Brewing update - 08/22/10

Apfelwein
I've been reading a lot about cider of late and decided that I needed to give this a taste. It still has a fair amount of krausen on top and is very cloudy. The nose was fairly strong with the scent of alcohol with a hint of apple in the back. The taste was bitter/tart upfront with an overly bitter/tart finish, not undrinkable but something that would need to be paced. The funny thing was that after I had taken a sample the krausen started to dissipate. Which I thought may have been due to either the k-meta that I used to sanitize the baster or opening it up. But when I went back down 15 minutes later it was back where it was before the sample. 

Basic Mead
Has an unpleasant medicine nose that's just as bad if not worse then it was before, tastes rather sweet and fuzzy with a sour and unpleasant after taste. Somewhat disappointed with how it's come along. I may have made a mistake and stressed the yeast or it could be the yeast itself. So far I haven't been too impressed with the EC-1118 and hope that the Afpelwein turns out ok.

Jalapeno Mead
Took a gravity reading and did a taste. The gravity had fallen down to 1.036 from the 1.045 it was on the 13th, hopefully it will keep fermenting. I'll try and not touch it for two weeks and then give it another test. As for the taste, it had a peppery nose that didn't really appeal to me. If I try this again I'll look for a pepper that smells good on it's own instead of the jalapeno. It was very sweet with a cloying mouth feel with a jalapeno after taste and no heat at all. So far this has been a disappointment, but I'm hoping to catch it somewhere in the 1.002 – 1.010 range and cold crash it and bottle. Maybe some time in the bottle will improve it.

JAOM
I didn't touch this at all as per the instructions... perhaps that's what I need to stop playing with things. Recipes that say walk away after installing the air lock. The bubbling has slowed down a bit over the last few days and some of the orange zest has started to fall. Only a month to go on the 25th, so I'm hoping that it will start to clear soon.

Ginger Beer
This is one of the few things that has turned out nice. I chilled a couple of bottles and took it over to a friends place for some testing last night. It's fairly sweet with a nice ginger taste and nose, And it's not zingy like some of the commercial brands that I've tried, but it's refreshing none the less. I opened one today to get a gravity reading and it fizzed up all over the place. It seems that the yeasties did a good job carbing it. I did notice quite the difference from it being chilled though, it was a lot sweeter (almost cloying) and was really really carbed. As for the gravity it was still at 1.044... which would mean that it didn't fall at all in the bottles. So I have not idea what the abv would be it there is any at all. I suppose that I'll have to try one on an empty stomach to see if there is any alcohol it in or not o_O.

Apfelwein

I lurk around the home brew talk forums a lot and found that a number of people had something called Apfelwein listed in their signatures as something in the works. Curiosity took hold and I gave it a google and ended up finding a recipe and description... also on the home brew talk forums.

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

It's pretty much described as a very dry cider of German origin. And, like many things, is an acquired takes a little bit getting used to, 2-3 glasses that is... o_O

I scaled the recipe down for 4.2L of juice, why 4.2L? Cause that's what 4 cans of Allens apple juice came out to and I didn't see the point in buying another for only 300ml.

4.2L Allens Pure Apple juice (4 cans)
204g cane sugar (should have been 201g, I over poured and didn't want to bother with 3g of sugar)
1 packet Lalvin EC-1118 yeast
1 4.5L glass jug

I re-hydrated the yeast in about 200ml of juice and had intended to leave it for only 10 minutes. But it took me longer to clean the jug and mix the juice and sugar so it ended up being 20 minutes. I funneled the sugar into the jug and then poured two cans of the juice on top of it. I then capped and shook until the sugar appeared to be mixed. Next I added the remaining two cans, capped again and gave it a quick swirl. Then took a hydro sample, pitched the yeast, swirled and airlocked.

The gravity came out to be around 1.056 and with the EC-1118 should ferment out to .999 or so. Which should make it a good 7.3% abv. I was aiming for closer to 8% so I think that the next time I do this I'll toss in another 50-100g of sugar.

