Beer Update

The Belgian Tripel that I have in the fermenter right now is going beautifully so far--not bragging or anything.  The temperature is holding at a steady 68°F which is like Disneyland for yeast.  The airlock has been steadily bubbling for the last week or so and it's been very encouraging.  So encouraging, in fact, that I've decided to bang out another five gallon batch of brew right on the heels of the Tripel.

Heather took a bread making class at Brooklyn Kitchen--an establishment at which Heather and I have taken a handful of classes, some of them beer related--and she suggested that if I were to brew another beer, I could use her 10% class discount to buy ingredients.  I said let's do it.  It wasn't until that very night that I decided on the beer to brew.  I decided on a coffee stout.

My "stout"

As loyal readers may recall, I tried my hand at a stout earlier in the year.  The result was a drinkable beer, but very pale.  I had a couple of theories about what went wrong with the color--maybe I didn't steep the grains for long enough or maybe I didn't get the right kind of malt.  A lot of things could have happened.  That beer marked the first time that I selected the ingredients myself rather than have the home brew shop assemble them for me.  I got the recipe from the Keystone Homebrew website--a great resource for extract brewing recipes--but I got the ingredients from Brooklyn Kitchen.  As a result, I had to make substitutions for some ingredients that they didn't carry.

It didn't occur to me until two nights ago--after I picked up the ingredients for this upcoming batch--that the grains need to be milled or crushed.  Every time I get my ingredients from Keystone, they prep the grains and blend them together.  Part of that preparation includes milling the grains so that the hot water can get access to the starch inside the grain and turn it into fermentable sugar.  Brooklyn Kitchen will not automatically do that for you, which explains the pale color and the low Original Gravity (1.040 as opposed to the 1.050 that the recipe estimated).  I felt (feel) like an idiot, but I am happy that it's no longer a mystery.  The code is cracked and I'm excited to move forward.

As luck would have it, Heather left her phone at Brooklyn Kitchen after her class.  She called them the next day and had them set it aside to be picked up later.  The phone retrieval gave me an excuse to go back, hat in hand, and ask them to let me mill my grains.  They were happy to oblige.

Whenever I get the kits from Keystone Homebrew, they give me the Wyeast smack packs of yeast that inflate when you burst the little bag inside.  When I go to Brooklyn Kitchen and pick out my own stuff, I get the White Labs vial of Irish Ale Yeast.  There's really not a great deal of difference between the two, but the vial makes me feel like more of a scientist.  The smack pack--while effective--makes me feel like I'm about to treat a sports injury.  Hopefully with my properly cracked grain, I'll be able to give the yeast a little more fermentable sugar to feed on.

I am very excited to return to beer brewing after this long hot summer.  I spent a good chunk of yesterday cleaning used bottles with my bottle brush and removing their labels with steel wool, which works leaps and bounds better than the scouring side of our dish sponge.  Heather is slowly getting used to the amassing of bottles in the apartment and has been putting up with it like a saint.

Bottling day for the Tripel is a week from today and I'll be able to drink it two weeks after that.  The recipe suggests that the beer could benefit from a secondary fermentation in a glass carboy.  Unfortunately, I don't own a glass carboy so I'll be skipping that step.  As far as I've come with beer brewing, there is still so far to go.  I suppose that's one of the things that keeps me interested; there's always going to be more complex and elaborate things you can do to make your beer better.

Beer Season Finale-Nut Brown Ale

The third batch of beer has been completed. It's a Nut Brown Ale and it's coming right off the heels of the "Stout" I made for round two. I put the word Stout in quotes because when you look at it, the first thought that comes to mind is not Stout. It's very good, but it's very pale.

I might have guessed that it would be that way from the very beginning. It looked a little pale from the onset even after all the ingredients were added. In the back of my head, I thought, "Well maybe it will darken over time." Now I know for the future that it won't--at least not in any substantial way. I have two theories about what happened; it could be either or both. The recipe I used called for two cans of light malt extract. It struck me as funny that one would use light malt extract for one of the darkest styles of beer.

Second, (and brace yourself for nerd talk) the darkness of the barley malt is measured in degrees lovibond or ˚L. The recipe I was using called for a rating of 675˚L and the darkest I could find was 413˚L-450˚L. As I've mentioned in a previous blog, we went to the Brooklyn Kitchen to pick up all of the ingredients. They didn't have exactly what the recipe called for so I had to settle for a lesser lovibond. What's the big deal right?

