I've come up with the label for BB-XI - Rising Storm Red Ale.
Coming as it does on the heels of my experimental Black Lager, I wanted the next beer in the pipeline to be something simple, something predictable, something expected. But I also want something I've not made before.
Rising Storm will be a stock Mr. Beer Red Ale kit. The end product will have a mere 3.7% Alcohol By Volume, and be a Class 2 Red Ale with 7 SRM and 12 IBU. If I keep to schedule, it should be brewed in 2 weeks - the target date is the weekend of July 14th - and it should be ready to drink one month later.
And yes, in case you're wondering, the name is a knock-off of the Tom Clancy novel.
"In dog beers, I've only had one!"
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Carbonating In Grolsch - Can I Trust It?
Okay, so when I first set out brewing at home, my starter kit came with 8 2-quart plastic screw-top PET bottles. Clean. Efficient. Easy to sanitize and store. Really ugly.
What I really wanted was something nicer to store, transport, and present my beer in. Having heard that many brewers have had success with using bottle cap systems, while others have used Grolsch-style bottles with swing-top stoppers, I had a decision to make.
Well, not really. Because the Grolsch-style bottles are just really, really pretty!
The first attempt at using Grolsch-style bottles was when bottling BB-3 Dark Ephipany. You've seen the photos - those labeled bottles were darned sexy! I happily bottled, carbonated, conditioned, and popped open my first Irish Stout, and the effect was nothing short of amazing.
So naturally, I was enthusiastic about sharing. My ex-wife is just across town, and had been following my brewing exploits through our son, whom I have involved in the process since day one. She's a Guinness fan, so one evening while taking the boy over I also schlepped a bottle of Dark Epiphany. After a couple of days, I called to ask how it was.
She said it was flat.
Hmmm.... that's odd. So I went downstairs into the Man Cave to retrieve an unopened bottle, and when I cracked it open I got the expected POP! FIZZ! indicative of released carbonation. I supposed that perhaps her bottle got jostled during delivery and somehow the seal was compromised. I drank my bottle, pulled another out for her and when I delivered this one I was careful to keep it steady. She popped it open when I arrived, it decanted as expected, and all was well.
Or so I thought.
A couple of weeks later, while opening a bottle of Shaved Amadeus that had been sitting peacefully in the refrigeration unit, I found that it too had gone flat. Of the 15 bottles I've put into Grolsch and have subsequently opened, two of them didn't seal properly, resulting in a half-gallon of wasted beer.
I've done a little research and have concluded that I need to add a step or two to the bottling process when using Grolsch. Looks like I need to have a bowl full of Star San at the ready. One poster on Homebrewtalk.com removes the entire wire cage assembly from the bottle and soaks it for a few minutes. Then after filling, he removes the assembly from it's bowl, snaps it onto the bottle, sprays a small amount of Star San on the bottle mouth, then snaps the cap on - wiping everything down afterwards. Supposedly this makes a positive seal between the rubber gasket and the glass bottle top.
This is a big deal, because I won't get a 2nd chance with the Christmas Stout. Once bottled and set back, it'll be Thanksgiving before anything else happens. If the seals fail, the beer will be as flat as can be. I won't really know until I follow this procedure on a different batch - one that will be bottled, carbonated, and enjoyed much sooner than this November/December. Anticipating I might want to have a batch to experiment upon, the bottling I did for Nimblejack was half-PET and half-Grolsch. I have 4 bottles of each style. I did not, however, use the wet seal technique described above when bottling, so even if I have a seal failure with this batch it won't indicate whether or not wet sealing will solve the problem. All I can get out of this batch is either a negative result or a potentially false positive result. When I bottle Browncoat tomorrow, which is scheduled for PET, and earmark 1 or 2 quarts to be put into wet-sealed Grolsch. I should know by late July whether I have a problem or not.
Just in case I do have a seal failure, I plan to stockpile some Coopers Carbonation Drops. These are used in place of priming sugar and can speed up the carbonation process. I feel that using these are a bit of a "cheat", but if I've got a complicated batch of beer that has been screwed up during the final step and am looking at pouring it out and losing 6 months of work, these might be a workable "Plan B" to allow me to attempt a "save".
