Dunkelweizen

The plan: I wanted to do a winter wheat, and I thought I'd try an all grain clone of Weihenstephaner Dunkelweizen. If you haven't tried it, do yourself a favor and go get some! Later, I think I wished I would have cloned the old Magic Hat St. Gootz... that stuff was so good, it's a shame they stopped making it.

Recipe:
5# Pilsner 2row (Ger)
5# Wheat Malt (Ger)
1# Honey Malt
1/2# Special B
1/2# Rice Hulls
1oz Mt Hood (in place of Hallertau)
Wyeast 3068 - Weihenstephaner Weizen

1/17 BREW DAY: This was my 2nd all grain batch, 1st in the cooler, and we were gonna have some company over while I was brewing, not optimal, but oh well. Heated up 15 quarts of tap water to 170F, added to cooler, then doughed in. Hit my mash temp of 153, covered with 2 blankets and let sit for an hour. I did open it up a few times to check the temp since it was the first time I had used the new cooler mash tun. By 60 min, I only had lost 2 degrees, so this thing rocked! I heated up about 8.5 quarts of water to almost boiling, added it to the mash for mash out, stirred the shit out of the mash, then let sit for 10 minutes. Vorlof'd back in, then collected first runnings. Brix = 11.5/1.045... hmmmmm, that's not that great. Estimated pre-boil gravity was 1.051.. and the first runnings didn't even hit that... eesh. (I later realized that I didn't stir it enough and I think there were some pretty big clumps in there). After first collection, I had about 3.5 gallons, and I want 6.5 total so I heated up 3 more gallons to 190 and added that to the grains. Hit my 168 temp, vorlof on top, collected second runnings, total Brix now = 9.75/1.038. Shit! Ended up with 6.5, threw on the fire and brought to a boil. Added my hops when boil started... let the boil go for 1 hour. It was actually warm enough (high 30's maybe 40) that I was able to use the outdoor hose, so I used the IWC and got it down to 65 in about 15/20 mins. SG BRix=10.5/1.042... target was 1.059 for 75% efficiency, so I came in low, around 53%... oh well, what can ya do... it was only batch #2. Pitched the yeast slurry started a day before, and called it a day (aside from cleanup).

It started a pretty vigorous fermentation the next day, to the point that it looked pretty crazy. You could actually see it swirling around in the main body of the carboy. I may have seen that once before, can't really recall.

1/29 RACK TO SECONDARY: I got a bit weirded out while transferring to secondary. Some unknown substance got into the batch and there was a huge "thing" on the inside wall of the carboy (see pic). Freaked-me-the-eff-out. I took a sample, Brix=6/1.014 which hit my target, and I tasted the sample. Hmmm, not sure about this one. I took this pic in to my LHBS, and they were a little weirded out by it too, BUT she suggested that I keep moving forward with it and see how it turns out. Oooookay! I will try.

2/13 BOTTLED: Ehhh.... this still has a weird taste to it... although I can smell the banana of the yeast, which is cool.

2/23 TASTING: No carbonation at all... which makes me wonder. Plus it really did not taste good. I'm so ready to pitch this into the garden and start over. I'll wait it out a little bit longer, but there should have been some sort of carbonation in there by now.

4/4 TASTING (AGAIN): Took pic at top of post, carbonated just fine, but it did take a while. Still has this strange aftertaste. I've looked into it a bit and it sounds like its an astringent taste. Like having paper towel on the back of your tongue. I don't like it. It does look and smell great though. I have a feeling I messed up with the mashing somewhere and got some unwanted tannins... and speaking of, I had a nice chat on Beer Advocate Homebrew Forum about it - Unwanted Tannins

5/1 HOMEBREW COMPETITION: Upon the suggestion of two friends and certified beer judges, I submitted this one to the local homebrew competition. It faired better than I thought, but still not great. My astringency suspicions were supported by both judges that tried it. I'm thinking it was a combination of using crappy city tap water along with a sloppy sparge. I will definitely make this again, but I do want to tweak some stuff, and make it more like the Magic Hat St. Gootz. Below are the two score sheets.

2010 Brew Calendar

The Plan: I have been enjoying brewing again, and I definitely feel more confident than my first go at it back in 2001/2002. I had no idea what the hell I was doing, and not very many people to turn to... and there was nothing online yet. So, I was going to wait for a full year before doing all grain again, but I thought... it's a new year, what the hell! While I am traveling, I decided to try and write out a tentative brew calendar for the year, based off of what I would like to be drinking at a particular time and how long it'll take for it to be ready. I also have a hefty goal of trying to brew every other weekend... not sure how long that'll hold up, but it's worth a shot! So here we go....


