Now I know the significance. The Nut Brown Ale turned out a lot darker than the Stout and I think it has a lot to do with the type of malt extract used (Amber as opposed to Light) and the grains used (338˚L was the darkest grain used, but there was more grain used overall.)

So the Stout didn't turn out exactly as I planned. But you know what? It's still really good and I learned a lot from that batch of beer. It was my first attempt at making a yeast starter and it was a rousing success. For those new to brewing, a starter gives the yeast a fighting chance by letting it reproduce by itself before pitching it into the wort. It was difficult to tell if the starter had the proper amount of activity inside. I only sealed the top with a piece of plastic wrap fastened loosely with a rubber band--the MacGyver approach to staving off bacteria. For a good chunk of time, I didn't know if it was working. This time around, for the Nut Brown Ale, I picked up a rubber stopper that I can attach my airlock to so I can actually watch the air escape bubble by bubble. Less than a dollar is a small price to pay for piece of mind.

I've learned that priming the beer with sugar before bottling is easier than priming with malt extract and produces a thicker head and more carbonation. I will still continue to toy with different priming sugars to see the different qualities of each. People use corn sugar, honey and even maple syrup. The possibilities are endless and delicious.

But I could not be more pleased with the latest beer. It's fairly dark, almost to the point of looking like a porter, and it's got a bit of bite to it. It's nice and warm and roasted and goes down smooth. I like it a bit more than the last one. Take a look at the picture on the left and guess which is the Stout and which is the Nut Brown Ale. You'd be wrong. I'm still getting the swing of things.

I'm really enjoying this whole beer brewing process and look forward to brewing more and blogging about it in the future, but unfortunately I'll have to hang it up for the season. Brewing requires consistent temperatures of about 65˚F-70˚F and our apartment just gets too hot. As you've read in my posts before, I was tempting fate as it was by keeping the fermenter in the bathroom with the window open to keep it cool. I was entertaining the idea of emptying out the fridge, putting the fermenter in there and just eating take-out every night, but Heather nixed that idea pretty quickly. Women--am I right fellas? Always letting sanity get in the way of good beer.

Keep it Short and Stout

Note from the Editor: Due to schedule conflicts this spring, Will and I are switching days. This means you can get your weekly dose of beer and cocktail anecdotes on Monday, and your food stories and recipes on Wednesday. We hope this doesn't mess up your chi too badly.

Thanks!

Epicurette

As I was brewing my first beer, I knew that the next batch would be a stout. Heather, when giving me my beer brewing kit as a gift, was nice enough to include the ingredients for an IPA because she knew I really enjoyed that particular style. I wanted to return the favor and try my hand at a style that she enjoys.

Heather is not the biggest beer drinker in the world. That having been said, she certainly prefers some more than others. A general rule of thumb is--the darker, the better. She likes deep, flavorful and aromatic more than light, clean and ice cold. Guinness is one of her favorites, partly because of the taste and partly because she likes the smoothness of the nitrogen bubbles. They give a beer a distinct smoothness. Though I don't have the means to incorporate nitrogen into a beer, I can certainly look up a good recipe for a stout. I perused the internet for recipes, but wound up back at the website where I got my first one--Keystone Homebrew. I put together a shopping list and set out.

Heather was taking a soup class at the Brooklyn Kitchen two weeks ago and apparently on the day that a person takes a class, they get ten percent off of anything they buy. I'm in. We go to the store and check out the beer ingredients. On the table is a handful of xeroxed beer recipes. One of them included a sweet stout in which lactose is included. I learned during yeast class that a brewer puts lactose in his beer to make it sweet because it is too complex a sugar for the yeast to break down. Maybe one day I'll try it but the idea of a sweet beer is weird to me.

I was able to find my malt extract and comparable grains easily, but they didn't have the exact hops and yeast I was looking for. I spoke with a gentleman there by the name of Harry and he hooked me up with a different brand of yeast called White Labs Irish Ale Yeast. It comes in a glass vial rather than an expandable packet like Wyeast. I felt good about the vial. I'm sure that they are both fine methods for storing yeast but for some reason the packet seems gimmicky. The vial seems more scientific.

As for the hops, the recipe called for phoenix hops. I'm not an old hand at this sort of thing; I don't know the difference between one type of hops and another. Since they don't have phoenix, I ask what would be a good alternative. Harry whips out his iPhone and pulls up an app called "Get Hoppy." I guess what they say is true, there is an app for that. It gives the statistics for popular types of hops like flavor, acidity and substitutions. Unfortunately, phoenix is not listed in the app, so he runs to the internet and looks it up. It turns out it was bred as a replacement for challenger hops which they also didn't carry, so Harry set me up with U.S. perle hops. We'll see how it works out.

