Stepping up production

It's been a little while since I posted. Not too much has happened in terms of brewing, and I mean that in all ways. The Jalopy 4 IPA has been in bottle for a good 4 weeks and is still completely flat. It looks like my yeast got cooked a little too much and aren't doing well. I also had my original problem of not finishing at a low enough gravity. So if I'm going to produce anything decently consistent (or drinkable at this point), I decided I need to get another fridge so I can control my fermentation temperatures better. I have a standard Ranco temperature controller coming to me from eBay, and I recently found an open box dorm fridge at Best Buy for pretty cheap. I had to make a few changes. As with most dorm fridges, the one I purchased has a small step in the bottom for the compressor. Though this step is smaller than most, I had to make a modification to the fridge in order for the 6.5 gal carboy to fit. I could either:
1) Place the carboy on the bottom, in front of the step. To do this, I would have to remove the shelving from the inside door.
2) Place the carboy on top of the step, and give it some supporting shelving. To fit it this way, I would have to bend the freezer box coolant element out of the way of the carboy neck and airlock.
I decided removing the shelves would be a safer bet. I hear that if you pinch a coolant line in the freezer shelf, it can mess up the whole thing. Unfortunately, the plastic mold of the inside shelving is what holds the rubber seal in place. So I went out and purchased a sheet of thin wood to replace it. The result actually looks pretty nice, though I'm going to have to give it some hefty sealant so it doesn't hold moisture and mold.

Also, as a utilitarian modification, I decided to turn the door into a chalkboard. That way I can know what's in there (if I never start getting that busy or senile w/ brewing), date started, temperatures, and whatever else seems useful. With a few coats of primer and a couple coats of the chalkboard spray paint, this has also turned out well.

Lastly, to solve the issue of needing to cool 5 gal of wort in the new stockpot, I also purchased an immersion chiller. I'm going to try to recirculate ice-water through the coil instead of just pumping a silly amount of not-so-cold tap water through it. I will also have a food-grade pump coming to be once it's back in stock.

I'm looking forward to getting this working and getting more serious about my beer brewing. I'm expecting the temp controlled fridge to go a long way to creating more consistent beers that will actually get to a decent final gravity! I'm thinking I'll make a Belgian Wit beer again, it would be nice for the summer (you might think I'm a little too late, but it'll be warm here for a while).

Cheers! I hope to post again soon with a new batch!

Beer update and an ultimate sin for dinner?

I transferred the Jalopy 4 into another carboy for secondary fermentation. I probably should have transferred it earlier, but I didn't have the time. Once again, the gravity is at ~ 1.020... I can never seem to get my beer to finish at a good gravity. I blame lack of temperature control. I keep my carboys in a large plastic trash can and fill it partially with water to at least make the temp changes a little slower, and even throw some ice in there when I can. It's been pretty warm in Denver as of late, so when I transferred the beer it was >75 F. It might be time to get a chest fridge/freezer or something to control that more, or at least get me more ice production.
As for dinner last night, still excited about my grill (I've been waiting a long time to have a grill again) I got some grilling stuffs from the store. Inspired by the wife and I's favorite restaurant The Linkery (whose food and people we miss), I decided to make mexi-dogs! What are mexican hot dogs? Well, take a normal hot dog, wrap it with bacon and cook it. Then put it in a bun and cover it with salsa and whatever else you want. Like such:

Where does the ultimate sin come from? Well, the few times I get hot dogs, I like to stick to Hebrew Nationals; they're delicious. It occurred to me that I might be committing something very bad by wrapping Hebrew Nationals with bacon...
Oh well, they were awesome. Paired up with some corn also prepared on the grill for a dinner!

That's El Pinto salsa on there as well. mmmm....

Cheers and good eats!

Weekend Gifts!

Two fun things came to me this weekend.
First was my new 9 gallon brewpot I got off ebay!
It came with welded on hole and threading for a ball-valve, and a false-bottom (insert inappropriate joke here)! Once I get a wort cooling system setup, I can do full 5 gallon boils instead of the 1.5 - 2 gal I'm doing now. And eventually I can take the step from boy to man with all-grain brewing. First I'll have to get a immersion chiller and maybe a food-grade pump to cool down 5 gallons of near boiling sugar water quickly.
What was the second gift of the weekend? Well my awesome wife picked me up a little gift on her way back from a conference in Costa Mesa, CA. It serves as a small reminder of our time living in San Diego:
He is currently adorning my monitor at work, nodding his head in approval at all I do.

Back on the wagon: Jalopy 4 IPA

Well, I've been meaning to startup this blog again for a while. I won't bother going through all that's happened in the last almost 2 years, so back to the beer!

First very important thing. The 'brewery' has a name! Crooked Mouth Brewing. Why Crooked Mouth? Well, my last name means crooked mouth, and I find it an amusingly appropriate name for a beer.

Now that my wife and I are settled into our new jobs and area, the I can spend some time on brewing. So what's going? Well, my first attempt at an IPA a while back didn't turn out well (not enough malt, so it tasted like a hop-tea), so it's time to try again.

