Group Brew!

on Saturday the 22nd we had a group brew at my home, and a few club members showed up to make 30 gallons of old fashioned porter.  the rest of the club will be brewing this coming weekend at Princeton Homebrew with a rather large mashtun (2 bbl system, 170 lbs!!)!

so what happened indeed?  well, I don't have the photographic evidence you might want or expect, as this time I had some real trouble.  Stuck mash!  Yeah, stuck mash.  apparently my false bottom didn't get along with the 1720 Stout Butt porter (5 lbs of 6-row, 30 lbs of brown malt, and 2 lbs of rice hulls).  Or my starting the pumps a bit too fast (this really didn't help). yeah, i was askin' for it, and I got it.  it took about an hour of back flushing the dip tube with hot water (thrice?) to loosen the bed, stirring in more rice hulls (~1 lb extra), and patience to finally get things reasonable.  but eventually it all ran-off into the kettle without me loosing my cool.  a big thanks to the other  brewers who were present and helped me sort out my tough spot.  another brewer also had trouble with a therminator clog (which I avoided this time thankfully), but in all we got our sweet wort (though i have to say that mine was really not sweet at all).

Observation:  the other two brewers were doing the 1776 porter, which has less brown malt.  if you've mashed enough, you can usually smell the difference between dough-in, conversion, and mash-out.  the 1776 recipes had that trademark sugar-sweet aroma one would expect, but the 1720 batch really didn't. it smelled like coffee.  good coffee, but really not much sugar or anything else in the nose.  but I must have gotten some conversion:

ECY10 Old Newark Ale, OG=1.062

I am curious to how much attenuation this beer will have as other members have seen 1.030 as the FG.  as the with the previous porter, half will get a brettanomyces treatment, although all might if the beer is just too thick.  besides, with my bugfarmed big brew saison looking so crazy, who wouldn't?

white fuzz and slimy bubbles... funky sour smell too!

historic brown porter gravity, impressions

finally racked the brown porter to secondary, and checked that gravity!

looks like 1.020 behind that head.

with the 1.020 FG, that means around 5.8% - 6.0% abv (OG 1.065).  the smell from the porter is really, really nice.  plenty of roasty / coffee notes, and a hint of dark chocolate aroma.  no real hop aroma that i noticed in the sample, though the earthy notes from EKG's might just compliment this recipe (also, i'm fairly used to loads of american hops in beer, so YMMV).  the mouthfeel is quite good, nice and full, but not quite a milkshake.  there is a tiny hint of sweetness to the beer, though i assume a higher mash temp would have helped increase that and probably balance that aspect a bit more.  i'm also guessing the carabrown and caraaroma played a small part in that as well, though, those specialty grains are more towards the 'toasty' spectrum

the two 5 gallon buckets were racked to nice carboys.  the 'regular' batch was simply racked, while the 'stale' porter had the wyeast old ale blend introduced.

i don't see a pellicle, but it will develop in time...

'regular' on the left, 'stale' on the right

the current plan is to let the 'regular' porter sit in secondary for two weeks or so, cold crash out the yeast, rack to a keg, and force carbonate.  it'll be close, but i should have it ready for the PaleAles meeting in september so people can decide if they want to make a beer like this for the group brew.  as i've already made this recipe, i'll be making the 'stout butt beer, 1720' from mosher's radical brewing.

Old Ale Yeast lives! Historic Brown Porter update.

so i had saved a small amount of wort from the brown porter brew for a forced fermentation.  i realized in hindsight that i needed to get the other yeast i had mentioned (Wyeast Old Ale Blend) up to speed.  so i checked the gravity of the old ale i had made last year, and dipped the auto-siphon deep to get some dregs for the jug of wort. the old ale is tasty for sure, but that's a different subject for another post (aka, when i bottle some of it).  been busy the last few days, so i didn't check on it too much and today:

wide awake!

good news indeed.  so i'll have no trouble making the second half 'stale', although it appears the ale yeast also survived the ~10% old ale from november of last year.  very curious about how all this develops.

group brew prototype: historic brown porter

on july 24, i brewed a historic porter based on the '1776 porter' from Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing (p. 96) as a test batch for the upcoming Pale Ales Group Brew.  well, also for my own curiosity, as the samples that i tasted from a recent meeting were quite good and interesting.  i was given advice (Al and Clay had brought the samples) to use rice hulls to make sure the mash flowed and to expect a rather viscous run-off.  so i gathered up the following ingredients:

