Krausen Rising

I’m going back to pre-sparge days for this week’s brew - an all-extract hefeweizen - from a kit, no less! Awesome! The kit’s just 6lbs. of “wheat” DME (60/40 wheat/barley), a couple ounces of low-alpha hops (I’ve already forgotten the strain), and a bottle of WLP300 - hefeweizen yeast.

I’ll be making an all-grain whit some time in late April/early May. This is for simplicity and fun. I keep upgrading my equipment and complexifying my process with each brew, which is the reason I’m making an all-extract beer this time. I’ll still have a yeast starter, and it’ll be a full boil, but other than that, it’s back to my first four beers. Not that I’ve come all that far. It’s #11 because it’s the 12th beer I’ll have brewed (the count starts from 0).

I made my Imperial whatsit. The recipe looks like this:

8 lbs. light DME
5 lbs. rauch
3 lbs. caramunich
2 lbs. chocolate
2 oz. Centennial (10% AAU) bittering (90 minutes in the pot)
1 pint WLP530 (Westmalle) starter

Rather than do a real mash/sparge, I mashed the grains for 30 minutes in 4 gallons of water (at 149-152 F), then drained it all into the kettle, added another 4 galons of water, and drained it all again. I ended up with about 6 to 6.5 gallons of wort at 1.029 or something. Very inefficient, but I was mostly hoping for color and some smoky flavor to come out of that.

Adding all that DME was annoying, but the whole thing went off pretty much without a hitch. I used my new aquarium stone to aerate the wort for an hour, pitched the yeast, then went off to The Trappist for some delicious beers. I got back three hours later and the fermentation had begun. Now I’m going to try to keep the wort above 70 F (preferably up near 80), to get some good yeast flavors in the beer.

I love arbitrary labels. I’ve spent hours arguing about nonsense like whether X band is funeral doom or death doom, or what’s the exact difference between a porter and a stout. Shit like that. Since the universe in which I live seems to be analog, not digital, boundaries aren’t actually nearly as neat and discreet as some of us with undiagnosed mild OCD might like them to be. But that doesn’t stop my love for labels, inherently arbitrary as they may be. So I’ve added three tags to the blog. They all relate to brewing, and my brews in particular. Down another half inch or less, you’ll find the tags and why.

Cat’s Quill
That’s the working title for the brewery in my kitchen, and the tag for my “regular” beers I brew. We have cats. They shed. I used to worry about my beer being infected by cat dander or fur (quills). I don’t any more, but the joke remains, and I like the feel of the phrase on my tongue. Probably not the best marketing, but since I only give my beer away, I remain unconcerned.

RauchMeister
I love smoked beers, the best smoked beers I’ve had are German (second best, Alaskan). My last name is Meister. I decided to brew my grand cru with smoked malt. Calling myself meister of anything brewing-related is silly and conceited, and calling my, what, 8th brew ever a “grand cru” is just plain silly. So I’m labeling all that stuff “Rauchmeister”.

Green Dragon
I’m working on an experimental line of beers infused with a proprietary herbal blend. Those are the Green Dragon beers. So far, there’s only one, the Maddhouse Double IPA. I have plans for more, but they are as yet vague and ill-defined.

I’ve been planning to brew an Imperial Stout for my next beer, but maybe with a Belgian yeast, and all extract except for some steeping grains, because I want something easy, and the stronger the beer the more it holds up to extract, sayeth Daniels. After cracking the smoked brown, I decided on a slightly different angle. I’m using 9lbs. of DME, 5lbs. of rauch malt, 2lbs. of chocolate malt, and I think it was 2lbs. of Munich. Or something like that. I forget. It’s written down, just not here.

The folk at Beer, Beer, and More Beer, where I picked up the ingredients for this batch, were wary of my 5lbs. of rauch malt, the same way I’m wary of the elderly woman who dresses all in purple, pink, and lavender and roams the streets of my neighborhood Witnessing for Jehovah all over anyone she sees. But like her, I have found my savior, and I don’t care if everyone knows it, or what they think about it. In fact, when this Imperial Stout turns out to rule the universe, I will bring a bottle of it to the unbelievers, and they will acknowledge our lord and savior, the Roach Malt.

