Equipment Update

I put my latest two brews in the wine chiller I bought on craigslist.  Even without a good thermostat, I can regulate the ambient temperature in my chiller to roughly 60 degrees.  The wort is usually a couple of degrees warmer, so although it is a few degrees cooler than I'd like, this still makes for a good fermentation environment.  Beats the heck out of the ice & cooler method I used last time, that's for sure! 

Sooner or later, I will purchase a Johnson temperature controller, which will allow me to get my fermentation temperatures set to a very specific range.  The device is basically a thermostat that allows you to set a specific temperature, then cuts (or enables) the power to your fridge to maintain the desired degree.  Having good temperature control will help with consistency in my brews.  
 
I also discovered I can fit four Little Brown Kegs in the unit at the same time.  This allows me to brew about 9 gallons of beer at once.  I haven't yet decided if that is a good or a bad thing!

Bottling Day 3, and Brew Day 4 and 5!

I put the Nut Brown in bottles today.  It was much clearer than I had expected, but I think that is due to the increased amount of yeast I used.  The hydrometer reading tells me it should have an ABV of 4.9%.  The traditional Mr. Beer refills are usually 3.7% ABV.  Also, based on the ingredients and final gravity readings, this brew would be classified as a Blonde Ale, not a Nut Brown.

Once that brew was in the bottles, I had 2 empty LBK's at my disposal.  I decided to brew a wheat beer, and more specifically a witbier, in one keg.  In the other, I wanted brew an Amber Ale.  Also, this time I had planned to use no Mr. Beer ingredients at all, and only those I purchased from the home brew shop.  Here are my ingredients for each recipe:

This time I added two new elements to the brews: hops and crystal malt.  Hops are used for adding aroma, flavor, and bitterness (to balance sweetness).  As with yeast, there are many, many varieties of hops so you can match the flavor and bitterness with the style of beer you are brewing.  Also, hops impart different levels of flavors depending on how much you use, how long you boil them, etc.  I chose pellet hops for my new brews, and the varieties I needed for my recipes are Willamette (fruity, floral), Cascade (bitter, citrus flavor), and Saaz (cinnamon, earthy).

Crystal malt is barley that has been roasted to bring out the sugars from the grain. Adding this ingredient to a recipe imparts sweetness and toffee or caramel flavors into the brew.  Using crystal malt involves steeping the grain in hot water to bring out the flavor.  You simply put the cracked grain in a muslin sack and steep it for 30 minutes or so.  It's a delicate process, though, because if the steeping temperature is too high, off flavors can make it into your brew. 

 The witbier also required some interesting ingredients:  Corriander seed, orange zest, and orange juice.

The good thing about the witbier (besides the taste) is the quick turnaround time.   I found a recipe that has the beer brewed, fermented, and carbed in roughly 20 days.  The Amber will take far longer, so the timing will be convenient for bottling and carbing between the two brews.  The staggered schedule will also put me on a better cycle for brewing, since I will be bottling and brewing on different days and I'll be able to keep the process going without waiting on a keg to be empty.

Nut Brown Ale @ 11 days in Little Brown Keg

I have purposely avoided over-sampling of the Englishman's Nut Brown Ale that I currently have in the fermenter.  In fact, since I have it in the cooler for temperature control, I sometimes forget that it is even there!  Ok, not really, but I haven't been babysitting this one like my first two brews.  I have only tasted it twice, once on day 7 and today on day 11.  I will measure the gravity at 14 days to see if it is near to the estimate.

There has been quite a bit of change in the flavor, but it is not quite ready yet.  The color is really coming around, too.  It is a deep copper color, and I expect that I will clear up a little more.  It looks like it will be about the color of Newcastle, which is pretty much what I was shooting for.  This will actually be more of a Brown Ale, and not a Nut Brown once it is finished.

Controlling temperature in the cooler has really worked out.  I only replace the ice bottle once per day, and temps stay between 64-70 around the clock.  Now that I bought the wine cooler, however, I won't need this anymore.  But, it is good to know I can fall back to it if I need to for some reason.

Vive Le Difference!

In order to provide a fair comparison to my first brew (West Coast Pale Ale), I went ahead and cracked open the trub bottle of Bewitched Red Ale after only a day in the fridge.  Either my brewing skills had improved dramatically from the first batch to the second, or there is quite a bit of difference in quality between these two booster packs.  My gut tells me it is the latter.


The Red Ale is still "green", but even at this stage is is exponentially better in both flavor and appearance than the WCPA.  The bottle poured out a creamy head that hung around until I finished drinking.  This is a complete contrast to the WCPA, which had very little head at this stage, and instead was fizzy like champagne.

I have the Bewitched Red Ale cold conditioning in the fridge, and the Englishman's Nut Brown Ale should be ready to bottle by the weekend.   That means I will have TWO empty LBK's at my disposal this weekend!  I am thinking that I will brew an Amber Ale in one and a Hefeweizen, (wheat beer) in the other.  I have also decided to go completely off-script and use all non-Mr. Beer ingredients for both of these batches.

I may need to address my small bottle inventory before I crank out two simultaneous batches of beer, though.  I only have 32 bottles on hand, and half of those will be taken up by the Englishman's Nut Brown for bottle conditioning when fermentation is complete on the Amber and Hefeweizen.

Filling My Time (and Pipeline)

The process of controlling temperatures during fermentation of the Nut Brown Ale seems to be working well.  It was interesting to note that in the first two or three days while the yeast was really working, I was having to change out water bottles very frequently. However, once most of the activity stopped, I could get by with changing the bottles out about once a day.  I realized this after I changed out the bottles one day and the temperature in the cooler dropped to 59 degrees.  From that point on, one bottle every 12-18 hours would keep the temp in the 60's.

