Our First 'Real' Bad Batch and Our New Toy

Ok, yes. We've had one or two less than tasty beers before, but those were still drinkable. Drinkable in the sense that if you got people drunk first on good beer then they didn't notice the nastiness of the bad beer. Anyways, something went terribly wrong on our last batch and we had to pour out 10 gallons of it. What a sad day. We think the problem had to do with the yeast we used since we tried re-using our yeast for the first time ever. Yeast looked good but looks can be deceiving I suppose. As sad as it was it was kind of neat to see 10 gallons of beer swirling down our drain...hopefully we won't have to do that any time soon again.



On a lighter side we now have a kickass keggerator. James and I have talked for quite sometime about converting our chest freezer into a keggerator and finally got around to it this past week. We now have the capability to have 5 different beers on tap. Sadly all that is on tap right now is PBR (hey, it's the cheapest keg greens had and we just wanted to make sure everything worked) but that will change soon. Beer on tap has already started to cut into my productivity...

We Have Moved!

The brewery has officially moved to its new location in Reynoldstown. We are now located just south of Little 5 Points off of Moreland Ave at my new house. After staying up late on our second try at a 10 gallon batch of IPA, we got up early and transported everything to its new home.

Brewing the IPA turned out to be a success, not only because we had another smooth brewing session but because we attracted our first crowd. We had about 10 friends come over to drink some beer and take in the brewing process. It made brewing much more enjoyable and we hope to continue these gatherings in the future.

Starters and Oxygen

Now that we have a couple successful batches under our belts we have begun to move onto some more 'advanced' brewing techniques. Now 'advanced' is in quotes because, well, they aren't really 'advanced.' These are things that we should have probably been doing from the start that we are just now figuring out.

This past weekend doing a 5 gallon Amber Ale we used a yeast starter for the first time. A yeast starter is pretty much just a mini sized batch of beer that is used to generate more yeast cells. I made about a 1 quart starter 3 days before our brew day. It was neat watching the little batch go through all the steps very quickly. Almost immediately after pitching the yeast into the starter I began to see activity with a large amount of krausen forming for about a 15 hours. After that the krausen died down but the airlock was still bubbling along. Anyways, y'all don't care about the specifics. All you need to know is that we grew a lot of yeast.

Another thing that we did differently this time was to use pure oxygen from a welding canister to oxygenate our wort. For the past 6 batches we had just been shaking a 5 gallon glass carboy to oxygenate it. 5 gallons of beer = ~40lbs. Needless to say that is a huge pain in the ass. Now all we had to do was dip our diffusion stone into the carboy and turn on the O2 for about 30 seconds. Much easier.

By using a yeast starter and the pure O2 our 5 gallon batch began fermenting within 4 hours. We have come a long way since our first batch where it took almost 40 hours to see the first bubbles from fermentation.

Radiohead

Oh, what a fun concert. Make sure to ask James about it, he'll tell you everything (haha...yeah right). We tailgated in style before the concert with 5 gallons of a California Common (similar to Anchor Steam). This beer was by far our best so far. It was also a very drinkable beer as opposed to some of the earlier Ale's that we have brewed.

Everyone that tried the beer said it was delicious. Maybe they were just being nice, but I'd like to think that they really enjoyed it. Only a handful of us managed to knock back almost all 5 gallons in a matter of a couple of hours. Our set-up looked awesome too. We caught lots of people staring at our keg and giant CO2 tank wondering what was going on. They were all jealous of us not having to pump our beer, which is really awesome by the way.

This was just the first of many amazing tailgates to come with our beer. There are currently plans in the works for a rolling street trash can that will have four faucets complete with big ass handles. We're talking a rolling bar here folks. 20 gallons of beer and a CO2 tank all on wheels. I can't wait for this fall. We shall be the Kings of the Tailgate.

The horror!

At least this guy is making the best out of a bad situation. Still, this is a sad sight.

