Wick's Home Brew
I think I’m going to do a series on the blog about this. I just entered two more beers that have been in competitions this year. This will be something good to write about in an upcoming blog post.
I’ve entered quite a few homebrew competitions, and I have really tried to take the feedback as constructive criticism. It is hard to take when someone rips your beer. I’ve sent soured beers, flawed beers, and some good beers. I have been fortunate to get some good feedback, but I have never really been told your beer sucks, which is a good thing. When studying for the BJCP, I learned that the overall impression is not just your impression, but using your brewing knowledge to suggest what the brewer can do to make that beer a better fit into the style in which it was entered. What will make this beer a 50 point beer. I’ll give you a couple examples of what judges have said on my sheets, and just maybe this will help lure you to enter more competitions.
Category 4C: Schwarzbier - Two Sides of the Schwarz
2013 National Homebrew Competition
Judge 1 - National - A fairly nice beer that suffers from a little diacetyl. Aside form a diacetyl rest at 68 degrees F 75% of the way through fermentation (75% x (OG - FG)) maybe aerate more and/or lager longer. Otherwise nicely done.
Judge 2 - Certified - This is a good beer. That has balance between the base malt and the roast. Also has enough hops to balance the malt.
2013 War of the Wort
Judge 3 - Recognized - Light smooth roast with malty richness made a very nice beer. Hop character was a little low in flavor and ok to be hidden in the aroma. Would like to see a little more hop flavor, although with a lighter roasted schwarz this is not completely a bad thing. Very nice beer!
Judge 4 - Certified - Enjoyable well brewed schwarz. I think the bitterness is a tad too intense. Suggest reducing hop bitterness and backing down a little on the sharpness of the roast. Very dry.
Let me note, these entries were from the same keg. So technically unless something was wrong with the bottle, these should have been the same beer. But you know that finicky home brew. So what can I do to make this beer fit better into style? One judge noted diacetyl. Shall I worry too much about the diacetyl that was noted? Not really since I should make my diacetyl rest good practice. It wasn’t a major flaw noted. So what did the judges tell me that will make this a 50 point beer? Not too much. Judges 3 and 4 both noted hop character, but in different aspects. This beer has been lagering since January so of course hop flavors would have dropped out. Judge 4 was the only one to note hop bitterness was harsh. Was it hop bitterness, or did I extract too much roasted bitterness? To conclude, they all four thought it was a well brewed beer, but it wasn’t a great beer. What can I do to make it great? Other than the detected diacetyl, which I do not typically detect in my beers until someone tells me. Mirror? Hello? Then the more hop character. This style has a low to moderate hop character, so I do not believe I will change my hop schedule. My major issue that I get out of these four comments is the diacetyl I need to work on my lagering practice. Patience is not my friend, so that means lagers aren’t my friends either, but I do enjoy drinking a well brewed lager.
Category 13C - Oatmeal Stout - Quaken Oaten Stout
2013 Bluff City Extravaganza
Judge 1 - Non-BJCP - a very drinkable beer. I would have liked some more sweetness and or oatmeal character. As the beer warmed I noticed a slightly tinny/metallic notes though were not overwhelming.
Judge 2 - Non-BJCP - Beer suffers from off flavored and over carbonation. Not sensing oatmeal character. Could be a good beer with tweaking.
2013 War of the Wort
Judge 3 - Provisional - Good beer very drinkable. Maybe try changing mash temps to try to get more unfermentable sugars to balance the bitterness. I would like more oatmeal character too.
Judge 4 - Certified - the beer was not too far off style, but balance was problematic. Tweaking of recipe or procedure is recommended. Needs more oatmeal sweetness/slickness.
These are two different batches, so technically these are different beers, but I want to show you that the judges’ comments are not too different. But it is the same recipe with similar ingredients I could not get Maris Otter for the War of the Wort batch, so I did substitute the base malt for what the home brew shop had in stock. I did have a slight issue with the beers sent to the Extravaganza being over-carbed. Was my fermentation not complete? Apparently not. That was a ding there. That beer sat in the carboy for 3 weeks, guess I needed to raise my fermentation temps up towards the end of fermentation. I am baffled by the way WLP002 flocculates and it appeared to finish pretty quickly.
