yeast sediment and your bag of hops.  Leave those there and clean up when you are done with everything else.

 Here is the tip of the autosiphon.  The tip on the end prevents it from sucking up the sediment.

 I take the tip off when I go to bottle so that I get all of the beer out of the jug when I am actually racking to the bottles.

 Now, I shake the bottles up one more time and dump the sanitizer out.

 Attach the bottling wand to the siphon hose and start filling.  Some people will use a bottling bucket with a spigot at the bottom, but I just rack out of the jug.  I still get every drop out and don't have to have another bucket.

I fill up all of my bottles, placing a cap on each bottle as I go.  When I have all of the bottles filled I go back and crimp the caps.  I got 10 bottles out of this batch which is fairly normal.  It may not seem like much, but if you brew often that means you can always have a nice assortment of beers on hand.

Now I just have to wait two weeks or so for them to carb up.  I may have to stir the bottles up every once in a while to make sure they carb, but I will coax them there.

Hopefully, these posts have been helpful to people who are thinking of trying out 1 gallon batches.  I will be happy to help anyone interesting in getting started with 1 gallon batches or brewing in general.

Until I brew again,
Cheers!

Batches 014, 015, and 016: AKA The Brewganza

About two weeks ago at work, we got a shipment from White Labs with a random variety of yeast strains for us to sell.  We got a vial of Berliner Weiss and were thinking that it would probably just sit in the fridge until one of us bought it.  So I did.  Now, one vial is too much for a 1 gallon batch of Berliner Weiss, but I could reseal the vial and pitch into two different batches.  I thought that if I did this I would have to brew them fairly close together to lessen the risk of the yeast going bad, which had been opened and exposed to the air.  So I bought the yeast and enough grain for what I thought would be two batches.  I messed this part up.  I had written in my notes that I needed 1.5# of Pilsner malt and 1.5# of white wheat.  When I went to bought them I thought that was for 1 batch and bought two sets of those ingredients.  I was wrong.  I only needed 3/4# of each for a 1 gallon batch.  So I upped my batch size to 1.75 gallons.  I also combined my bags of grain and split them into 2# batches (1# of wheat, 1# of Pils each). So Saturday I brewed my first batch.

Batch 014: Icht Bin Ein Bierassenseiter (I am a beer outsider)
Berliner Weiss beers are fairly simple to brew.  Equal part of wheat and pils, keep it around 8 plato (~1.030 sg), and hop as little as possible, in this case 5 IBU's.  I used Hallertau Hersberker hops since they are the lowest alpha acid we had (and frankly I have ever seen) at 2.3%.  I mashed at 154 for an hour.  Now for the different part, boil for 15 minutes.  Thats it.  Hops go in at the beginning of the boil and pitch the yeast blend when it is cool.  You want this beer to be as light as possible and any issues with DMS from the pils in such a short boil will be counteracted by the lactic bacteria in the yeast blend.  So I pitch half of my vial of yeast and set it back in the fridge until the next day.

Batch 015: Icht Bin Ein Bierassenseiter II
Thats right, I brewed the exact same beer the next day.  Everything went exactly the same except for one small hiccup.  I didn't realize it had started boiling when it did, so it boiled for an extra 5 minutes or so resulting in it being half a degree plato higher in OG.  Not an issue.  This one will get a fruit addition in secondary, I just haven't decided yet.  Anyone have any suggestions?  It may just come down to walking around the market for what looks good at the time I rack.  I used the other half of the vial of yeast and set this next to the other to ferment and sour.

Batch 016: Hunter's Harvest
This was one of the first beers that I ever brewed.  I am thinking it was my 4th batch.  I had read of this recipe online and wanted to try it.  I loved the result so I am finally getting around to rebrewing this with a couple tweeks.  I used the same grain bill that I used for the last two brews because that is what I had on hand and it fit the style.  I did lower the batch size back down to the normal 1.25 gallons to up the gravity a bit though.  Now the fun part about this is that this is a hefeweizen, but with blood oranges in it.  For those who don't know blood oranges are a cross between oranges and grapefruit and are a deep ruby color and are packed with antioxidants.  They are a very nice berry flavor and fit perfectly with the hefeweizen style.

I mashed this one a little lower at 152 and measured out some more Hersberker for hopping.  As the wort was boiling I started dissecting the fruit.  I used two oranges, which is more than the original recipe called for, but if I put fruit in a beer, I want to be able to know that its there.  I want it to be balanced, but I don't want to have to search for it.  First thing you do is to zest the oranges.  Be careful to avoid the pith (tough white rind) as it is really bitter tasting and will bitter your beer.

 Next you peel the oranges and separate the sections.

 After I separated the sections I butterflyed them open to make getting the flesh out easier.

