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!

Fat Ninja Ale Big Brew Day

Saturday was 65 degrees, perfect for a Pale Ale 10g batch. We used up the Maris Otter and used Pale US Malt, Munich, Biscuit, and Wheat malts. It came out at 1.052.

Experimental hop schedule with Simcoe, Centennial, Amarillo, & Palisade in the boil at 7,6,5,4,3,2,1...

Grains pre-mill:

Draining mash to kettle:

Boil in progress, lots of green hops:

Racking to two carboy fermentors;

Pitched yeast and set blowoffs:

One is California Ale yeast and one is English Ale yeast, both from White Labs.

Oatmeal Stout Bottling Day

The Oatmeal Stout came out to 55 bottles worth. Bottling stouts is remarkably easier than dry-hopped IPAs due to the sludge called trub.

First, we racked sanitizer to the bottling bucket:

Then racked the sanitizer back into carboy:

Now the beer was transferred from the carboy to the bucket with some Dixie Crystal simple syrup. The Hydrometer reading was 1.018 from 1.058.

Add the bottling wand and fill some bottles:

Crown and crimp:

This will be a good batch. It smelled and tasted Choco- roasty. Cheers!

Bottle-o-rama

Briarcliff Brewing's Bourbon Barrel Barleywine was bottled in the basement by us both.  Alliteration aside, this one should be a winner.  The bourbon smell permeated the room, which should play nicely in the 11% ABV beer.

Additionally, we bottled the Northern English Brown Ale.

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!

Bottling Jaryllo Pale Ale

Boiled 16oz water

Added cane sugar

Siphoned from carboy to bucket

Added sugar water to bottling bucket

Bottling wand

Capping line

5.1 gallons = 50 @ 12oz + 1 bomber

All Jaryllo hopped 5% pale ale