British Session Beer–No Chill

 

I generally have a low strength session beer as one of my taps and I thought I’d try an easy recipe and try to make the process as quick as possible.  I’ve been following a thread on Home Brew Talk about No Chill brewing.

It always bothers me how long my chiller takes and how much water I waste when I am chilling my beers.  The only thing that was holding me back was not having Winpak containers.  Since Corny kegs are stainless steel I am going to try my no chill in one of those.  I am not going for anything long term, like storing wort for weeks at a time.  I just need a place for the wort to cool naturally over a day or 2 and not get infected before I pitch the yeast.

I brewing this beer now and plan on pitching the yeast on Sunday.  Next on my list of things to buy is some fermcap and a Bleeder Valve so I can ferment directly in the Corny and carb my beer as it ferments.  This will give me some beer from grain to glass in 7 days for some of my session beers.

Malt Bill
Pounds	Type
5	Maris Otter
1	Crystal 80
Hops
IBU	Type	Time
18	Kent Golding	60
Mash Schedule
Temp	Time
158F	60 minutes
170F	Batch Sparge
170F	Batch Sparge
Yeast	Safale S-04
Stats
5.5 gal	80% efficiency	IBU: 18

Bottle Processing–From Start to Bottle Day

 

Even though I have a have a kegging setup I still bottle a lot of beer.  Mostly I bottle beer to take to places with me or to give away.  For most batches of beer I’ll make 5.5-6 gallons and bottle a gallon or 2 and then keg the rest.  This gives me good kegged beer to drink at home and some bottles that are easy for transport.  It took me awhile to come up with a solution that made this as painless as possible.  First by two 5 gallons buckets.  I ended up getting mine from the bakery of a local grocery store.  They get their basic icing colors in them.  If you talk to them ahead of time and bring in a homebrew they are pretty easy to get.  The added homebrew even got mine cleaned out.

I have a coworker who goes through a lot of craft beer and he brings me in all of his bottles.  He drinks good stuff like Schafly and Founders which both use good, heavy bottles.  As payment I bring him in the occasional growler to take home.

I rinse all the bottles out, put them in the bucket, and fill with hot tap water. 

After the bucket is full I use a half scoop of Oxy Clean.  You can buy this in bulk at places like Sam’s Club and it is pretty reasonable.  I also use it in my laundry.

(Make sure you get the Unscented kind!)

After two days of soaking in the Oxy Clean water most of the labels fall off when you pick them up out of the bucket.  Sometimes there will be a bit of glue stuck to the bottle.  If that happens I put it bottle under running water and hit is with a scrubby pad.  After the two day soak the glue just falls off.  Once they are clean they get a trip through my dish washer.  If you want to use these right away don’t add any soap or other dishes to the load.  I usually store mine and run them with whatever else will fit in the load.

After the load is done you can store you bottles however you want.  On bottling day I run my bottles through the dishwasher again without soap or any other dishes in the machine.  I run a short cycle and make sure that you drying cycle is set to high.  Once the bottles are cool to the touch you are ready to bottle**.  I have a mobile dishwasher so I just put a crate on top of the dishwasher and set my bottle bucket on the crate.  I then grab the bottles as needed and fill, set a cap on top of them and put them on the cabinet.  Once I have a dozen or so I cap the down and do another dozen.

**As long as you don’t open the dishwasher your bottles will be just fine if you leave them in there for a few hours.  Sometimes I run them in the morning before work and bottle when I get home.  I have never had an infection or any other issue.  I have been using this method for over a year!

Dunkelweizen and Alte Braune

This is another double batch beer that I am going to be fermenting one half of it with a normal yeast for the style and souring the other half.  The Dunkelweizen is the second all grain recipe that I did after my switch from extract.  I took a keg of it to my work’s Christmas party and it was drained within a half hour (and we don’t have that many beer drinkers).  I told them I’d brew another keg of beer for the party and they all said “Make that beer you brought last year.”
I like Dunkelweizen, but not enough to drink 5 gallons of it by myself.  I’ll probably get enough of it at the party, but brewing a single batch of beer takes me as long as a double.  I got the idea of souring the second half and calling it an “Alte Braune”, Old Brown in German.  I am going to use Wyeast’s Roeselare Blend and rack the beer after a month or 2 to a Better Bottle.  I have heard that a Roeselare yeast cake changes as the bug count / Saccs ratio changes so I will add a 2nd beer after I rack this one.  I was thinking about making a Mild and souring that. 
When I rack the soured beer to the secondary I am going to add some dregs of Duchesse de Bourgogne and possible some Jolly Pumpkin La Roja if my local store ever gets some back in stock. 