I have had trouble getting that oatmeal sweetness/slickness that judge 4 mentioned. Body has been a problem for me with this beer. I need more dextrines. Is the way I handle my oats wrong? I use Quaker oats from the grocery store. Should I use quick oats? Should I cook the oats like I would for breakfast before I mash? I do bake the oats to try to bring out more nutty characters. I will need to ramp up my saccrification rest to 156, I normally mash at 154. This will also help get those long chained sugars I need for more dextrinous wort. This is a beer I want to to nail down as I really enjoy drinking this style.
I know this beer is not a 30 point beer in the oatmeal stout category. It fared better in the War of the Wort. My goal is to perfect this recipe. I will.
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How many beers have you let your friends drink and they tell you it’s awesome? It’s great? Well this oatmeal stout, no one has told me to my face it is not quite right, as an oatmeal stout that is. Do they know better? Some of them do. I’ll still drink this keg, sorry rose bush, you’re not getting this beer. I know this, but I wanted some feedback on it outside my circle of friends.
I hope this kind of put a bug into your ear about entering competitions and how they can help you brew better beer. If you only enter one a year, enter the War of the Wort next year, if you enter two, enter HBAMM’s Monster Mash, which will be held in the Oct/Nov time frame.
Cheers!
Ok, being the big nerd I am and my fellow homebrewers who are big nerds and like statistical data, here we go. I am glad I am well versed in SQL or I would have been here quite while figuring this stuff out. So if there is any other statistical data you wish to see about our competition, drop me a comment or a tweet and I’ll see what I can do.
Cheers everyone!
What did I get out of from this year’s National Homebrew Competition? One that I cannot complain about my scores at all. Two, it is pretty awesome that all of my beers went to their respective Mini-BOS. Three, what can I do to make my beer stand out against the competition in a Mini-BOS? The beers I sent to this year’s NHC were just five beers I had around the house that were worth submitting to this year’s competition.
Three of them are my go to beers the other two beers were experiments per se, and they scored the best!
Chocolate Hazelnut Porter (BJCP Category 21A) - this beer has won me quite a few awards. It advanced to the second round of 2011 NHC with the same recipe, and it’s normally a holiday time brew. It’s usually on tap at my house up until May. I’ve almost blown that keg this year.
Judges Overall Impression -
Judge 1 - Certified: Great example of your chosen style and description! Score: 41
Judge 2 - Certified: Well balanced cocoa & hazelnut - Roasted grain & other porter characteristics are subdued & might benefit from being brought forward a bit. Score: 38
Hoppin’ Oaked Saison Squared (BJCP Category 22C) - woah! This scored a 41? I entered it as a Saison IPA aged on medium french oak chips. I brewed this beer for an intra-club competition and I entered this solely to get feedback from people outside of my homebrew club. I’ll enter this into other competitions just to see how it will do, and as the judges noted, I needed to be better on my description which the next competition I entered it into, I was a bit more descriptive.
Judges Overall Impression -
Judge 1 - Certified: An excellent beer. The flavors are well matched and compliment each other. You need to do a better description in the future and don’t make the judges guess what the base style is. Score: 43
Judge 2 - Provisional: An interesting beer which as much not a saison as its not an IPA but its nice the wheat and oak makes for a great texture. While Belgian yeast and hops provide a nice bubble gum spiciness, very unique, slightly fusel, but not solventy. For the competition I judged it as an IPA with Saison aspects. Score: 40
Let’s Stout It Out (2012) (BJCP Category 13F), the 2011 version of this turned out really good, but the only problem was that I only brewed a 3 gallon batch and it was really good. So in 2012 I tweaked the recipe a bit based on the success I had with my Regal Porter. I used the base malt I had on hand and also changed to Scottish yeast, which my little secret in 2012 on the malty beers I brewed this year.