 As you can see there is still a skin like membrane around each section.  I pulled the fruit out of this to make it easier to extract the flavors and colors into the beer.

 All of the flesh and zest gets added to a small pot with a little bit of water and heated to about 165 to sanitize it.  Avoid going higher than 170 or else you will just make orange jelly.  I let this mixture steep in the pot while the wort finished boiling.  When it was ready to cool my wort I poured the flesh into a nylon bag and added the water and fruit to the wort and cooled the whole batch.  The fruit will remain in the beer during primary fermentation.  I will not be doing a secondary on this so the oranges need some time to impact the beer.

So for now, all of my primaries are full, and so are most of my secondaries.  I need to bottle up the Killer Bee this week along with the Triple Berry Cyser.  Now that I have knocked a decent chunk off of my to-brew list, I need to come up with some new ideas.  I still have a long list, but am always looking for something else that is fun.  If you have heard of any fun beers lately, let me know in the comments below

Until I bottle later this week,
Cheers

Recipes: http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/icht-bin-ein-bier-aussenseiter
http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/hunters-harvest

Bottling, racking, and finning.

So I missed a week of brewing, but I will be making that up this week.  I was sick and made up some work on my day off so my schedule got mixed around.

Anyway, on to what I did tonight.  I bottled up the GF brown (Alterna) I brewed up a few weeks ago.  A lot of honey flavor left from the caramelizing process and a bit sweet, but I'm surprised how much flavor is it for what it is.  I also racked my honey IIPA (The Killer Bee) to secondary with dry hops and gave it a taste.  Wow, its amazing, everything I could have hoped for.  Really bitter, super hoppy and with a twinge of honey flavor still peaking through.  Lastly, I added some Chitosan to my Triple Berry Cyser (Berry Cyser).  A few more weeks then bottling for that.

I will be brewing tomorrow night and possibly Sunday night as well.

Until tomorrow,

Cheers

Batch 013: The Killer Bee

Fair warning, this is going to be a really long post.  I decided it was time to go through and document the whole process from start to finish so there are a lot of pictures and there will be a lot of explanation behind them.

A week ago I was harvesting honey from the combs in preparation to make the next batches of mead at work and was talking to my boss about honey and beer.  He mentioned that it would be nice to have a honey IPA out there that showcased the honey.  I brought up Bell's Hopslam, but he was thinking even more honey forward than that.  So I accepted the challenge and a week later I was brewing up The Killer Bee Honey IIPA.

The recipe: Being honey forward that is where I started.  I really enjoy the taste of orange blossom honey so that is what I went with.  I wanted half of my fermentables to come from the honey so I grabbed a pound and a half of honey.  This will give me 47 points or 1.047 if I only put the honey in.  Two pounds of pale ale malt will give me the rest of my fermentables with 4oz of crystal 40L and 4oz of cara-pils to boost the body.  I am mashing high to get me a lot of body, which is usually avoided in IIPA's, but due to the amount of honey that is in this and how dry honey ferments I am trying to keep some body to the beer.  At this point I am throwing an obscene amount of hops at this beer with a calculated IBU of about 140 which I still thought was slightly conservative.  White Labs WLP001 will hopefully work its way through this beast.

The process:

 First things first, gather all of your ingredients and, if available, some inspiration beer.

 I started heating up 8qts of strike water to 162.5F, almost there in this picture, just a little farther.

 When you reach your strike temp, add your bag to the pot and toss in your grains.  Make sure to stir very well to wet all of the grains, which isn't as hard when doing a full volume mash.  Check your mash temps to make sure you hit your numbers.  Aiming for 156F, so I am happy with this.

 Place the lid on your pot and tuck the extra bag on top for safe storage during the mash.

 The pot then goes into the oven, set to warm.  If you put the pot directly on the bottom of the oven it will heat up too much, but if suspended on a rack it will hold its temperature for the whole mash.

 During the mash I go ahead and measure out my hop additions.  I use butter tub lids as weigh trays.

 60 minute bittering addition: half an ounce of Centennial and half an ounce of Simcoe.

 Left to right: 60 min(1/2oz Centennnial, 1/2oz Simcoe), 10 min(1/4oz Simcoe, 1/4oz Citra), Knockout(1/2oz Simcoe, 1/2oz Citra), and dry hop(1/4oz Simcoe, 1/4oz Citra).

 I weigh out my dry hops while weighing the rest so that I don't have to dig them out of the freezer when it comes time to dry hop.  So I bag them up then too.

 I take that bag and put them into a clean White Labs vial and place them on my freezer door for easy access, but still storing them cold and sealed to keep them fresh.

After an hour long mash, the pot comes back out of the oven and gets stirred up one last time.