6 bucks for a bag, shipped, from Amazon. Cheap, as insurance goes.
What I really wanted was something nicer to store, transport, and present my beer in. Having heard that many brewers have had success with using bottle cap systems, while others have used Grolsch-style bottles with swing-top stoppers, I had a decision to make.
Well, not really. Because the Grolsch-style bottles are just really, really pretty!
The first attempt at using Grolsch-style bottles was when bottling BB-3 Dark Ephipany. You've seen the photos - those labeled bottles were darned sexy! I happily bottled, carbonated, conditioned, and popped open my first Irish Stout, and the effect was nothing short of amazing.
So naturally, I was enthusiastic about sharing. My ex-wife is just across town, and had been following my brewing exploits through our son, whom I have involved in the process since day one. She's a Guinness fan, so one evening while taking the boy over I also schlepped a bottle of Dark Epiphany. After a couple of days, I called to ask how it was.
She said it was flat.
Hmmm.... that's odd. So I went downstairs into the Man Cave to retrieve an unopened bottle, and when I cracked it open I got the expected POP! FIZZ! indicative of released carbonation. I supposed that perhaps her bottle got jostled during delivery and somehow the seal was compromised. I drank my bottle, pulled another out for her and when I delivered this one I was careful to keep it steady. She popped it open when I arrived, it decanted as expected, and all was well.
Or so I thought.
A couple of weeks later, while opening a bottle of Shaved Amadeus that had been sitting peacefully in the refrigeration unit, I found that it too had gone flat. Of the 15 bottles I've put into Grolsch and have subsequently opened, two of them didn't seal properly, resulting in a half-gallon of wasted beer.
I've done a little research and have concluded that I need to add a step or two to the bottling process when using Grolsch. Looks like I need to have a bowl full of Star San at the ready. One poster on Homebrewtalk.com removes the entire wire cage assembly from the bottle and soaks it for a few minutes. Then after filling, he removes the assembly from it's bowl, snaps it onto the bottle, sprays a small amount of Star San on the bottle mouth, then snaps the cap on - wiping everything down afterwards. Supposedly this makes a positive seal between the rubber gasket and the glass bottle top.
This is a big deal, because I won't get a 2nd chance with the Christmas Stout. Once bottled and set back, it'll be Thanksgiving before anything else happens. If the seals fail, the beer will be as flat as can be. I won't really know until I follow this procedure on a different batch - one that will be bottled, carbonated, and enjoyed much sooner than this November/December. Anticipating I might want to have a batch to experiment upon, the bottling I did for Nimblejack was half-PET and half-Grolsch. I have 4 bottles of each style. I did not, however, use the wet seal technique described above when bottling, so even if I have a seal failure with this batch it won't indicate whether or not wet sealing will solve the problem. All I can get out of this batch is either a negative result or a potentially false positive result. When I bottle Browncoat tomorrow, which is scheduled for PET, and earmark 1 or 2 quarts to be put into wet-sealed Grolsch. I should know by late July whether I have a problem or not.
Just in case I do have a seal failure, I plan to stockpile some Coopers Carbonation Drops. These are used in place of priming sugar and can speed up the carbonation process. I feel that using these are a bit of a "cheat", but if I've got a complicated batch of beer that has been screwed up during the final step and am looking at pouring it out and losing 6 months of work, these might be a workable "Plan B" to allow me to attempt a "save".
6 bucks for a bag, shipped, from Amazon. Cheap, as insurance goes.
A Flurry Of Activity
After a relatively quiet month, where I've managed to reduce my backlog of undrank (undrunken?) beers down to a single quart of each of my four remaining varieties (BB-3 Dark Epiphany Irish Stout, BB-4 Shaved Amadeus Vienna Lager, BB-5 New World Czech Pilsner and BB-6 Farty Monk Belgian Dubbel), I've decided to go out with a bang by getting the "assembly line" started up once again.
