Did I mention I bought a wine kit for my friend? Did I mention I am brewing it up for her as we speak? No? Well I did. I bought a Shiraz kit from the local home brew supply store and whipped up the batch on the weekend along side brewing my Jolly Christmas Manticore. The kit was super easy to make when compared to brewing beer; you simply toss the ingredients into a fermenter and add water and yeast. Done! The OG was 1.090, a bit stronger then I was anticipating (I think the kit called for 1.070). I am sure it will be drinkable in the end, though it may take upwards of a year in bottles to mellow.

I also moved my Skeeter Pee Plum to the secondary last weekend. I wanted to get my Pacman yeast back for the Jolly Christmas Manticore so I need to move the must off of the yeast cake and wash the yeast into jars. I am not sure how much this yeast will impact the flavour of my Christmas ale as it was not sitting in beer, but a lemon cider. The gravity reading was right at 1.000, making this around 5% ABV. I will probably throw this into my crappy PET beer bottles next or next next weekend.

You start making experimental batches with grocery items lying around the house. I had basically everything I needed to make another batch of Skeeter Pee except the lemon juice, so I ran out to the grocery store and picked up a couple bottles. Now I have today’s concoction cooling downstairs in the basement waiting for me to pitch my last jar of Pacman yeast into it.

Skeeter Pee Plum —

• 1KG Table Sugar
• 250g Dextrose
• 1 can Apple Juice concentrate
• 1 can Lemonade concentrate
• 250ml Umechuu (Japanese Plum Wine)
• 1 jar of Pacman yeast starter

OG is 1.040 which is a bit lighter then the last batch, but I think it should still be good. I kind of regret dumping the entire contents of the Pacman yeast because now I have none left to use for my next batch of beer. I also added the last cup of Ume Chuu, a Japanese plum wine into the batch. No one was drinking it and I find it far to sweet for my palette so I figured it was better used in this batch then thrown out.

When I got home from work today I moved my last creation which I No Chilled to its fermenter. I took a gravity reading as well which was 1.032.

I pitched a package of Windsor yeast onto it, without bothering to re-hydrating it first. Plan is for a 3 week primary and then straight into bottles for consumption!

It’s the morning after my Bradinator’s Big Bad Belgian Ale was brewed. I let it sit overnight after I finished brewing it around 1:00PM yesterday. This morning when I got up I checked the temperature, found it to be right at room (23C) so I decided to move it to its fermentation bucket after breakfast. I took the gravity reading and found that instead of a really good efficiency I got a piss-poor 55% (vs. the near 90% last time). I did some reading and found that larger beers with move grain, especially when using the BIAB brew method will really hurt the efficiency. Lesson learned I guess. The gravity was still 1.082 which is what I was aiming for, but I move final volume was 1 gallon less then expected (I wanted 5 gallons but only got 4 gallons of wort). Another lesson learned; a roaring boiling for 70+ minutes can drive off 1.5 gallons of water.

Tranferring the cooled wort from the brew kettle to the fermentation bucket.

Last night I also took out my yeast starter and allowed it also to come to room temperature. I swirled the yeast around in the jar and dumped it into the fermentation bucket with cooled wort.

This is the starter from the yeast I harvested. It has nearly quintupled in size since I first made it!

Not much more I can do now but wait for the around 24 hours for the fermentation to kick off. Lots of sugar for the yeast to eat in this batch and they were definitely active when I from the starter at the time I poured them into the beer. I mashed at a low temperature (~150F) so I am hoping this will allow the beer to finish dry at around 1.010 or lower. If it does I should have a very strong, 10% ABV beer to enjoy on the day of my child’s birth!

A lot of preparation went into this batch of beer. I harvested yeast, made Belgian candi sugar and even did a starter. I am also trying a few new things with this batch to streamline the whole process of all-grain brewing and hopefully come out with a better final product.

Some of the things I am doing differently today -

• 90 minute single step BIAB mash (vs. 60 minutes) with a sparge
• Extended boil (usually 60 minute)
• Late extract addition to the boil (in the last 10 minutes I will add another 500g of DME)
• No chill cooling (overnight cooling of the wort)

The extended mash is done to try and get the best possible efficiency I can with the BIAB (Brew-in-a-bag) method. I managed 90% efficiency for my last all-grain and I am hoping I can do that again today. The extended boil is being done as many other home brewers swear it makes better beer, driving off unwanted flavours such as DMS. Also because I do not plan to chill my wort I need to make sure that absolutely any malign bacteria is killed. Additional reading has also led me to believe that late wort/extract additions in the boil process can also improve the overall flavour of the final product.

The No-Chill cooling of beer is something that originated in Australia, due to water usage restrictions they have in place. Cooling in an ice-bath or with a wort-chiller consumes tons of water and constant drought in that country forced brewers to device other methods to cool the wort when finished boiling. The No-Chill method is very simple: When the wort is done boiling remove it from the heat, put a clean lid on the pot and leave it overnight too cool to room temperature. This is a beautiful thing because I absolutely HATE chilling the wort at the end of the brewing session. My only real concerns are possible infections during the cooling and cleaning the brew kettle after it sat overnight (everything is going to be gunked on!).