Malt Bill
Pounds	Type
11	Dark Wheat
7	Pilsner
2.5	Dark Munich
1	Caramunich II
1	Midnight Wheat
.75	Caramel Malt 120
Hops
IBU	Type	Time
15	Tettnanger	60
Mash Schedule
Temp	Time
152F	60 minutes
170F	Batch Sparge
170F	Batch Sparge
Yeast I	White Labs WLP300 Hefeweizen
Yeast II	Wyeast 3763 Roeselare Ale Blend
Stats
12 gal	80% efficiency	IBU: 15

This is my mash tun at max capacity.  I might have been able to fit another pound of grain in …but it might make a mess.  I didn’t use any rice hulls in the mash and didn’t have any problems with my lautering.  Boil was pretty uneventful …All the protein in the wheat threatened to boil over a few times.  I ended up with 11.75 gallons of wort @ 1.059 *Note - I haven't ever used WLP300 before. I didn't realize it was such a violent fermenter ...and a true top cropping yeast.  Guess I should have used a blow-off tube!

(Ignore the horrible wallpaper)

Divination – Belgian Quad

 

This is my attempt at a Belgian Quad.  I wanted to try and make the beer how the monks would have made it.  They didn’t have tons of caramel and base malts to work with.  They got all of the color and flavor from different Candi sugars that they created onsite. For this recipe I used a very basic grain bill and homemade Candi sugar.  I cultured yeast from a Chimay Dubbel bottle a month before brewing.  I then did a month’s worth of step ups to the starter to get enough yeast to pitch into a beer that is close to 11.5% in alcohol.  The beer seemed to take a month to ferment out.  It was stable for weeks so I

put it in a Corny keg to bulk age at 60*, the ambient temperature of my basement.  The reason I said the beer seemed to ferment out before kegging … I released the pressure after 9 months to open the lid.  Once the lid was removed I had a foam geyser and lost 1/2 a gallon of beer.  Luckily with all the outward pressure didn’t allow anything in to infect the beer.  I re-lidded the beer and spent another month slowly degassing the beer so I’d be able to bottle it and have a general idea about the amount of CO2 I’d end up with.

The beer tastes great and I have been thinking about entering it into some Belgian beer competitions coming up.

Malt Bill
Pounds	Type
7	Pilsner
7	Belgian 2 row
1	Sugar – 60 minutes
1	Amber Sugar – 30 minutes
1	Dark Sugar – 15 minutes
Hops
IBU	Type	Time
20	Northern Brewer	60
3.5	Saaz	30
3	Styrian Golding	30
Mash Schedule
Temp	Time
147F	90 minutes
170F	Batch Sparge
170F	Batch Sparge
Yeast	Chimay Bottle Culture
Stats
5.5 gal	80% efficiency	IBU: 26-27

Purple Parsnip Pumpkin Stout–p3

I made this pumpkin stout last year as a request from my wife.  She told me she wanted a beer that was pumpkin pie in a bottle.  I thought about changing around my basic stout recipe to give it a roasted background.  I like coffee with my pumpkin pie.

This is version 2 of this recipe.  The first recipe I used 5.5 lbs. of pumpkin puree.  Even with a pound of rice hulls it still took hours to lauter.  This version I reduced the amount of pumpkin a bit …but I don’t think that it will affect the overall beer that much.  Pumpkin is mostly unfermentable and last year I lost about 20% of this beer to trub.