Judges Overall Impression -
Judge 1 - Rank Pending: A good representation of the style. Fermentation was well done in order to not be hotter than it is. The alcohol aroma is a bit much. Score: 37
Judge 2 - Master: Has al the right flavor elements, but higher alcohols are a bit too fruity / floral and harsh / hot. Be sure to pitch HUGE for high-grav beer like this, oxygenate well, keep temps under control. Consider different yeast strain. Score: 34
Two Sides of the Schwarz (BJCP Category 4C) - ok I have pretty much had a Schwarzbier on tap at my house since I got a fermentation chamber. I received really good feedback from 2012 NHC so I tweaked the recipe a bit. 2012’s was a bit too roasty for the style. So I backed off of it a bit, and I get a lower score in 2013. Live and learn and keep brewing it.
Judges Overall Impression -
Judge 1 - National: A fairly nice beer that suffers from a little diacetyl. Aside form a diacetyl rest at 68 degrees F 75% of the way through fermentation (75% x (OG - FG)) maybe aerate more and/or lager longer. Otherwise nicely done. Score: 35
Judge 2 - Certified: This is a good beer. That has balance between the base male and the roast. Also has enough hops to balance the malt. Score: 34
Regal Porter (BJCP Category 23A) - this was another experiment at the Wickham Brewery and it turned out phenomenal! This was brewed as an Imperial Porter. Sweet, chewy, luscious, and it is awesome with some ice cream! I only hope I can recreate it. The experiment for this beer was to do a parti-gyle brew day. Which if you haven’t done one, it is a long brew day, but you get TWO beers out of it, which is spectacular. The beer had almost six months of age on it and it is just getting better with time. I’m really proud to get a 43 on this beer.
Judges Overall Impression -
Judge 1 - National: Very well made beer with no major technical flaws. Imperialzing this beer amped up the good parts of the base style without adding any unpleasant harshness. It may benefit slight with more carb & perhaps cutting back on the highly kilned malts a touch. Score: 42
Judge 2 - Certified: An excellent Impl porter. Roastiness, malt sweetness, hops & alcohol are all bumped up but not harsh or conflicting. More carbonation is needed to improve aroma, appearance, and to maybe thin (dry) out the flavor a little. Score: 44
I learned quite a bit from most of these sheets. The one glaring thing is when submitting specialty beers, be very descriptive of your beer. You do not want to keep the judge guessing. After judging at my local competition this weekend I totally I understand. I was judging fruit beers and there were a couple beers that did not state the base style so I had to make assumptions. After we were done judging the competition I found the second bottle of the entry and the name says what the style was. So there you have it and of course I was wrong on one of the base styles. But it still scored well, I at least got the category number right.
I submitted the same five beers to my homebrew club’s local competition, and I will compare those sheets with these judge comments. Should be interesting. Hopefully this will kick start me to write on my blog more.
Cheers!
The scientific definition of diacetyl is a vicinal diketone with the molecular formula C4H6O2. In simpleton terms, it is a movie theater butter or butterscotch flavor. Yes, I have heard that movie theaters actually are using diacetyl when they ask you if you want your popcorn buttered. Is this fact? I’m not saying no, but I wouldn’t doubt it. But diacetyl is a common problem in homebrew. I have even had a lot of commercial examples that have loads diacetyl. But this is is not a flaw in some English style beers.
So how does diacetyl get in our beer? Diacetyl is produced during fermentation. It starts to show up in the low krauesen phase. Huh? Low krauesen? This is the phase of fermentation when the yeast has finished growing and you’ll start seeing a foam wreath develop in the middle of the surface. The yeast has not completely adapted to the environment and ready to start metabolizing those sugars you worked so hard to create. Ok, maybe I need to go in depth on the yeast development cycle one day. It is quite interesting what all those yeasts do during fermentation. Back to diacetyl. It can start showing up in the low krauesen phase and the yeast will start cleaning up by products that were developed during late krausen phase.
Ok, so now we know when diacetyl can show up in our beer. Now why am I tasting it in my beer? Well, it can be a lot of things.
- if you have a long lag phase (from when you pitch to when you get to the growth phase of fermentation) which can be caused from poor yeast health or insufficient aeration.