Also here is the math for the down scaling, one gram of sugar equals 20.895ml of liquid. Writing this here now I realize that I should have taken a gravity reading of the juice before adding the sugar. But oh well :P.

See below for an image of the apfelwein about 3 hours after pitching, the little yeasties hard at work.

Re-pitching the Basic Mead

I picked up some more Lavlin EC-1118 tonight to re-pitch into the basic mead. I poured the yeast packet into some room temperature water and left it for 5-6 minutes. Then I turkey basted a little bit of the must out of the jug and added it to the re hydrating yeast. After another 5-6 minutes I gave it a good stir and funneled it into the jug. The reaction was more or less instantaneous, bubbles! Lots and lots of bubbles! So many in fact that that it almost overflowed the jug. I'm hoping that this will help the must finish fermenting and speed up the clearing. 

Also, I'm a little annoyed at the availability of the Lavlin strains of yeast in this area, the LHBS that I tend to go do only stocks the EC-1118 and the internet reatailer i've been looking at also only seems to stock the EC-1118... Oh sure the internet guy has all kinds of other yeasts... just not the ICV D-47 or 71B-1122 I would like to try in an upcoming mead.... jerks

Bottling Bitter take two

Over all the bottling was a success! The only issue that I can think of off hand was that the gravity was still a little high at 1.010. I didn't want to wait any longer and wouldn't have the time during the week for a bottling, so today had to be the day. I just hope that it doesn't cause any bottle bomb issues, but considering that the ginger beer seems to be doing ok I don't think that it'll be an issue.

I boiled around 200ml of water and added 160g of cane sugar and poured it into one of the 23L carboys I picked up a little while back. I then pumped the finished wort into the carboy, mixing the wort with the priming solution. After I finished filling the bottles I cleaned out the pail and carboy, giving the bottles a chance to start to carb and push out all the oxygen that would have been on top of the wort. Next I capped them and put them up on a dresser in me basement. I figure that I'll leave them up there for about a week and then put them on the cooler floor. And then into the fridge some time before drinking them. I plan to crack some open on the 3rd to taste. Also, see below for pictures! And it came out to 45 500ml bottles.

EDIT: And that's everything, I'm all caught up now. Everything from this point onwards will be fresh and new. 

Mead updates and such

I've learned that mead is something you need to be willing to forget about and then come back to in 6 months or so. Over the past few days I've taken gravity tests of both the basic and jalapeno meads, the basic seems to be stuck at 1.030 and the jalapeno was only down to 1.045. If I hadn't messed with the basic by racking it I'm sure that it would have kept going. Next time I'm in the LHBS I'll see about picking up some of the same yeast and re-pitching.

As for the jalapeno, I wrote up some tasting notes. (even though I don't really know what I'm doing with tasting...). It had a mild jalapeno nose with a slight jalapeno taste and a rather sweet and cloying mouth feel. I'm hoping that with age the jalapenoness will recede and lend the mead a hotter mouth feel and taste.

Also, I've resolved not to touch any of the meads (except for adding more yeast to the basic) until they clear. Whenever that may be. 

08/06/2010 Munton's Premium Bitter take two

That's right take two, didn't make any mistakes this time (third times the charm eh?) and used the plastic pail. Which is funny because I found it easier to clean and use then the glass carboy. Maybe if I can find a source I'll switch over to the clear plastic better bottles.

Even though I didn't over water this time the gravity was still a little short at 1.038. I pitched in another 100g of sugar to try and up it the last two points. Another thing was since I didn't want to spend money again on spring water I ended up just filling the empty containers from the previous attempt with tap water and leaving them over night for the chlorine to evaporate.

I went to bottle it last night and was in for some disappointment. The gravity 1.012 when it needed to be 1.008... Since I'm still new to this I didn't want to take the chance with bottle bombs and so left it for tomorrow. I'm not going to have time during the week, so for better or worse it's going into the bottles tomorrow.

