Fermentation Notes, Dry Stout #1 (mon 28jan)

Fermentation has begun sometime between 9-16 hours while I was asleep. I had sealed the fermentor with cling wrap (my lid is definately not airtight) so I could get an easy visual via the airlock, which is bubbling fine.

I will try and keep fermentation temps in the 66-68F range, supposed to be the optimum for this yeast. Emphasis on try.

UPDATE Day 1, 2: Bubbling away every couple seconds. This one is generating quit a bit of heat. It is fermenting around 68-69F even though the room is around 62F. Probably due to the large amount of yeast it started on.

UPDATE (thurs 31jan): bubbling has slowed/stopped, but still positive pressure in airlock. Gravity is at 1.015. Temps 65-68ish. Hopefully over the next week or two, it will get nice and dry around 1.011 or 1.012. Tasted pretty good for being completely unfinished.

UPDATE (mon 04feb): Gravity clocked in at 1.012, probably about as low as it will get. I'm going to let it sit in the ferm until probably next monday for a total of 2 weeks, then I will bottle up.

Noticed that there seems to be some white/cream colored clumps of something floating on top of the beer, I'm assuming and hoping it is just unfloculated yeasts and not anything funky. I'm not too worried because I already noticed that this yeast is the least floculative I have used so far, and I also pitched onto the entire cake from previous, which would include both and the most and least floculative yeast spawn from the last batch.

Brewing Notes, Dry Stout #1 (mon 28jan)

6 lbs. Northern Brewer Gold LME
1 lb. Roasted Barley
.9 oz. Columbus Hops (12.3% AA)


Same process as normal. Plus water salt and irish moss.

Steeped 1 # of roasted barley in 1 gallon of ~ 150F water with ~ 1tsp of calcium carbonate added to balance the acidity of the grains.

Boiled 75 minutes total, additions:

(60 min) : .9 oz Columbus hops (a little higher IBU when using calculator, but I figure since I'm doing a partial boil and adding my extract at the beginning, I will be getting less than ideal extraction, so this combined with whatever hops oils/acids that are left in the cake from the previous batch will get me around target IBU of 42)

(15 min): rehydrated Irish Moss, 2-2.5 dry tsp. worth. Decided to try this as a clarifier for first time.

Repitched directly onto Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale yeast cake from Oatmeal Stout after wiping most of the crud ring off with a Star-san soaked napkin.

Aerated with a heavy hard pour of water and stirring vigorously for about 3 minutes with a slotted spoon.

Original Gravity ~ 1.041

With 3 gallons of cold water and approximately 2.5 gallons of hot wort (cooled in ice bath for 30 minutes), combined temp after mixing was right at 65 F which was great. Hopefully the cold then warm water didn't shock the little yeasties too bad.

Bottling Notes, Oatmeal Stout (mon 28jan)

Bottled the oatmeal stout today.

Final grav ~ 1.018

% attentuation ~ 62% (see fermentation notes for theories as to why this finished so high)

ABV ~ 3.8 %

Used between 1/2 and 9/16 cups of corn sugar to bottle. Got equivalent of 50 12 oz. beers. Had to drink one that was unbottleable thanks to the Bohemia bottle not having a notch on the neck, thereby being incompatible with my bottler.

The Irish ale yeast is definately less floculative than either of the previous 2 yeasts I've used. It was much less dense of a cake. I didn't end up harvesting any yeast because there was alot less floculated out than I had expected, and more was probably sucked into the bottling bucket during transfer. I decided just to direct pitch onto all that was left.

reschedule

going to bottle and brew monday now, since I forgot to run the bottles, buy some jugs of water, and was nasty hungover friday ..... what're'ya gonna do ?

Plan to brew and bottle

I'm planning to bottle the oatmeal stout on friday (13 days in fermentor) and brew and pitch dry stout #1 onto 1/4-1/2 of the remaining yeast cake immediately after.

Corn sugar bottling guidelines

Amount of corn sugar for brews:

Oatmeal Stout: ~ 9/16 cup

Dry Stout (#1 and #2): ~ 3/8 cup

Sweet Stout: ~ 7/16 cup

Simple sweet stout recipe

6 lbs. Amber LME
.75 lb. Black Patent
.25 lb. Simpson's Dark Crystal
.5 lb. Chocolate Malt
1 lb. Lactose
1 oz. Cluster hops (60)
Wyeast 1028 London

I think I will do this and pitch Dry Stout #2 onto half of the yeast cake.

Fermentation Notes, Oatmeal Stout

Fermenting in the 66-68F range.

After three days, gravity is down to 1.022.

Note: lamp works well at maintaining warm enough temps when it is freezing outside like now.

UPDATE (tues 22jan2008):

Checked gravity: It was at 1.019. This is pretty high, but kind of expected because of the use of dark LME as the base and because there are probably a bit of unconverted starches because I am doing a bootleg version of partial mashing that probably yields no greater than 50-60% at the very best of the oats and 6-row. This is good though, because this should leave the final beer with a nice thick body and a low abv, two things I don't mind in an oatmeal stout. Chewy texture, drink lots of them. Sunday breakfast anyone?

It has a nice coffee/choco flavor goin on.

Notes for Dry Stout #2

In order to compensate for not having a large enough mash pot to really handle 3.5 pounds of grain (1.5 lbs. 2-row, 1 lb. flaked barley, 1 lb roasted barley), I've come up with the idea to just mash the 2-row and flaked barley by themselves so they will fit easily in my mashpot. I will steep the roasted barley by itself while they are mashing and then sparge the other grains into my brew pot after an hour.

