The Once and future HERMS

School has started again as have the multitude of projects I find to distract myself from it.

I am close to completing an electric 240 volt HERMS brewing unit - I already have a small control panel box that I have been using to do electric boils which I need to expand to having a PID.

here is the control box - the knob is for the pulse width modulator which controls the flow of electricity to the element in the boil kettle

I will post pictures of all the equipment and fittings as they arrive.

I have already removed the lids from all my kegs - three in all - 1 Hot Liquor Tank, 1 Boil Kettle that is 90% complete, and one Mash Lauter Tun that needs one more hole drilled and a fitting soldered on.

I suffered a great loss of beer a while ago - an infected carboy has been ruining my beer - something I have tried to fix.

An Update to my tap addiction

The taps  and handles have been done for a while but I have been so busy with school that I haven't taken any new photos. 

here is the final version, not entirely happy with the drip tray but I don't think I can cut it down without messing up the stainless steel. 

All the lines work, although only 4 of them have kegs on them right now. I just kicked my munich cascade smash - which I will be making again today with a few slight tweaks. 

For anyone interested as to whether or not the salt water chiller is working - it is - and continues to impress me with the fact that a 30 dollar pond pump can do so well in a below freezing high salinity environment.  

Last of the extracts - found it in my beer tunnel

As you can see this is highly carbonated - I think I over-primed by about an ounce when I bottled almost 2 years ago.

the beer has aged pretty well, no signs of oxidation.

A little background on this beer.

It was a Phat tire clone recipe kit from Northern Brewer that I brewed the same night as I brewed a hefeweizen kit from them. I had two yeasts to pitch and wouldn't you know it I switched them. So I ended up with a brown hefeweizen and a lighter colored ale.

I thought I had gotten them all but this one survived my late night scroungings.

It has a fruity background, a caramel note to it and almost no hop aroma or flavor - I suppose two years of aging will do that.



 

Brewing in the Snow

As the great pre halloween snow storm of 2011 is nearly upon us - some soap box jockeys screaming 10 inches of snow - I thought it best to make some more beer.

A new brewing associate Aaron and I will be making a batch of "Chimaybe" a Chimay red clone attempt I came up with today. He gave me two bottles of Chimay and I cultured some yeast from one of them

We will also be making two batches of Brandon O's Graff http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f81/graff-malty-slightly-hopped-cider-117117/ which I have made before and loved. This time I will be making an all grain version using .5 ounces of cascade hops, 3 pounds of Pale malt, and 1 pound of munich malt.

I plan on mashing this for an hour then boiling the runoff for 30 minutes adding the hops at the beginning of the boil.

Last week Aaron and I brewed up a low end of the scale DIPA - I used beersmith 2 to work it out, I'm still learning the program so I know there are some errors.

Type: All Grain Date: 10/22/2011 Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal Brewer: Ian Boil Size: 8.24 gal Asst Brewer: Boil Time: 60 min Equipment: Stainless Kegs (10 Gal/37.8 L) - All Grain End of Boil Volume 6.24 gal Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 % Final Bottling Volume: 4.25 gal Est Mash Efficiency 86.4 % Fermentation: Ale, Two Stage Taste Rating(out of 50): 30.0 Taste Notes:

Ingredients

Ingredients

Amt	Name	Type	#	%/IBU
4 lbs	Munich Malt (9.0 SRM)	Grain	2	26.7 %
2.00 oz	Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min	Hop	4	32.6 IBUs
2.00 oz	Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 10.0 min	Hop	7	10.7 IBUs
1.00 oz	Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min	Hop	8	3.2 IBUs
2.00 oz	Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 0.0 min	Hop	10	0.0 IBUs
1 lbs	Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM)	Grain	3	6.7 %
10 lbs	Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)	Grain	1	66.7 %
1.00 oz	Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 30.0 min	Hop	6	12.5 IBUs
4.00 oz	Cascade [5.50 %] - Dry Hop 14.0 Days	Hop	11	0.0 IBUs
1.00 oz	Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 45.0 min	Hop	5	14.9 IBUs
2.00 oz	Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 1.0 min	Hop	9	1.4 IBUs

