Wick's 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 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.