Ingredients –

Grains/Extract/Adjucts

·         8.0 lbs Pilsner Malt

·         1.0 lbs Biscuit

·         1.0 lbs Rye Malt

·         750g Light DME + 250g late addition @ 10 min

·         1.5 lbs Belgian Candi Sugar

Herbs/Hops

·         1.5 oz Hallertauer @ 60min

·         1 oz Saaz @ 10min

Misc

·         ½ tsp Irish Moss

·         1 tsp Yeast Nutrient

·         1 cup of washed yeast

·         1 package Windsor Yeast, dry @ 3 days

Equipment

·         6.5 gallon kettle (big kettle)

·         2.0 gallon kettle  (small kettle)

·         Large Sauce Pan, Sieve (for Candi sugar)

·         Plastic Fermenter

·         Grain Bag (10lbs)

Procedure –

Pre-Mash

1)      Setup insulation for small brew kettle

2)      Pre-heat mash water in large brew kettle, 3.5 gallons (56 cups, 13.25 liters) to temperature of 165F

3)      Measure out sparge water, 2.25 gallons (56 cups, 8.5 litres) in small brew kettle

4)      Boil 2 litres of water in electric kettle (for mash, to raise temperature if needed)

Mash

5)      Place grain, in bag, into the mash kettle at appropriate temperature (~163F)

6)      Stir vigorously, take temperature and adjust as needed (use boiling water to raise temp or cold water to lower). Temperature should be between 147F-154F.

7)      Allow to sit for 90 minutes (was closer to 120 minutes… I went to the gym and grocery shopping, temperature stayed very constant) at constant mash temp ( ~148F)

8 )      Raise temperature to 160F for additional 20 minutes for mash out Did not do!

9)      (optional) Raise temperature of sparge water in large kettle to 170F

10)   Remove and drain grain. Pour wort into clean fermenter from large kettle and place grain back into the empty kettle

11)   Sparge by slowly pouring hot water over the grain, collecting the runnings into the fermenter. Rinse, lather and repeat until mash water is empty.

       12) Take gravity reading of wort and move into the large kettle Did not do!

Boil

13)   In sauce pan, place sieve in with water, melt down sugar, removing paper. Add 750g DME to the same mix and add to the main wort

14)   Bring wort to boil, add hops at appropriate times (60, 30, 10)

15)   Boil for 75 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes, collecting and toss boil foam

16)   At 10 minutes at Irish Moss and late DME addition of 500g

17)   At flame out add yeast nutrient

18)   Take a small sample of wort, cool and measure gravity

19)   Cover wort  with sanitized lid and cool wort overnight (no-chill)

20)   Move to fermenter once at room temperature

21)   Pitch yeast from wash (will need to be drained, and have boiled/cooled water added to it)

Fermentation

22)   After 7-14 days move to secondary fermenter

23)   (optional) Pitch dry yeast and allow to age for 3-6 months before bottling

My cheap-o mash tun.

8lbs of pil, 1lbs of rye and 1lbs of biscuit

I managed to make it fit!

A small beer used to grow yeast for a much bigger beer.

This is not a container of juice or muddy water. This is actually a yeast starter made in the only 2L container I could find on short notice. A starter is basically a tiny beer brewed for the purpose of growing yeast for a much bigger beer. I really wanted to use the yeast I harvested several months ago but was not sure on its viability, so creating a ‘starter’ was the best option. I boiled 2L of water with 2 cups of DME which had a gravity of about 1.035. I took the harvested yeast from the fridge, warmed it to room temperature, decanted the liquid and pitched the small amount of yeast into the cooled wort.

The next morning I could see signs of fermentation so its obvious that the yeast is viable. I need to stir it several time over the next couple days to keep the yeast suspended in the wort and not settled on the bottom where won’t grow as quickly. Once its done I can decant some of the liquid and move it into a clean mason jar, then place it in the fridge to settle out out the yeast.

On a side note I have all the ingredients for my big beer, which is basically 10lbs of grain, 3lbs of DME and 4oz of hops. With the Candi sugar ready and the yeast starter started Saturday is the planned ‘brew day’. This is going to be the biggest, most challenging beer I have made to date!

My next beer is going to be a Strong Belgian Ale. What makes a Belgian Strong different from any other strong Ale? Belgian Candi Sugar of course. I did not to bother try to shop for this when I know that most homebrewers just make it themselves. Following another homebrewer’s blog I managed to create about a 1.5lbs of Amber Candi sugar which I plan to use in my next homebrew.

I simply took 1.5lbs of sugar, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and enough water to make it a syrup.

Keep an eye on the temperature!

From this I brought it to a rolling 275F and managed to keep the temperature around this for about 20 minutes until I reached the desired colour. As the temperature got higher I used small amounts of water to cool it back down to 275F.

I brought the temperature up to 300F and moved the boiling syrup to a pan covered in wax paper. Here I let it cool for a couple hours.

Finally I smashed it apart and tried in vain to remove the wax paper. Unfortunately I could not get it off the candi so I am going to need to figure out how to separate them later.

How the hell am I going to get all that wax paper off?