I thanked Harry and got a couple of other supplies--bottle caps, hydrometer tube, grolsch tops--checked out with my ten percent discount and headed over to Barcade to play some video games. When I got home I immediately bought the app for my iPod touch and played with it. I found out it also gives information on yeast. Ninety-nine cents is kind of a bargain.

A couple days before brew day, I decided I wanted to make a yeast starter. It gives the yeast a head start by letting the cells reproduce and shore up their numbers before the main event. I dissolved half a cup of malt extract into two cups of boiling water to make sort of a malt sugar syrup, cooled it, put it in a glass bottle (in this case a half gallon beer growler) and pitched the yeast right in. I wasn't around to see the bubbling (I do have a job,) but there was substantially more yeast settled at the bottom than I started with.

Brew day went a lot smoother this time around. The malt extract was a liquid this time around so I didn't have to wait as long for it to dissolve. There was a more substantial hot and cold break this time--which means that more of the unnecessary proteins solidified during the boiling and cooling of the wort and therefore won't end up in the finished product. And with my new hydrometer tube, I was able to measure and record the gravity of my beer. I'm curious why my kit came with a hydrometer and not a decent tube to put it in.

I also applied a thermometer to the outside of the fermenter so I can better regulate temperature. During the first couple days, when it was bubbling vigorously, I put it in the bathroom and opened the window all the way. All the activity gets the wort pretty warm. It's in my office right now so I can open the window if it's too warm and close them when it gets cool.

I'm excited to see how this one turns out. I'm a little older, a little wiser. I've got more equipment, certainly. When I started this endeavor I thought the next step would be lagering, but now I'm very curious about all-grain brewing as opposed to using malt extract. I'm told it gives a better character to a beer and offers more flexibility. But perhaps I'm getting to far ahead of myself for now. These are topics for future blogs.

Bottling Brews

The long weeks of buying beer, drinking it, and amassing bottles has finally paid off. It's bottling day, people. As Heather and I were mapping this whole brewing thing out, she said that she didn't want anything to do with the first part of the process--the boiling, the extract dissolving, the wort chilling and the yeast pitching. I think in her head, I was going to destroy her entire kitchen and the apartment would reek of barley and hops for the remainder of our lease. Those things did not happen because I am a careful man and a wonderful husband.

Heather did agree to be present for the second major step of the process--bottling. The conceit of bottling is pretty simple: add sugar, put in bottles. The kit that Heather got me even came with a bag of superfine priming sugar so I didn't even have to measure it. I just had to dissolve it in two cups of boiling water and let it cool to room temperature. The biggest pains in my ass were, A) cleaning and de-labeling the bottles (I could have kept them on but I didn't want my beer to share a spotlight with Sam Adams and Magic Hat) and B) sterilizing everything and maintaining a clean work environment. These steps were taken before Heather got home from work. I only needed her there for the main event. I lined up my bottles, I set up my bucket, I re-lined up my bottles; I was so ready for this. Now if Heather would just hurry the hell up. Stupid employment.

Finally she arrived. We set to work. First thing's first, we take the lid off the fermenter for the first time in two weeks. I learned in yeast class that I should have been taking hydrometer readings every now and again, but I found that out a week and a half too late. God damn it. Maybe next time. We got the lid off and there was a thick layer of yeasty gunk on the inside wall of the fermenter. I take that as a sign that the process worked. After the yeast is pitched into the wort, there is a one to two day lag phase and then the yeast bubbles vigorously leaving behind a bunch of crap. Heather had a different reaction: "eeeeeeeewwwwwwww"

I added the sugar solution to the bottling bucket and then syphoned the beer from the fermenter to to mix it with the sugar, leaving behind the bottom layer of yeast sediment that has built up. An important thing to be aware of is that the beer should be exposed to as little oxygen as possible. Stirring the sugar in is not necessary; the swirling from the hose is enough to mix it in. I then attached the hose to the spigot on the bottling bucket. The hose comes with a neat little attachment that regulates the flow of liquid, making sure it doesn't spray or splash.

This is where Heather came in. One person could do this, but I wanted her around to speed this process up. In my mind, the longer it takes, the higher the risk for contaminants. I put the bottling bucket on the counter and got on the floor to take advantage of gravity--a dignified position. Her job was to bring me empty bottles, take them away once they were full, and cap them. It kept me from having to move. She had a little trouble with some of the caps, but discovered that she could get more leverage if she also moved to the floor. So there we were, two fully grown adults on the floor of our tiny kitchen surrounded with beer. I'm sure that image give you a lot of insight into our lives.

