Non-Brewing Tasks

I wish I was brewing. But I need to recapture some fermentation space... I've got 15 gallons fermenting in the beer closet under the stairs, and another 5 going in the garage. I could easily fit a couple more carboys into either place (hybrids in the garage or ales in the house), or it would be nice to get a lager started.

Which brings me to the less fun non-brewing tasks related to making beer. There is always something to work on. Cleaning, organizing, racking, bottling, inventorying... I have delayed racking my finished beers (5 gal of Double/Imperial Red and 5 gal of Northern English Brown) because my kegs are not cleaned and sanitized. And I have delayed brewing my first lawnmower lager, because my new beer fridge had not been cleaned since I brought it home and my keezer needed a little interior wipe-down and reorganization.

So, instead of brewing more beer, this weekend was dedicated to some of those tasks that would enable me to brew more beer. Six 5 gallon kegs (and one more that is used for my kids' root beer). All in various stages of uncleanliness, ranging from absolutely filthy with god-knows-what dregs in the bottom to empty and rinsed but not really clean. I broke out the OxyClean, filled up a 40 qt cooler, and got to work. A couple of hours of elbow grease, and they were as shiny and clean as they were going to get!




Given the state of the kegs, I knew the beer lines were going to be a total loss, so I cut all the tubing off and threw it away. I scrubbed, then boiled all of the fittings (the beer-out connectors, the cobra taps) to make sure they were clean. Then I refitted them all with fresh new beer line in anticipation of new beer!

I also figured it was about time to press my new beer fridge into service... I got it a few weeks ago, and it is still not in use. I did clean out the freezer part right away, but then abandoned the project for other priorities. My wife would really like my hops out of the house freezer to make room for more food and she would really prefer if my yeast was stored someplace else as well. And it might actually be more my own fault when it comes to the yeast - I am really picky about what gets put into that refrigerator: nothing to smelly, nothing too hot, etc. (gotta take care of my yeast!).



My wife pitched in and helped me on the fridge cleaning (see what I mean?). The inside looks super, but there's not much we could do about the neglect on the outside. Maybe it is destined for a custom paint job? It's all plugged in and cooling down in anticipation of the goods!

Planning Another Big Brew

I had a great time in April brewing with my Guard buddies; it really rekindled my brewing bug. I've been fairly active with beer-related stuff even when I haven't been brewing (but I have brewed 20 gallons in about 4 weeks time).

At drill this weekend, I pushed folks to get another brew date on the calendar. I knew that Kris needed to brew at least another 5 gallons for a wedding in July, so it was just a matter of 'when', not 'if'. We're going to shoot for either Memorial Day weekend or the weekend after drill (mid-June). Confirming that it was actually going to happen, the wheels started turning...

Kris told me that he was planning on brewing another batch of Bill's Citra Special IPA (www.olybrew.com). He brewed a batch about a year-and-a-half ago, and it was stellar. In fact, last spring when Black IPAs/Cascadian Dark Ales were getting a lot of press (and I was drinking a lot of different BIPAs), I began to think about how I would formulate my own Black IPA recipe. This recipe was the first one I thought of as a likely candidate: clean malt profile with a dry finish, and a bright hop character. What better way to contrast the darkness and tiniest hint of roast?

Also, Kris had inquired about brewing 10 gallons instead of 5, so that he could share one keg at the wedding and keep one for himself. Which is also great for me and the rest of our rag-tag brewing group, because that means we'll actually get some. It was then that it hit me - he could brew the Citra Special, and I could brew the Dark Side Citra! Then everybody could do the side-by-side, comparing the original recipe with my style-modified version of the same beer.

I guess I should start working on the recipe. This will have to be a pretty big yeast starter - 15 gallons at around 1.070 OG!

Birthday Party Dry Hop

My Double/Imperial Red Ale (Bruise Bros) finished out right around the same time as my Redwings: good on the beer, bad on the'Wings. Time to dry hop it!

Weekends are always busy, and this was no exception. Mother's Day tomorrow, and today we did the family celebration of Brandon's birthday a week early, since I won't be around next Saturday on his real birthday. I had a bunch of stuff to do in the morning to get ready for company to come over, so I was just preparing my hops when folks started showing up...

My dad, who used to work at the Rainier Brewery back in its heyday (and whose grandfather was the business manager of the Horluck's plant for Sick's Brewing from the late-30s through the 60s), always takes an interest in my brewing despite the fact that he no longer drinks. As I weighed out the hops, sanitized marbles (to weigh them down), and shoved them into a hop bag, he shared how much he hated the smell of hops.

What? Are you crazy? Hate the smell of hops? He explained that he liked the smell as they were added to the wort, but he had negative associations with the smell of plain dried hops. It seems that when he first went to work at Rainier (he was 14 years old), one of his jobs was to move hop bales from cold storage to the brewhouse for the brewers.

Just like today, the hops were bundled into 100 or 200 pound sewn burlap bales; at 14 my dad probably did not weigh much more than 90-100 pounds since he weighed about 120 when he enlisted in the Marines at the age of 19. At any rate, he had to wrestle the bales out of cold storage, transport them using a hand-truck through the brewery up an elevator into the brewhouse. It was exhausting work, and he could not get rid of the smell. I guess I can see where his dislike comes from... I still like it though.

Finally! (Parti Gyle Complete)

In true Medius Nox Noctis form, I finished my parti gyle brew in the wee hours of the morning...

First of all, it is a crazy brewer who tries to brew multiple all-grain batches in one day. The brewer who thinks they can do three should not roam the streets of his free will. I will never do that again (even if my wife would let me)!

Besides time, the biggest challenge I faced with my parti gyle brew day involved brewing software. I do own BeerTools Pro, but I am usually too lazy to use it; maybe there is parti gyle formulation capability built into the software, but I wouldn't know. I primarily use the BeerTools.com website for my recipe formulation. It is not as robust or flexible as the BeerTools Pro standalone software, but it is quick and gets me in the ballpark for all my recipes; plus I am a "Gold" member, so I can store up to 256 recipes online.

The online recipe calculator has no parti gyle flexibility - or much in the way of sparge adjustments at all. It simply takes your grain bill and your recipe volumes and calculates out your gravities. This works great for the average batch or fly-sparged recipe. But for no-sparge or parti gyle? Not so much.

At any rate, I ended up pretty close to the predictions on the first batch (the Old Ale), which came in just over 1.100 OG with 5.5 gallons into the carboy. For the second beer, a Northern English Brown, I could not figure out how to make the adjustments in the interface to calculate the second runnings separately... I ended up just plugging in a completely new recipe, preserving the grain bill ratios and hop additions, but scaling it down to the actual gravity I pulled into the kettle.

I used some interesting yeast strains (Wyeast Old Ale Blend for the Old Ale, and Wyeast West Yorkshire Ale for the Northern English Brown) this time around. The Old Ale, dubbed 'The Reaper', will actually get racked into a secondary to let the Brettanomyces do its work; it will eventually go into bottles as part of my gift beer for the Holidays at the end of 2011. The Northern English Brown ('The Creeper') will be ready much sooner, and I can't wait to pull some pints off draft in a few weeks!