Process Updates

We have entered 6 AHA/BJCP competitions so far this year, earning 10 medals, and attribute the success to implementing several improvements to the brewing process and focusing specifically on brewing hoppy beer styles.

We have a Pale Ale, IPA, and Double IPA that have received medals at local and regional competitions that are also entered into the first round of the American Homebrewers Association National Homebrew Competition in Austin, TX with judging starting April 1.

The following modifications to the brewing process have led to producing better and more consistent beer from batch to batch.

Fermentation Temperature Control

As the saying goes, brewers make wort, but yeast make beer.  Pitching an appropriate number of yeast cells for the gravity and volume of wort is critically important for a healthy and complete fermentation.  Using fresh yeast and making starter wort as needed will grow the cell counts and kickstart quality fermentations.  We ferment ales using White Labs California Ale (WL001) or Wyeast American Ale (WY1056) at 64-66F with an increase at the end to help the yeast clean up.  We have a chest freezer with a temperature regulator that makes this easy if the basement temperature is too warm.  The chest freezer can also serve to cold-crash fermentors, refrigerate, and carbonate beers before moving them into the kegerator.

Water Chemistry

I attended a John Palmer event on brewing water and have learned a lot about modifying water to enhance beer flavor.  We added a carbon block filter attachment to the basement sink, which scrubs out the chlorine and chloramine.  From there, we add salts to the brewing water to accentuate the flavors we are looking for in hoppy beer styles like Pale Ales and IPAs.

Our Fulton County (Roswell, GA) water report indicates the following profile, which is very soft and clean and a great starting point for brewing water:

• Calcium 8 parts per million (ppm)
• Magnesium 2ppm
• Sodium 9ppm
• Sulfate 4ppm
• Chloride 5ppm
• Bicarbonate 25ppm

For a hoppy beer like a Pale Ale, IPA, or Double IPA, we need to increase the calcium, chloride, and sulfate to accentuate the flavor.  The recommended ranges are calcium to 50-150ppm, sulfate to 100-400ppm, & chloride to 50-100ppm.  To achieve these levels, it requires roughly 4-7g of gypsum (calcium sulfate), 3-4g of epsom salt (magnesium sulfate), and 2-3g of calcium chloride, but your mileage may vary.  We split the salts between the strike water and the sparge water depending on the volume allocated to each.  There are a few spreadsheets available that aid in calculating the appropriate levels of each, which I have found to be very helpful, though they do vary on the numbers a little bit.

Cold Crashing, Kegging, Gelatin-fining, and Bottling
We have enhanced the post-fermentation process, which has helped increase the quality and appearance of our brews.  We cold-crash the secondary after dry-hopping to drop the hops, trub, and yeast to the bottom of the carboy, then rack the cold beer into a keg purged with CO2.  We add gelatin to the cold beer for a few days before force-carbonating it with CO2.  We either serve it through the faucets in the kegerator and/or use the Blichmann Beer Gun to fill bottles or growlers.

New Instruments

We use a pH meter and a digital refractometer to measure the wort throughout the process, which allows us to make corrections on the fly if something is off and this careful analysis has led to batch consistency.  Due to the fact our water is slightly acidic and we aren't using any dark or roasted malts in these beer styles, we typically arrive at a 5.2 pH without having to add any lactic acid to the strike water, which is nice.

These few enhancements have greatly increased the quality of our hoppy brews this year.  Cheers!

Brew Day Video

At long last, I filmed shots of brewing an all-grain batch of a Honey Double IPA and strung the clips together into an 8-minute video on YouTube.  It illustrates all the steps involved in brewing a batch of beer from milling the grains through pitching the yeast.

The beer turned out great and the honey flavors really shined through.
Cheers!