One of my favorite beers in San Diego was Bear Republic's Racer 5.
And since it's not easily found in Denver, I went searching for a clone recipe. I found one, but it got changed around due to 1) leftovers I had on hand and 2) hop substitutions due to what my brewshop had (also limited by the hop shortage).
Without further adieu, the recipe.

Jalopy 4:

0.5 # of 2-row
0.5 # of Catastan 20 (15 lovibond)
0.25 # of Carapils
5.5 # Pale LME
3.0 # Munich LME (Amber malt extract)
1.5 # Wheat LME
0.25 # Turbinado Sugar (organic, raw cane sugar)

6.25 AAU Centennial (10% AA) for 90 min boil
8.9 AAU Amarillo (8.9% AA) for 60 min boil

Dry-hopped:
0.375 oz Centennial (10%)
0.25 oz Magnum (13%)
0.75 oz Cascade (whole leaf hops, old in my case, 7.6%)

Steep grains at 155F for 45 min. Etc, etc.

My starting gravity was 1.082! Racer 5 is supposed to start at 1.070. I probably didn't add enough water, but oh well. Why Jalopy 4? Well, it's my slapped together (Jalopy) version of Racer 5 with 4 different hops.
The foam was pushing the top of my 3 gal stockpot for almost the entire boil... I was blowing on it so much to keep it from boiling over (failed once) that I was light-headed for the last 15 min of boiling.

The fermenter is bubbling away as we speak. I hope it turns out better than my last IPA.

More to come! I promise!

Cheers!

Playing Catch-up 2: Der Belgian Wit

For my second brew, I wanted something appropriate for the summer and able to handle the increased temperature in the condo (no A/C in western parts of San Diego) . So on the weekend of June 17th, I went back to American Home Brewing Supply looking for a Wheat beer kit of some sort. After talking with the owner for a bit (who is very friendly and helpful) he told me the lack of Wheat beer kits is due to the fact that they are easy to make, and the kits usually turn out badly. He helped me out and I got setup to do a Belgian Wit (much like Blue Moon by Coors).

Ingredients:
Dry Wheat Extract: 6 lbs
Flaked Wheat: 1 lbs
Kent Golding Hops: 1 oz (20 min)
Saaz Hops: 1 oz (5 min)
White Labs Belgian Wit Yeast
Table Sugar: 3/4 cup (carbonation)

Start by boiling the 1.5ish gal. of water and adding the Flaked Wheat in a steeping bag (this will give the beer the cloudiness that is characteristic of wheat beers). Then remove the bag and add the 6 lbs of malt extract to the boiling wort. Once well dissolved, add the Kent Golding hops for a 20 min boil, then the Saaz Hops for the last 5 min. Cool quickly, and add to fermentor along with enought water to get up to 5 gal. Pitch the yeast when the wort is down to about 70° F.
I fermented this for about 3 weeks, used the table sugar as priming sugar (was a little iffy about this, but I didn't have any standard dextrose) and bottled.
Two weeks later I had a delicious wheat beer perfect for summer!


Cheers!

Playing Catch-up: Porter

Since this will ideally be a blog about my brewing, I figured I should clear some info on my first couple brews and get them out of the way.

I purchased my homebrewing kit from American Home Brewing Supply back in the middle of May. A standard 5 gal. kit with a 6.5 gal glass carboy, along with my first brew kit, the True Brew Porter!

Ingredients:
Unhopped Dark Liquid Extract: (1 can) 3.3 lbs
Dark Dried Extract : 2 lbs
Chocolate Grain Malt: 6 oz
Malto-Dextrin: 4 oz
Cascade Hops (pellet) : 1 oz
Ale Yeast
Priming Sugar: 5 oz

Brought 1.5 gals of water up to a boil, then reduced heat.
Steeped grain in a steeping bag in the hot water for 30 min.
Removed the grains and brought wort back up to a low boil.
While continually stirring, the liquid extract, the dried extract, 4 oz of the Malto-dextrin, and the hops was added to the boiling wort.
Boiled for 30 min.



I cool my wort by sticking the stock pot in the sink and filling the sides with cold water and adding ice. Once it's decently cooled, I added the wort to my carboy with 3-4 gallons of cool water to finish cooling. The yeast was pitched and I placed the carboy in the loft of our wee condo to ferment.
The wort never seemed to cool to a decent temperature for the yeast (ale yeast is generally good between about 65-75° F) upstairs in the loft. So after a few days, I moved it downstairs and it instantly dropped about 5°.
12 days of fermenting later, the priming sugar was added and the beer was bottled.
Original Gravity: 1.038
Final Gravity: 1.021

Which calculates to a whopping ~ 2.9% alcohol [(38-21)*0.14 + 0.50]
I have a feeling that the few days at 75+° might have wiped out the yeast and caused the low conversion. Nonetheless, the beer was good and those who have tried it liked it.
Cheers!

Start

This is Kyle finally getting off his rear and creating a blog. I'm going to try to keep this centered around beer/brewing and physics, but I'm sure I'll tangent into other interests of mine.