Brewing on your counter - You don't need to spend much to make great beer!

As you all know, I struggle to find a balance between my desire for the shiny, flashy, fancy brewing gear I see on the inter webs, and my knowledge that this gear is for the most part, completely unnecessary.   Cool, but unnecessary. After all, I have more brew gear, accumulated over years  of brewing than most home brewers.   When we brew as a group, we use this gear; my keggel, a 100 quart mash tun, my 210,000 BTU banjo burner.  So, we can make some seriously big batches of beer. But, when I brew on my own, what should I use?  So the other night, as a way to fight off boredom and pressing reality, I found myself again looking at cool systems on the web.  Recirculating mash machines, eherms, and rims systems.  I read all about them, and then I found this little disclaimer on one of the websites,  "by adding a sparge rinse many brewers report efficiency of almost 80%"

Excuse me?  80%?  I can do 80% in my sleep with my good ol cajun injector electric turkey fryer.  I thought these things were more efficient.  Turns out they are not.   That is when it hit me, why in the world would you spend money on something that is less efficient and makes beer that is the same or lesser quality?   The only possible explanation is that theses systems are really cool.  And they are cool.  I'll be one to admit they are far out freaky cool neato. Wort is moving around, that seems like a good thing.  Pumps are pumping, that seems more advanced some how.   But at the end of the day they are no better at making beer than a $100 electric turkey fryer.   They are faster, but are they $800 faster?  Again, no.  my cajun injector has a 1650 watt heating element.  I can add a 1300 watt element for under $20, in the form of a bucket heater.  So if I really get worried about how long it takes to come to a boil, I just put in the bucket heater.   Which means, I go from mash out to full boil in under 30 minutes.  Since my kettle is now insulated with foam, I seem to get there in about 17-20 minutes.  I have done the math.  I know it should take 25.4 minutes based on kWs and BTUs but I'm telling you it seems to be about 18 minutes.


So, for me, I will choose my good ol Cajun Injector electric turkey fryer.  And I strongly suggest the rest of you who have not spent big money on a brewing system yet, also consider the same. I am not a spokesperson for Cajun Injector, they aren't even a sponsor.   I just like it. With the Cajun Injector you can do full volume extract, 5 gallon, partial mash 5 gallon, and all grain BIAB 5 gallon up to about 1.060 OG.  Above that you'll have to do a partial mash.




When you are making small batch the Cajun injector handles them easily.   When you are making 5 gallon batches you have to boil with the lid on but a jar.   I have done this literally hundreds of times, and I have never had an issue with DMS.   DMS has more to do with the modification of the grains than anything else. As long as you boil hard, chill fast, and make sure your wort can vent, there is little risk of DMS.

So here is my process for all grain biab in the Cajun injector.

1. I grind my grains fine.  This is the key to excellent efficiency.   My mill is set to the thickness of a credit card.  No, I do not get astringency,  yes I do get some flour.   I don't care what you have read, or what you wish was true.  The finer the grind, the better the efficiency.   Physics is physics.  More surface area equals more enzyme and starch interaction.  
2. I put the basket in, and then the bag.  The bag is big enough to go over the edges of the kettle.  I can hold 11lbs of grain. I think maybe I could get 12 lbs.  But 11 lbs is enough for a 1.055 to 1.060 beer.  
3. I use as much water as I need to create a reasonably thin mash. Somewhere between 3.5 and 4.5 gallons of water.   The rest of the water is used for infusion step mashing, or for sparge rinsing.  I almost always step mash or decoct.  It simply tastes better.  The exception is a simple blonde ale for which I use my "set it and forget it process". Ill be posting about this process soon.  
1. Example  Champagne Lager 7.6 lbs of Pilsner, .9 lbs of flaked rice
1. 3.62 gallons of water at 139.7 (140 F) rest at 132 F for 15 minutes
2. Add 3.5 quarts of boiling water to raise mash temperature to 146 F rest for 30 minutes.
3. Add 3.6 quarts of boiling water to raise mash temperature to 156 F rest for 20 minutes.
4. Add 6.2 quarts of boiling water to raise mash temperature to 168 F rest for 10 minutes.
2. Total water used in step mash is 6.92 gallons,  Which leaves 1 gallon for sparge rinse. 
3. I sometimes just use 8 to 9 lbs of grain and just add DME to get a higher gravity.  
4. I also like to do decoction in order to reach mash out.  So sometimes I skip the mash out water addition and pull a thick decoction. Right after the 2nd infusion.  
1. Yes, I am a nerd who enjoys decoction. 
2. For higher grain amounts there may not be enough water for sparge and mash out.  When that is the case I definitely decoct to get to mash out. 
4. I drain the bag on a rack set over the kettle.  Then I vorlauff,  yes I vorlauff.  I drain a gallon or two and pour it through the grains.  Not sure if I have to, but the beer sure is clear.  Then I sparge with remaining water to volume.
5. From here on out it is just like any other batch of beer.  Boil and make hop additions.   The one difference is that I leave the lid on during the boil, but a jar by about 2".  See the video above. 