08/03/10 Munton's Premium Bitter

Ok, so lacking the proper equipment and a grain source for all grain brewing I decided to try another extract kit. This time I went with Munton's Premium Bitter and enlisted the aid of a friend to help things go smoothly.

Which didn't really help... it seems that I had forgotten that the 1.5L of the kit threw off the total amount of water and we ended up using too much again :(. At the time I worked through the water math a few times to make sure that I didn't screw it up and I forgot about the bloody kit again... gah. This time I was also using the glass carboy that I got with the kit. I wanted to watch the beer brewing instead of trying to peer through a translucent plastic pail.

As a fix for the extra water we decided to add some more sugar to the mix. The gravity came out to about 1.034ish and we added another 150g of sugar to try and raise it. The kit mentioned 1.040 in the instructions, but we only got up to 1.036 with the addition of the sugar :P

I figured that it was going to blow over when the yeast started, so we placed it into the plastic pale to catch the overflow. The pail ended up being a good idea for catching the overflow, when I came down the next morning there was tons of foamy yeast sitting on top of the carboy and some wort in the bottom of the pail. The bad part of using the pail was taking the carboy out to clean off the overflow. It slipped out of my hands as I was setting it down... glass and concrete don't really like each other so it's a good idea to prevent the two from meeting in any sort of impact...

Several hours later with some cussing, some lacerations, some pumping, some moping and some more cussing I had manged to clean up the mess of 24L of glass shard infested wort. During the process I had somehow manged to misplace the sediment trap for the pump as well as hit my head on just about every low lying beam, air duct or light bulb in the basement as well as get soaked by the insolent pump (with beer and water) whenever I pumped too hard...

Suffice to say I shall no longer be using glass for primary fermentation for anything over a gallon.

07/25/10 Jalapeno Mead (Capsicumel)

I read about Capsicumel (don't ask me how to pronounce it) on the home brew talk forums here:
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f80/habanero-capsicumel-60272/

Being someone who likes some spicy food every now and again I decided that this would be next on the list of things to try. It also didn't help that I had bought too much clover honey for the JAOM... So I picked up some more and made this on the same day.

The poster had made his with habaneros and thought that it came out too hot in the end. Not wanting to kill myself on my first try I decided to go with a safer chile, the jalapeno. I would have made another 4.5L batch, but I didn't have the right size of jug on hand and only had around 1.2kg of honey so I went with a 4L batch.

Jalapeno Capsicumel
1 jalapeno cut into quarters (in order to fit into the jug) with the seeds and pith removed.
1.2kg clover honey
4-5L of spring water
Muntons Preminum Gold Active Brew yeast (I used the rest of the pack from the ginger beer, may have been a bad idea but we'll see)
1 tsp yeast nutrient

I boiled 3L of water, removed the pot from heat and let the it cool a little. Then I mixed the honey in making sure to keep stirring until it had dissolved just in case the bottom of the pot was too hot. I chilled the must down before placing it into the jug and topping off with fresh water. Took a gravity reading (1.068) and then tossed in the jalapeno. I left the cap off for 24 hours to allow the yeast some oxygen for breeding and then realized that I forgot to add the yeast nutrient. Which I tossed in right before capping, the must went crazy and it was lucky that it stopped before overflowing.

I tried giving this a taste tonight, I was interested in how it turned out and wanted to see how far the gravity had come along. I had read somewhere that fermentation should be done around two weeks and sought to confirm. I was disappointed with the gravity reading of 1.045, since the fermentation had quieted down I believed that it would be a lot lower. I don't believe that it's stuck or anything, just slow. Perhaps it's the munton's yeast, I tried looking on their web site for the alcohol tolerance and suggested temperature ranges and got nothing. I think that I'm going to stick with Lalvin yeasts from now on.

Also, only two more blog posts and then I'm caught up! Yay!