- Some bacteria strains can cause diacetyl production. Here is where I use that sanitation word. Any homebrewer has heard sanitation probably 3.7 million times. Seriously. Sanitation, so that’s 3,700,001 times.
- Premature racking out of primary. See earlier? You might not be able to see when your beer in late krauesen. So make sure your beer is done fermenting by checking your final gravity for a couple days straight to make sure your gravity is not dropping.
- Under pitching. Huh? So you’ve never made a yeast starter? You’ll improve your beer ten fold by making yeast starters. Take the plunge, get a stir plate and you can make sure you’ll have enough yeast to pitch.
- Too much oxygen. Wait one minute. I bet you remember me mentioning earlier about insufficient aeration? Well of course I did, there can also be too much. Yeast absorb all the oxygen it can during the growth phase. Well if there is too much oxygen there will still be oxygen lingering when the fermentation is over. Most homebrewers don’t filter their beer. If there is still oxygen left over, the yeast will still be feeding off of it and still trying to go through fermentation phases. Also minimize oxygen exposure after fermentation started, e.g. while racking to the keg or bottling bucket.
- Increase your fermentation temperature. That is use a diacetyl rest. A diacetyl rest is a common practice for lager beers. When you warm up the yeast it becomes a bit more active and it will help clean up the yeast. You can also use a diacetyl rest for ales, but most of the time you are fermenting at the correct temperature for the diacetyl to be cleaned up.
- Use a less flocculant yeast strain. Flocculation is the state of yeast of being clumped together and falling out of solution. If the yeast is still in suspension it will be a little more efficient when cleaning up diacetyl.
Diacetyl will always be a flaw in lagers, but not in every ale style. It is acceptable in some English and Scottish style beers and also a dry stout.
I’m sure we have all had this problem show up in our beers. This is one of the major issues that I fight with, especially since I started doing lagers.
Relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew.
References:
How to Brew
Beer Judge Education Course
To quote a neighboring state representative favorite among Mississippians, “What’s wrong with the beer we got?”
Since it is after July 1st, we all of the sudden have “real” beer in Mississippi? So before July 1st we didn’t have real beer? I wholeheartedly disagree with all the tweets, Facebook posts, etc. Mississippi has gone leaps and bounds with the limitations that were imposed on the craft beer drinkers in the state. Where were we five to seven years ago? Five to seven years ago, I for one wasn’t into craft beer as I am today. I remember wanting to drink local with every vacation or business destination. That’s where my interests started to pique and then it snowballed from there. I’d come home and mull over our selections. Well, yes it was disappointing, but with every few months in the past two to three years our selections got broader.
Raise Your Pints has done an outstanding job on giving us freedom of choice in the craft beer selections in our state. Yes, north Mississippi is really behind right now compared to what is current availability in Jackson and even Hattiesburg, but please be patient. This was not going to be an overnight sensation. I have every bit of confidence in our area distributors that they will get the better selections to us as soon as they can. That is how they will make their money. If you are getting antsy, pick up the phone and give an area distributor or your local beer shop a call, be polite, every one I’ve talked to has been open to information, as open as they are allowed to be.
Be grateful that we have better beer choices now, not just all of the sudden we have “real” beer in Mississippi.
Cheers!
BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Two Sides of the Schwartz
Brewer: Wick
Asst Brewer:
Style: Schwarzbier (Black Beer)
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (30.0)
Recipe Specifications
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Boil Size: 8.49 gal
Post Boil Volume: 6.24 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 6.00 gal
Bottling Volume: 6.00 gal
Estimated OG: 1.055 SG
Estimated Color: 30.9 SRM
Estimated IBU: 28.6 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 72.0 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes
Ingredients:
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Amt Name Type # %/IBU
7 lbs 0.9 oz Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 1 56.0 %
4 lbs 0.5 oz Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 2 32.0 %
8.1 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) Grain 3 4.0 %
8.1 oz Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM) Grain 4 4.0 %
4.0 oz Carafa II (412.0 SRM) Grain 5 2.0 %
4.0 oz Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) Grain 6 2.0 %
1.50 oz Hallertauer [4.30 %] - Boil 90.0 min Hop 7 24.1 IBUs
0.50 oz Hallertauer [4.30 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 8 4.6 IBUs
0.50 oz Hallertauer [4.30 %] - Aroma Steep 0.0 m Hop 9 0.0 IBUs
2.0 pkg SafLager West European Lager (DCL/Fermen Yeast 10 -
Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Medium Body, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 12 lbs 9.5 oz
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Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Mash In Add 15.69 qt of water at 166.0 F 154.0 F 60 min
Sparge: Batch sparge with 2 steps (1.83gal, 4.25gal) of 168.0 F water
Notes:
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Not a great brew day. After I dropped the hops in after I saw signs of a boil, I dropped the 60 minute hops in. So guess what. I hopped at 90 minutes. Oh well, followed the rest of the hop schedule in the recipe.
