Cleaning Your Brew Pot Ball Valve

I remember when I first disassembled the ball valve on my brew pot after never having done so. I was HORRIFIED!! As brewers, we are always so careful to make certain that everything is clean and sanitary, especially anything that our wort touches on the cold side of the brew day, which means anything after the boil, but I had overlooked this very important piece of equipment come clean up time. Here's what my disassembled valve looked like after my Scottish 80 Shilling Ale brew day this past Saturday.

Bear in mind that this was after one brew day and that I started with a spotlessly clean ball valve. Had I left this on my brew pot, the wort stuck inside would have been a breeding ground for all sorts of nasty, beer ruining microbes, not to mention the kettle trub and hop particles being trapped inside.

Considering that this is what 6 to 11 gallons of freshly cooled wort passes thorough on its way to the fermenter, we all need to make sure that it is spotlessly cleaned and sanitary for every brew day. Some advocate for simply flushing the system really well with PBW as part of the clean up process. This is referred to as Clean In Place, or CIP for short. This is accomplished by varying the opening of the valve as cleaner runs through it to make sure that every part of the valve is flushed out. This might be fine for some, but I am a bit more anal about the clean up and given that it takes roughly 5 minutes to disassemble, and the same to reassemble once the valve's been cleaned and dried, I always remove, disassemble, and clean my valve after every brew day.

All you'll need is an adjustable wrench (or 2 if you'd prefer to not use a socket wrench) and a socket wrench. For my valve, I use a 13mm socket. I would suggest taking a picture of the assembled valve to aid in the reassembly the first time or two but after that, it becomes second nature. Do be careful with the stem that actually extends into the chamber and turns the ball as there is a very small, white o-ring that is very easily lost once it has been taken off of the stem. Once disassembled, simply rinse the pieces and let them soak in a bowl of PBW or any oxygen cleaner. I typically let them soak overnight, then rinse the cleaner off the next morning, and let the pieces air dry before reassembling the valve.

Once you're ready to brew again, simply re-install the valve on your brew pot and check for leaks. Whether you clean in place or disassemble your ball valve, you always want to make sure that it has been sanitized before you drain the wort at the end of the brew day. This is most easily done by simply running a gallon or so of boiling wort through the valve towards the end of the boil. Be sure to wear protective gloves and use a container that can stand up to the boiling liquid. Once you've run off about a gallon, simply close the valve and pour the wort back into the boil kettle. I go a step further and spray the valve really well with Starsan before I drain the kettle.

Stay tuned as I will post about a citrus IPA brew day coming up very soon. This beer, along with an American Amber Ale of mine, will be served at the upcoming Evergreen Homebrew Festival on Sunday, October 18th from 3-6 at Ecco on Overton Park Ave. I'd love to see you all there so check it out. We'll have 20+ beers being poured!!

Cheers 

Citrus IPA Update and Big Brew Day

The citrus IPA was kegged on Sunday, 4/19/15, and man did it smell great!! Thanks to my less than skillful handling of the tubing used to fill the keg, I didn't have a chance to taste it. I didn't take a final gravity reading on it but when I last checked before cold crashing the beer, it came in around 1.010 which puts the ABV at 4.07%. This beer will be great for the hot days ahead. 

Speaking of hot days ahead, Saturday, May 2nd, is when this year's Big Brew Day event will be held at Bosco's in Overton Square. In 1988, May 7 was announced before Congress as National Homebrew Day. The American Homebrewers Association (AHA) created AHA Big Brew as an annual event to celebrate National Homebrew Day around the world. AHA Big Brew is held each year on the first Saturday in May. Bosco's has hosted this event many times and graciously provides their Bombay IPA wort and their house yeast to all participants. Home Brewers take it from there tailoring a beer to their liking via wort additions, hop schedules and boil time. All are welcome and many experienced brewers will be on hand from the Memphis Brewers Association to share their knowledge and possibly some home brew. I encourage anyone who's ever had any interest in home brewing to come out and see what it's all about. The great thing about home brewers is that we're a friendly group that loves to bring others into this hobby that we all love. My plan is to be at Bosco's around 8:30 to get set up and ready to brew. I'll have 5 gallons of the recently kegged citrus IPA on hand and I doubt you'll go thirsty given that most participants will have beverages on hand. I hope to see many current and potential brewers at Bosco's on the 2nd!!