07/25/10 JAOM

So this is my attempt at a pretty well known (in the mead circles at least) beginners mead. Joe's Ancient Orange Mead, or JAOM for short, is a melomel (fruit mead) that uses basic materials that anyone can get at a grocery store anywhere. Well, maybe not the jug and air lock, at least the standard issue ones.  I've seen pictures of some pretty makeshift airlocks and carboys before on forums.

Here is the link to the recipe that I used:
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f80/joes-ancient-orange-mead-49106/

I made it pretty much to a T, only I used the imperial gallon (4.5L) instead of the US gallon (3.7L). This may have had an effect on my OG, which was only 1.076 as opposed to the 1.100 that the poster had. Also I snapped the cinnamon stick in half and only put in 1 clove and no nutmeg or allspice. And by reading through the comments I saw that a number of people we complaining about a pithy taste to the mead, so I zested and then peeled the navel orange that I used. The handful of raisins I used were 30ish golden ones that I had on hand. And the most important ingredient (the honey o_O) was 1.6kg local clover honey.

I'm going to stick by the recipe and not touch it at all. It's been 19 days and the airlock is still dropping every 6-8 seconds. The basic mead slowed right down after about the first 7 days. Hopefully all goes well, I can't wait for September 25 to roll around.

07/18/10 Ginger Beer Plant (bottled 07/25/10)

 
Ginger beer is one of those things that slowly grows on you. When I first had it the spicy hot mouth feel and fizzy finish almost turned me off of it right then. But over time and with a trip to Bermuda I came to appreciate the zingyness and decided to try an alcoholic version at home.

The recipe I followed was to start something called a ginger beer plant that you feed with ginger and sugar for several days before mixing it with a whole lot of sugar and water then bottling.
Here's run down of the instructions I found on the internet and in a book* with some of my changes:

8.1L spring water
Dried ginger
sugar
jar
cheese cloth
1 tsp yeast (I used Muntons Premium Gold dry yeast, will mention how it turns out come tasting.)

-In a sterilized medium jar mix 600ml of boiled water with 2tsp of dried ginger and 4 tsp of sugar.
-When at room temperature pitch in the yeast and cover with cheese cloth. I wasn't sure if anything else was needed at this step, all the places I could find instructions for making the plant didn't say. And it's not like the jar can be sealed with the yeasties eating away. Perhaps it would be better to use an airlock, but the jar I was using would not have been able to have one fitted.
-For the next 6 days 'feed' the plant each day with 2tsp of dried ginger and 4tsp of sugar mixing well and recovering (make sure that the mixer is sterilized!).
-On the 7th day, in a large pot, boil and dissolve 1kg of sugar with 1L of water, add about 120ml of lemon juice.
-Strain out the contents of the jar and set aside the solids while mixing the liquid into the pot and then add 6.5L of cool water.
-Stir well and then bottle into anything that was made to hold pressure as the ginger beer will be still brewing in the bottles while becoming carbonated.
-Half of the the solid stuff can be mixed with 600ml of water, 1tsp ginger, 2 tsp sugar and the plant can be started again. Either toss the out other half or give to a friend in need of ginger beer. 

I ended up having enough for 16 500ml PET bottles, which I have been keeping a close eye on everyday to make sure that they don't explode.

I'm a little worried about how it might taste, I took a swig of it from when I did the gravity reading and it was way too sweet with very little ginger taste. Here's hoping that it will even out in secondary. As for the gravity readings, the liquid from the jar was 1.016 and before it went into the bottles it was 1.044. Once 4 weeks have passed from the bottle date I'm going to crack one open and take another gravity reading to try and see what the alcohol levels might be like. Though I'm not sure how accurate it will be.

*The book that provided the base recipe was:
Home Brewing, Producing your own beer, wine and cider by Kevin Forbes.

