brewing in maine

So I picked up a bag of Weyermann Pilsener malt a few weeks back and it’s been sitting in the corner of my dining room just waiting to get cracked open. Got it for a song and it should cover at least the next 4 or 5 lagers or Belgians on the list.

It seems like a good idea to have a large amount of base malt laying around now that I finally have a grain mill. I’m thinking of picking up a bag of Crisp Maris Otter for any British beers I want to brew (think biscuity) so that all I need is specialty grains. It keeps the costs down.

Now if only I could get moving on culturing a few key strains of yeast and growing aroma and flavor hops I wouldn’t have to buy much of anything when it comes time to brew.

I tore into the bag this weekend for a traditional Bohemian Pilsener:

12 lb Weyermann Pilsener malt
0.75 lb Carapils (dextrine malt for head retention)

Mash at 154 degrees for 60 minutes, collect enough to end up with six gallons after a 90 minute boil.

1.75 oz Saaz (3.2% AA) @ 60 minutes for 20.3 IBU
2.25 oz Saaz (3.2% AA) @ 30 minutes for 13.3 IBU
1 oz Saaz (3.2% AA) @ 10 minutes for 2.3 IBU
1 oz Saaz (3.2% AA) @ 0 minutes for 0 IBU

WLP800 Pilsener (Urquell) in an active 2L starter (1.3L pitched)

Ferment at 52 degrees. I could only get 54 in the basement and the lager fridge is in lagering mode at 34 degrees right now.

The mash went well, though the grain looked a little more crushed than usual. It was my first crush with the new mill, the Barley Crusher, which was a breeze to use. It came fully assembled, you just stick in on the top of a 5 gallon bucket, hook up the drill, fill the hopper and let it rip. It’s fast and clean with no dust at all.

I definitely learned a lesson about whole hops as well. It was the first time I haven’t used pellets and I underestimated quite how much boiling wort would absorb into the hops, especially 6 full ounces. I only made a fermenter volume of about 4.75 gallons and had to top it off with some water.

The OG before the water addition was about 1.068, 12 points higher than it should have been, so I diluted it to 1.056 with three quarts of cold water. This also brought the temp closer to the target pitching temperature.

The WLP800 should attenuate down to around 1.014, or 75%, for an ABV of about 5.8% and a nice Saazy hop flavor and aroma.

The Tripel I brewed waaaaaay back in September and cold conditioned for almost five months, just because I didn’t get around to bottling it, is finally in bottles. Final gravity in the carboy was 1.007 for an alcohol by volume of around 9.84%.

It was actually easy once I had everything I needed. We saved bottles as we drank Belgians, and then I bought a case of 12 to round it out. A full 5-gallon carboy fit into about 25 750ml bottles.

After unsuccessfully trying to beg or borrow a corker I caved and picked up a Portuguese Floor Corker at Maine Brewing Supply ($72 later, ouch!). I bought a package of reference corks for Belgian bottles and a bag of twist cages to hold the pressure.

According to ProMash I needed 6.3 oz of priming sugar to get 3.25 volumes of CO2 in the conditioned beer. Because the carboy had sat at cold temperatures (42 deg) for nearly five months I felt like it would be wise to re-pitch fresh yeast, so I rehydrated 2/3 package of Safbrew T-58 and pitched it into the bottling bucket. I had read that T-58 is well known for forming a solid sediment after conditioning is complete – we’ll see how that turns out.

The bottles are currently stored on their side in my living room and the heat is locked at 66 degrees. It usually goes down to 58 in the daytime to save money on oil – oh the things we do for beer!

Tasting notes to follow someday…though I will open one in a couple of weeks, I am hoping this one will be good to put up for a while.

We tried some cider before it fully carbonated and man is it alcoholic, to the point that it overwhelms the other flavors and completely takes over the cider. I’m thinking the quantity of Maker’s Mark might have been too much, or maybe the yeast didn’t finish their job properly and convert some of the more solventy alcohols down to their final forms.

I’m hoping that given some time the flavors will mellow and with cold and carbonation things will even out a bit.

As for the Framboise I dumped half of it (a full case!) before I said, “maybe I should just try one of these, just to be sure.” It was spectacular! Any hint of the cardboard oxidized flavor of the one previously tasted bottle was gone completely – these were great beers. A lucky break – I saved the rest for storage.

The Tripel is still in the fridge cold conditioning. I’ve been waffling between bottling it in Belgian bottles and just kegging the damn thing so I can drink it. I don’t have quite enough bottles, nor corks or corker, so I haven’t done anything yet.

Also there’s a Porter in the future, someday.

Happy new year.

The Tripel has been racked to its secondary where it will live for a week and then head into the fridge for a week of cold conditioning. I was shocked to find it had fermented all the way down to 1.008! That’s the best attenuation I’ve had yet, assuming I hit my OG which I’m not sure about, practically 90%.

It smells great and tastes good too, all kinds of clove, fruit and not much of an alcohol-heavy flavor at all. Looks like I survived my fermentation temp rise so far.

This one should come in around 9.5% ABV once all is said and done.

The smells coming from the Tripel as it ferments have been pleasantly fruit-like but subtle. Once the cane sugar went in, however, the room nearly filled with a banana ester flavor. It must be something to do with the way the yeast process the cane sugar. Since we’re doing a renovation on the house my brewing books are boxed away in storage so I can’t do much for research.

I’m concerned that the esters will be too powerful, or linger too much, but maybe a lot of it will be reabsorbed as the yeast go dormant. Either way it’s to style from what I’ve read.

So I took a reading on the Tripel tonight, three days into fermentation, just as the yeast was slowing down (a bubble every 10 secs or so). The beer was starting to clear up a bit on the top couple of inches, with a settling yeast cloud below.

I roused the yeast first, then added the cooled syrup I made with 2.5 lbs of boiled table sugar.

Before the sugar was added, the gravity read 1012. That’s incredible for three days even with the large starter, and I think tells me my mash went as poorly as I thought. Although it’s consistent with the lower mash temps yielding a more fermentable wort. Since I forgot to take my original gravity measurement, I can only guess based on the recipe what my starting point was, but according to ProMash it’s 1061.  That’s 80% attenuation – more than Wyeast even specifies for the strain. So I’m naturally suspicious my OG was really in the 1052-1055 range.

Either way this beer seems to be very busy even a scant 15 minutes after the sugar addition – should be cranking tonight.

The Tripel is down from a high of 78 deg last to about 72 thanks to the window left open and a box fan blowing air across the carboy all night. Not sure I can cool it much further – it’s still very active.

Here’s a video of the Tripel fermentation, 24 hours in. We’re up to 76 degrees on the carboy thermometer-strip. Yikes – no good!

embedded by Embedded Video

Here’s some video of the Tripel mash process, putting the grain in the mash tun.

embedded by Embedded Video

I woke up this morning to the Tripel fermentation lock bubbling every second – no churning yet but things are definitely getting started. My starter seemed a little slow but this guy’s getting going. My only worry is temperature…I had it cooled to 64 degrees in the kettle according to the thermometer I trust, but the carboy temp strips said more like 67-68. They are reading 70 now so hopefully this means the fermentation is really in the 66-67 range and we’re on track. It’s going to heat up fast.

The gamble is whether I can find my blowoff hose before things really get roaring.