Cheers 

Citrus IPA Brew Day - 4/4/15

I brewed this beer last summer for the Evergreen home brew event that was held in October and it was well received so I wanted to give it another shot while making a few adjustments along the way.  My grain bill called for the following:

12lbs American 2 Row Malt
1lb Crystal 20L Malt
1lb Vienna Malt

The hops used and hop schedule was as follows:

1oz Centennial (9% AA) First Wort Hop (fancy term for throwing the hops in the pot with the 1st runnings of wort)
1oz Centennial (9% AA) at 10 minutes remaining in the boil
2oz Citra (12.5% AA) at flameout (fancy term for end of the boil)
2oz Citra (12.50% AA) dry hop

Now...if ever a day was tailor made for brewing beer, Saturday, April 4, 2015, was!! The sun was shining, 98.9 FM was playing all of my favorite classic hip hop & I had plenty of time so rushing was not going to be an issue. It didn't hurt that I have a decent stout and the newly kegged IPL on tap.

I mashed in at 11:00 with 5.5 gallons of water heated to 168. After adding 2 cups of boiling water, I hit my desired temp of 150* and let it rest for 90 minutes. I would suggest heating your water to 5 degrees warmer than suggested prior to adding it to your mash tun.  This way, when you pour the hot water into the mash tun, it pre-heats it prior to adding the grain.  Once you've added the grain, simply stir it to release the heat until your desired rest temp has been reached.



After the 90 minute mash rest is when things started to go downhill. Prior to the wheels coming off of my brew day, I performed the vorlauf (fancy word for making sure the wort runs free of grain pieces) and was pleased with the color. As the first runnings of wort filled the brew pot, I tossed the 1oz of Centennial into the wort and man it smelled great. Now, you'll recall that I had added 5.5 gallons of water to the mash tun but I ended up with only 2.5 gallons of wort in the brew pot after the 1st runnings. I had lost 3 gallons of water in the system!! I knew something was terribly wrong. How wrong would be revealed later. To put it into perspective, the gravity of the first runnings for the IPL brewed in February was 1.065. This meant that I had extracted very little sugar from the crushed grains and that the body and strength of the resulting beer would be lighter and lower respectively. Oh well, there was nothing I could do about it at that time. I attributed this atrocity to my new CPVC mash manifold being rubbish and would address that later. I sparged with 5.10 gallons of 171* water and let it rest for 15 minutes. Once the 2nd vorlauf had been performed and the 2nd runnings had been drained into the boil pot, I'd collected 7.75 gallons of 1.022 wort!!! Again...I was not happy.  I added 1lb of dehydrated malt extract to get the pre-boil gravity up to 1.031...pitiful I know. The boil proceeded as usual and of course...brewing isn't all work and no play.

The immersion chiller was added with 15 minutes remaining on the boil time. This is called a citrus IPA and is called such for the flavor imparted by the hops utilized but I like to kick up the citrusy aspect by adding the zest of 2 navel oranges to the wort once the flame has been turned off along with the 2 oz shot of Citra hops.

The last hop addition and orange zest steeped for 20 minutes before I chilled the wort to 77 degrees with the immersion chiller.  At this point it really smelled great!!

I collected 5.5 gallons of wort in the ale pale and placed it in the fermentation chamber with the temp controller set to 65 degrees. It took about 2 hours for it to cool to 65 so the yeast was pitched at 6:30 PM. The starting gravity of the wort going into the ale pale fermenting bucket was 1.041. Assuming the yeast does well, which is should given the size of the yeast starter, this beer should ferment down to about 1.010 which equates to roughly 4.10% ABV. This isn't close to what I was shooting for but given the warm, read HOT, days right around the corner, a lower alcohol session beer will be a welcomed respite after an afternoon of yard work.

Now, as to why I had so much trouble, the answer turned to be very simple. I discovered when cleaning the mash tun that the manifold had floated up nearly 4 inches at the back of the mash tun. As I searched the internet thinking that I was going to need an advanced degree in fluid dynamics in order to engineer a new mash tun manifold, I came across a forum post that solved the problem. All I needed to do was open the valve on the mash tun after I added the strike water in order to fill the manifold with water. This would have displaced the air and kept it firmly seated at the bottom of the mash tun.