Aside from a couple of minor drips and bottle overflows, the bottling was a success. We ended up with a grand total of 43 twelve ounce bottles and a champagne bottle I had fitted with a grolsch bottle top. We put them all in cardboard six-pack caddies which are currently sitting on the bottom shelf of our book case while they undergo their secondary fermentation. The shelf has sliding doors so the bottles can be shielded from light. Two weeks from the bottling date, they should be ready to drink. You can be sure I'll let you know how it goes.

Those Magical Micro-organisms

As part of our ongoing quest to gain more knowledge about the world around us (funny how the world around us is usually a bar,) we decided to sign up for a brewer's yeast class at the Brooklyn Kitchen. Ever since our knife skills class, Heather has had her ear to the ground for new and interesting classes. (Since that class they have been expanding. When we took our first class the instruction happened at a crowded counter toward the back of the store, which was slightly nerve wracking as we were all using sharp objects within inches of each other. Now they have opened a completely separate space a few blocks from the original store on Frost Street, complete with two full teaching spaces and a high end butcher shop. They have also included retail sales at the new location, mostly of consumable goods but some kitchen equipment too. The bulk of their kitchen tools still remain at the old space on Lorimer Street.) The instructor was a guy named Chris who works as a brewer at the Brooklyn Brewery.

The class was close to three hours long, but I found it pretty helpful. Even if I'm hearing a lot of the things that I've already read about in my beer book, it's good to hear it from an actual human being. It give me reassurance that people actually do these things. Much of the class was practical advice about the role of yeast in brewing, specifically home brewing--the history, the science behind fermentation, the differences between strains, the flavors it can add or subtract from the beer, the ideal conditions for yeast to remain healthy, and so on. Some of the specific subject matter was a little over my head but much of the class was made up of neophytes like me, so many of the questions were ones that I had too.

A fringe benefit for taking this class was the tastings. In order to illustrate a point about a flavor or a style of beer, we were given small glasses of a beer that demonstrated that quality. For example, to show the difference between a lager and an ale, we were given Brooklyn Pennant Ale and Brooklyn Pilsner. He also gave us tastes of some of Brooklyn's premium beers called Local 1 and Local 2. Earlier that day, he took some of each from the tank at the brewery and allowed us to try those against the finished product of each. These particular styles are fermented in the bottle with a different yeast than it's first fermentation. This illustrated the significance of secondary fermentation. We also tried a hefeweizen and a beer called "The Wild One" made with a strain of wild yeast called brettanomyces. He mentioned before we tried it that it had kind of a hay, barnyard, horse blankety kind of flavor. It was hard not to notice it after he said it. It was interesting and kind of good, but was not my favorite. My favorite--for the record--is the Local 2.

Midway through the class we took a five minute break to wander around and go to the bathroom. Before we started again, Heather asked about a bacon flavored beer that Brooklyn Brewery put out. An impish smile crept across his face as if to say, "Yes, we did that." He briefly outlined the process of doing that, adding, "It was pretty good, but you wouldn't want to drink a lot of it."

Towards the end of the class, Chris showed us how to calculate the viable yeast cell count by looking at a sample under a microscope. Now I can delude myself into thinking that I will put the effort into many things, but I can't imagine ever caring enough to actually do this. I suppose in a yeast class we're bound to get around to cell division and such. I peeked over at Heather's note but all she had were doodles of lightning bolts and smiley faces.

After the class, our instructor stuck around to answer questions. I stuck around to hear some responses and then joined Heather in the store. The Brooklyn Kitchen sells a fairly large amount of brewing supplies and ingredients. They have an entire corner dedicated to home brewing along with a big ass fridge at the other end of the store filled with yeast and hops. The beer bottles they sold caught my eye. They have the standard 12 and 22 oz. sizes along with the swing top or grolsch style bottles but they also sold these tops with little metal straps to convert a regular bottle into a swing top. I bought one and attached it to a used champagne bottle I've been saving and it fit like gangbusters.

Heather and I caught Chris before he left and I told him I was brewing an IPA. He thought that was a good beer to start with and told me to e-mail him and let him know how it turns out. (The people at Brooklyn Kitchen all have a great friendly vibe, they know a lot about food and drink and are excited to discuss it with like minded people. It certainly keeps us coming back.) To make the night complete, we topped the experience off with a pint at Barcade. We never miss an opportunity to take advantage of all Williamsburg has to offer--at least when it comes to beer and video games.

