Skol

After a week in the bottle, we broke out a "Pining for Pliny" today and I must say it is truly an amazing brew! Bright orange, nearly clear (I think some more time in the fridge will clarify it more), thick, frothy head, absolutely delicious hop aroma and flavor. I really think it is a huge step forward and not too far from Pliny (of course it is not Pliny but Pliny seems not so distant anymore). There is a slight resiny hop flavor that I hope gets conditioned out in the next few weeks (it is still a bit early in the conditioning phase) but overall I'm very impressed and for once proud of one of my brewing creations.

Update

Lot's of stuff since the last post.

First, the two extract brews ended up aging nicely and are now quite drinkable. Argentina, in fact, was tasty, and hopefully Hoppy Diwali will come into its own soon.

Though they were tastier, the hop flavor never arose. I narrowed the problems to:

1) Too much time with the dry hops

2) Poor filtering at bottling time, leaving hop sediment to bitter the beer more

3) Too many IBUs (most likely), causing a harsh bitterness which obscured the hop flavors

4) Water profile

I dialed down the hops big time for a new brew called "Pining for Pliny". This is an all-Simcoe IPA with an IBU count of ~70, which was a substantial rollback. I made the recipe as light on grains as possible to showcase the Simcoe. (Wow, do yourself a favor and smell a bag of Simcoe some time. It's known for a piney/citrus flavor; hence the naming "Pining for Pliny".). Regarding the process: I paid special attention to water levels and managed to perfectly hit my water amount. I used BeerSmith to aid in the process and I don't think I'd brew again without it. Today I bottled it and wow, what a smell! The beer is clearer and much lighter than previous brews. Can't wait to try it.

I have been reading a lot about water profiles and it turns out that Orange County water does not cut it for highly hopped beers. The sulfates are way too low, and sulfates are critical to really pull the flavors out of hops. So, for the next brew I'm going to be adding gypsum salt to get it up to the right level (again, Beersmith will help me calculate this).

Next up: a break from the usual hop bombs. I'm going to try something summery; a light, Belgian ale, using Pilsner malts, Belgian yeast, a low ABV, and a low dose of Sterling hops. I'm calling it "Bruxelles Sprout" (were it a stout you know what I'd call it.) I have a crazy idea to siphon off a gallon of it into my little 1G carboy and add some wild yeast to give it a nice sourness.

Finally, I have decided that if "Pining for Pliny" comes out decent, I'm getting/building a keggerator. I hate bottling enough to abandon the hobby altogether.

Not-so-happy

Hoppy Diwali is a big, malty, hoppy mess. I think the reduction from 2.5G ending volume to ~1.75 caused a concentration which does not favor flavor. I recalculated and got 11.1% ABV and 150+ IBUs. The sherry off-flavors are telltale of allowing the beer to get too hot, which I know was the case as the upstairs closet has reached 80+ temperatures in the last month. There is a nice toasty malt flavor with honey and some light spices. The bitterness is near astringent and not right. Also some husky, tannic tones. Good thing the batch size was small. I had really almost written this one off anyway.

First all grain batch

I did my first all grain batch yesterday. Let me begin by saying that all grain is way easier than you can imagine. Its reputation for difficulty must be a hangover from days when you had to do all the calculations by hand. Nowadays, tools like hopville.com make it a snap.

I designed a recipe called Santa Ana Garden. There's a lemon tree in front of the Santa Ana house I stayed in and I made lemonade from it once. The citrusy hops I placed in this one (including Amarillo, which means "yellow" in Spanish) evoke that memory.

The grain bill is fashioned after McDole's Pliny the Elder clone.

Some notes on the recipe:

1. I put 1oz Cascade in the mash itself. There is growing popularity for this method as a way to infuse the beer with more flavor and aroma without adding bitterness. Though the science is not well understood by beer nerds, the idea is that the sub-boiling mash temperatures allow the hop flavors to be more fully extracted into the wort before boiling off, and they'll tend to keep throughout the full boil.
2. I used some yeast collected from Bell's bottles as described earlier in this blog
3. I'm using a method to keep the primary fermenter cool, since the apartment was in the mid 80s for most of the weekend. Warm temperatures for fermentation cause serious off flavors. I put it in a cooler in the closet and fill the cooler with water. I put ice packs in in the morning. I've measure the temperature at various times and the water temperature is about 67, which is ideal

And mistakes:

1. I forgot to put the sugar in. Cane sugar is a way to build the alcohol and body of the beer without adding flavor or color.
2. I did not calculate water loss in the grain bed correctly, and ended up with about 2 gallons of beer.
3. I forgot to put Irish Moss in, so did not benefit from its coagulative properties and hence threw away more trubbed-up beer

Given the mistakes, I ended up with a variant recipe which I describe here. The loss of water means a higher gravity. Not the worst thing in the world, I suppose.

Mash tun take one

I built a mash tun today. I originally decided to use the directions here. However, those directions are pretty hard to follow since they seem to be written for mechanically inclined people. It also requires non-standard washers which were not available in any hardware store in my area (the author says to just expand a smaller one, but I have yet to talk to someone who knows how to do that).

I instead used the directions here, which were both easier and required fewer parts. I have:

1. 5 gallon round Rubbermaid cooler ($22)
2. 1/2' of 1/2" copper tubing ($1)
3. a small rubber stopper ($1)
4. a stainless steel mesh taken from a supply line ($5)
5. a square head plug (Watts part A-737)
6. 1/2" hose clamps

Most of this is straightforward. However, the supply line needs the ends to be sawed off. You then pull the hose from the center. I asked the guy at Fetch Lumber to help me saw off the ends of the supply line and he did with relative ease. I used needlenose pliers to pull the hose out and it took about 5 minutes.

Next, I would wash the mesh in some alcohol to get the oil off.

1. I unscrewed the plastic spigot from the cooler.
2. I jammed the stopper in from inside out. Make sure to go this direction so it can withstand the pressure. This took me 5 minutes of strenuous work. If it isn't hard to do, you may have a stopper which is too small, and will not get a good seal.
3. I pushed the copper through the hole in the stopper. This was by far the most difficult task and took me about 10 minutes of pushing. I was drenched in sweat by the end
4. I attached the head plug to the mesh using a hose clamp
5. I attached the mesh to the copper using a hose clamp.
6. I attached the vinyl tubing to the copper on the outside of the cooler

Here's a picture:

Future brew brainstorm

1. "Raspblurry Stout": A strong stout with chocolate and tart fruit flavors like raspberry and cherries. Creamy feel (from oats?). Think Framboise raspberry over a deep chocolate stout
2. "Pop-the-cap-puccino stout": espresso and milk stout, frothy head
3. "Currant Affair": Dark, thin stout or porter with a sour dryness. Think cabernet over a dry chocolate malt base
4. "Chocolate orange": Not really much of an orange taste but some aggressive, citrusy hops on a stout. No one does this. Would it work?

Extract twang

Home brewers often complain about 'extract twang' which vaguely describes the telltale off-flavors from extract brewing. It seems the main problem (aside from contamination) is boil size. The typical kit is for 5 gallon batches but the process involves a 3 gallon boil since most homebrewers can't boil much more. There are two negative consequences:

1. The extracts are added to the boil portion and hence saturate it. The hops cannot be as effectively absorbed. This can be avoided, in part, by not adding half of the extracts until the end of the boil (long enough to sanitize)
2. Water needs to be added to the wort in the fermenter to bring it up to full size, rather than being incorporated in the whole boil. If you did this with a curry sauce, I doubt it would be as flavorful.

These contribute to the extract twang. This is where the smaller batches are advantageous: you can do the wort as a full boil.