The beer fermented quickly and vigorously. I checked the gravity at 9:30 on 4/7/15 and it showed as being 1.014 so I ramped the temperature of the fermentation chamber up to 70 degrees in order to get down to at least 1.010.  I'll likely dry hop the beer this weekend and keg it next weekend. I'll update you guys with a tasting as soon as it carbs up.

Cheers

Mead Update

So my first foray into making mead got off to an inauspicious and frustrating start.  After pitching the Wyeast 4184 Sweet Mead yeast and following the nutrient schedule suggested by Josh at Bernoulli Brew Works, the gravity never budged off of 1.090 which is what it was from the very beginning. 

Well, fear not fellow brew enthusiasts...Lalvin EC-1118 saved the day!!  I pitched 1 packet of this beast of a yeast at 4:00 PM on Sunday along with a dose of yeast nutrient and a good stirring.  It took about 24 to get going but man once it got going, it took off!!  The gravity dropped from 1.090 to 1.070 by Tuesday evening and it has been bubbling away ever since.  My plan is to leave the mead in the Ale Pale until mid-May then rack it into my 5 gallon glass carboy.  I'll bottle the mead the first of August.

I do think I'll give mead a try again but I know for fact that using a liquid mead yeast will not be part of the process.

Check back soon as I will be posting about the experience I had with my first home brew competition.  

Going Medieval

My nephew is getting married this summer.  He and his lovely bride-to-be asked me to make a couple of beers for the event.  Once I got past the shear terror of putting my precious home brew out there for consumption by and gasp...criticism from others, I gladly agreed to help out.  I then received a text this past weekend asking if I have ever made mead.  Now...I have never even THOUGHT about making mead much less read a single word on the subject.  I told him that if he would procure the honey, I would give it a go.  So with that ladies and gentleman, my brewery pulled double duty last night and functioned as a meadery.

After searching online and getting a crash course in making mead, I settled on making a modified 5 gallon batch of something referred to as Joe's Ancient Orange Mead (JAOM).  For a 1 gallon batch, the JOAM recipe calls for the mixing together of 3.5 lbs Clover or your choice honey or blend (will finish sweet), 1 Large orange (later cut in eights or smaller rind and all), 1 small handful of raisins (25 if you count but more or less ok), 1 stick of cinnamon, 1 whole clove ( or 2 if you like - these are potent critters), optional (a pinch of nutmeg and allspice ), 1 teaspoon of Fleishmann’s bread yeast . Balance water to one gallon.  This recipe can easily be scaled up for larger batches.

I opted for an updated 5 gallon version which called for the following:
12lbs raw/ unfiltered honey, 3 navel oranges (zested and juiced), 50 raisins, 5 cinnamon sticks, 3 whole cloves.









I simply heated 2.5 gallons of tap water to 160 degrees and added all of the ingredients making sure to stir it very well until the honey was completely dissolved in the solution.  Once it cooled to about 120 degrees, I poured it vigorously into the 6.5 gallon Ale Pale and topped it off with enough cold tap water to bring the batch size to 5 gallons.  I was now pretty much finished.  I placed the Ale Pale in the sink that was then filled with water and ice blocks to cool the must (that's what mead is referred to prior to fermentation) to under 75 degrees so I could then pitch the yeast.  Instead of using bread yeast, I opted for Wyeast 4184 Sweet Mead Yeast (I activated the Smack Pack around 5:30 to give it plenty of time to swell).  I will add yeast nutrient and fermaid k for 4 days after the yeast has been pitched for 20 hours.  This is needed so as to keep the yeast healthy and viable since honey lacks the nutrients and minerals found in wort.  Here's how it looked steeping in the pot:

At this point, I have maybe 30 minutes in the whole "brew day" and most of that was waiting for my electric stove to heat already hot tap water to 160 degrees.  I'll ferment the mead for 2 months at roughly 60 degrees in the basement then rack it off into a 5 gallon carboy for conditioning.  I'll bottle it up about a week before the wedding since this will be a still mead and won't be carbonated. 

Making this mead couldn't have been easier but I do warn you that sanitation is of the utmost importance at all stages.  It took roughly 2 hours of sitting in the ice water and being stirred to cool down to 75 so I pitched the yeast at roughly 9:30.  I assume I could have used my immersion chiller to speed the chilling process and I might give that a try next time.  The entire process took about 2 hours in total with about 30 minutes of hands on activity on my part.