Good Luck to the Barley Mow

For those who don't know already, Heather was nice enough to get me a beer brewing kit for Christmas. I'm not sure I needed another obsession, but I'm happy to roll with it. My gift was the kit, a box of ingredients for an IPA (India Pale Ale) and an accompanying book, How to Brew by John J. Palmer. I would recommend this book to anyone starting out because it is very well laid out. If you just want to know the basics, the first chapter will probably get you through. If you want to get more in depth about any one topic, the chapters are very clearly labeled. And if you want to get into the science of fermentation and beer production, there is no shortage of that either.

Rather than rush into brewing right after Christmas, I decided it might be best to read up a little about what I'm doing and try to avoid any pitfalls. After all if I make a mistake, I might not know right away. It might take me a solid month to find out. "Oh right, I was supposed to put yeast in it. I was wondering what that was for." I didn't read the book cover to cover, but I amassed what I thought was enough knowledge to proceed. I got all giddy and set aside a whole day to brew. In the days leading up to brew day I wouldn't shut up about it. I would point to my ingredients and say, "There it is Heather. That pile of crap will soon be delicious beer."

Heather, upon seeing my excitement, tried to temper it by warning me not to get my hopes too high. She said that she bought the ingredients as a test batch and that I shouldn't be crushed if it doesn't work out. I'll be bummed but I won't be crushed. I just can't help getting excited about it. I even talk about it at work. "Three days til brew day...Two days til brew day...brew day's tomorrow." A coworker of mine says that Heather has given me a golden ticket to become an alcoholic. Maybe, but I don't think so. There are cheaper and easier ways to get beer. Buying Pabst Blue Ribbon for one. Malt extract isn't cheap.

Then the day came--this past Thursday to be specific. The whole process is supposed to take only a couple of hours but I took things slow to make sure I was doing them right. I started by putting a gallon and a half of water on the stove in a five gallon stock pot. Before the water boils, a pound of cracked grains is steeped in the water for a half hour to give it color and aroma. To be honest, it made the entire apartment smell remarkably like Grape Nuts. After the grains are steeped, they are removed and the water is brought to a boil.

The water is then taken off the heat and half of the seven pounds of malt extract are thrown into the pot and dissolved. The pot is then put back on the heat and the first of a battery of hops are added--bittering, flavoring, and finishing. As time goes on and I get better at this whole process I'm sure I'll come to understand better this whole process, but for now I'm just doing what the directions tell me. After the bittering hops have steeped for 40 minutes, the pot is taken off the heat again and the rest of the malt extract is added.

This is where I hit a little snag. It took me a long time to dissolve the malt extract and even after ten minutes there were still little clumps. I ran the wort through a strainer and got rid of the clumps. I don't think I removed enough to harm anything, but if my beer isn't as malty as I'd like, I'll know why.

After finishing my hop additions, I transferred the pot to my sink which was waiting with ice water. I thought two bags of ice from the grocery store would be more than enough but it melts very quickly. I had just enough to get me through. After it cooled, I poured the wort through a strainer into the fermenting bucket which had two gallons of water waiting in it. The book told me that I should have a fair amount of sediment at the bottom of the pot--proteins that solidify and need not go in the fermenter--but I saw none. That may have been because I already strained it when it was on the stove. I have no idea.

After pouring the wort into the fermenter, I topped it off with additional water to achieve five gallons and sloshed it back and forth between the two containers a couple of times. The book recommends that you oxygenate the beer before you pitch the yeast. My yeast came in a little packet that resembled a cold compress. A couple of hours before brewing, you smack the bag inside the pack to activate it. The packet expands to let you know the yeast is viable. After the yeast is pitched, it's off to the races. I just have to let it sit in the dark at a constant temperature. It's currently in my office, sitting under my desk inside the box it came in. Every now and again, I'll peek in like a child to see if the airlock is moving. Like many of my projects, the main goal is to keep things from exploding and making a mess of our apartment. So far, so good.

Tomorrow marks the one week anniversary of brewing day. My goal is to obtain 50 empty beer bottles before I get to the next step in this process. I don't have that much further to go thanks to a friend of mine inviting Heather and me to a party for the Eagles/Cowboys game. The Eagles lost but I got a bunch of bottles so I count it as a win. Once I've passed two weeks, I can begin to bottle. Hopefully nothing goes wrong in that time. Wish me luck.