When we last left things, there were two fermenters currently full of beer: #1 has 2 gallons of my still-unnamed Christmas Stout (BB-7), which has been hard at work since May 5th; #2 has 2 gallons of Browncoat Ale (BB-9), which was brewed on June 10th and has been fermenting for just under 3 weeks. Both of them are ready to come out and be bottled.
Meanwhile, my Blonde Ale, named "Nimblejack" (BB-8) has been bottled for 3 weeks, carbonating away nicely, and is more than ready to be moved into the nearly empty primary refrigeration unit to begin cold conditioning. If this gets done today, it will be ready to be sampled just in time for the 4th of July celebrations.
To round things out, today was also the day I set about concocting my first true "experimental" beer. Until now, everything has been based on either a stock recipe from Mr. Beer, or a modification to a stock recipe made (and tried) by other users. But for my 10th batch of beer, I felt that it was time for me to branch out in a new direction.
So today, we're going to brew a Black Lager.
After doing a fair amount of online research, I settled on an archived recipe for Snow Drift Dark Lager as a starting point. This recipe uses the High Country Canadian Draft HME (which is a base starter for a very large number of custom MrB recipes), but combines it with the Creamy Brown UME and Argentine Cascade Pellet Hops to make a Lager that weighs in at 4.6% ABV, with 24 SRM (dark) and 22 IBU (moderate bitterness). Not bad, but not quite what I want. My modification to this recipe is to replace the hops with US Goldings Pellet Hops, to use 50% more hops than the recipe calls for, and to add 1 oz of Sinamar to darken it significantly. If my math is correct, I should end up with a "Hoppy" beer that has 5.9% ABV and 40 SRM, but maintaining a 22 IBU. This will make it a Class 6 Black Lager.
The name, as had previously been revealed, will be "Ten If By Giant Robot". The inspiration came from a t-shirt design I found on Threadless, with a terrified Paul Revere riding off to warn the good folk in Lexington and Concord about the manner by which the British were coming. One if by land. Two if by sea. Ten if by giant robot.
[Late Evening Update] I've brewed Giant Robot and have moved Nimblejack to begin cold conditioning. Bottling of the Christmas Stout (Grolsch) and Browncoat (PET) will happen tomorrow.
When we last left things, there were two fermenters currently full of beer: #1 has 2 gallons of my still-unnamed Christmas Stout (BB-7), which has been hard at work since May 5th; #2 has 2 gallons of Browncoat Ale (BB-9), which was brewed on June 10th and has been fermenting for just under 3 weeks. Both of them are ready to come out and be bottled.
Meanwhile, my Blonde Ale, named "Nimblejack" (BB-8) has been bottled for 3 weeks, carbonating away nicely, and is more than ready to be moved into the nearly empty primary refrigeration unit to begin cold conditioning. If this gets done today, it will be ready to be sampled just in time for the 4th of July celebrations.
To round things out, today was also the day I set about concocting my first true "experimental" beer. Until now, everything has been based on either a stock recipe from Mr. Beer, or a modification to a stock recipe made (and tried) by other users. But for my 10th batch of beer, I felt that it was time for me to branch out in a new direction.
So today, we're going to brew a Black Lager.
After doing a fair amount of online research, I settled on an archived recipe for Snow Drift Dark Lager as a starting point. This recipe uses the High Country Canadian Draft HME (which is a base starter for a very large number of custom MrB recipes), but combines it with the Creamy Brown UME and Argentine Cascade Pellet Hops to make a Lager that weighs in at 4.6% ABV, with 24 SRM (dark) and 22 IBU (moderate bitterness). Not bad, but not quite what I want. My modification to this recipe is to replace the hops with US Goldings Pellet Hops, to use 50% more hops than the recipe calls for, and to add 1 oz of Sinamar to darken it significantly. If my math is correct, I should end up with a "Hoppy" beer that has 5.9% ABV and 40 SRM, but maintaining a 22 IBU. This will make it a Class 6 Black Lager.