Brewery Update

Due to the lengthy summer vacation absence and our computer being in the repair shop, it has been a while since our last post.  Here's a new logo I have been working on:

Keg Party

The Rye Pale Ale and American Pale Ale were successfully served at a party in Maryland on July 13.  They both tasted great and we had many compliments from the Bud Light crowd.  I had several issues with the liquid dip tube and post clogging continuously on one of the kegs, so we had to improvise and rest the keg on it's side.  I will be evaluating options for fixing the issue, such as a dip tube screen or stainless steel scrubby pad over the end and possibly shortening the tube an inch.  We camped out at the party, but somehow lost our air mattress pump, so having the CO2 tank proved valuable as it was used to fill the mattress!  It is amazing how much gas is in that 5 pound tank.

Fermentors

There is beer in three of the secondary carboys.

1. Imperial Stout made on 6/7 with an OG of 1.090
2. American IPA made on 6/23 with an OG of 1.071
3. American Amber Ale made on 7/2 with an OG of 1.057

Next week, we will dry-hop the IPA and Amber and prepare some secondary additions for the imperial stout.  I am thinking cacao nibs, some mild chile peppers, and possibly some cinnamon.

There is beer in two of the primary carboys.  This was a 10-gallon batch split with different yeasts with a 1.052 original gravity.

1. American Pale Ale brewed on 7/4 with Giga Yeast GY054 Vermont IPA yeast
2. American Pale Ale brewed on 7/4 with Wyeast Pacman yeast

Because I turned off our A/C during our week-long trip, the basement temperature rose from it's typical 64F, which will influence the amount of dissolved CO2 in solution and therefore the amount of priming sugar needed for bottle conditioning.  Because of that, I plan to keg as many of these as I can and may either CO2 force carbonate them or do a combination sugar carbonation and CO2.

I will be working on my brew day video soon.

Cheers!

San Diego National Homebrew Competition Entry

We packed and shipped the IPA to the National Homebrew Competition Finals! Judging is 6/11 and the awards ceremony is 6/13. We are hopeful for the best!



The IPA has Rahr 2-Row Pale, German Cara-Red (20L), Crystal 10, and Carapils malts with Amarillo, Cascade, Columbus, Centennial, Citra, Chinook, and Crystal hops.  We were pleased with the batch that used GigaYeast GY054 Vermont Ale yeast as it had less attenuation, but gave a brighter color and aroma than the Safale US-05 American Ale and White Labs 001 California Ale yeasts.

AHA National Homebrew Competition 2015

We were fortunate enough to advance an American IPA in the Nashville first round of the 2015 American Homebrewers Association National Homebrew Competition!

Since we floated the keg of that batch at a local homebrew competition, we got a chance to rebrew it with a few tweaks based on tastings and feedback.

It is a San Diego style IPA with plenty of Pacific Northwest hops.

The final round with entries placing 1, 2, & 3 in each category from each of 12 regional sites will be judged in June in San Diego at the National Homebrewers Conference.

The grains are:
US Pale, UK Pearl, Crystal 10, Cara-Red (20), & Carapils

The hops are a mix of:
Amarillo, Columbus, Chinook, Centennial, Ahtanum, Simcoe, Citra, & Crystal

Fermentors were 64 and got good attenuation. Bottled.

IPA Brew Day

Brewing our Eternia IPA for the National Homebrew Conference Competition.

7 types of Hops:

US Pale and UK Pearl with German Cara-Red and Carafoam.

Mash hopping and big hop stand after 90 minute boil.  Double dry hop planned.

Honey Imperial IPA Brew Day

On Sunday, we made a batch of Imperial IPA and took some videos of the action.  Once the video is edited, we will post it here.

Batch Moving Day + Ginger Ale

Today was batch transfer day.  We had 10 gallons of Pale Ale and 5 gallons of IPA that finished in the primary.  One Pale Ale went directly in the keg with a sock of Ahtanum hops and the other went into a secondary fermenter.  The IPA with an original gravity of 1.064 went into the secondary fermenter at a gravity of 1.011, which equates to about 7% ABV with 70 IBU.  In addition to the three transfers, we made a 5 gallon batch of ginger ale with fresh ginger, lemons, sugar and water.  Here are a few shots of the action.

Dry hop Ahtanum:

Pale Ale transfer:

Washing bottles with recycled cleaning water:

Racking Pearl Malt IPA:

Ginger Ale:

Cheers!

