Extra Special Bitter Brew Day

We brewed an English Pale Ale (aka ESB) today using White Labs 005 English Ale yeast.  The color looks great and we can't wait to try the finished product.

This is the kettle with the chiller and auto-siphon after racking was complete.

The color looks very caramel/toffee:

We are looking forward to this one!

Bottle Prep Day

Today was bottle cleaning day and this is what 100 bottles looks like in the dishwasher!

Cleaning carboys & racking Star-San.

4 beers are now in the secondary fermentors:

• Imperial Stout
• Super dryhopped IPA
• Rye Pale Ale
• Oatmeal Stout

1 in primary: Pine Fruit Pale Ale

Bottling is next!

Rye Pale Ale Brew Day

Today was the brew day for a Pale Ale with Rye, inspired by Spike Buckowski at Terrapin.  I am happy with my current process and wanted to photo document the many steps involved during Brew Day.

Heating the strike water is always first.  We always get that going early while working on the recipe formulation, gathering ingredients, and other things.

Next is milling the grains.  We usually do this during the 30 minutes the strike water is heating up to the calculated temperature ranging from 165 to 170.  Once the water is at temperature, we pour the hot water into the mash tun, add the grains, stir with the mash paddle, and establish the mash temperature.

Mashing.  This is an hour long process, so you will have some time to take care of a few other chores.  About 30 minutes in, we light the burner to get the sparge water heated to 170-180F.

Vorlauft and Lauter First Runnings.  After the hour is up, we run some wort off the mash tun into a pitcher, which helps catch some grain husks and proteins.  I pour that back into the tun using a colander strainer, then attach tubing to the mash tun ball valve, then transfer (lauter) all the wort into the boil kettle.

Vorlauft and Lauter the Second (and possibly Third) Runnings.
This is a repeat of the first lauter, but first adding either half or all of the sparge water.  I will do a single batch sparge if I have a big grain bill and a double batch sparge if I have a small grain bill.  Pour in the water, stir it like you mean it, vorlauft, and let it ride.

During this transfer, I light the burner to start heating the wort up to 212F.

Dispose of Spent Grains.  They did their job with the enzymes from the grain converting the starches into fermentable and unfermentable sugars during the mash.  Now, I clean the mash tun and usually spread the grains out in the yard somewhere.

Clean out the Mash Tun.  This picture shows the new plumbing with the false bottom, which is easy to remove and clean.  This is a 10 gallon cooler, which I maxed out with about 23 pounds of grain once and ended up being a pain.  If I do more 10 gallon batches, I will either need to double mash or find a larger or second mash tun.

Boil Away.  This is the fun part!

Add Boil Additions.  Hops, Whirlfloc, Irish Moss, etc.
It's 5:30, how bout some Fuggles!

Sanitize Wort chiller by placing it in the boil with 15 minutes left.  Add some Gypsum, irish moss, whilfloc, & East Kent Goldings hops.

Lots of steam on this 60F degree day!

After the hour-long boil was up, we extinguished the burner and turned on the hose for the wort chiller.

The mash tun got a bath in our wheelbarrow/outdoor sink.  We collect the water from the chiller and use it to pre-wash the equipment.

Here's a shot of the wort transfer from kettle to carboy fermenter.  Racking is the term for moving wort/beer, so you can insert many "nice rack" jokes!

The kettle gets a bath in the salvaged water as well.  Batches with lots of hops make this a messy endeavor.

Prior to pitching the yeast, the wort needs to be aerated well.  We will eventually get an O2 tank and diffusion stone to inject pure oxygen for the yeast, but now we shake, rattle, and roll it.

Now the wort is ready to be inoculated with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is the scientific name for brewers yeast.  We are using White Labs yeast today, which conveniently comes in a test tube-like container.

Usually, one to two days later, we will start seeing CO2 activity on the airlock and a krausen forming on the surface, which means the yeast are converting starch to ethanol and carbon dioxide.

Cheers!