The name, as had previously been revealed, will be "Ten If By Giant Robot". The inspiration came from a t-shirt design I found on Threadless, with a terrified Paul Revere riding off to warn the good folk in Lexington and Concord about the manner by which the British were coming. One if by land. Two if by sea. Ten if by giant robot.
[Late Evening Update] I've brewed Giant Robot and have moved Nimblejack to begin cold conditioning. Bottling of the Christmas Stout (Grolsch) and Browncoat (PET) will happen tomorrow.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Keepin' Up With The Joneses
I've fallen a little behind in updating the blog, but the brewing has been ongoing! Here's an update to get everything re-synched.
May 15 - First pour, Shaved Amadeus Vienna Lager (BB-IV). This was a milestone, but not because I taped it for YouTube posterity. No, it just so happened that on this day I completely filled the primary cold conditioning unit and has absolutely no more room for the beers coming out of the pipeline. I had managed to only squeeze one-half of the BB-IV batch in and left the other gallons' worth of beer in the conditioning cabinet to continue to carbonate.
More time wouldn't hurt the beer, and might even enhance the flavor, but it didn't help that I had two more fermenters full of beer that would need some place to go once bottled.
May 20 - 1st half New World Czech Pilsner (BB-V) into cold conditioning
May 26 - 1st half of Farty Monk Belgian Dubbel (BB-VI) into cold conditioning
May 27 - 2nd half of Shaved Amadeus (BB-IV) into cold conditioning, and Nimblejack Blonde Ale (BB-VIII) brewed
June 10 - 2nd half of New World (BB-V) and Farty Monk (BB-VI) both enter cold conditioning, Nimblejack (BB-VIII) was bottled, and Browncoat Ale (BB-IX) was brewed.
What's up next:
May 15 - First pour, Shaved Amadeus Vienna Lager (BB-IV). This was a milestone, but not because I taped it for YouTube posterity. No, it just so happened that on this day I completely filled the primary cold conditioning unit and has absolutely no more room for the beers coming out of the pipeline. I had managed to only squeeze one-half of the BB-IV batch in and left the other gallons' worth of beer in the conditioning cabinet to continue to carbonate.
More time wouldn't hurt the beer, and might even enhance the flavor, but it didn't help that I had two more fermenters full of beer that would need some place to go once bottled.
May 20 - 1st half New World Czech Pilsner (BB-V) into cold conditioning
May 26 - 1st half of Farty Monk Belgian Dubbel (BB-VI) into cold conditioning
May 27 - 2nd half of Shaved Amadeus (BB-IV) into cold conditioning, and Nimblejack Blonde Ale (BB-VIII) brewed
June 10 - 2nd half of New World (BB-V) and Farty Monk (BB-VI) both enter cold conditioning, Nimblejack (BB-VIII) was bottled, and Browncoat Ale (BB-IX) was brewed.
What's up next:
- This week: Bottling the still-unnamed Christmas Stout and setting it back for a long 6-month wait. Of course, I need to solve my Grolsch Carbonation problem first - oh, I haven't talked about that yet have I? Stand by, that'll deserve its' own blog post...
- Weekend after next: Nimblejack (BB-VIII) will enter cold conditioning.
- AND Browncoat Ale (BB-IX) will be bottled...
- AND Ten If By Giant Robot Black Lager (BB-X) will be brewed... my first experiment!
The Sinamar Saga - Part II
Within 48 hours of my original email, I received in reply the following:
I am sorry to hear that there was damage to the Sinmar [sic] that you received with your order! We will get a replacement out to you for that jar. Sorry for any mess or inconvenience! Thanks for choosing Midwest, you can expect the replacement sometime in the upcoming week.Not only did I receive a replacement at no cost just a few days later, but it was wrapped extremely securely and the lid had clearly been checked and hand-tightened down before shipping it to me. Not a drop had spilled out. I went ahead and chucked the Sinamar that had come open in the original shipment, and am only a week or two away from making the Black Lager for which the Sinamar had been obtained. Good times!
Please feel free to contact us if you have any additional questions.
Cheers,
Lyndsey
http://www.midwestsupplies.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)