Interesting article, "Beer battle brewing in Alabama"

This article really makes me glad that I don't live in Alabama. Apparently it is still against the law to brew beer in Alabama...yeah, wtf. You also can't buy beers that have higher than a 6% ABV. again, wtf. I honestly don't know what the last beer I drank that was less than 6% ABV. Just last week James and I (and Steve) were tasting dozens and dozens of beers at the Classic City Brew Fest that were higher than 10% ABV.

I know we are all in the bible belt down here, but even so, I can't believe that this law is still on the books. Their (the bible beaters) main argument against high gravity beers is that it will endanger teenagers and make it easier for them to get drunk. Really. Ok everyone, play along with me. Can you remember the first beer you ever had. Mine must have been a Bud Light or Miller Lite and I hated it. How could anyone enjoy such a disgusting drink was my initial reaction. It took me years of hard work to gain the appreciation for a fine brew that I currently enjoy. I'm guessing most people had a similar experience. Somehow though, these Alabama lawmakers think teens are going to be going out and spending 4 or 5 times the cost of Bud/Miller to buy a high grav beer. I think not. Although I do think it would be funny watching some 16 year old guys try and funnel a barleywine, but that just wont ever happen.

Well, I guess its just one more reason to add to the list of why we are glad that we don't live in Alabama.

Stuff White People Like

Link to: Stuff White People Like - Microbreweries

Apparently our quest to make our own beer makes us like a lot of other white people. I am currently looking for a house to buy so we can further our quest to brew the perfect beer. Driving to my parents house is not the perfect situation to be able to brew on a regular schedule and we have not been able to make as much beer we would have liked to lately. Once we find a permanent place to set up the brewery then we will expect to have a lot more friends come out and experience beer in it purest form.

Brewing up Trouble

Brewing up Trouble, it's not only a catchy blog title, but also a catchy team name. Thats right...a team name. James and I will be competing in the Atlanta City Chase under that team name and we are going to win. If you don't know what that is (I didn't know what it was 3 days ago) then google it. It happens May 17th and like I said, we're going to win.

Anyways, that is all completely beside the point. The main point of this post is to tell everyone how awesome we are. Today we brewed our first 10 gallon batch with the help of Kellie C (if it sucks its her fault). The recipe we tried is supposed to be an IPA...but it actually didn't call for dry hopping, so I'm not sure how they can call it an IPA at all, but whatever. It might not even taste like an IPA at all since we changed almost every ingredient called for in the recipe. We didn't have the bittering hops the recipe called for, so we made a substitution. I was so proud of myself for figuring out the math (turned out that it wasn't that hard actually) to figure out the equivalent AAUs (Alpha Acidic Units) for the new hops that I completely forgot to double the hops since the recipe was for 5 gallons and we were brewing 10 gallons. Not entirely my fault, James didn't catch it either.

Well, we realized about 30 minutes into the boil that we (I) messed up, so we made the addition then. Shouldn't mess things up too badly...it probably just won't be very bitter at all and will taste extra sweet. We also decided to use Cascade hops as our finishing hops rather than the England Kent Goldings the recipe called for. So at the end of the day we had completely changed the recipe which means that we actually made our own recipe. Fingers crossed that it turns out delicious.

In other brewing news our second batch tastes much better than our first batch. We also have sort of figured out how to carbonate the beer correctly...we think.

This time brewing went much smoother than all the other times. I was ready to quit brewing already after the last time I brewed, but thankfully that was just due to the flu/being hung over. I think we all enjoyed ourselves today.

Finally!

I was finally able to try our beer today. Petra was nice enough to bring me a bottle back from Atlanta. I'll admit that I was a little nervous about tasting it, but really its not bad. Not bad at all. Yeah, it was almost completely flat (James hasn't quite figured out the carbonation yet), but if I ordered it in a bar I honestly wouldn't be disappointed (except for the whole lack of carbonation thing). Hell, I'd pay 3 dollars for it, easy.