Beer Profile

Est Original Gravity: 1.078 SG Measured Original Gravity: 1.046 SG Est Final Gravity: 1.020 SG Measured Final Gravity: 1.010 SG Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 7.8 % Actual Alcohol by Vol: 4.7 % Bitterness: 75.4 IBUs Calories: 151.6 kcal/12oz Est Color: 7.7 SRM

Mash Profile

Mash Name: Single Infusion, Light Body, No Mash Out Total Grain Weight: 15 lbs Sparge Water: 5.16 gal Grain Temperature: 54.0 F Sparge Temperature: 168.0 F Tun Temperature: 54.0 F Adjust Temp for Equipment: TRUE Mash PH: 5.20


It is still bubbling away in the fermentation freezer, along with a cascade Munich smash IPA I made the day before.

My long draw beer tower is complete!

check out the full post here: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/long-draw-salt-water-chilled-beer-tower-271578/

I will post up more info later when I am not taking a telepresence course. Needless to say I love having beer on tap in my house.

The Dangers of Pitching onto a recently active yeast Cake

I brewed up a honey belgian beer a little while ago, and being the thrifty brewer I am decided to pour it directly into a recently emptied carboy with a very healthy supply of yeast from the last brew. So I lifted the kettle, put the tubing on and let it run into the carboy, after it filled I realized I had no airlock so I scampered inside to find one. This is what I found when I returned.

I filled it to the 5.5 gallon mark, and the yeast did the rest...very quickly. A bung and a blow off tube solved this issue but I learned that I should just make a starter from a previous batch and be done with it instead of trying this kind of trick again.

House Amber Ale Tasting

So I brewed ten gallons of this stuff about 5 months back. It primaried in a massive 15 gallon hdpe barrel and I bottled it all with the help of Abrial- with whom sanitizing and filling became a joy. (perhaps it was just nice to have help for once.

Grain Bill:

14 Pounds Canadian 2 Row
4 Pounds Canadian Munich Malt
5 Pounds Crystal 30L Canadian Malt

Hops:
2 Ounces Cascade Whole Leaf Hops @ 60 Minutes
2 Ounces Cascade Whole Lead Hops @ 5 Minutes
1 Ounce Cascade Whole Leaf Hops @ Flameout

Note: The bitterness is there( which I like because this beer is quite malty) but I should have dry hopped it for a few days as well.

Yeast: I used US-05. Its a good all around yeast that ferments out pretty clean.

Fermentation Schedule: Fermented at Room temperature - about 62 degrees - for two weeks.

Mash Schedule:

Single Infusion to mash at 153 for 60 minutes

Sparge at 172 for 20 minutes


Appearance: The beer pours a nice red amber color with about three fingers of foamy head that dissipates within a few minutes. Carbonation is a bit over where I want it, my fault as I primed with a bit too much dextrose. As long as you pour immediately after opening and into a large enough glass its not an issue.

Taste: This is one of the better mainstream style beers I have made. Usually I tend toward the saison and Belgian direction but this is great on a hot summer night. Its malty and crisp with enough backbone to balance out the large hop additions. Its very drinkable and the carbonation plays nicely with fuller body.

Nose: nice smell of cascades, malty and somewhat yeasty- yeasty in a good way but I would prefer it without, probably because I didn't cold crash this one. It was before I had the ability to coldcrash- before acquiring a freezer and a fridge for "extra food". I think willow saw right through that ploy.

I have about 1.5 cases of this stuff left, and while I wait to get all the parts for my keezer I will be milking the bottled beer I have and letting some of the bigger beers I made age out - many of them still have that high alcohol rocket fuel taste that big beers have for the first few months.