9 lbs. TF Brown malt
9 lbs. TF Amber malt
9 lbs. Briess 6-row
1.5 lbs. Weyermann CaraAroma
1.5 lbs. Briess CaraBrown
0.25 lbs. Franco-Belges Kiln Coffee Malt
0.25 lbs. TF Pale Chocolate Malt
0.25 lbs. Solar kilned malt (courtesy of Joe @ Princeton Homebrew)*
3 lbs. rice hulls (i know this is overkill in hindsight, but a stuck mash is never never NEVER fun)
8 oz. East Kent Goldings, 4.5%AA, pellets
WLP022, Essex Ale yeast (1/2 gallon starter prepared)**

*malted and kilned as an experiment at Princeton Homebrew
**had saved a slurry of this yeast in my fridge as it is a seasonal strain

6-row on the left.  brown, amber, spec. grains on the right.

my ten gallon setup was used to brew this 10 gallon batch:

not too fancy, not too shabby

i heated up plenty of strike water to 165-170F, and started to fill the mash tun (center vessel).  first i doughed in the 6-row and rice hulls.  next came all the brown, amber, and specialty malt which did not crack so nicely. the brown and amber malts milled like roasted grains, i.e. nearly exploded into dust. i say nearly since they were not dust, but not too much intact husk was left for a nice filtering bed.  after adding all the grist, i started up one of my pumps to recirculate the mash, and the temp fell below where i was aiming (but not too low)

150F mash, recipe calls for 156F.  d'oh!

mash tun's pretty full

i heated up more water to sparge the mash, but also for the hop steeping, another historic part of the recipe that Mosher calls for.  one pint 160F water per ounce hops, and allow them to steep for up to four hours.  sounds like first wort hopping to me.

8 oz EKG @ 4.5%AA

1 gallon 160-170F water, EKG's in 2 lrg muslin bags

after an hour of conversion time, an iodine test indicated there was no starch remaining, so i transferred the near-boiling sparge water to the hot-liquor tank, and ran off 1 gallon of wort to the boil kettle.  i added ~1.5 gallons of near boiling water to the mash tun for mashing out.  i started the burner on high, as the first gallon of wort was to be caramelized to a somewhat thick syrup, and stirred like it was my job.

Stir!  Caramelize!

after a nice steam bath and an amazing olfactory experience (so long as you like malty smells) things were thicker and reduced, but not burned.  Mosher thinks you should taste it, but i wasn't going to burn my tongue with plenty of brewday remaining.  while i was creating this syrup, i recirculated the mash, and directed the run-off into a bucket for temporary holding.

Reduced'n'syrupy

after the boil down (~30 minutes), i dumped the hop steep into the kettle (water and hops) and directed the sparge output to the boil kettle (fly sparge).  i don't recall exactly how long i sparged, but i would say around 80 minutes.

two pumps made this easy

grain bed after sparge

filled up boil kettle

the wort was boiled for 90 minutes, and there were no other hop additions or irish moss for that matter.  Mosher's recipe calls for licorice root and brewer's licorice to be added near the end of the boil, which i did not add but they were typical brewing additions at that time.  at flameout i whirlpooled the wort, and allowed it to stand for 20 minutes while i got my fermenters and plate chiller ready.  i started the cool water in, and started to pump the wort to the chiller... and that's when trouble started.  it started flowing fine and then reduced the flow to a trickle.  checked the prime on the pump, it's fine.  oh no.  the plate chiller was clogged.  after a thorough backflush and resanitizing, i started the run off again.  same result.  repeat the following steps and finally things were flowing.  after collecting my 10 gallons of wort in two 5 gallon vessels, i checked the bottom of the boil kettle and noticed there were little clumps of what looked like brown and/or amber malt.  looks like the recirculation needed a little bit more time to ensure the grain bed was set.

OG @ 90F

the wort was quite thick coming out.  and the aroma was really nice!  chocolate and toast malt smells abound. after sitting to cool a while to 72F, the decanted starter was pitched to both batches.  fermentation started within 10 hours.  the chocolate-sweet malt aroma coming out of the buckets was really nice.

fermentation after ~60hrs.

so after primary fermentation, one 5 gallon batch racked to a secondary and aged for a little while (6-8 weeks).  the second 5 gallon batch will be racked to a secondary and will receive some dregs from an old ale fermented with Wyeast's Old Ale Blend (9097-PC, contains brettanomyces) to 'stale' the beer.

i am not sure what the attenuation will be as of yet, but i have a small amount of wort that i saved for this purpose so i do not have to test the entire batch.  more information as it becomes available...