  Pull the grain bag out and place it on a strainer to drain for a few minutes.  After it has drained you can discard the grains and begin heating to a boil.  Stir very well at this point.

The reason to stir very well is the make sure that your wort is uniform and will allow for a more accurate gravity reading.  I had a pre-boil gravity of 9.5P when I was expecting 8.7P.  A little high, but that's alright for this beer.

 As we reach a boil the first hop addition gets thrown in.

 Yummy hop break.

 Don't forget to start your timer.

 Pull the yeast out of the fridge to warm up to room temperature.  Since it is only one gallon, there is no need for a starter, but we will need the whole vial of yeast to fight the Killer Bee.

 During the boil is a good time to clean and sanitize your fermentor.  In this case a 2 gallon bucket that will allow for plenty of kreuson without blowing the lid off.

 If you can drink something similar to what you are brewing, the beer gods will look kindly upon you for this.

 10 minute addition of hops, my house reeks of Simcoe by now and I'm loving it.

 Knockout hops, kettle off and lots more hops going in.

 The kettle goes into a sink full of cold water to chill.  Stir the inside while moving to the pot to keep both the water and the wort moving.  When your sink is full leave it sit for 5 minutes.

 After 5 minutes the sink water should be hot, so drain it and replace it with fresh cold water.  Also this is the time to add a sanitized lid to keep the wort safe while it chills.  I usually change the water 2-3 times to chill a batch down to below 80F.

 Below 80F, good enough for me.

 Time to check the gravity again.  It is now up to 13.5P, with an estimated OG(pre honey) or 12.3P.  So I did overshoot my gravity, but as I said before, that isn't exactly a bad thing for this beer.

 Now I rack to my fermenter and try to leave the massive amount of hops and break material behind in the kettle.

 Nice cake of hops left in the bottom of the kettle.

 Time to get the honey ready.  A pound and a half of orange blossom honey going in.

 Make sure that everything is sanitized, including the container that the honey is in.

 Mix the honey in with a whisk and while you are doing that so ahead and aerate the wort like crazy.

 Last gravity check.  23P or 1.094 SG.

 Pitch your yeast and watch out for the exploding vials.

 Finally tag your fermentor so you don't loose track of what is in each bucket.

Don't forget to take notes.  Here is my note sheet that I use.

Crazy brew night for sure.  Nothing went wrong and finally got a step by step walk through of my brewing process for anyone interested.  Bottling two batches this week, adding clearing agents to my berry cyser and impatiently waiting on this and Alterna to finish.

Got the stuff to brew a few more batches up, but I am currently stocked up in the fermentor department so once I bottle I can brew again.  Time to check on the bottle supply.

If anyone has any questions about how I brew, or just want to leave a message, hit the comment button below.

Until next time,

Cheers everyone!

Recipe: http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/the-killer-bee

Brewing postponed for a few days

Work schedules are being shifted around a bit and I won't be brewing until Saturday or Sunday night, but it will be a fun one.  I bought three brews worth of ingredients today and am excited to get them going.  Until I brew, cheers!

Batch 012: Alterna Gluten Free Brown

This week I am taking a step away from the grain, away from all grain actually.  I am brewing up a gluten free beer for a friend of a friend.   I was asked if it was possible to do and I took it as a challenge to not only do it, but make a great tasting beer in the process.  I spent a good portion of the working life in kitchens and dealing with gluten allergies is becoming more and more common.  It is tough to be sure that you are actually getting gluten free food and drinks and taking a chance on whether or not it is can be risky.  I did a fair amount of research before even looking at recipes for other gluten free beers.  I learned a lot just reading up on how to do and I am sure I will learn more as this brew ferments.

The recipe:  Well this was an interesting one.  Luckily Briess makes a sorghum extract that is used for brewing gluten free beers.  I grabbed myself a can of that and started searching for what else would go in.  Through reading online I found a fair amount of posts describing how to caramelize everything from quinoa to millet to add color and a bit of flavor.  I knew a pale beer would be hard to do without it tasting like it was gluten free.  I wanted to make a gluten free beer that tasted like beer, not sorghum.  Looking through my cabinets I found the molasses I had used from St. Nick's Nog and noticed the gluten free tag on the label.  That's when I decided I would go for a brown/porter depending on the color I got out of it.  Honey is also gluten free and a tasty ingredient so 12 oz were put in.  Near the end of the boil I am adding 3oz of maltodextrin to increase the mouthfeel and thicken it up a little bit.  I looked up maltodextrin about 4 times to make absolutely sure it was gluten free and it turns out that it is so processed that it can come from wheat or barley but by the time that it makes it to the finished product it is gluten free. (reference: http://www.glutenfreeliving.com/ingredient.php#maltodextrin )  I took a similar approach to the hoping as I did with the Brew Year Brown.  I put a small charge of Centennial in just for bittering and finished off the Willamette I had for flavor.

