Going All-Grain

We had a busy weekend of brewing firsts, not only did we create a setup for and brew a lager beer, we also brewed our first all grain batch. We mashed in a bountiful 17 pound grain bill of Belgian Malts to make a Belgian style pale ale inspired by the Yellow Diamond Belgian Pale Ale recipe in Randy Mosher’s Radical Brewing. We enjoyed learning new techniques and knowing we made a beer from all raw products. We may have to tweak our approach to getting our mash-out temp but we are excited to see how this one turns out.

Here are some pictures from the first all-grain brew.

The setup...

The saccharification rest (coverts the grain's starches into sugars) followed by sparging the grains ("rinsing" the grains of those sugars)...

A closer look at sparging...

Now to the outdoors for the boil...

Pitch the yeast and let it ferment...

The Cold Side of Brewing… It’s Getting a Little Colder

Several weeks ago Andy purchased a chest freezer and until last weekend it sat empty. While this freezer will someday turn into a keezer providing us fresh home brewed beer on tap, it allows us to ferment at colder temperatures which gives us the ability to brew lagers. To this point in our brewing adventures we have done exclusively ales. The main difference between lagers and ales is the yeast and how they like to be treated. Ale yeast typically likes temperatures between 60-72 degrees Fahrenheit, while lager yeast likes temperatures between 45- 69 degrees Fahrenheit. Ale yeast is also top-fermenting while lager yeast bottom ferments, typically lagers ferment for a longer period of time before they are removed from the yeast cake.

With the addition of the chest freezer and a temperature controller made by our resident electrical engineer Andy, we were able to brew the Model de Mayo: Vienna Style Lager kit from Northern Brewer. This kit was won at the AHA rally that Andy and Brian attended in April, membership has its benefits.

The beer is fermenting well at about 59 degrees Fahrenheit right now and in a few days we will lower the temperature as we continue the lagering process. This crisp lager should be ready for the end of summer or early fall and will be fun to try on a hot day. 

MN State Fair Homebrew Competition

It is time! This will be the first competition we have entered our beer into. The biggest thing we are looking for is insightful feedback from certified judges.  It also wouldn't hurt to place in the competition.

With that said we decided to brew a couple of styles that we are comfortable with and that have turned out really good in previous brews.  The two styles we decided to brew were an American IPA and a Sweet Stout.  The stout may not turn out so "sweet".  We didn't realize that the roasted barley we used would add some bitterness.  We will see how it turns out. 

Steeping the grains for the Stout

Check out the recipes and the competition.

10 Gallon Brews!!!

Since the last post, we have made fine use out of our 15 gallon kettle.  The weather finally cooperated... We were able to get outside and use the propane burner with our 15 gal. kettle. It worked out extremely nice. We were able to boil the wort down to 10 gallons and not have to add the additional water to the carboys like we normally do with the 5 gal. kettle.

The first brew with that kettle was for AHA's big brew back in May. We beefed up their English Dark Mild recipe from a 5 gal. batch to a 10.5 gal. batch. Unfortunately, I was't able to attend the inaugural brew of that kettle, but here are some pictures the other guys took.

The other 10 gal. batch we brewed a couple weeks later was the Sierra Madre kit from Northern Brewer. We took the 5 gal. recipe and doubled it to 10 gal. The brew went great.  I did forget to connect the kettle screen to the ball valve coupling inside the boil kettle, but it worked out. Most of the trub stayed inside the bottom of the kettle once we got to the point of transferring the wort to the carboys. A few pics of the brew session below.

Chilling the wort before transferring it to the carboys in the background

Since we brewed 10 gallons we divided the wort between two carboys, 5 gallons each. We used the same yeast for both, so Brian figured we should use a couple ounces of Cascade hops to dry hop one of the secondary carboys.  Looking forward to see how all these beers turn out!