Pitched yeast sludge January 18th at 44 degrees.
January 20th fermentation chamber was at 55 degrees. Changed heat to cold and turned freezer back on and put to 48 degrees.
Created with BeerSmith 2 - http://www.beersmith.com
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I find chilling your wort a major time-consuming part of your brew day. I would say it takes at least an hour to get my wort down to pitching temperatures. Even longer in the summer time when groundwater temperature is higher than your pitching temperature. Like every beginning home brewer, I started with the ice bath method in my kitchen sink. This worked really well while I was extract-brewing and only boiling about 3 gallons of wort and topping off to my target volumes. I would chill my top off water in the refrigerator while brewing, use the ice bath to get to about 90 degrees, rack it to the carboy, and top off. That would get me to my pitching temps. Sometimes it would get me below pitching temps, so I had to wait for it to warm up.
This method was great, but when I decided to go all grain, I had to do full boils. So the idea of lugging 6 gallons of wort into the house and submerging that into an ice bath was not a very fun thought. The wife also didn’t like the idea of me bringing in 6 gallons of hot wort into the house and using a bathtub to chill wort.
So I went on a search for a wort chiller for a manageable price. I looked at all of the online home brew shops at all the different options. The top three methods I have found are immersion, plate, and counterflow chillers. All of them have their pros and cons.
Immersion Chiller
Pros: Affordable, easy to clean, wort does not run inside of your chiller, easy to sanitize, just drop it into your wort with about 15 minutes left in the boil.
Cons: Uses lots of water, and takes a long time to cool the wort.
Plate Chiller and Counterflow Chiller
I’m grouping this two together, because they seem to be essentially the same thing, in my opinion.
Pros: Can be gravity fed, uses less water than immersion, chilling less wort at any given moment.
Cons: To be really effective you would need a march pump, higher cost, hard to clean and sanitize. If you do not have a pump, you couldn’t pump boiling wort through it to sanitize, would need to use star san.
Well, what did I go with? Well not really wanting to buy a pump and all its fittings which will set you back at least 160 bucks, easy, I went with an immersion chiller. It was pretty easy choice since I found one for about $55 on eBay. Yes, it works great, but it wasn’t working great enough for me. So after listening to some podcasts and reading up on the Internet I found out using a pond pump with a bucket full of ice water would be helpful.
Pond Pump
You can pick up a cheap pond pump at Lowes for $20-$40 bucks. So add that to the cost of your immersion chiller and you’ll more than likely be around the same price as a plate or counterflow chiller. On brew day, I chill my wort down to 90-100 degrees with the patio hose. This normally takes 20-30 minutes, depending on how warm it is that day. Disconnect the hose from the immersion chiller and attach a tube from the pond pump to the immersion chiller then have it recirculate back into the bucket. Just replenish the ice into the bucket when it all melts and there ya go. Ice water is now pumping through your immersion chiller. I would say it takes another 20-30 minutes to get your wort to pitching temps. Now if you do not want to buy a pond pump, take your bottling bucket and fill it with ice water, put the bucket on, say, a step ladder and attach the bucket and chiller with a hose and let gravity do its thing. Have the chiller run off into another bucket and then just dump that water back into the ice bucket. That way you can make beer and get a great workout.