08/02/10 Racking the Basic Mead

 The first jug that the basic mead was in was an amber one, which meant that I couldn't really tell what was going on with it. How much it was still fermenting or how much lees (sediment) had build up. The latter of the two made me really paranoid. I could sorta see what I had thought was a large build up of lees and after reading in several places that leaving the mead on the lees too long it could ruin it I decided to risk racking it early just to get it out of the amber jug. Then I learned after racking it that some people leave their musts on the lees for extended period of times without any negative effect and that racking tends to be more personal preference/opinion then anything else.

During the first week or so of fermentation the airlock was giving off this sweet delicious scent that I hoped the mead would retain. But I was rather disappointed when I popped off the airlock and smelled a rather brutal medicine like scent. I had head about this before and it should be (I hope) something that can be aged out. I racked it into the jug that was shown last post. And as I got to the bottom there was hardly any lees at all! I guess that I over reacted for nothing and should have stuck with the home brewing expression DWRAHAHB (Don't Worry, Relax and Have a Home Brew).

I took a gravity reading as I racked it and got a 1.030, the yeast I used should bring it all the way down to 1.000. So I'm going to take another reading this weekend to see if it's finished or not. One thing I learned after I racked it was not rack until fermentation had finished completely... because if you rack it too early you end up leaving behind a lot of the healthy yeast that would be fermenting away. I also tossed in some more nutrient in order to help the yeasties out, to only learn today that you shouldn't put any in after the mead has gone more then half way >_<

Oh well, it's the first batch and I can't expect everything to smoothly. I just hope that it doesn't take forever to age the suck out.

Next post will be about the ginger beer plant I made.

7/17/10 Basic Mead recipe

This will be a two parter, I'll deal with the racking in another post.

I don't know what it was about mead that caught my attention. But to me it seemed like it would be something to try, it seemed pretty basic and low cost and I could could get the ingredients pretty easy. (not like partial mash/all grain brewing or wine making)

So I called around town looking for some 4.5L jugs, or demijohn as the book I picked up called them. I would later learn that the book was printed in the UK and demijohns were all over the place there and some what a pain in the ass to find over here. I managed to find some, picked up some champagne yeast, acid blend and some creamed honey from the grocery store.

Here is the basic mead recipe that I was going off of.

5L unchlorinated water
1.5kg honey
1 tsp acid blend
1 tsp yeast nutrient
1 packet champagne yeast

For the water I filled the jug up with tap water and then left it out over night for the chlorine to evaporate out of it. A foodie friend vouched for the method and I decided to give it a go. The honey was just a creamed no name brand, it ended up giving me a higher gravity then the clover honey I used for later attempts. Which would mean that it had more sugar in it, whether this is because it was creamed or not I'm not sure. I'll be sticking with the organic stuff from now on. The acid blend, yeast  nutrient and yeast (Lalvin EC-1118) I picked up from a LHBS (local home brew store).

I re-hydrated the yeast by boiling ¼ cup of water, mixing in some honey and then pitching when it was around 35C ish.  I left it for 70 minutes or so before pitching it into the must.

I boiled around 3L of water in a 11L stainless steel pot, it didn't need to be that big of a pot but it didn't hurt having the extra room. And I'm sure that one day down the line I'll end up using it to full capacity. I let the water cool a bit and then started stiring in the honey a little bit at the time. Making sure that if the bottom of the pot was too hot it wouldn't get burned. 

I made the mistake of thinking that the 3L of water and 1.5kg of water would be enough to fill the jug. I had placed aside around 1.2L of water but then poured the rest out in order to empty out the jug for filling with the wort. I also took a gravity reading at this time... which was 1.146. This ended up being a mistake as that the wort was short of the 4.5L I needed to fill the jug, even with the 1.2L I had put aside I'm not sure that I made it to the full 4.5L. The other issue with this is that I didn't realize at first that adding water to the wort would mess up the gravity reading. So I ended up taking another and got 1.118.

The yeast was pitched when the must reached 35C and I gave the jug a good shake in order to make sure that the yeast had enough oxygen to reproduce. I then left the airlock off of it for 26 hours with a piece of cheese cloth on top to keep out bugs and the like while still giving the yeast access to oxygen. I gave it another good shake when I put the air lock on and my notes state that it frothed up a whole hell of a lot and I ended up stopping before the full minute.

