Beer from Grains

Did not post about this immediately after I did it, probably due in large part to the massive kitchen renovation that started the day after the night I did this. By "this", I of course mean my attempt to become a true purist in the world of homebrew: an all-grain batch.

What this really refers to is actually purchasing malted barley and other grains, get them milled, then extract the precious sugars and other nutriets from the endosperms of those grains through a process called mashing.

Finally, after the boil that occurs with all brewing, yeast is added, which metabolizes the solution called wort (rhymes with 'kurt'). This is a little more involved than extract brewing, but supposedly the results are much better. I chose to make a Belgian Dubbel, which should be a high gravity brown-ish ale with lots of maltiness, some esters, as ABV of around 7-8%.

You are able to see some pics of my set up and the mash to the left, though for some reason, I cannot get Picasa to permanently rotate a photo...including the one to the left of my modified 8-gallon aluminum kettle/mash tun (mashing vessel). Using a step-drill, I added a spout and screen (not pictured, but on the inside), and a thermometer to give continual readings of the mash temp (this and pH are two critical elements to mashing properly).

Here's a post of mine to Homebrewchatter.com, a forum that has many experienced homebrewers checking it throughout the day...I got many good responses, but was still not able to figure out why I was unable to get better efficiency (ie extract more sugar from the grains for my wort).

So I finally took the leap to AG last night. I had purchased an aluminum 8 gallon pot from a restaurant supply store (which it turns out, at which I was not allowed to shop, but the cashier decided to hook me up...only $30!).

Yesterday I went down to my homebrew retailer, planning on buying a simple screen/valve assembly for a cooler. No go. He didn't have any of THOSE left, however he did have an assembly to use an 8-gallon pot as a lauter tun. So I stopped by the hardware store, purchased a step drill, modified the pot for a valve, screen filter, and thermometer (also a purchase @ the HB store), but not before I had walked out of the homebrew store with the ingredients for a Belgian Dubbel and an extra fermentor:

1 lb Briess American Dextrin (carapils malt)
7.5 lbs Muntons English Maris Otter Malt
0.1 lbs Weyermann German Dehusked CaraFa II
0.5 lbs Dingemans Belgian Aromatic Malt
1 lb Dingemans Beglian Special B
1 lb candi sugar
1 lb honey (he had this AWESOME stuff called "Meadowfoam", which is truly delicious, to the point where I may make some meade from it)
1oz Brewers Gold pellets (60 min)
1/2 oz Hallertau (20 min)
1/4 oz Hallertau (10 min)
Wyeast #1214 Belgian Abbey Yeast

A couple of things happened:

1.) Always make sure there is enough room for a valve assembly to close if you are installing a thermometer in the same pot. After a tapestry of obscenities thinking I ruined a pot, I added an extra gasket so the thermometer is able to fit. (A friend of mine stopped by later and suggested to simply rotate the valve assembly...thank God for friends)

2.) As I was attempting to wake up the yeast by smacking the activator pack, a good bit of it splattered out on me (stain about the size of a softball on my shirt). I sanitized the outside of the package with some spray Star San and let it sit while I mashed/boiled.

3.) I realized that unless this beer REALLY sucks, I will likely not brew an extract again.

A couple questions:

1.) I came out with a 1.030 boil gravity. I measured immediately after lautering, but I feel like this is low. I used 13.5 quarts of water for the mash, and yielded just about 5 gallons of wort, and with 9 total pounds of grain, that only comes out to 16ppg. Isn't that a pretty miserable yield?

2.) Should I repitch more yeast? I want to not only make sure I get a good fermentation, but also that there is enough so I get a good carbonation.

3.) I had a full gallon of boil-off during the boil, so I added a little over a gallon of water. Since my charcoal filter was totally effed, I ended up using about a half gallon of filtered water and and a half gallon of UNFILTERED tap water. Problem?

Thanks in advance for the help!
Mike

In any event, the brew is still in the can and bubbling...it looks like that and the california common will be ready around the same time!

PS, cracked a bottle of the IPA on Saturday night and while a little undercarbed, it was amazing. Nice hop aromas, but very well balanced with a nice maltiness and a hop finish. Can't wait to drink more of these...

California Not-So-Common / Extra IPA Update

Incredibly accurate information from an ever-reliable source regarding California Common/"Steam" Beer below, but Fisher and I decided to get the ingredients to brew this on the way to the store. Also took another important step in complete brewing freedom: did a partial mash/partial extract brew.

This basically involves extracting the sugars from malted barley as an eventual food/nutrient for yeast to gobble up and turn into CO2 and ethyl alcohol (and usually some other by-products that give most different beer varieties their flavor profile nuances)

Extract-based brewing basically skips this step, as someone else does it, then dehydrates the product (wort) and sells it to saps like me.

Really excited for this brew, will likely be ready 5-6 weeks out.

