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!

Another Double Brew Weekend

It was another big weekend brewing. Took me a week to post this, but we ended up brewing two, bottling two, and racking one (would have bottled three but someone forgot to dry hop the Son of Simcoe). We decided to push back bottling the Son of Simcoe a couple weeks and dry hopped it this weekend.  This also means that we will be bottling four beers on May 4 for AHA's Big Brew instead of the three we had planned.  No big deal though, just more bottles for Brian to sanitize.  By the way, he is the one who forgot to dry hop the Son of Simcoe beer so don't feel bad for him.

Finished racking the Dawson's Red Ale and getting ready to bottle the SS Minnow Mild

The two beers we brewed were two recipe kits from Northern Brewer.  We did their Cascade Mountain West Coast Imperial IPA kit and their T-Can & Bearcat's Wheaten Beatdown kit.  The imperial IPA kit is pretty self-explanatory from the title.  It is an imperial IPA that uses a good amount of Summit and Cascade hops (dry hopped with 4 oz. of Cascade hops!).  The Wheaten Beatdown on the other hand isn't as discernible from the title.  This beer can basically be described as a hopped up wheat beer.  I am personally excited to see how it turns out.

Now many of us have heard the saying April showers bring May flowers, but we haven't had many of those types of showers.  Rather we have had a few snow showers this April and apparently April snow showers bring yeast starters.  Don't believe me?  See the picture Brian took of his patio when it was snowing in the middle of April.

Yeast starters for the two beers brewed this past weekend 

Well at least the weather won't be this bad next weekend for Big Brew.  The forecast is in the 40's so it is not a whole lot better.  Too bad Big Brew couldn't have been this weekend with the upper 70's and lower 80's we had.  Regardless of temperature though it will be a great time and we are all looking forward to brewing!

SS Minnow Mild and Dawson's Multigrain Red Brew

We managed a double brew this past Friday evening.  We brewed a couple of 5 gal. extract kits from Northern Brewer.  The first kit brewed was the Dry Dock SS Minnow Mild kit.  The second batch brewed was Dawson's Multigrian Red kit.  Both beers have a relatively low original gravity so we decided to just add yeast nutrient ten minutes prior to the end of each boil.  This saved us (well really only Brian) the hassle of making a yeast starter for each beer.

Below is a picture of our brewing closet with these two recently brewed beers closest to the door.

6 carboys fermenting away

Our Big Brew Day Plans

It's about that time of year... AHA Big Brew!  This is a celebration of National Homebrew Day (May 7) and is observed the first Saturday in May every year.  Get together with family and friends and share the great fellowship of home brewing all day. 

We plan to spend the day brewing and grilling (weather cooperate please!).  The plan is to brew one of the three recipes released by AHA for Big Brew 2013.  We chose to brew the English Dark Mild Ale recipe.  Instead of doing a 5 gal. batch which the recipe calls for, we are going to do our first 10 gal. batch.  Well it will really be 10.5 gallons, 5 in our 6 gal. carboy and 5.5 in our 6.5 gal. carboy.   We decided we are going to use a different strain of yeast in each carboy.  In one, we are going to pitch the recommended London ESB yeast and in the second we are going to pitch West Yorkshire Ale yeast.

What are your plans for AHA's Big Brew?  If your not brewing, try to enjoy some homebrew or at least a craft beer.

First Partial Mash and New Kettle

So... it has been some time since the last post. We have been busy brewing some great beers and discovering some good things along the way.

 The most notable thing we have done lately has been brewing a couple of partial mash recipes.  Brian and I brewed our first partial mash recipe on Feb. 16.  We brewed the John Palmer's Elevenses ale kit from Northern Brewer.

Mash going strong

It was a great learning experience to actually do a mini-mash and realizing that stove tops aren't the most ideal place to do a mash.  For one, the lowest temperature setting on the range is just over 154ºF, close enough for our purposes. The other problem we ran into was having limited space for sparging the grains.  In an optimal setting one does not have a microwave inches above the grains you are trying to sparge (we did).  We can't wait for the weather to warm up so we can get outside and brew!

Brian sparging the grain after the mash

The spent grain after the mash

Mashing phase complete, now boiling the wort 

Speaking of brewing outside, we just recently made a key investment.  We purchased a large 15 gal. kettle from Midwest Supplies.  This kettle will easily allow us to now do 10 gal. batches and prove to be an optimal boil kettle, especially when we get into all-grain brewing.  Apparently 15 gal. is also equivalent to about 1 Trost...

Ryan proving to us that he can fit in our new 15 gal. boil kettle

As you can see, we took advantage of Midwest Supplies' hole drilling service and had them drill a 7/8" hole so that we can attach a weldless ball valve setup.  We purchased all of our components for the weldless ball valve setup from bargainfittings.com.  We will post more once we receive the hardware and assemble it. Definitely getting excited to brew with the new setup!

First Brew Since the New Blog

Well here it is... Our first brew since starting this blog! We decided to go a recipe kit from Northern Brewer and selected the Dead Ringer IPA extract kit which is a solid, true American IPA style beer. Here are some pictures from that brew...

The boil

Adding the second hop addition to the boil

Joel enjoying a beer while brewing

Chilling the wort with our homemade immersion chiller

Travis and Joel transferring wort to the primary carboy

Andy aerating the wort before pitching the yeast

Dead Ringer IPA fermenting away

New Home Brew Blog

Brand new way to keep updated on brewing times, events, details about each brew, etc.  Figured we could start by using a blog type setup up, making our posts about each brew session and then commenting within the post.  I'm going to try to figure out how to import the brewing calendar and maybe even Facebook chat.