I'll never give up brewing beer but given how much easier and quicker a mead making session is, it is certainly a viable option when the weather doesn't cooperate.  As an added bonus, the smell is awesome and much more pleasant to those who don't care for the smell of mashing 15lbs of malted grains (You know who you are).

I had a great time making this mead and couldn't help but get a little philosophical in the process thinking that this ancient drink brought our distant ancestors together and hopefully will do the same for our family this summer.

Cheers
    

India Pale Lager Update

I took a sample Last Thursday, 3/5/15, evening that came in at 1.013 on the hydrometer.  It tasted great but I thought that I detected a hint of butterscotch which is an indicator of their still being diacetyl present at a perceptible level so I decided to leave the temp set at 63 degrees.  Saturday morning my brother and sister in law came over and wanted to, "see where the magic happens"...his words, not mine...but I dig it!  I pulled the airlock off of the IPL and it smelled great.  Very hoppy with not even a hint of butterscotch.

At 10:00 PM last night, 3/8/15, I dropped the temp on the fermentation chamber to 1.5 C (34.7 F) to begin the lagering process.  I'll leave the beer alone for 2 weeks before I pull a sample and will likely raise the temp at that time to about 63 F to begin the dry hopping process.  I have high hopes for this beer but that could be said for every beer I've ever brewed! 

Cheers and check back soon for a post about my experience in a local beer competition.

India Pale Lager Brew Day

I've read several articles lately about India Pale Lagers both online and in Brew Your Own magazine and figured that since I love IPA's, an IPL would be a good first shot at brewing a lager beer.  The temperature in my basement sits steadily at 56 degrees this time of year so fermenting at 48 degrees and lagering at 32 degrees shouldn't stress my upright freezer fermentation chamber nearly as much as it would in the summer when the basement is at least 10-15  degrees warmer.  I opted for a grain bill that is essentially the same as a lower ABV IPA and fermented with 1 Wyeast 2035 American Lager yeast smack pack built up in a 1 liter starter that sat on my DIY stir plate for 24 hours.  The IPL was brewed on Saturday, 2/21/15 and the grain bill as follows:

9lbs American 2-Row Pale Malt
1lb American White Wheat 
1lb Crystal/ Caramel 30L
1lb American Munich Light 10L

The hops used were Cascade and Centennial with a hopping schedule of:

1oz Centennial at 60 minutes (after the hot break has fallen completely)
1oz Centennial at 15 minutes left in the boil
1oz Centennial at Flameout and whirlpooled for roughly 20 minutes
2oz Cascade - Dry Hop for 2 Days
2oz Cascade - Dry Hop for 2 Days after the first Cascade dry hop

I mashed in with 6 gallons of strike water and held the mash temp at 151 degrees for an hour.  I collected roughly 3.80-3.90 gallons of 1.065 wort at mash out.  Given how much liquid I left behind in the mans tun, I realized that I needed to build a new manifold more to the specs laid out by John Palmer in How to Brew. I performed an batch sparge with 175 degree water for 15 minutes then drained the second runnings into the boil pot.

I ended up with 8.25 gallons of 1.035 wort in the keggle.  The boil was delayed by about 2.5 hours as we went to the groundbreaking ceremony for the newly branded Crosstown Concourse.  This was a worthwhile trip as I was able to sample an IPA and a Brown Ale brewed by Crosstown Brewery.  Both were excellent beers!! The wort was boiled for a little over an hour and, with really cold groundwater this time of year, I was able to cool it to 66 degrees in roughly 15 minutes after flameout.  I drained 6 gallons of wort into the fermenter and placed it in my fermentation chamber.  The yeast was pitched once the wort cooled to 52 degrees.  I dropped the fermentation temp to 48 degrees roughly 24 hours after pitching the yeast.  The sample pulled on 2/28/15 had a gravity of 1.014 and tasted really good.  The final gravity should come in around 1.010 so I raised the temp to 63 degrees on Tuesday, 3/3/15, to help the yeast clean up after itself and drive of diacetyl.  I plan on taking another reading tonight and tomorrow then starting the lagering process on Saturday, 3/7/15.  I'll hold the beer at 32 degrees for 2 weeks then raise the temp to 60 degrees and begin the dry hopping process.  My hope is that raising the temp will help the beer hold more of the Cascade aroma from dry hopping as opposed to dry hopping at 32 degrees.  If any of you have suggestions about this, please let me know.  I'll post tasting notes on this beer in a couple of weeks once it's been kegged and carbonated.

Cheers