Hopefully we can get the CO2 stuff figured out. I think that with the right amount of carbonation it would have been a damned tasty beer.

Four weeks ago I would have never believed that we could have made a beer from scratch that actually tasted like beer. We did it though...go us.

Tastings and New Assistant Brewer

This has been a somewhat eventful week of brewing. I am living at the "Brewery" (aka my parent's house) while my folks are on vacation and decided it was time for more beer.

On Wednesday, I took another trip to Atlanta Brewing Company with Steve and Blakely to get some expert opinions on our first batch and received good reviews from Chris. Our friends from last time weren't there, so I left a bottle for them to try. We will see...

Also, I made another trip to "Brew Depot" to get some new ingredients and to hear Mike and Bob's opinion on our ale. They both agreed that it came out well and had good flavor but was defiantly not an American Pale Ale, but more like a Red Ale. At least it tasted like beer!

I decided to try a brown ale next and was assisted by Kellie G., as Ben was busy drinking at a lake house... Mike wrote me a recipe using the hops we already had, but I didn't realize that the hops I planned on using had turned brown and were probably were not good. So, I improvised and substituted some other hops we had on the prayer that they will work well with the style and not suck. Again, I changed the configuration of our brewery and think everything went very well. For the first time, we used the grain mill and crushed our own grain. Next, we hit our mash temps perfectly and barely any grain came out of the mash tun. Even the sparging went great. As chaotic everything probably seemed to Kellie, it actually went well. We even tried a great new cask aged brown ale from Dogfish head: Palo Santo Marron It was excellent.

Serving: Beer (Its the first batch, I won't try to categorize it)
Carbonating: American Pale Ale
In the Fermenter: Brown Ale
Next up: Any Suggestions???


BTW: Ben still hasn't tried the first batch and it's been kegged for 2 weeks. Where is the dedication?

Atlanta Brewing Company

Last Friday (the 15th) James and I decided to give one of the other local micro tours a chance. We've done Sweetwater countless times, I'm not sure why we didn't venture away sooner, but I'm glad we did. The place was pretty crowded by the time we finally got there at 6:15 (doors opened at 6) and continued to get even more crowded all the way up until 7. Seven dollars gets you a pint glass, as well as 6 bottle caps that you can redeem for beers...not a bad deal at all.

The bar area is a little smaller than Sweetwaters, but the waits were never too bad. And the beer was all delicious. My favorite of the night was their Winter Brew with the Peachtree Pale Ale in close second. We also got the chance to talk w/ all the guys that work there. None of the people there were brewmasters or anything, but they all knew a helluva lot more about homebrewing than Jamie and I, so it was fun to shoot the shit with them. We ended up hanging around until close to 11 (places 'closes' at 8) before heading out.

If you haven't read anything on the entire blog, please read this! If someone ever offers you $30 to eat two hop pellets please please don't take that bet. Yeah, it might seem like a good idea after 7 or 8 tasty micros, trust me, its not. Lets just say that I brushed my teeth two times the next night still trying to get the taste out of my mouth. Also, all day Saturday I though I had hops poisoning (ps, they are poisonous to dogs), turns out it was just the Flu. Lucky me.

Second Batch - Smoother

The second time is so much better. We went with the same recipe increased the water and changed our brewing process a little. Some things we will continue, but we still haven't entirely figured the best way to utilize all of our equipment.

Things that went better this time:

• We used the correct amount of water and ended up with 5 gallons when finished
• We pitched the yeast into the wort and shook the carboy to aerate, this gave us a fermentation time of 12 hours instead of 36
• We only worried about sanitation post boil. This saved a lot of time.
• Whirlpooling the wort before draining into the chiller. We were left with a perfect cone. Thanks Adam.
  