4/11 - CHECK-IN:
I thought I'd check in with my brew calendar and maybe adjust a few things since I've fallen a bit behind as well as switched a few things around. So far I've brewed: Chocolate Stout (plus chili & mint EXPs), Dunkelweizen, Brown Ale, Brown Rice Lager, and Funky Monkey (my banana hefe concoction). All have been all-grain, and so far the chocolate stouts, dunkelweizen, and brown ale have had this weird after taste... but apparently it's me because others have tried them and don't taste it... go figure. I blame it on using tap water, and all were brewed using tap water except the last one - funky monkey. It's a little odd that I have nothing in any carboys right now, well aside from my cider that is still chillin.

The Mash Tun Project

1/3/10 - Good lawd this thing has stressed me out somethin awful! I have a sweet 3 tier system (on the left - circa 2003), but the damn thing has such a problem with heat loss that I have decided I just cannot use it. Even in hotter outside temps, it just doesn't do well. I had had enough of it, and I was ready to start all grain brewing for good, but I knew I needed to get this thing fixed or else I'd be screwed.

First Option - Wrap That Rascal
I had seen some people wrapping their mash tun kettle with water heater insulation. I went to Lowes and looked at a couple different types and decided to use the one with the higher rating. Well, what I didn't take into consideration was the friggin insulation (dumb ass). When I actually went to cut out the piece to wrap the kettle, and also a circular piece for the lid... I realized that choosing the one with the fiberglass insulation was a HORRIBLE idea. That shit got everywhere, and I was so pissed at myself. What a waste of $25. Well, I made it work for that first batch, but proceeded to throw it away right after. And the thing still didn't retain heat... it dropped 10 degrees in 45 minutes. WTF???

Second Option - Convert The Old Family Cooler.
This seemed very promising since a lot of people have done this, PLUS it would allow me to brew indoors during the winter which was a huge bonus. So, I needed to fix a crack on the inside, find the right size tube to fit through the hole, a stainless steel toilet supply line, and an in-line valve outside of the cooler to control the flow. Well, for the first attempt with this one, I decided not to fix the crack on the inside... it seemed sooo small and insignificant... big mistake. Well, maybe not big, but it did leak quite a bit through the course of mashing and lautering. The toilet supply line was easy, and finding the the valve setup locally was a little challenging but I got it worked out. I could've just snagged a valve from Northern Brewer... but I like to make things difficult for myself apparently. So, 2 1/2" (shanks) and a 1/2" valve switch later, I was in business. Since I had the leak, I tried caulking the outside of the hole, but that just slowed it down a little and made a gooey mess. Between my 2nd & 3rd batch, I got some food safe water sealant and sealed the shit outta the inside and out and it has worked wonderfully.

So, option #2 is the big winner for now... I do love my 10 gallon stainless steel kettles... and I hope to maybe make a 5 gallon version of the Brutus 10 someday with them. I have shitty burners, and smaller kettles, but I think it's possible. Just need to build the stand, get some pumps, and build the controller and I'll be set. I will still have the issue of heat loss with that effin thing, so we'll see. But for now, I'm loving the resurrection of my old cooler. We used to make a huge vat of jungle juice in that thing for parties, so it's probably loving this retirement plan. :-)

Cheers

Chocolate Stout EXP

The plan: I have had this idea in mind to try a few chocolate stout variations. We grow 3 varieties of mint at our house, and I thought it might be interesting to try to make a chocolate mint stout. We have peppermint, spearmint, and applemint, and I saved (froze) about an ounce from each at the end of the season. I also wanted to try to make a chocolate chili stout... using a cayenne pepper to spice it up. I brew in 5 gallon batches, so I've been working on buying 5 - 1 gallon jugs to split the batch up. I have the needed equipment and so at the beginning of 2010, I thought I'd try it out.

Recipe:
I've been sampling chocolate stouts over the past 2 months to see which would be a good recipe to base this off of. I settled on Young's Double Chocolate Stout. If you haven't tried it, do yourself a favor and go grab some. While researching a clone recipe for this, I decided that this would be a good time to move to all grain brewing. I was fairly confident that I could do this, but what I was worried about was my mash tun. It has had a horrible heat loss problem, so I needed to figure something out with that first. I have another blog entry detailing this process.
Ok, on to the recipe:
OG- 1.053
FG- 1.013
IBU-28
SRM-35
7# Pale 2-row (UK)
11 oz Crystal 60
13 oz Choc malt
12 oz Lactose
8 oz Invert Sugar
4oz Cane sugar
6 oz Cocoa powder
.33 oz liquid chocolate extract
1.4 oz Fuggles (60 min)
1/4 oz Kent Goldings (15 min)
Wyeast 1318 London 3

SO, I made some changes to this, I substituted Malto Dextrin for the Lactose... which I regretted later. It's not a huge deal, but I think it would have added a sweeter mouthfeel to compliment the chocolate in the recipe. Oh well, I was looking at the price of the two instead of what they did ($1.99 for 8 oz MD, $4.99 for 1# of Lactose). I also could not find Invert or Cane sugar, so I used 1# clear candi sugar instead. I did locate the liquid chocolate extract at a health food grocery store, but I forgot to add it to secondary, so it was a waste.