Last night I volunteered at a beer tasting in West Point. Anthony’s Good Food Market hosted the event. This sparked a question of mine. What does the Golden Triangle have to offer when Mississippi Craft Beer Week comes around? With last year as the inaugural year for MS Craft Beer Week, the GTR area has plenty of venues that are more than able to host these events. Who is willing?
Starkville
The Halfway House: This is the newest beer-centered establishment in the area. Opened up with 30-plus taps and have room for expansion. Roomy inside, perfect outdoor patio. The beer menu is always changing, so you can experience something different every time you visit. The only negative is parking.
Rosey Baby Starkville: Rosey Baby has stepped up their game with 50-plus taps installed. Installed a cold room behind the bar to store kegs. It’s a nice setup for your average beer geek. They have hosted beer and wine tastings by certain breweries and wineries. Rosey Baby is doing their best to get into the mindset craft beer enthusiasts. Twitter: @RoseyBaby_stark
Dave’s Darkhorse Tavern: Want a low key environment, good live music and good beer? Dave’s is your place. While their selection isn’t anything like the others. The environment and live music makes this place a worth while host for any craft beer event in the area. They were the first place in the town with Sierra Nevada’s pale ale- even though it was in the bottle, there was not another bar in town where you could find it.
Ptolemy’s Taproom: When Ptolomey’s came into town it was the premier beer bar in Starkville. Started out with 12 taps and have upgraded to 20 taps. The venue is small, but it is located in the heart of Starkville’s Cotton District meaning you will get the college crowd to come and enjoy a beer with you. Twitter: @ptolemystaproom
Columbus
The Princess Theater: The current owner, who enjoys a good craft beer, has taken on the task to make this bar quaint with plenty of beer selections on tap or in the bottle. Then there is also the theater next door that brings in musical acts. If you ever find yourself in Columbus, go to this historic location and have a beer. You’ll be pleased.
West Point
Anthony’s Good Food Market: Good food and good beer. Average number of taps, but have a great bottle selection. Great space by the bar and the room next to the bar. Firkin anyone? Influenced by the best beer store in the area right down the street, the Smokestack, the writing is on the wall. Good food and good beer equals a good time and great potential.
So with Mississippi Craft Beer week on the radar the Golden Triangle is more than equipped to host any craft beer event. So which brewery or distributor wants to get their name out and promote craft beer? The Golden Triangle is more than ready for the task.
I don’t know if you follow me on Twitter (@wickdawg) or not and saw my tweet about two of my beers submitted to the National Homebrew Competition receiving 1st place. So as I prepare my beers for the final round submission I am going to document my lessons learned day by day as the deadline approaches.
Lesson Learned #5 - Patience
If you know me on a personal level, you know my patience comes and goes. It used to be around quite often, but here lately, patience has not been a virtue for me. I am reasoning as to why my patience is running a little thin right now. I couldn’t in my right mind think that I would have made it to the second round of National Homebrew Competition.
I’ve only been home brewing for a little over a year. The two beers that placed first were probably batch numbers 11 and 12, all grain batch numbers 2 and 3. As you could tell from my first lesson, I didn’t take very good notes, if any at all, so I’m not sure about the first numbers, but I know my Chocolate Hazelnut Porter was my second all grain batch and the brown was the third. So now I am trying to wait patiently for the two beers I brewed this past week to ferment out and get ready to be kegged. Here is the rough thing for me. Normally I wouldn’t worry about this so much, but next week I will be unable to rack my beers to the kegs. So I am going to have to do it on fermentation day 10 for the CHP and day 9 for the brown ale. Ten days of fermentation is about right. According to Jamil that is. Listening to his podcasts he says 10 days is normally when he knows things in your carboys are done what they needed to be done. So I’ll take a sample out of each and hope both of them went through the diacetyl rest, and rack to the keg and start carbonating those bad boys.
This post is mainly for me to RDWHHB (Relax, don’t worry, have a home brew).
<Deep Breath> - Ok, I’m good to go and ready for a home brew.
I don’t know if you follow me on Twitter (@wickdawg) or not and saw my tweet about two of my beers submitted to the National Homebrew Competition receiving 1st place. So as I prepare my beers for the final round submission I am going to document my lessons learned day by day as the deadline approaches.
