Wick's Home Brew

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.

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. 

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 #3 - Yeast Viability

I have become adamant on using Jamil’s Yeast Pitching Rate Calculator (http://www.mrmalty.com).  The last post I mentioned that I had a backup vial of WLP001 (California Ale) in my fridge. Well the best by date is May 14, 2011. Uh oh, the viability of that vial of yeast is going to be uber low. To figure out the production date of the the yeast, you subtract four months from the best by date. Well, that vial of yeast was produced on January 14, 2011 which Mr. Malty says the viability was at 16%. Well needless to say I am not using that vial of yeast. To pitch enough healthy yeast, I would need to to do a small started and feed it for a few days. 

So here is my plan. I made starter wort last night and I am storing it in a sanitized gallon pickle jar. So once I get my mash going tonight I will get the stir plate fired up and build up some yeast and pitch tomorrow after work. That way the chocolate will have plenty of time to infuse into the wort. Maybe giving the beer a bit more chocolate flavor. Here’s to brewing!

Cheers! 

As always you can contact me at wick at wickshomebrew dot com.

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 Number 2 - Preparing for a Brew Session. 

I wanted to show you that I do actually know how to use a hydrometer. At least I hope I do. So, yes AHA Big Brew day was a lot of fun. Didn’t realize it took so much longer to brew a 10 gallon batch than it does 5 gallons. More run off, heating more water, etc. Hey this is my lessons learned series and you are always learning while brewing. 

Proof is in the pudding, uh, beer! So I really can’t tell ya the last time I’ve used my hydrometer, made notes on a brew day, etc. It was a successful brew day and I was successful in taking notes if I want to brew that beer again in the future.

So onto my next lesson learned. Living in a small town without a LHBS I cannot simply go to the store and pick up ingredients for my next adventure in home brewing. So luckily I have a couple reliable resources in Brewmasters Warehouse and Rebel Brewer and I can order in one day and get my supplies in the next day or two. 

But there is much more for to plan out a brew day because of not having a local shop.

• Do I have DME for my yeast starter?
• Do I have enough time to make the proper starter? I’m glad I purchased that stir plate from Rebel Brewer. 
• Any equipment break recently? 
• Do I have backup dry yeast if my yeast starter doesn’t come out right? 

These are just some of the things I have to go through every time I do an order to an online home brew shop. Maybe I should take advice from the wifey and make lists. She is a list taking machine. One day I’ll learn.

The two recipes that placed, I ordered my supplies from Brewmasters Warehouse and their Brew Builder software saved the day. I just logged in and added those two recipes to the cart, went through my check list and boom, supplies ordered and I’m ready to brew. It’s really easy to use, you should go check it out. 

I’m glad I keep a vial of White Labs California Ale on hand, just in case. Going to whip up that starter tonight and get it going, just in case my stuff arrives tomorrow and I’ll get to brewing as soon as possible. I’ll keep you updated.

You can contact me a wick at wickshomebrew dot com if you have any questions or comments. 

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 Number 1— TAKE GOOD NOTES! Especially if you enter your beers to competitions. I got really lazy and just wanted to brew and my notes on my beers that placed are lackluster at best. Why did I need to take notes? I still have the recipe.

Yes I still have the recipes, but do I know how much sparge water I used? What temperature the beers fermented at? No. All I know is that I fermented at ambient temps. But I have a newly acquired chest freezer that will serve as my fermentation chamber.

Take good notes. What was my final gravity? What was my efficiency? I have no clue. All I know, is that those beers were well received among my friends and that why I submitted them to NHC.

So with today being the AHA big brew day, I am going to start taking much better notes. At least I believe I’m going to. I need to take notes. We are brewing 10 gallons of the East India Pale Ale.

Be on the lookout for the next lesson learned.

This will be an updated blog throughout the year. But after listening to a lot of podcasts from The Brewing Network, especially The Jamil Show or Can You Brew It. Which ever one, it is a great podcast and if you are a home brewer (which I would believe you are if you are reading this) it is a great resource.  I would recommend that every home brewer listen to these guys. The other show from them I listen to is Brew Strong. Another awesome one. So on to the reason for this blog post. Since Jamil wrote Brewing Classic Styles, he mentions the book quite a bit in his podcasts. So it was on my Christmas wish list. I got other goodies, so I picked it up shortly after Christmas. It is a great book. So I believe everything I’m going to brew this year will be either straight from this book or I will use it as a guide.  

The first one found that caught my eye was a beer called Programmers Elbow, an ESB. Two things that caught my eye, the name of the beer. Being a programmer myself, I must brew this beer. Secondly I am wanting to do an English style beer. I will not go into any more detail with the other styles I want to brew, but there they are. I am not exactly sure when I’ll brew these, but I will try my best to update my blog as much as possible this year. 

1. ESB 
2. Belgian Strong
3. American Barleywine
4. California Common
5. American Amber/Red Ale
6. Oatmeal Stout
7. Imperial IPA
8. Belgian Dubbel 

So what are you planning on brewing this year? Got any questions on brewing your own beer? Want to brew some beer this year? What is your favorite style to brew?