Or it will be undrinkable, and I’ll dump it.

I have a theory about rauch malt (I say rauch rather than smoked because peated malt is different and more dangerous to use) - I think smoked malt is an acquired taste in a way similar to hoppy beers. Something happens when you taste a very smoky, great beer like Schlenkerla’s Urboch, a Lupulin shift-like adjustment of the palate. I’ll test that theory with the beer I brew Thursday.

Okay, so my porter is not a porter at all.  It’s a smoky, brown ale with Belgian yeast.  So, a  smoked brown, I guess.  I opened a bottle after having bottled a bit over a week ago, and it was a little flat, but delicious.  Smoky, a little sweet, malty, not much obvious hoppiness at this point, with a delicious belgian yeast character, though not much in the way of fruitiness.  Maybe some spice.  There’s a bitterness that doesn’t seem hop-related to me, and that’s probably the weak point.  It could also use a little more body, but like I said, I bottled it a week ago.  I’m expecting it to be perfect in a couple weeks, and I can’t wait to brew a stronger version of this same beer.

I went out to Beer, Beer, and More Beer and bought me an 8 gallon kettle with a spigot, notched lid, and an immersion chiller, and now I’m all about the all-grain (next up, though, an all-extract imperial stout because I’m sick to frickin’ meow of all-day brewdays). Then I went over to the Oak Barrel and picked up about 12 lbs. of grain, a vial of WL’s good ‘ol California Ale Yeast, and some ahtanum hops. For grains, I used a 8.5 lbs. of 2-row (American), three different colors of crystal (40, 60, and 80, IIRC) and some Vienna or Munich. I wants me a nice, strong copper ale with good hops (also using amarillo and magnum that I stashed away before the beginning of this here hop shortage that has hop wranglers out killing one another and any innocents that get in the way). Then I waited two or three weeks, because who wants flavorful malt, right? Really, I was just busy, then sick, then, well, it was three weeks later and time to brew.

First, of course, I tested the new equipment on water. Can my stove heat 7 gallons of water to the boiling point? Yes. Does the spigot on the kettle leak? Yes. Okay, tighten everything. Does the immersion chiller work? Yes, but you have to really tighten down the vinyl tubing coming out of it to avoid drips.

Once I determined my new equipment worked, I set aside some time to brew. The night before, I mixed up my yeast starter, but I’d had a bit too much to drink and I waited until about 1:00am to mix it, so I don’t really remember the process very well, and I’m sure that contributed to the epic lag time I experienced with this beer.

My first time using my new equipment and doing a full boil yielded one major problem - I ended up with about 1.5 gallons too much wort at the end of the boil. I probably should have boiled until that 1.5 gallons was gone, but I was pressed for time. So once again, instead of the gravity I wanted (1.057-1.060), I ended up at 1.052 or so. Not so horrible, really, but I’m getting sick of these weaker-than-desired worts.

It took only about 35 minutes to chill the wort to pitching temperature. I racked and pitched, then set it aside. For the next four days, I waited, and nothing happened. Finally, on the fifth day, as I was about to pick up some more yeast, the fermentation began. It was still cold enough in the house that I needed to heat the carboy for an hour or two every day, bringing the temperature up to between 64 and 68 degrees. It would then drop to just below 60 overnight, and I’d heat again. A blow-off tube was crucial.

Which brings me to my next problem - laziness. Bubbles were still coming up for three weeks, and I never racked it off to secondary. Also, I never replaced the blow-off tube with a proper airlock. Also, I never changed the water in the bucket holding the blow-off tube. Combine all that, and I ended up with a bit of mold in the water sitting in the bucket with the blow-off tube, and when I racked to secondary this past Saturday, the beer tasted bad. Not sure just how bad, yet. Not sure if it’s an infection, nastiness related to overlong contact with the trub, or if it’s just the more complex than usual grain bill tasting funny when young. I’m going to wait a week and see. If mold starts growing on top of the beer, I know it’s an infection. If it just sits there and glares at me, I’ll take a sample, have a taste, and see if I want to throw it out or bottle it.