Malt Bill
Pounds	Type
6	Maris Otter
3.75	Libby’s Pumpkin Puree
1	Toasted Quick Oats
.5	Chocolate Malt
.38 (6 oz.)	English Roasted Barley
1	Rice Hulls
1 tbsp.	Penzey's Pumpkin Pie Spice (Flameout)
1	Split Vanilla Bean - Secondary
Hops
IBU	Type	Time
20	Golding	60
Mash Schedule
Temp	Time
156F	60 minutes
170F	Batch Sparge
170F	Batch Sparge
Yeast	Irish Ale
Stats
6 gal	80% efficiency	IBU: 20

Toast both the pumpkin and the oats in the oven the day before in a 350* oven.  Turn oats over every 15-30 minutes for about an hour.  Cook the pumpkin until it looks like pumpkin pie.  Put pumpkin in the fridge until brew day and put the oats in a paper bag to cool.

I always mash in with my grain in my cooler first then add the water on top of it.  I know people talk about dough balls but I have never had a problem with this.  Add all your grains and 1/2 of the rice hulls to the cooler and mix.  I then mash in with my water a bit higher than what Beersmith recommends and let it sit for a minute.  Then I stir in the additional rice hulls and pumpkin.

Normally I don’t rack beers to secondaries unless there is a good reason.  I rack this one since it has a lot of solids to clear out in the beer.  At bottling I usually adjust the pie spice up a bit by adding it to my bottling sugar syrup.

Belgian Dubbel - "Duplication"

This recipe is from Brewing Classic Styles with only one minor adjustment.  I brewed this on the same day as my Belgian Single recipe.  Every year I talk my birthday off and spend the day making beer.  This year my birthday was inspired by my love of Belgian Beer.

My friend Larry also had the day off so he came over and we spend the day making and drinking homebrews.  I like when Larry is over, he carries heavy crap for me!

Malt Bill
Pounds	Type
10	Pilsner
1	Munich 10L
.5	Aromatic
.5	Caramunich
.5	Special B
1	Amber Candy Syrup – 75L
.5	Table Sugar
Hops
IBU	Type	Time
23	Tettnanger	60
Mash Schedule
Temp	Time
149F	90 minutes
170F	Batch Sparge
170F	Batch Sparge
Yeast	WLP-530
Stats
6 gal	80% efficiency	IBU: 23

Belgian Honey Single – Standard and Soured

I have come up with an easy way to get my sour pipeline going.  I am going to start making 12 gallons of some of my beers.  Some of the beers will be fermented like normal…some will be fermented with sour blends.

With this beer I decided to ferment the whole 12 gallons with the same yeast.  The second half of this batch was racked into a Better Bottle with Wyeast Roeselare Blend and 1 medium toast oak spiral that I boiled for 30 minutes, changing the water every 10 minutes.  I don’t want much oak flavor, just a place for the bugs to live.

I racked 5 gallons of the standard into a keg which is in my kegerator carbing.  The beer tastes great flat.  I have high hopes for this beer once it is carbed and ready to go.

Malt Bill
Pounds	Type
12	Pilsner
4	Honey Malt
Hops
IBU	Type	Time
15	Tettnanger	60
Mash Schedule
Temp	Time
158F	60 minutes
170F	Batch Sparge
170F	Batch Sparge
Yeast	WLP-400
Stats
12 gal	80% efficiency	IBU: 15

You can see that this beer has a very simple grain bill.  The beer finished out at about 1.012 which gives it a good mouth feel.  With a FG of 1.012 that gives the Roeselare Blend some residual sugars to eat but the beer shouldn’t be overwhelmingly sour.

My next beer I am doing this with is a Dunkleweizen which I will ferment the second half of the batch with the sour blend from the beginning.  Thinking about calling the soured half  “Alte Braune” – Old Brown in German.

Kentucky Common with Rye

I wanted to brew a beer that is going to be low on calories but hopefully have some more taste than a BMC type beer.  I found Revvy’s Kentucky Common recipe on HomeBrewTalk.com and modified the gravity down so it would be a 100 calorie beer.  I wanted an everyday beer on tap that I can drink one with dinner and still be keeping my daily calories lower.

I mashed this beer pretty low so it will dry out and hopefully get some of the crisp, bready flavors of the Rye malt up front on the beer.  That is another reason for the one 90 minute hop edition.  This should give me bitterness with very little hop flavor.