Brewing Notes, Oatmeal Stout (Sat 14jan)

The recipe for the oatmeal stout I made was:

6.6lbs. dark liquid malt extract
0.5lbs. flaked oats
0.5lbs. 6-row barley
0.5lbs. black roast barley
0.5lbs. Simpson's chocolate malt (added in extra)
0.25lbs. Crystal 120L malt
1.0 oz. East Kent Goldings (60)
0.5 oz. Fuggles (30)
Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale yeast

I used dark malt extract because that is what came with the kit I ordered a while ago. For recipes from now on I'll mostly be using pale/light/gold extract and getting all the colors and flavors from steeping/mashing grains. Unless I'm trying to make a batch on the cheap and trying get some flavors from the extract instead of buying extra grain.

This was my first try at a partial mash, here's the procedure I used:

1 - Heated a little less than 3 quarts of water to 168F (limited by pot size, would have done at least 3). I figured that the temp would be brought down to around 150-155F when the grains were added. Added 1/2 tsp of calcium carbonate to balance the acidity of the roasted grains that I used.

2 - Steeped in bag of grains. Mashed down into the water and put the pot in a cooler and stuff it with towels.

3 - After 50 minutes dumped the juice plus the bag into the colander over my brew pot. Sparged with about 1.5 gallons of 170F water. I tried to pour as slowly as possible.

4 - Topped up to about 3.5 gallons for boil.

I ended up with a larger boil volume than normal because I smartly added the extra water before the extract. Luckily I had enough room in the pot. It probably actually helped the hop utilization anyhow.

It also helped me get closer to optimum pitching temp of 68F because I had to add less cold water at the end and there was more warm wort. I ended up pitching at about 75 degrees which wasn't perfect, but was close enough.

Initial specific gravity was ~1.047

Fermenting at 66-68F. Showed signs of fermentation between 5-12 hours, foam in drum tap when I got up.

Tasty and easy idea

Note: Belgian Pale Ale from Jamil radio show

Bottling Notes, Brown Ale ( Wed 09jan2008)

Going to bottle up the brown ale today, I actually remembered to load the bottles and dishwash them this morning, so its on. Steps:

1 - Assemble bottling bucket.

2 - Fill with water, add Star-san

3 - Attach hoses, bottle filler

4 - Run solution through hoses and filler filling up mop bucket with sanitizing solution.

5 - Wrap filler in foil/plastic wrap

6 - Put large transfer hose in sanitizing solutions

7 - Boiled 3/4 cup corn sugar for 10 min in a pint of water

8 - Transfer from fermentor to bottling bucket using large transfer hose.

9 - Put lid on bottling bucket, remove airlock.

10 - Fill and cap bottles.

11 - Clean up that mess.

12 - Bask in the glory of it all.

Bottled Notes:

Final gravity: 1.013 (corrected ~ .001 for 68F temp)

% alcohol/vol based on OG of 1.041 = ~3.6 percent (drink up :))

Total yield: equivalent of 49 x 12 oz. bottles + about 1 beer of spillage and runoff from empty santizer from hose.

Going to carbonate @ 65-70 for 2 weeks and then start drinkin em!

Stout plans

I have plans to do 3 different stouts next, of which I have been tinkling with some of the recipes:

1 - Oatmeal Stout:

6 lbs Dark LME
.5 lb 6-row barley
.5 lb oats
.5 lb black roast barley
.5 lb chocolate malt (added to initial recipe)
.25 lb dark crystal malt
(mash above for 40 min @ 155F in 1 gallon water, sparge with 2 gallons 170F water)
1 oz. Kent Goldings (60)
1/2 oz. Fuggles (30)
Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale

2 - Dry Stout #1 (steeping grains only)

6 lbs Gold LME
1 lb black roast barley
1 oz Columbus Hops (60)
Repitch on 1/4-1/2 1084 yeast cake from oatmeal stout, save other 1/2-3/4 cake in jar for below

3 - Dry Stout #2 (partial-mash)

6 lbs Gold LME
1.5 lbs 2-row barley
1 lb flaked barley
1 lb black roast barley
(mash above at 150-155F for 60 minutes with 1.25 gallons water, sparge with 1.75 gallons 170F water ghetto-colander style)
1 oz. Galena Hops (60)
Probably repitch saved 1084 yeast from oatmeal stout cake

Ghetto-colander style:

mash into .75-1.25 gallons of 160-165F water
sit it for 60 min in styrefoam cooler (40 for the 6-row oatmeal stout, more enzymes)
raise to 168F
strain through colander
sparge with ~ 2 gallons of 170F water

forgot to run bottles

I was going to bottle yesterday, but I forgot to run the bottles in the dishwasher. I'm thinking wednesday now, because there are still alot of dishes that need washing first.

Notes

Plan to bottle brown ale on monday (assuming the final gravity is about right)

Oatmeal stout notes:

1 - 1/2 tsp baking soda during mash for carbonate balance of acidic malts

Gonna try a very basic dry stout after the oatmeal:

Pale extract, black roasted unmalted barley, bittering hops = as basic as it gets.

I'm just shooting for a low gravity, extremely drinkable, simple dry stout. I will use probably only 1/2 cup corn sugar to bottle to simulate the low carbonation mouthfeel of the draught style of this beer.

I may make another batch of this to pitch right onto the yeast cake, except maybe I'll try some amber malt extract or some chocolate malt to see how that works with the flavor.