Many of you have asked about the Cajun Injector Electric Turkey Fryer.  So there it is,  that is how I have been brewing on my own, and that is how I suggest any of you brew who don't want to spend big money on brewing, and who want to brew inside.  But the real point is you can use affordable gear.  You can follow processes that are proven, and fun for you.  And since my life is changing,  I will be brewing lots of small batches.  2.25 to 3.5 gallons.    And the Cajun injector rips through a small batch no problem.  In fact, when I do small batch I tend to just to no sparge full volume BIAB and use the element to step mash.

I am here by promising a full on illustrated step by step brew day with this system.  A 5 gallon batch of an ultra malty, German Festbier, with videos.  Soon the counterbrew YouTube channel will launch. So you can watch our geekery in all of its video recorded glory.  You can also expect more posts from counterbrew contributors.  Mark will be spending time in Brazil and reporting on the growing craft beer scene.  John is going to write about cloning great beers, and using the internet and brew tools to perform due diligence on a recipe.  Jake will be writing about the financial side of home brew, and examining whether it is a cost savings or a money pit.

That is all for now sports fans.  Wishing you peach and good beer.

Friday Brewed an All Citra IPA with the crew Saturday Brewed my Stell"ale" a great brew days...hot brewing action photos at bottom

Friday was new years day.  Banks and Markets were closed all over the world.  The turbo charged, whirling gears, and clogs that are our modern world, all ground to a stop. And for  a moment there is peace in our crazy lives...  So, what else would we do but brew some beer.  On this day, an all citra hop IPA designed to be somewhere between Zombie Dust, and Pseudo Sue.  Trying to get the bitterness of Pseudo Sue with the brightness of Zombie Dust.

Recently I have been talking with the good people at Cargill.  Cargill is a US Based Grain company.  It is almost not fair to call them a grain company, their business model reaches into so many different sectors.  Luckily for us, as home brewers, it reaches into some of the finest malts you can buy.  Cargill is a dominant force in macro beer production.  But they are still growing in homebrew, and craft brewing.  If you type "Cargill homebrew" into a search engine, you'll find homebrewers every where trying to find their products.   They were kind enough to supply some malt for me to try.  And, boy did that malt perform...

After using their malts a couple of times,  I can now say... "go, young padawan, and find Cargill Malt at a local home brew shop near you".  This stuff is awesome.  It extracts like crazy,  The flavor of the malt was bready, and nutty, and sweet, and complex.  Awesome Stuff.  Will I exclusively use Cargill in the future?  No.  I'm still a fan of Rahr, and MCI, and Briess as well, but I sure will happily use Cargill when I can get it.  The point is don't limit yourself.   There are many great malts made by many great companies.   Try them, find the one that works best in your recipe.

Friday's  brew session was with out event, other than a little spill of grains... on a garage floor. Pre-boil, who cares... we scooped up what we could, we picked out anything we saw and we headed to the mash. The crew is getting good.  The brew was very good.  And we bottled up 5 gallons of Cream ale that is going to be amazing.  Although, Jake did note if this is an amazing beer it is going to be difficult to replicate what ever dirt and minerals were picked up from the garage floor.

Saturday, SWMBO went to a "married at first sight" marathon wine party.   So, I brewed again.  (And if she leaves today, to go binge watch the Kardashians with her friend "DameDrama", I'm brewing an apricot wheat beer.)