I racked a little under 12 gallons into a Sanke keg @ 95*.  It is currently sitting in my basement dropping down into the high 60s.

With the weather hot and my ground water not very cold this time a year I have been only chilling to the high 90s and letting my basement do the rest of the chilling.  So far I have had good results with this.

Malt Bill
Pounds	Type
8	2 Row
2.5	Flaked Corn
1.5	Flaked Rye
.38 (6 oz)	Carafa II Dehusked
.38 (6 oz)	Crystal 120L
9.5%	Sugar
Hops
IBU	Type	Time
20	Willamette	60
10	Hallertauer Mittelfrueh	30
Mash Schedule
Temp	Time
148F	90 minutes
170F	Batch Sparge
175F	Batch Sparge
Yeast	US-05
Stats
12 gal	85% efficiency	IBU: 20

Pacific Northwest Saison

Having never had a good Saison (local beer selection isn’t that great) I decided to make my own.  I wanted to use up some hops that I had and make this a bit different so I used a package of Falconer’s Flight and a pack of Citra I had lying around.  This isn’t standard hops for the style but I wanted a dry beer with a bit of fruit aroma. 

Malt Bill
Amt (lbs)	Type
5	Pilsner
1	White Wheat
1	Caramunich
1	Honey
Hops
Amt (oz)	Type	Time
.75	Falconer's Flight (11.5%)	60
.25	Falconer's Flight (11.5%)	10
.25	Citra (14.5%)	10
1.0	Citra (14.5%)	Flame Out
Mash Schedule
Temp	Time
150F	90 minutes
170F	Batch Sparge
170F	Batch Sparge
Yeast	Wyeast French Saison #3711
Stats
6 gal	85% efficiency	IBU: 36

I wanted to try using a real wort starter so I used my chiller to get the wort to about 135*.  I then filled 2 jars and my fermenter with the wort.  Once my starter jars were at pitching temperature I split the smack pack between them and put them on my stir plates.  I am using one of the jars to ferment the wort and the other jar to farm some yeast for my frozen yeast bank.  What is left from the yeast that I don’t bank I am going to add to a 8oz capable Coke bottle and throw in the fridge.  It will leave me enough yeast to ferment another batch if I make another starter like the one pictured.





With the wort I put in my fermenter I let it cool to pitching temperature overnight in my 67* basement.  I aerated and pitched the yeast this morning and will move it into my loft bedroom in a day or two which is 10* hotter to help the yeast finish out.

A Blog About Beer

I am making this blog to have a online journal about beer brewing.  I am hoping to post about the beers that I make, projects I hope to start, and tips and advice that I come across from other locations.

I am starting to get into sour beer brewing and would like this blog to help others (along with getting input from other brewers) about making sour beers.  There are very few sour brewers out there and information doesn’t seem readily available without a lot of digging.  I have found a few sites that are really great sites and have even talked through email with some of the guys.

Our local scrap yard seems to have a steady supply of kegs that they sell for scrap value ($35).  I have used one of these kegs to ferment double batches of beer in and that got me thinking about using them as 16 gallon, long term stainless steel barrels.  Some of the projects I hope to eventually get going

Belgian Quad Solera – I currently have a 5 gallon batch of a Quad aging in a Corny keg.  With the Solera I want to start 15 gallons fermenting and pull 3 gallons a year after the one year mark and replace that with either the same beer …or slowly change the recipe and therefore the character of the beer.

Flanders Red

Oud de Bruin

Lambic – Split into 3 5 gallon Better Bottles and aged on Cherries, Another fruit depending on season, and a 3rd Better Bottle to continue to age to blend with future beers.

Three out of the 4 of these projects are for sour beers.  Generally people do these as 5-6 gallon batches.  I had thought about doing this but …with the 12-18 month fermentation time on these beers if I really like them it will be another year or more at best to make more.  This way I will have 15-16 gallons of beer.  If the beer doesn’t turn out well then I am not really out any more than I was if the 5 gallon batch was bad since I buy all my grains in bulk.

Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I’ll have a brew day if the weather breaks a bit.  Standing around in 105* weather around a pot of boiling wort isn’t something I am in a hurry to do.