I will soon move my blog to another site in which you’ll be able to post comments. So send me your comments to wick at wickshomebrew dot com and I will update this blog post and respond to your comments. 

Thanks for reading!

Good ole Southern heat peaked into the mid 90s this week making me worry about how my fermentation on batch #5 is going. The t-shirt wrapped fermenter and fan method that people told me about on Twitter is working like a charm. Everyday I check the temperature of my carboy and it is hovering 68-69 degrees with an ambient temperature of around 75 degrees. Thank you Twitter people for chiming in and helping me out. 

The krausen hasn’t fallen yet and the blow off is still randomly blowing bubbles, so racking to the secondary is going to have to wait at least until after the weekend. As you may can tell I am very eager to drink this beer. It will be ready for me to drink by the time I head up to Kansas City for my summer vacation. 

Will keep the updates coming. 

Cheers

I have been reading this book “Microbrewed Adventures” by Charlie Papazian. Great read. Describes each brewery he visits and respective brewer as an adventure in the craft beer industry. This guy has got to have one of the best positions/job (if you can call it a job) ever! I often wonder what his source of actual income is, but he is one of the pioneers of the home brew movement. But onto to my own home brew adventure. Now you may wonder where us batch #4? Well what happened was I believe I let some contaminates get into this batch. How? I have a few theories. I also believe that I didn’t use enough yeast and when I bottled there were no more yeast alive to react with my corn sugar to naturally carbonate the beer. I have an idea I may try. Who knows. But I think it did not ferment down to it’s final gravity range. Home brewing is an experiment, right? So I scratch that batch and onward to my next batch.

I have really started liking to drink pale ales as of late. Talk to me two to three years ago and ask me if I wanted a pale ale, I would have passed on your offer. Well my palate has changed quite a bit since I have been on this craft beer movement. I have taken a liking to the Tommyknocker Pick Axe Pale Ale. Fruity flavors, bitterness all in my pint that I get at the local bar here in town. Well this book I have been reading has recipes for beers at each brewery Charlie has visited. I have always wanted to try the Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, but of course living in Mississippi I cannot find it around here. In the back of the book I find a home brew recipe adapted for the 60 min IPA. So me being one to try things jumped right into it. But I adapted the recipe to some ingredients I already had here at the house. So which made my order to Brewmasters Warehouse a little cheaper. Instead of using all pale LME. I had 5 lbs of extra light DME handy. So I just ordered enough LME so I could achieve some of the expected color and also increased the amount of caramel malt grains. I also changed the type of hops i used because Brewmasters Warehouse was out of warrior hops and they suggested I use Columbus instead. The smelled great!

Living here in the south we have devilish hot summers and it already feels like summer has already hit us. So I needed a way to keep my fermenter at around 70 degrees or below. Thanks to Twitter a couple people suggested the t-shirt and a fan method. I must say it is working pretty well I filled a large cooler up with water about half way, put my carboy into the cooler then wrapped t-shirts all around it and then put a small fan blowing on it constantly. I checked the temp earlier this evening and it is hovering around 67-68 degrees. The ambient temp is 74-75 degrees. Not too shabby. I do want to try to build a “Son of a Fermentation Chiller”. Looks very nifty and ingenious. Google it and you’ll see what I am talking about.

So my IPA is fermenting away. Once it’s time to rack to the secondary I will dry hop wit 15 grams of hops and let it sit covered in t-shirts with a fan blowing on it for a couple weeks and then bottle.

I am soon gonna post pics of my sweet stout and hefeweizen and let ya know my review on those. I also want to start reviewing beers I try. I’m still new to the craft beer revolution and am still developing a palate to the different flavors you find in each beer. But so far I am loving every minute of it, even if I did screw up one batch.

Cheers!

The ole lady and I along with another couple went to the Suds of the South beer fest in Tuscaloosa, AL in March. Great! Great! event I must say. Had a handful of southeastern brewers there. Lazy Magnolia (Kiln, MS), Terrapin Beer Company (Athens, GA), Sweetwater Brewery (Atlanta, GA), Good People Brewing (Birmingham, AL), Back Forty Beer (Birmingham, AL), Highland Brewing Company (Asheville, NC), Abita (Abita Springs, LA) and Yazoo Brewing Company (Nashville TN).  It was limited to 200 people. So we bought our tickets and headed on over to Bama country. I got a chance to pick the brains of the brewers there and actually talk to them about their beer. The only beer I drank that night that I did not enjoy was Yazoo’s smoked porter. I think I will limit my smokiness to only meats. It tasted like my smoker as I am smoking some ribs or a pork butt. All their other beers, GREAT! This was my first beer event and now I am itching for more. I am planning on going to the Magic City Brewfest in June. That will be a busy couple weeks for me. Ahh well, I can handle it. 

So anyways, on to the home brew. The reason I chose this kit is because the ole lady really liked Yazoo’s Hefeweizen. I found a kit on Midwest Supplies and ordered it up. The target OG for this batch was suppose to be around 1.049 to 1.053. So I got my hydrometer out and measured it and it was sitting around 1.070 after I adjusted for temperature. Not that I was worried, this just means it will have higher alcohol content.