Saturday brew in detail.   Stell"ale".  My lagering capacity is full (1 carboy, Need to work on that).

I ground my grains Old school.   The bid red funnel and the tall hopper will hold about 5 lbs of grain.   This recipe is only 5.8 lbs of grain.  So I didn't bother with the drill.   Just 5 minutes of good ol fashioned hard work.  I will admit my old arms do get tired when I grind by hand.  But there is something satisfying about grinding your grains up by hand.

The grist was perfect. I had set my mill to the thickness of a credit card. My advice for all brewers is get a bag and set you grain mill fine.  Even if you are a 3 vessel brewer.  Your efficiency will climb.  My efficiency with my 3 vessel set up is around 75%,  with brew in a bag I always get into the 80% region.   Sorry for the awesome photography of the grist.  I was boiling water to clean the brew kettle, so it was kinda steamy.


I mashed this batch at 148 for 60 minutes then rose to 168 for 1 minute.  Total mash time was about 78 minutes.  I think I created a very fermentable wort.  After sparge my gravity was 1.032.  Not too shabby.  With only 5.8 lbs of grain in 6 gallons of wort, that is somewhere around 89.3% efficiency.

The mash was awesome.  The cajun injector electric turkey fryer was awesome at keeping the temperature perfect.  I use my cajun injector electric turkey fryer for partial mash and low og all grain.  Never have a problem.   I set the temperature conttrol to 150 F and stir occasionally.  If the temperature falls below 148 F, I simply turn it up to 175 F for a couple of minutes, then back to 150 F.

I sparged this one to a volume of only 6 gallons, not 6.5.  I knew I would be adding corn sugar dissolved in a gallon of water as fermentation slowed.   I began my boil with my lid on but a jar.  The boil is rigorous when I follow this method.  I never have problems with DMS and I have covered this issue ad nauseum on this blog.

The hop selection for this batch was almost 100%  US Saaz.  US Saaz had a weird year.  The reported AAUs for saaz this year were 8.9%.  That is way high for a hop that is usually 3.5 to 4.25% alpha acids.  I did throw in .1 oz of nugget at 60 just to make sure I was around 21 IBUs.

At the end of the boil, I chilled, and shook to aerate.  Then I pitched re-hydrated US05 by Fermentis, you should really give it a try.  It is reportedly the famous "Chico" ale strain from a brewery in Chico California... It can be your go to yeast for almost all "clean" ale styles.  Styles where you don't want the yeast flavors to be more pronounced.

I realized I have become spoiled with my double coil chiller.  I only used the 25' copper chiller for this batch and chilling took 30 freaking minutes.  Back to the double coil next time.  I pitched rehydrated US 05.  And a calm but active fermentation had begun by 6 hours later.  I say calm but active.  Remember this batch was only 1.039 after the boil.   It isn't going to have a super vigorous amazing fermentation.

Tonight , I'm adding corn sugar and 1 gallon of water to the wort.  This is a great old school trick to use to help your beers finish out lower.  Don't add the simple sugars to the early part of the fermentation.  Wait until you have a big healthy colony of yeast in there.  Yeast will always eat the easy sugars first.  But if you give them the easy (simple) sugars after they are established, you will wake them up and get them munching again.   The result, they'll finish eating all of the maltose too... Boom! a clean, dry, ale... that tastes like a lager.   I'll update the blog with more pictures after I add the corn sugar.

Update:  it is 11 days later and this beer is done fermenting.  It tastes amazing.  It had fining added 2 nights ago and is currently cold crashing.   Still looks a little hazy in the carboy, but not in the hydrometer or the wine glass I use to taste.  So I'm bottling it up tonight.  I told you all how easy this beer is.  John and Jake both have tried it and assured me I am not crazy.  It really is excellent.

Update 2:  This beer is amazing.   There is the slightest fruity hint from the ale yeast.  Next go round well use K97.   But it tastes just like a stella.  Fantastic! brew it!

Overshooting gravity... is still missing the mark

Early Saturday morning Mark and I set out to brew a clone of Stella Artois, that we were calling Soldier Svejk.  In all honesty it is a warm up for a real Czech Pils we'll be doing soon.  Stella is good beer.  In my world, I judge a beer by how it tastes.  Not by whether or not it was brewed at a factory rather than a brewery.

