Where the hell have I been?

It's been over a month since my last blog post. The truth is I really haven't had the time to write anything. Work has been extremely busy and taking up a good portion of my time. Some small/medium sized home projects have been lingering.

This weekend will be a nice homebrew session. Perhaps a nice Irish Red or Belgium Wit. Whatever I decide to brew, the most important thing is: this will be my first all-grain brew. I'll have pictures later this weekend of the session. Lots of em.
Check back Sunday.

There's been a lot of talk about Joe Strummer lately. Since I'm a fan of the Clash, I'm dedicating this entry to their late front man.

By order of the prophet, I decided to rack my pale ale in preparation for bottling. I was thinking about dry hopping this ale but I'm not sure if I want to. I have a small amount of hops on hand; Hallertau, Fuggles, Tetnang, and some bittering hops. I might use one of those, or I might just leave it as is.

Now over at the temple, the target gravity for this ale is 1.010 and that's where the beer is. I plan to bottle in the next couple of weeks.

The king called up his jet fighters because he was starting to worry about this batch. It was very active for the first couple of days, but then it seemed all activity in the airlock ceased. I did a gravity test and it was around 1.020ish. I stirred the beer a little and let it sit for another few days. I then did another test and it was at 1.012. So yet again, the advice and guidance from John Palmer's book paid off. Thanks John.

http://www.howtobrew.com/

I'm really looking forward to drinking this beer. I've been trying to find a good "every day" beer. I think a nice medium body pale ale with a little over 5% ABV can do the trick. I've had several pales before and some are very good, others are very...eh. A lot of them taste like vegetable stock was an ingredient. Can you say asparagus pale ale? I don't know about you, but I like my beer vegetable free. The pales that aren't vegetable like are about 8 bucks a six pack. That’s too expensive for an everyday brew.

Drop your bombs between the minarets and email me some suggestions at paul@paulbeer.com.

You know he really hates it.

With today being my last day of mini-vacation, I decided to brew a batch of beer. I took my amber ale recipe and made some modifications to it.

I swapped the pale LME for some light DME. I also skipped the step of adding the dark DME. My goal is to just try something different. I'm also hoping to brew something I can call my "every day" beer. I've been switching between Sam Adams, Flying Fish, Yuengling, Blue Moon, and my very own wheat ale.

The Sam Adams selection is nice but at 8 bucks a six pack, it's not really an every day beer. Flying Fish also isn't that bad. Their XPA (pale ale) ESB and their IPA are pretty good too but also a little too pricey for an every day beer. Yuengling and Blue Moon are good but not something I want every day.

The OG of this beer turned out to be 1.050. I let it sit at room temp for a while and the gravity stayed. Target FG should be around 1.010.

For hops, I chose to stink with East Kent Goldings and Fuggles. I added 2.5 ounces of EK Goldings and .75 ounces of Fuggles. I'm not sure I'm going to dry hop this beer. I may rack it to the secondary and bottle it in a few weeks.

Ugh...did I say bottle? I mean mini keg! We'll see when the time comes. I need to order some new minis.

Well that's all for tonight.

After weeks of wanting to brew something, I was finally able to do so today. I've been drinking a lot of English beers and I wanted to try and duplicate one that I really enjoy: Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale.

I dug up an old recipe in Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing book for an English style ale. Since I'm not prepared to go all-grain right now, I did the partial mash method. I went to my local homebrew supply place and picked up the ingredients. Six pounds of Munton's Amber DME, two pounds of biscuit malt, one pound of medium crystal, and English Ale yeast.

The recipe calls for .75 oz of Northern Brewer hops at 90 minute boil and then .5 oz of Northdown hops at 20 minutes. Since my homebrew supply place has been out of Norther Brewer hops since...I don't know when...I decided to use the Northdown hops instead. Since Northdown hops have a fairly high AA%, I didn't want to use them again because I was afraid that the beer would be too bitter. So instead I used .5 oz of Fuggles for the 20 minute boil.

Brewing today seemed to go by very fast. I started at about 11:30am and finished cleaning up everything at 3:30pm. Now most of that time was spent cleaning and sanitizing, and of course boiling wort. But it didn't seem to take that long.