Fawcett Pearl IPA Brew Day

Today we brewed the base malt challenge IPA for my homebrew club with 95% Thomas Fawcett Pearl malt and 5% Carafoam.  Hops are Columbus, Simcoe, and Amarillo.  The target ABV is 7% with 70 IBU.

Weighing the malt:

Heating strike water for mash:

Milling the malted barley:

Grains into mash tun:

Water into mash tun:

Vorlauft:

Lauter:

Measure hops:

Draining with first wort hops:

Boiling strong:

5 minutes remaining:

Racked into carboy and pitched yeast:

The original gravity was 1.064 and the yeast is Wyeast American Ale 1056.  Hopefully we can get it down to around 1.010.

Brewed the Hard Way IPA kegged

Bottled 8, then kegged about 4 gallons. 4 carb drops per bottle.

We have our Ginger Ale, Oatmeal Stout, & this double dry hop west coast IPA brewed for people who like to drink beer. At 12 psi, the IPA should be ready in 5-7 days I surmise.

Peach State permit printed & ready, #thisbudsforyou

Hard Way IPA Brew Day

Today was the brew day for a kegged beer to enter in the People's Choice Award contest for the Peach State Brew Off presented by the Covert Hops Society on 2/28/14.

It was a windy day, but the trusty Blichmann burner powered through.

There was a lot of steam!

After chilling, this golden beauty was racked to the carboy.

The yeast for this batch is Safale US-05 American Ale.  After it is finished fermenting and dry hopped, we will bottle a few using carbonation drops and keg the remainder.

Citra IPA Brew Day

Today, we brewed an all Citra Hop American IPA. This is batch 9 of this recipe, with small tweaks along the way.  The last batch scored second place for American style IPAs at the Music City Brew Off AHA BJCP homebrew competition in Nashville on 11/8/14.

The malt in the recipe was American 2-row Pale Malt as the base with Munich for breadiness/maltiness, Crystal 10L for light sweetness, Carafoam for body & head, & Melanoidin for sweet toastiness.  The hops were of course all Citra added as First Wort Hops, then 60, 15, 10, 5, 0, & Dry Hops.  The mash was a single infusion which rested at 152F.  We did a single batch sparge and 60 minute boil.  After chilling and racking to the carboy, we pitched Safale S-04 English yeast at 9pm into the 1.062 original gravity (OG) wort.

Safale Battle: S-04 vs. US-05

The showdown!

I have made several beers with both Fermentis Safale S-04 (English Ale) and US-05 (American Ale).  Typically, the type of beer style matches with the choice of yeast because it will produce appropriate qualities to the beer type.  English yeast will attenuate less, leaving a higher final gravity for a more malt-focused beer and American yeast will attenuate more, resulting in a lower final gravity for a dryer beer.

In the spirit of experimentation, I wanted to compare the characteristics attributable to the Safale S-04 and US-05 yeast strains in the same wort.  This would also give me a chance to try out some 10 gallon batches on my system.  I split the grains into two mashes and combined the wort from them, boiled for the hour, then cooled it with an immersion chiller.  I split the wort into two 5 gallon class carboy fermenters, and pitched the American strain in one and the English strain in the other.

I have done this with the last two batches of homebrew, using two of my most established recipes.

• Citra IPA with OG of 1.058
• Amber Ale with OG of 1.050

Both of these are currently still in the carboys, but I am already noticing big differences in the yeast characteristics.  These were both originally American Pale Ale/IPA styles, but I am hypothesizing that the use of the English yeast will push those versions into the English IPA and English Pale Ale/Extra Special Bitter (ESB) style.  Two brew days will ultimately result in 200 bottles of 4 different types of beer!

I will post the findings of my experiment, focusing on these attributes:

• Color - big differences, including a "color swap" during fermentation
• Attenuation - comparison of the final gravities
• Flocculation - how did the yeast drop out of the beer?
• Fermentation activity - English was way faster and had a much larger Krausen
• etc.

I should be bottling the IPA in about a week and the Amber about a week after that.  I will share the results at a later date.

English on the left and American on the right.

American on the left and English on the right.