1/3 BREW DAY: OK, first all grain in 7 years, so pretty much my first all grain. I worked on wrapping the mash tun with a water heater insulation... big mistake, but I made it work for this one. Heated 11 quarts of water to 170, dumped in mash tun, waited a minute or two, then doughed in. Temp reading = 153... perfect. Now I would pray that it stayed there. I waited about 45 minutes and took another reading... 145. Shit! I decided to use the decoction method and I drained about 2 quarts and heated it up to almost boiling. I added that back in, took a temp reading.. 149. Shit! Took another 2 quarts out, boiled, added, temp reading = 150. I did this one more time, and then left it alone for the remaining 10 minutes or so before mashout. I added 3.25 qts of 206F, stirred then drained immediately (another mistake). Took a sample, Brix=9/1.036... target was 1.051. Collected about 4 gallons, so I heated 2.5 gallons to 196F, added to grains, stirred and took temp - 180... way too high. Held for 10 minutes then drained, collected 6 gallons, added another 1/2 gallon water. So.. I was so excited about all of this, and the use of the cocoa, candi sugar, etc... that I accidentally dropped ALL of it in at the beginning of the boil. DOH! I was supposed to wait until 10 minutes left in the boil. Shit, oh well. Somehow with the candi sugar I was able to hit my target gravity after the boil, actually go over it. My target was 1.056, and I got 1.062.

1/15 RACK TO SECONDARY: Between the brew day & moving to secondary, I had the pleasure of traveling to the Dominican Republic for work. We got to tour a cacao plantation where they harvest cacao seeds, ferment them, roast them, and make cocoa powder. I was able to bring some cocoa balls back with me, which are nothing more than organic cocoa powder in a hard packed form. The first step was to break the 5 gallons apart into 5 one gallon jugs. After that, I'd add one cocoa balls, in powder form, to each jug. I wanted to have 1 gallon of plain chocolate stout to compare tastes to, 1 gallon with a single kung pao chili pepper de-seeded and cut up, and 1 gallon of each mint - peppermint, spearmint, and applemint.








1/29 BOTTLED: Time to bottle... I decided since I only had a gallon of each, I would bottle in as many 12 oz. bottles as I could. I walked away with 8 plain, 8 chili, and 2 each of the mints + 3 22 oz. bottles of the mints as well. And I think maybe 1 22oz bottle of each the plain & chili. So, I will TRY to wait a couple weeks, maybe even until Valentines day... but man I'm stoked to try these. I think the chili one is gonna rock.

2/13 - TASTING!!! I have been looking forward to this for sooooo long now. I dreamed up this idea back in November, 3 months later it has come to fruition. On this night, I popped open one of the chili stouts... definitely not ready yet, hardly any carbonation at all... but the taste was pretty good. The heat was perfect. Nailed it! Hope the bitterness of the chocolate mellows out a bit with age.

2/18 - TASTING: Tried one of the Choc Spearmint Stouts while Ash stopped over to watch the Olympic women's halfpipe comp. Great head poured, but disipated quickly, over the course of 10 minutes or so. The mint was definitely too strong, but not too bad. Definitely not great, and I think if I tried this again (IF), then I would use, at most, half as much as I used this time... maybe even less. Concentrate on the choc stout and just add a hint of the mint. The other two mints are probably gonna turn out awful since this was my pick of the litter, we'll see.

2/23 - TASTING: With the good show of carbonation on the mint stout, I thought I'd crack open one of the plain chocolate stouts tonight after dinner to see how it faired. Well... the head was great, the aroma was nice, the initial taste was nice... but wow, horrible aftertaste... yuck. Definitely disappointing. Maybe it'll mellow over time... but I just launched in to thinking about all the shit that I did wrong that could have made that bitter aftertaste, and I'm not talking about hops. I don't remember getting that aftertaste with the chili one, but I did catch a faint taste of it with the mint one. Seems like I tasted that in the Holiday Cheer too... but that was definitely the clementines, and was a different bitter. I'll give these a little more time, probably try the chili one again this weekend for Mardis Gras and see how it is.