Part of what made it go by quicker today was the introduction of my homemade wort chiller. I reduced the downtime in between boiling and yeast pitching to 15 minutes. Not bad at all! I had concerns about the wort chiller but after some retesting and today's results, I no longer have those concerns.

One issue I had recently with my amber ale was fluctuating fermenting temperatures. When that beer was in its primary, the temperature outside the house was in the teens. I normally have the beer near a heat vent to keep the temp up. Well, somehow that vent was closed and the temp dropped to about 63 (possibly cooler at night) and slowed fermentation down. The end result is a sour green apple taste.

Lesson learned. My new English Nut Brown Ale is happily fermenting away wrapped up in a fleece with a heating pad belt attached to the exterior wall of the fermenter. That should keep an optimal temperature for fermentation. (Hopefully!)

It was finally nice enough outside today for me to take some photos of my home made wort chiller. Instead of spending the 40+ to purchase one of these and wait a few days for delivery, I decided to stop by Home Depot and pick up the things needed to make one.

After spending about 28 bucks and about 15 minutes of assembly time, this is the finished product.

Here's what you need:

At least 20 feet of soft copper tubing. I used 3/8".
Depending on where you chill your wort, you may want to get at least 10 feet of 3/8" ID food grade vinyl hose (I bought 20 feet).
You will also need three #4 hose clamps and a 3/4" FH to 3/8" barb to connect to your sink faucet or an outdoor hose.

I coiled my tubing around one of my corny kegs. You can use a large coffee can or paint can if you don't have a corny keg. Leave about 18 inches or so of tubing to gently bend upwards. You may have to twist it in order to not kink the tubing.

Dry fit the immersion chiller into a 5 gallon bucket and see how well it fits. If it is touching the sides, you'll want to make a tighter coil. Try to leave at least 1 1/2 to 2 inches of space between the bottom coil and the rest. This is so the coils will site above any sediment that may settle at the bottom of your fermenter or brew kettle (or whatever you are cooling in).

Connect the one end of the wort chiller to your faucet and turn on the cold water to give it a test. Make sure your hose clamps are tight enough and not leaking anywhere. You don't want any leaky water running into your wort.

For cleaning, don't use anything that reacts badly to copper. Simply wash it off and dry it.

I'm also working on a 48qt cooler converted to a lauter tun. Check back in the next couple of weeks for that.

Jody and I took a tour at Flying Fish Brewing Co in Cherry Hill, NJ today. I've never been there before so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. When we walked in, we were greeted right away. And the folks at Flying Fish certainly know make you feel welcome: Free Samples!

Yes, I would like to "try" the XPA. I would also like to try the ESB, the Belgian Dubbel, oh and don't forget that IPA! Lovefish anyone?

The tour lasted about 30 minutes or so and we saw pretty much everything. They explain mashing, boiling, fermenting, pitching, filtering, and bottling (ugh).

And check this: the spent grain from the mash is picked up by local farmers for cow feed. Lucky cows!

So if you are ever in the area I suggest you check it out. Free tour and free beer.

http://www.flyingfish.com/

I know I probably shouldn't have, but I cracked open one of the wheat ales tonight. I was looking forward to it all day! (Does that mean I have a problem?)

I opened the bottle and heard the sound of gases being released. So far so good.

I slowly poured the beer into one of my Peroni glasses that I received for Christmas. Nice color, nice thick head. That's about all that was nice. It has an after taste that sort of sneaks up on you. Not my favorite. I think I was a little premature in opening this beer, at least I hope that's all. It will really suck if this beer...sucks.

 

Well at least it looks good!

I'll revisit this beer in a month or so. In the mean time, here are some pics. Enjoy!

The past few days have been pretty productive, as far as beer related activities go. Late last week, I bottled my wheat ale and last night I bottled my amber ale.

If you don't know by now, I've been posting pictures of my brews on Flickr under the name BierBrewer. Of course, Paulbeer was already taken. So instead of using a crazy name like Paulbeer38596748230, I decided to go with something a little different.