Anyway, Saturday morning we set to make a stella clone.  Things went well with the mash. We doughed in and hit our target temp.  And aside from the mash getting too hot at the end (which isn't really a problem) the mash was uneventful.

Now this batch was a partial mash.  So we followed my time tested, award winning, ultimately awesome, process for partial mash.   We BIAB mashed in the turkey fryer,  We added 2 gallons of water in which we had dissolved the Pilsen LME,  We sparge rinsed to volume.  And that is when the trouble started.   Our Initial gravity was way high.  When I partial mash, I plan on only getting 70-75% efficiency.  We got 92%.   Freaking 92%.  now a lot of you would be excited by this.   Overshooting is certainly better than undershooting.   I however was not amused.    Overshooting is still a flaw in the process. Overshooting means your beer will not have the bitterness you expected from the hops.

Overshooting mean, your beer will not have the alcohol content you planned.  Overshooting means you will have to baby sit your freaking primary fermentation to help make sure the yeast gets down to where you planned.  (yes there are things you can do to improve attenuation, more to follow)  So, although overshooting by a point or two on a batch is kinda cool, overshooting by 10 points is not cool.


Here is the good news.   It was a really fun brew day.  Even when you goof up, brewing is still a blast.  Even figuring out what to do to fix your screw up is a great time.  In our case, we added additional hops.   Had we not, we would have had a beer that was no where close to what we had wanted.  I had some Nugget in the freezer.  It is powerful ju ju, with a whopping 14.4% alpha acid.  Just barely under .2 ounces of nugget took our IBUs back up to where they belonged.

So how did we know what to do?  Experience.  How did we plan what to do?  Technology.  You have to use brewing software when you brew.  I prefer and continue to promote brewtoad.com  It is so easy to use.  And on days like this, the ease of use shines.  Of all the things I promote and talk to you all about on this blog, this is among the most important.   Purchase and use brewing software,  you just have to.   Well you don't have to, but if you don't,  you are a loathsome scallywag and the angels weep for you.   When you are using brewing software you can use the software not only to plan the recipe, but also to make the corrections.   In our case we opened the recipe and began increasing the efficiency until the predicted starting gravity matched our hydrometer test.    This of course showed us that our IBUs would be too low, at the higher gravity.   So we then went to the freezer and looked at my pitifully low selection of hops.  Nugget was the right choice, brewtoad.com helped us determine that .17 ounces was just about perfect to keep the IBUs where we wanted them.


Mark had Star Wars tickets for noon, so we made the decision to "No Chill" this batch.   I wont go over no chill again.   Basically you wrap up your pot and let the beer come to pitch temps naturally.   The batch was ready for pitch by noon the next day (today) but my beloved Kansas City Chiefs were on the television.  So the yeast got pitched at 3.   The yeast was another adventure.  I was rehydrating  Fermentis 34/70.  It was in a mason jar on the counter.  Unfortunately one of the hobbits who lives here, chose today as the only day they ever clean the kitchen.  This particular hobbit thought the yeast was milk that had gone bad... down the drain.... rinsed out, and actually set on the rack to dry.... what the what?  You had to pick today to actually clean up something?   Not to worry, I am a full metal brewing geek.  I have plenty of yeast in the garage fridge.   I pitched 2 pints of some Wyeast 2112 yeast slurry.   This is a lager yeast that performs ok at ale temperatures, and very well at low ale temperatures.  So rather than fermenting in the garage, the beer is happily fermenting in the basement.    The only snafu with 2112 is that it doesn't attenuate as well as 34/70.  But attenuation is apparent, and if you know the tricks you can make any beer attenuate out almost completely.   So... more to come on that as I babysit this beer to awesomeness.   I will be writing a couple of posts on this beer, and how to make a beer come out great... even when you goof.

Up coming blogs.

• How to maximize attenuation - come along on this magical journey where I show you how to get a beer to attenuate out all the way.  Even when the yeast doesn't want to cooperate.
• How to adjust flavor before bottling.  I will be showing you how to make your own hop potions.  I will be making sure that Soldier Svejk is awesome with a combination of homemade hop shot,  Home made flavor shot, and with dry hops.   Well get this soldier home.
• New Years Day Lager brew... The brew crew will be continuing our series of lager brews.  Probably a Maibock, and hopefully either a Czech Pils, or a Premium American Lager.    

