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Monday, September 18, 2006
Busy Brewing Weekend
OK, so I brewed both the Nelson Sauvin pale ale and the Vienna lager.
For the pale ale, I did a partial mash - 4 pounds (1.8 kg) of grain in my 2-gallon (7.6-L) cooler - and added 3 pounds (1.4 kg) of dried malt extract to make the wort. The partial mash was a mix of crystal malt (40 °L), crystal malt (60 °L) and Maris Otter. I boiled the full wort with my propane cooker, cooled with my immersion chiller and fermented in my swamp cooler.
The Vienna lager ended up being 100% Vienna malt. I mashed in at 131 °F (55 °C) in my kettle, with a fairly thin mash - around 2.0 qts/lb. (4.2 L/kg) - to bring out some of the malty/grainy notes from the Vienna malt. I started heating the mash immediately and ramped the temperature up by about 2 °F (~1 °C) per minute until I reached 154 °F (68 °C). I rested there for about 45 minutes, then heated the mash to 168 °F (76 °C). I took a bit of time to cool the wort down to near lager fermentation temperatures, but when I got it in the ballpark, I racked the wort to my new 7-gallon (26-L) stainless steel cylindro-conical fermenter. Normally, I stop siphoning from the kettle when I start getting "gunk" from the bottom, but this time I racked as much as I could into the fermenter and just dumped the crud out the bottom the next day. Very slick.
I ended up "kräusening" the pale ale once primary fermentation ended. I cooked up 1 quart (~1 L) of wort with a bunch of Nelson Sauvin hop added and added that when I racked to secondary. My idea was to get some more hop flavor and aroma into the beer that wouldn't blow off with a vigourous fermentation. The renewed fermentatin from the "kräusen" (it's not really called kräusen since it's an ale) was steady, but nowhere near as vigorous as a primary fermentation.
I fermented the Vienna at 53 °F (12 °C) in my chest freezer (with override thermostat). Once the fermentation wound down, I let the temperature rise to 60 °F (16 °C) for two days for a diacetyl rest.
Sunday night (last night), I racked the pale ale to keg. I also dumped the yeast from the Vienna lager and dialed the temperature in my chest freezer down to 40 °F (4.4 °C). The pale ale tasted very promising. The lager, like all green lagers, tasted like crap - but that should improve with time.
Posted by Chris Colby @ 1:08 PM Link This
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Friday, September 01, 2006
Back At It
OK, so I haven't brewed in awhile. It's a long story, but the short version is this - once you buy a rototiller, every available patch of your lawn that gets sun during the day looks like it needs to be turned into a garden patch. Gardens, in turn, need to be tended. Hence, I haven't brewed in awhile. But, with Labor Day on Monday, it's a three-day weekend. Time to knock out a couple batches of beer.
First off, I'm brewing a pale ale with a new variety of hops - Nelson Sauvin. This is a New Zealand hop I first tasted recently on a press tour of Anheuser-Busch's Elk Mountain Farm, which grows Saaz and Hallertau hops. At a dinner during the event, the brewer at their R and D plant in St. Louis served some pale ales. Each was made with the same malt bill, but hopped with a different single hop, including Santiam, Safir and Nelson Sauvin. I really liked the Nelson Sauvin and the brewer (Florian Kuplent) gave me a bag of pellets (and also some whole Safir and Santiam).
To me, Nelson Sauvin was very reminiscent of Amarillo, which I love. I hope to have this beer ready to serve at the next Austin ZEALOTS meeting. (By the way, in a similar vein, I thought John Brack's (JB's) Newahtarillo Pale Ale - which he brewed with Newport, Ahtanum and Amarillo hops and brought to one of the last ZEALOTS meetings - was great. I also liked Kerry Martin's watermelon ale that he brought to the picnic. It actually gave me an idea that I'll blog about later if I actually do it. The basic idea is this: in the spring, I'll be growing a variety of watermelon (Black Diamond) that can reach 70 pounds (32 kg). In a recent BYO, we featured a guy who fermented some beer in a pumpkin. From the size of the pumpkin, he must have fermented about a gallon of beer; I'm wondering if I can't ferment 5 gallons inside a giant hollowed-out watermelon. (Also, I wonder if I could mash inside a melon? Hmm. But I digress.)
For the pale ale, I'm going with the malt bill from my APA (which appeared in the March-April 2006 BYO as Patrick Henry Pale Ale) and Nelson Sauvin at 60 minutes, 15 minutes and at knockout. I'm going to shoot for around 40 IBUs, and use around 0.75 ounces (21 g) for the 15-minute and 0-minute additions. Nice and hoppy, but not over-the-top. I also want to see how the hop works with the malt.
I'll probably brew the pale ale on Sunday. On Monday, I'm thinking Vienna lager. For one thing, I love Vienna lager. For another, I want to impress Ashton Lewis, our technical editor and Mr. Wizard columnist, who will be speaking at the Dixie Cup this year. Last time he was in Texas, I didn't have any homebrews bottled up to give him.
And, I think Vienna lager is a style that is not only awesome, but one for which you can really show your skill as a brewer. I'll also be bringing some BYO's 10th Anniversary Ale, which I brewed last year around this time and turned out great, to the Cup.
So, I'll need to make a yeast starter tonight for the Vienna lager. I'm making 5 gallons, so I'll probably go with a 3 quart (~3 L) starter at a specific gravity around 1.030-1.040. For the pale ale, I'm going for a quick brewday. I'm doing a 2-gallon (7.6-L) partial mash and using DME for the rest of the extract. I'll do a full-wort boil out on my porch, cool it down and pitch a couple packets of dried yeast (US-56). For the pale ale, I'll just use my swamp cooler; the lager will go in my chest freezer. (I'll also be using my new 7-gallon (26-L) stainless steel cylindro-conical fermenter for the first time. I'm psyched.)
This afternoon, I'm going to run into Austin to get my CO2 tanks filled, then back to Bastrop to get my wife, then back into Austin later to watch the movie Beerfest with some of the ZEALOTS. And OK, maybe I'll sneak a little gardening in this weekend as well.
Posted by Chris Colby @ 1:07 PM Link This
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