This method of temperature control, although effective, is a manual process and is subject to human error.  I decided to look for a more reliable way to control temperatures, and I found the answer on craigslist for $50.  I bought a 4.6 cubic inch wine cooler.  It can fit at least two Little Brown Kegs, and the temperature in the unit can be lowered down to 48 degrees or so.   This appliance will allow me to precisely control the temperature of fermentation, something that is critical for most non-Mr. Beer yeast strains.  Colder fermentation temperatures (50-55 degrees) are also required for lager brewing, something I'd like to try in the future.

Speaking of two Little Brown Kegs, I bought a second one from Mr. Beer for $10.  A second LBK will allow me to brew 5-gallon recipes, which most mainstream beer recipes are geared toward.  It also gives me the option of brewing different styles 2. 5 gallon recipes simultaneously if I want to have a wider variety of beer in my pipeline.

Finally, since I have the Bewitched Red Ale conditioning in bottles, and I am close to bottling the Nut Brown, I decided to make labels so I could distinguish the two.  The experienced brewers suggested I use paper and a glue stick since this combination will be easy to remove in warm water.  So, the photo on the right is my first attempt at a label.

A New Brew!

I decided to get a little more advanced for my next brew.  I purchased an Englishman's Nut Brown booster pack from eBay for $13 (free shipping!), which is decidedly cheaper than from Mr. Beer's web site.  However, I also wanted to venture into some alternate ingredients to further enhance the flavor of the beer.

I purchased 1 pound of Breiss Sparkling Amber dried malt extract (DME).  This is totally different than the Mr. Beer Hopped Malt Extract (HME) I have used in the last two brews.  First, it is in powder form and not canned liquid, which means it has to be mixed with water.  Second, it has no hop components, so it is sweet and not bitter.  Finally, by adding this to the booster kit, I will increase the alcohol content of the beer.


I also upgraded my yeast to a better quality version.  I bought Fermentis Safale s-04, which is specifically designed for English Ales.The upgraded yeast should also improve the flavor of the beer.   The only drawback to the yeast is that I need to ferment at a slightly cooler temperature (65-70).  I took an idea I saw online and put it to use.  I put the keg in a cooler and filled it with water to the same level as the wort.  I put in a couple of cooler packs to lower the temperature of the water.  My plan is to change out the cooler packs with frozen water bottles and continue to rotate to maintain a lower water temperature.

Since I bought the booster kit at a savings, I was able to add both the DME and the yeast and still break even on what I would have paid from Mr. Beer for the kit alone. 

Bewitching Bottling Day

I bottled the Bewitched Red Ale tonight after 18 days of fermentation.  The wort seemed to continue to evolve in taste and color, so I waited to bottle until I had a couple of consecutive days where the flavor and clarity seemed consistent.

I added some items to my equipment inventory for this go 'round.  The more research I have done, the more I have found that most brewers use a different sanitizer than the one that ships with Mr. Beer.  I suppose this happens out of necessity, because once you stop buying the kits from Mr. Beer you need to find a new method of sanitizing the equipment. 

I chose StarSan for this task, which seems to be far and away the leading home brew sanitizer.  Just like the Mr. Beer sanitizer, this is a no-rinse chemical sanitizer.  It is a liquid concentrate, and a little goes a long way: you mix 1 oz to 5 gallons of water.  It is much faster than the oxygen-based cleaner, as it only needs 1 minute of contact (instead of 10) to sanitize a surface.  The best part is that once you make the solution, you can continue to use it for a couple of batches.  I bought this bottle for $7, and it will most likely last me a year or more of constant brewing.

Since I bought the new sanitizer, I needed to buy something to hold the solution.  I bought an 11-gallon plastic bucket with handles.  It is flexible and easy to maneuver, and as luck would have it, my sink accommodates it perfectly.  I figured that if I ever get to the point where I am making 5 gallon batches of beer, this will do the trick. 

I made a 2.5 gallon batch of StarSan this time, and this turned out to be just about right.  I put about half of my new 16 oz. bottles in the solution, waited for a minute, then drained them and left them to dry while I put the other half in.  Each time I had the bottles soaking, I also put in the other equipment I'd need to sanitize (bottling wand, caps, funnel, etc.)

I had brought out my Little Brown Keg about 2 hours earlier in hopes that any solids that were agitated by the movement would settle by the time I started bottling.  After everything had dried, I attached the wand and added the priming sugar to the bottles and started filling.  The wand has a spring-loaded valve on the end that allows you to fill the bottles from the bottom to avoid any aeration.  Not much faster, but helps you avoid contaminating the beer.

I put the wand in the first bottle and immediately noticed lots of solids going through the wand.  This batch had never really cleared up like the West Coast Pale Ale had, but I wasn't expecting that on the first bottle.  Each subsequent bottle cleared up a little, and by the middle of the process I was getting what I expected.

The final bottle also had a lot of particulate matter go in from the keg.  I marked these two bottles as the ones I'll try first during carbonation testing.  Interestingly, I only got 15 bottles out of this batch.  However, I taste-tested this batch non stop for the past week, sometimes twice per day.  I probably drank 16 oz. worth over the 18 days it was in the fermenter.

I put all the bottles back into the box they were shipped in to further protect them from light.  I'll leave them there for at least two weeks again.  Now I have two batches in the pipeline, either in warm conditioning or in the fridge.  Either way, that means I have an open fermenter!  I already have plans to do something about that.  

My little brewery inventory is growing!  My next batch will go into the fermenter before the weekend.  I am going to brew a Mr. Beer booster kit with some additional ingredients I bought from the home brew shop.  Stay tuned....