On that note I think I need to make some smaller beers soon.

Grap-felwein experiment #1

So I bought a surplus of apple juice at a local bent and dent and set about making a prodigious amount of booze from it.

5 gallons of anything sounds like an awful lot but really that only fills about 2 cases of beer bottles plus a few more. So out of a 5 gallon batch of anything I get around 54 twelve ounce bottles of home made hooch.

Two cases of carbonated beverage - or one 5 gallon keg - doesn't necessarily last two adults very long. Especially if those adults happen to have 5 wonderful children. In that case 5 gallons isn't nearly enough.
Here is the link to the original recipe and a lot of discussion on it.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f25/man-i-love-apfelwein-14860/

This batch is an experiment. If you look for Apfelwein you will find a long series of posts dedicated to it on homebrewtalk.com, the recipe came from a guy calling himself EdWort. This stuff is great. Willow loves it because it sits happily around 10% alcohol and takes about 1 glass to give a healthy warming feeling. More than that and its a speedtrain to giggletown. I like it carbonated but I did cork 24 wine bottles worth of the stuff about three months ago. One bottle is left and that has been promised to a currently pregnant woman who wants to drink it when she becomes unpregnant in a few weeks.

My adulteration of EdWort's recipe is as follows:

2 pounds Dextrose
3.5 gallons Apple juice - only other additives allowed are Vitamin C as it doesn't interfere with fermentation
1.5 gallons Grape juice with only Vitamin C added - I used welches and juicy juice
Yeast: I used champagne yeast because its what I had on hand

The carboy on the right is the Grapfelwein, on the left is the straight laced apfelwein.

We tend to drink ours young, I shoot for waiting at least 3 months but I hear that waiting longer is better. 

Will it fit? Freezer edition.

I just answered a question that has been with me since birth:

Will a 26 cubic foot freezer fit into the back of a 1997 Jeep Cherokee?

Answer: More or Less.

Question: Will a 26 cubic foot freezer fit into a Jeep Cherokee while still allowing me to drive whilst not looking like a complete pud?

Answer: No, I looked like a pud.

I am not a small man...6'2 and 208 pounds as of this morning. The seats are normally positioned all the way back and not just so I can hear the anguished screams of one of  my passengers as the seat rests  on their knees. Instead its because as a plus sized man I require plus sized room. Really I just have the seats where it seems most comfortable and allows me to drive without looking like a very tall Simpsons character in a certain small automobile.

The freezer fit, and while I had to load it myself the drive home was uneventful despite the back hatch being held down with tie downs and my seat being so far forward that my knees have dents in them.


to what end did I bring home this beast? well I want to stuff it full of beer and put it in my living room of course. As an ever evolving avid home-brewer and husband to a far too accepting wife I continue to get deeper into the hobby of making alcoholic beverages. I acquired 13 five gallon soda kegs, enough for a lot of beer. Which is good because I have a lot of malted barley which is good because I have a lot of carboys and fermenters which is good because I love good beer which is because I have 5 kids.

It will become a KEEZER. A freezer modified to chill to above freezing temperatures and it will be glorious. I had planned on adding it to our kitchen as a way to expand counter space. I know what you're thinking: Ian there is no counter space in freezers! its like buying real-estate in a housing boom- it only ends in divorce and sadness. But no I say, I will build a custom cabinet for it and a massive butcher block counter top to fit onto it, greatly increasing our counter space. It would have been useful and beautiful. but Alas the kitchen cannot accept a gift of such girth. If only we could get rid of the stove....

much of my inspiration will come from Homebrewtalk.com where many before me have devoted time and energy( and a little cash) to creating things that eject cold beer in a pleasing manner. see the link here:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/show-us-your-kegerator-29053/index11.html

After leafing through that post I got some ideas and now just have to slowly build the beast.

I will add updates as my progress continues. It will live in the garage for now...but soon.....

I just started cleaning out the Beast and here is the first photo.