The Extra IPA is going into the bottles this week, and will hopefully be ready in about 2 weeks, more-likely 3. Had a medium original gravity, and when racking to the secondary fermenter, used plug cascade hops, and 2 oz of whole Mt. Hood hops for additional aromas. Had a taste today (uncarbonated), but it was really good. Hopefully my best yet. Not as happy with the stout, but more on that later...

On Steam Beer (California Common):

Steam beer may be defined as a highly effervescent beer made by brewing lager yeasts at ale fermentation temperatures. It has two distinct but related meanings:
Historic steam beer produced in California from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s;
Modern California common beer, the official name for the beer family which includes Anchor Steam beer.
Historic steam beer, associated with San Francisco and the U.S. West Coast, was brewed with lager yeast without the use of refrigeration. It was an improvised process, originating out of necessity, perhaps as early as the Gold Rush. It was considered a cheap and low-quality beer, as shown by references to it in literature of the 1890s and 1900s.
Modern steam beer, properly known in the brewing community as California common beer, was originated by Anchor Brewing Company, which trademarked the name Anchor Steam Beer in 1981. Although the modern company has corporate continuity with a small brewery which was still making traditional steam beer in the 1950s, Anchor Steam beer is a craft-brewed lager. The company does not claim any close similarity between it and turn-of-the-century steam beer.
Explanations of the word "steam" are all speculative. The carbon dioxide pressure produced by the process was very high, and one possibility is that it was necessary to let off "steam" before attempting to dispense the beer. According to Anchor Brewing, the name "steam" came from the fact that the brewery had no way to effectively chill the boiling wort using traditional means. So they pumped the hot wort up to large, shallow, open-top bins on the roof of the brewery so that it would be rapidly chilled by the cool air blowing in off the Pacific Ocean. Thus while brewing, the brewery had a distinct cloud of steam around the roof let off by the wort as it cooled, hence the name. It is also possible that the name derives from "Dampfbier" (literally "steam beer"), a traditional German ale that was also fermented at unusually high temperatures and that may have been known to nineteenth-century American brewers, many of whom were of German descent.

Bottled the Stout / Brewed the Extra American Pale Ale / Quandary

Bottled the stout two nights ago. For some reason, I am losing an average of a half gallon of beer @ transfer. Might not sound like much, but its almost a 6 pack! I'm going to start brewing 5.5-ish gallons. Had a taste when checking FG, which was right on target @ 1.012. Slightly less booze than the Brickhead Blonde. (~4.5% ABV) It was actually great as is, had that nice crisp mouthfeel that I love in a Guiness.

I will also use this opportunity to say that traditions in brewing/drinking are often kept alive for the wrong reasons. For instance, "British Bitters are better at room temperature, as thats the way they have always been drunk". Ahem. Yes, they are not my favorite to begin with, and to have them at 70-75 degrees is just about the most un-refreshing thing I can think of. I like beer cold, whether its a stout, an IPA, a porter, or a Corona. Maybe I don't get as many of the upfront aromatic notes and flavoring hops, but I feel as though I get enough. I guess I'll have to push back my timetable on becoming a judge @ the Denver Beer Festival.

Also brewed an extract brew purchased at Annapolis Homebrew modeled after Dogfish Head "60 Minute" IPA. One of the few problems I have with this store (they make their own extract in house, which is AWESOME), is that they do not tell you the specific ingredients in their brewkits. I'll have to email them.

In any event, this is an aggressively-hopped beer, to which I am likely going to add extra dry hops while in the secondary fermenter (the kit comes with some hop pellets which are added to the primary after 5-ish days), but I also purchased 2oz of whole, vacuum-sealed Mt. Hood hops, which have an International Bitterness Unit (IBU) of 4 to 6. I am going to put these into a muslin (cheesecloth) bag and submerse in the brew with the secondary.

I also think I may have found an easy way to lager a brew (ie brew a lager)...going to run it by some of my beer brewing cronies, but
http://brewphileatthebrickpile.blogspot.com/2010/03/bottle-stout-brewed-extra-american-pale.html

Oh ya, I did promise in the tagline of this blog that there will be some mis-adventure. Here goes:

-Was supposed to brew the Extra Pale Ale last night.
-Started.
-Have a standard sink with a basic adapter, to which I have a Brita faucet filter hooked up (primarily to get rid of chlorine and some other junk in our tap water)
-After removing and replacing it so much (with bottle washers and wort chillers - another post on that topic soon) it became worn
-Walked to Ace Hardware to buy a new adapter
-Returned home, installed
-Brita still spewed water everywhere...like a male, I tried screwing it in further, thereby stripping the threads and rendering my filter useless
-Go buy another Brita filter @ same Ace Hardware, install, begin brewing
-As I was about to add a muslin bag of steeping grains, i noticed small ball-bearing-like objects at the bottom of my brewpot
-My thermometer had broken
-Walk back to Ace to get another floating thermometer. They have candy thermometers (temp doesn't go low enough), nine varieties of meat thermometers, external, ambient thermometers, none that float...

I came home and cracked a Brickhead Blonde. Then another as I watched the Sabres lose to the Caps. Some days you eat the bar, and some days....well....she eats you.