Lesson Learned #4 - Brewing, while it’s fun, it can be a lot of hard work.
I enjoy brewing. I enjoy drinking the beer I brew. Prior to me not having that much confidence in my my home brewing skills, I brewed maybe once a month, twice if I was feeling frisky. I brewed 3 times in 5 days this past week. Twenty gallons (only 15 gallons of that is in my fermentation chamber). Needless to say, I’m whooped. Just plain tired. I work a full time job and to come home and whip up an all grain brew that evening is just plain crazy. Well, yes I am doing that now and I do not believe I’ll do it again. After this weekend, I’m solely a weekend/holiday brewer.
Now for a little tangent. Back in March my then finance now wife took a little trip to Maine for Shipyard’s Brewing Vacation (which she coined it a brewcation and told everyone at Shipyard that is what you need to call it, and that’s the law). It was an outstanding time in Maine. The weather was great, the scenery was gorgeous and the beer. Well, lets just say we had plenty of it. We arrive at Kennebunkport and check into our hotel and meet up with Shipyard’s Trade Brewer over a couple pints of chit chat and him letting us know what all we were going to be doing on the vacation. He also let us know we’ll need to report to the brewery at 6:30 the next morning and be ready to get our hands dirty and wet with some brewing. We were up for that task.
The next morning rolls along and we up and at ‘em and walking into Federal Jack’s brewery (which is the birthplace of Shipyard) and the Head Brewer there starts letting us know what all we were going to be doing. So we get to brewing, cleaning, more cleaning, and then some more cleaning. Needless to say it was a lot of hard work, we put in a 10 hour day, easy and he was sticking around to do more cleaning and paperwork after we finished up cleaning everything we were asked to clean.
So lets fast forward to this week. I know I’m not brewing a 7 barrel batch of beer. I get that. I am brewing a beer for myself, family and friends to enjoy. Oh yeah, and I’m brewing to ship off 6 beers to the National Homebrew Competition. I’ll walk you through the brew session for my Chocolate Hazelnut Porter.
My other half started heating my mash water up because she gets home well before me. So that saved me 30 minutes. So I arrive to mash water ready to go, so I pull out all of my equipment. First up, my converted 10 gallon water cooler, aka the mash tun. Since it was outside, I didn’t prime it with any hot water, it didn’t take long for it to heat up. I got the mash going. 5:38 is when I shut the lid and the clock started ticking away. So I got my yeast starter going for the beer. I had planned on pitching the next day anyways, due to my time constraints. Cleaned the brew kettle from the AHA big brew day. Then started the sparge water. Sent the wife to the store for the cocoa powder and more bar keepers friend. I recirculated some of the wort to set the grain bed for a good drain. Went and grabbed my sparge water threw it back into the tun. Let that rest for about 10 minutes. Recirculated again. Then drained. Got the kettle up onto the burner, then waited for the joker to come to a boil. Followed the hops schedule, added the cocoa powered in the last two minutes of the boil. I believe the time was around 9 by the time I turned the burner off and started the wort chiller. Well guess what, the hose clamps weren’t tight enough when I turned on the water. So I had a little leakage while getting the wort chiller going. Got that fixed then started chilling. My hydrangeas were happy to get a little extra water. Once I got to about 90 degrees, I got a cooler full of ice water, submerged a pond pump into that water, then hooked that up to my wort chiller and then I started recycling the water and added ice as needed to keep the water cold. So about 10pm is when the wort was cool enough to rack into my carboy. So I threw the carboy full of wort into my fermentation chamber and it would wait for my yeast to wake up and grow so it could ferment my beer nicely.
Then it was time to clean up. Rinse the mash tun, rinse out the kettle and put up all my odd and end things so it will be ready for the next day. Whew, lets just say, days later, I’m still whooped.
Lesson learned. Brewing is hard work. I know most home brewers dream of going pro. Wonder if they really realize how much work, mainly cleaning you do. A clean brewery makes good beer. So to make good beer, you need to be anal about having a clean brewery.