The process: This is where things got a little interesting.  I applied a few past lessons from my burnt mead and threw the honey and molasses in the bottom of my pot with a splash of water and turned up the heat.  I cooked the honey and molasses together for about 45 minutes caramelizing the honey and molasses to give me more flavor and residual sweetness.

After it had cooked down I added back 8qts of water and started my boil.  I added 1.5 pounds of sorghum extract at the beginning of my boil and away I went.  I decided to make a larger batch (1.5ish gallons) so that I could send more than just a few bottles out and still keep a couple for myself.

 

 Everything went really well and I put the wort in a new bucket to ferment with Fermentis S-04 English yeast.  Here is the other interesting thing about gluten free ingredients.  Dry yeasts are gluten free, White Labs vials are just over the limit, but if pitching into 5 gallons of wort will dilute down to acceptable levels(if you are willing to chance that depending on the severity of the allergy), but Wyeast is not gluten free.  The liquid used to store the yeast and propagate it is a standard starter wort and thus, not gluten free.  I went with the safest option and have no problems using dry yeast.

Sidework: While brewing I also racked my American Wheat Tattoo'd Graffiti to secondary and added the first dry hop of Citra and Amarillo.  It smelled amazing and is only getting better with the hops added. I will add more next week and bottle the week after that.

This brew was important to me and I am a little upset that I kept pushing it back.  People can't control the cards they are dealt in life and I really respect the people that take it in stride and do the best that they can with what they have.  Something such as being celiac or gluten free doesn't mean you have to hide in a clean room and shut your life down.  If you want something you just have to take the extra step to find a way to make that happen.  By brewing this I hope that I can give people a nice craft beer that someone that is gluten free can enjoy, but also that someone who isn't gluten free would like to.  Below is a list of the ingredients that went in to this along with suppliers so if there is any question to whether or not something is gluten free you can know before getting sick.

Cheers!

Recipe: http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/alterna

Briess White Sorghum Syrup 45HM Link
Brer Rabbit Full Flavor Molasses Link
Great Value Clover Honey Link
LD Carlson Maltodextrin Picture (see above link about being gluten free)
Fermentis S-04 Brewing Yeast Link
Hop Union Hops (Centennial and Willamette)

Batch 011: Brew Year Brown

I realized I said my next brew would be something special that would challenge me, this isn't that beer.  This was a fairly unexpected brew day and didn't have the money on hand to pick up the necessary stuff to do it. Anyway, on to what I actually DID brew.

Brown ales are a bit of a sore subject for me.  90% of the commercial brown ales that I have tried just taste kind of muddy with no clear purpose.  There is one brown ale that I have had that defied that though from Crown Brewing in Crown Point, IN. My hopes in making this is to make something as rich as that.

The recipe: I started off with Maris Otter as the base malt to accentuate the maltiness with special roast for some nice toasty flavors and chocolate malt for color and flavor.  I used Willamette hops for a mild hop flavor.

The process: I upped my batch size from 1.1 to 1.25 gallons with this batch.  I doughed in with 8 qts of water at 161F for a mash temp of 154F.  I kind of overshot the temp so I had a bit of stirring to do, but it was down to 154F within 5 minutes so I'm not too worried about it.  60 minutes later I checked my gravity and had a pre-boil gravity for 7.5 Plato when I was expecting 9.3 Plato.  I checked two more times and it was the same every time.  I lautered anyway and brought the wort to a boil before checking my gravity again and making a decision on adding DME to bump up my gravity. I checked again and it was at 9.2 Plato so I continued with the boil.  What happened was the the wort stratified and basically the sugars sank.  The boil stirred everything up and unified the wort allowing me to take an accurate reading. One more reason to not freak out about every detail while brewing.  I also tried upping my boil rate to match what I have in my software other than trying to match the software to my process.  I realize that is kind of backwards, but it was just something to try before trying to figure out what my burner was at and repeat it every time.  Knowing my burner is at 100% is easier to repeat.  At the end of the boil my gravity was 13.5 Plato when I was expecting 13.2 so I am pretty happy with the results.  It wasn't exact, but a lot closer than past brews.  Over all this brew day had a hiccup or two, but turned out to be one of the best ones yet and a great way to start the New Year in brewing.

While brewing I also racked over my berry cyser to secondary and added more fruit to it: raspberries, blueberries and blackberries.  The color was awesome and the taste was good too.  Tart and dry so I added sulphites and sorbate so that I can backsweeten later.  Two more weeks for that one until it gets racked to tertiary and sweetened. Excited for that one.

So, next week I will finally get around to that challenging brew.

Until next time, cheers!

Recipe: http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/brew-year-brown