By the time I put the airlock on it seemed to be bubbling away happily towards a good fermentation. I'll let you know about the racking next post.

6/13/10 Munton's Pale Ale

For my very first home brew I decided to keep it simple and just do a full extract premade brew kit. It shouldn't have been hard right? Just boil some water, add some sugar and wort, air lock it off, wait, bottle, wait and then drink. In some ways it was that easy, in other ways it sure as hell wasn't.

And the largest lesson that I learned from this attempt is that it is a good idea to have the right equipment to do the job. And that just because you waltz into a supply store and buy a brewing kit and the extract kit doesn't mean that you will have everything you need to do the job.

What I had from the two kits:
Brew Kit:
25L plastic bucket
24L glass carboy
carboy brush
hand pump siphon and tube
sanitizer
hydrometer
plastic spoon

Extract Kit:
Munton's Pale Ale kit (for 23L)
Hopped Wort in a can
Dried yeast

I had also purchased a book on home brewing that provided a good intro and revised instructions as opposed to those that came with the extract kit.

Missing from the list above are a few things that I've since picked up, and a few more that I still need to... (I might have missed some things below. If I remember anything else I'll add them later)

First and foremost would be the electronic scale for measuring the dextrose to be added to the kit. Not having one I found somewhere on line that a cup of sugar weighs around 190g and used 5ish cups in placed of the 1kg that was needed... Looking back on the ABV it's a pretty solid fact that I didn't add nearly enough to the wort. But I was impatient and thought that I could get away from it. I managed to find one on sale for $14.

Next up was an easy fix, I didn't have anything that allowed an easy removal of some wort for testing the OG. This was remedied by a turkey baster.

A thermometer would have also been nice, that way when I rehydrated and pitched the yeast I would have been able to make sure that the water/wort was the right temperature. This is something that I'm still missing and have been using a candy thermometer as a bad replacement (it only goes down to 40c...)

Onto the brewing, I mixed some boiling water with the wort in the 25L plastic bucket and then added the dextrose. Not having access to a large pot to boil the water in I got an 18L bottle of spring water from the grocery store and then boiled 5L of tap water. I added everything and wondered why I had 24.5L instead of the 23L the kit should have been. I didn't realize that the kit was 1.5L itself and put me over the intended water amount. >.<

6/22/10

Bottling was pretty easy, and I don't really have anything special to mention about it. It took me about 3.5 – 4 hours to do, and even then I wasted (not really wasted) a bunch of time making sure that they were properly sanitized. I ended up leaving it in the bucket for 9 days. I wanted it out sooner, but time and lack of caps pushed it back later. Also due to all the extra water I added I ended up with 49.5 500ML Pet bottles. Which makes sense because of the 1.5L from the kit and 1.5 from the priming solution (See below).

Since I over watered and under sugared it the batch came out to a whopping 1.030 SG on the hydrometer. And with the FG of 1.008 the beer clocked in just under 3% at 2.88% ABV. At least, that was what it was at before I primed it with 1.5L of water and 10 tablespoons of dextrose... Once again having an electronic scale would have been handy. The beer came out weak and under carbed. But it still made for a refreshing beverage and maybe somewhat of a session beer.

First!

Yes, I named this post after those special individuals who feel the need to comment FIRST! and who never seem to ever contribute anything to the boards/forums/blogs they lurk and troll about. Lets just hope that I keep up with this and never turn into one of them on my own blog. o_O

I started home brewing in June of 2010 (so long ago I know) and will be writing up the notes from everything I've done since then and will post it here. And then once I get caught up it will just be the new stuff that's getting posted. And I have a digital camera now so that I can document all the happenings (there are a few pictures that would be nice to have, but oh well :P)

So thanks for stopping by and I should have something up here soon.