• We replaced some of our dirtier tubing. Everything looks cleaner

Things that still need work:

• The sparging process is still challenging us. We are hitting our mash temps and we didn't have any flow problems this time, but we had a lot of particles flowing into our boiling pot. We have a few theories: 1st, we started sparging almost immediately after recirculating the first couple cups of mash. Do we need to let our grains compact before starting the sparging process to form a filter on the false bottom? If we wait, since our mash is flowing out faster than sparge water is coming in, we have to keep opening and closing the drain to keep the mash from bubbling as the cooler empties. Last time we let the cooler totally empty of liquid before we stared sparging and we didn't have a problem with grain flowing into the boiling kettle. 2nd, we used gravity instead of our pump to get the mash into the boiling kettle. Last time, we drained the mash into a bucket which has a hole near the bottom that we have a tube connected to with a pump sending the mash out of our the the bucket and up to the boiling kettle (sitting above the mash ton). This let any grain that was drained out settle to the bottom of the bucket before it was pumped up to the kettle. We thought that just using gravity could save a step and prevent an opportunity for oxygen to get into the mash before the boil. We still aren't sure what to do next time...
• Carbonating a keg... we tried to force carbonate our first batch, it didn't work. We chilled the beer, then racked the beer into the keg from the carboy and pressurized the keg to 25 psi. Then we "shook the fuck out of it" let it sit for 5 hours, shook it again then poured. It was still flat. We are going to wait 3 days and see if we have beer.

Water!

As if the drought was affecting our beer, we had a water shortage while brewing and I promise it was not because Ben "the hippy" Arrington wanted to save water. It seems that we just didn't start with enough in the beginning. We had planned on finishing with a 5 gallon batch of beer, but we ended up with a little more than 2.5 gallons. Since then we have found a couple sites that help calculate how much watch we should start with and we definitely didn't start with enough. Thanks Mike. While starting with 7 gallons in anticipation of losing some water in the mashing process and boiling off about 1 gallon as we prepared the wort, we did not capture the entire picture. We think we failed to anticipate loosing so much water in the mashing process, where the grain absorbs some water, and just general loss of as the liquid makes it way through the entire process . We didn't realize how much would be left over in a couple of the tanks that we used and we also read that the wort looses some of its volume as it is cooled for fermenting. Next time we will be ready though and hopefully be able to make enough for everyone to enjoy. To better brewing!

Fermentation!

That one word text-messaged to me by James made me a very happy man. Well, thats not to exciting you may say...but it is. Typically, the wort will start fermenting within 12 to 36 hours. I believe ours took a total of 38 hours. This could be due to any number of reasons, but is probably because we didn't aerate the wort enough. All we really did was smack the water with a plastic spoon, I think all we succeeded in doing was making a bigger mess and a hell of a lot of foam. That, or maybe the yeast was just too cold (it was outside the fridge, but it was after midnight before we pitched the yeast and was about 45 outside).

Anyways, we had all but given up hope that we would have to re-pitch the yeast, or worse that we would have to dump the carboy out and start over. But no! Our wort is now happily fermenting and is on it's way to becoming real beer.

I've never been so proud.

We are messy

Please pay no attention to the huge mess that we made that you can see in the picture. It was probably Jamie's fault, but we'll do a better job next time...hopefully.

Our First Batch!

This was our first attempt at brewing beer. Hopefully we can turn this in to something bigger and better in the future. We had been talking about starting to brew beer together for probably close to two years before making the plunge. We purchased all the equipment from someone off of craigslist.com that had been brewing for 20 years. Let's just say that we got quite a good deal. In in spirit of jumping right into things and against the advice of everyone we talked to (Mike at the brewshop tried hard to talk us out of it), we decided to start with all grain brewing for our first batch rather than using a malt extract. It was definitely a challenge but we learned a lot. We will post more on our first experience as well as things we learn and questions we have throughout our trials and tribulations. We would appreciate tips and advice as we learn how to become master brewers. Friends, this is also a way to keep you involved in the process as most of you will be testing these "experiments." Thanks for reading and happy brewing.

Jamie and Ben