Thanks as always for reading... happy brewing.  Prost!

Cream Ale Brew Day - PROCESS CONTROL BREW

Saturday Brew Day... Cream Ale.   John's First Recipe for the team.

John and Jake trying
Pliny the Petulant

Every now and then you need to to a "process control brew".   A brew that reveals any and all of the potential flaws in your process.   A brew that can't hide any of these problems.   For us... that brew is a very light ale.  Cream ale or Blonde Ale.   Today, it was a cream ale.   So what separates a blonde ale from a cream ale?  They are very similar afterall.  And today's batch was mostly Rahr 2 row malt.  Perfect for cream ale.  Rahr 2 row should be a part of your regular brewing regimen. 

The things that separates a blonde ale from a cream ale are two fold.  1.  Cream ales almost always have corn and or rice in them.   And they always have an adjunct grain  of some kind. Blonde Ales only have barley in them, base and crystal.  2.   Cream ales almost always feature noble hops, or the american version of a noble hop.  Blonde ales often feature another type of hop.  i.e. biermunchers centennial blonde.  Cascade, centennial,  even citra are used in blondes some times.  

I'm actually a big fan of cream ales.  Not only do they taste delicious.  They protect your inventory of more esoteric beer from the muggle hoards who want to "try" your home brew.   You know the type,  friends of your wife who think bud is actually the king of beer.    These people are dangerous to your inventory.

forgot the grate we normally
use, had to raid the oven.

So we set out to brew a cream ale.   John wrote a great recipe.   And we started early Saturday morning.   Well early for the millennials, for me... a certified Gen Xer... it felt like noon.

We doughed in at 156.9 hoping to mash at 149.  But we had a tough time maintaining temperatures.  First time with the electric rig at Johns house.  Now that may seem like a cop out, but trust me, it is not.  The power in the older homes is wildly inconsistent.  We eventually figured out that turning off the accent lights in the family room, gave us consistent power, and mash temps.  It was Me, John, and Jake this week.  MA having fallen victim to some dreaded illness... So, other than the temperature fluctuations, the mash was uneventful.  We followed our normal, taste and see mash method.    The mash was done in just under 65 minutes.  Remember, a mash with corn in it is going to take longer.  The enzymes in the barley have to convert the corn as well...

Despite the ups and downs of our mash, we still exceeded our targeted SG.  This time we just barely overshot.  We hit 82.3% efficiency.  Which is a little low for Johns house.  So that tells us the inconsistent mash did have an effect on our efficiency.

The boil was straight forward with on 3 additions, Mt. Hood, Liberty, and Liberty.  We wanted to stick with American hybrids of noble styles.    This beer after all was originally created by American brewers to compete with light lagers.

Here is the cajun injector in action during our boil.  It really does well with the lid on but ajar like that.  It is so rigorous, and vents so well, DMS is never a problem.

At the end of the boil, we used both immersion chillers to cool the batch.  That is parallel 50 linear feet of cooling power.  The chill only took 15 minutes, for a 5.5 gallon batch.  For fun we left the thermometer in the pot,  It was cool to watch the needle sink so fast.

After chill down, we aerated for a good 25 minutes with the aquarium pump, and then we pitched a very healthy Fermentis S04.  Fermentis says you don't have to rehydrate any more.  But we always do.  We actually rehydrate at the beginning of our brew day.  Lots of guys think because you don't have to rehydrate... you shouldn't.  I'm sure Kevin and the gang at Fermentis would still agree it is preferable to rehydrate.   With the billions and billions of cells we get from a dry yeast package there is no reason to make a starter.  By rehydrating 4 or so hours before pitching, we get amazing yeast action.  Our beers are bubbling away with in hours of pitching.

Overall it was a great brew day.  We were shooting for 1.048, we got 1.052.  So we overshot a bit, but not too bad.   This should be an amazing cream ale.  John reports that the active portion of fermentation is largely over.   The S04 was so healthy and in such a healthy environment that it took off like a rocket.  We'll let it sit for a while to clean up before bottling.  But it is really cool to see such a healthy fermentation.