Amber Ale: I sterilized about a case and a half of 12 ounce bottles last night and also one 5L mini keg. I was going to do two 5L minis but since we are going on vacation in a few weeks, I want to make sure I can bring along some of my homebrew.

The mini kegs take about 4 weeks or so to carbonate compared to the 1 to 2 weeks for bottles. They are pretty easy to clean and fill. If they condition as good as a bottle, I'll be very pleased.

Since you need different amounts of priming sugar for mini kegs and bottles, I had to transfer the beer twice. Thanks to Google calculator, I was able to easily determine the proper amount of priming sugar per batch.

Priming Sugar Measurements

1 x 5L mini keg - 1 1/3 tablespoons (or 4 teaspoons) of priming sugar.
3.5 gallons for bottling - 8.5 tablespoons of priming sugar. (It was actually 8.4 but I rounded up)

I've done some research and found that the average amount of priming sugar for a 5 gallon batch for mini kegging is 1/3 of a cup. For bottles, I typically use 3/4 of a cup. Keep in mind this is for priming sugar. If you use DME or LME, your measurements will be different.

The color of the beer is a deep amber. The lower left tile in the mosaic shows just how dark it really is. The lower right pic looks like I'm siphoning oil out of a can. I should name it 10W-40 :) As the beer was transferring into the bucket, you could see the oils from the hops mixing in with the beer.

The aroma was very nice. Noticeable amounts of hops without any grassy undertones. I was a little concerned about that since I let it dry hop for longer than I originally planned.

Bottling was a breeze last night. I was able to fill 32 x 12 ounce bottles and have enough left over to fill the hydrometer tube. The fact that I didn't use enough water accounts for the deep amber color and the lesser than normal amount of beer. Oh well, I'm happy with the way it is turning out. I sampled a small amount and I think it will be very good.

We'll know in a week or so!

Paulbeer isn't just for home brews?

Nope. Starting in the near future, I'll be reviewing a new beer a couple nights per week. I'd like to stay off of the liver transplant list, so I will be limiting my reviews to 2 or 3 per week.

So the mini kegs arrived, are they in use yet?

Sadly, no they aren’t. I stink.

Work has been consuming most of my time lately, so my brews are still sitting in the carboys. I need to bottle/keg the dry-hopped batch soon. I don't want it to get "funky".

I know using work as an excuse is pretty lame. It's only partially true. I've just been lazy as shit the past few weeks. I want to bottle that stuff soon because I'm dying to try it out.

Maybe tomorrow night.

Short porch tonight...I'm a little tired. 

Have I mentioned that I hate bottling?

Probably.

After spending the night out last night wining beering and dining, I came home and found myself wide awake. Not only was I wide awake, but I felt the need to be productive. I took 3 cases of empty bottles and soaked them in hot soapy water so the labels would peel off somewhat nicely. I let them sit overnight covered so the soapy solution and heat would penetrate the paper and glue. When I checked them this morning, they were ready to be cleaned. I then spent the rest of the morning scrubbing bottles. Fun.

Why still mess with these damn bottles?

 

I’d like to bottle half of each brew and then keg the rest. I like the bottles for the portable and convenience factors, so I guess that’s somewhat of a fair tradeoff. According to UPS tracking: Mini keg kit should arrive tomorrow, NICE! Unfortunately, neither of the Paulbeers will be ready in time for Superbowl Sunday. :( That sucks.

 

Hey, nice labels!

 

As you can see, my fiancée has become quite the Anne Geddes. I have been employing her (annoying her is more like it) to take the photos that you see here on my blog. Some of them were taken by me, but those are the not so good ones. I’m getting my own DSLR camera soon and I’ll be taking the photos myself but until then, it’s all her. Thanks :)

 

I’ve been trying to come up with a label design for my homebrews, mostly for the bottles that I hand out to friends. I decided to use the header from my blog and make that the focal point. I didn't want the label to be too busy so I thought I'd just stick with the logo and a generic font for the type of beer. It needs a little work still, but I think it came out okay.

 

I think for the next version I'll make the logo smaller this way you do not see the drastic wrap around. A border around the edges might also work.

 

We shall see.