East Coast IPA Brew Day... and Vertical Tasting of Boulevard Rye on Rye.

The team gathering in the
garage with Bailey the
"lab-brew-doodle"

On Saturday morning the team gathered for an epic brew day.   We were determined to brew our version of an East Coast IPA.   10 gallons of hoppy deliciousness.   The recipe was set out in the previous post.  Basically a whole lot of Mosaic, Citra, and Cascade, with a touch of Warrior, and Simcoe, to add some bitterness on the front and in the middle.

Beth and Mashy Hoppinton
visited during brew day.  What
a cool mom, notice the beer.

This was a fairly medium gravity brew, only 22.5 lbs of grain.   The base grain was Vienna 20 lbs, and the only other additions are  2.5 lbs of wheat malt, and 1 cup of white flour (to make it murky).  The flour is the wild card,  we have never done that before.  We have never tried to make a beer cloudy before.   It was a real weird feeling, adding something to the mash for the express purpose of making a beer appear cloudy.  All of our grains came from Cargill.   The Vienna from Cargill is amazing stuff.  Malty and bready... gives an awesome back bone for a hoppy beer.  Meussdoerffer Vienna... We have made ECIPAs in the past with pale ale, or two row malt, and they were delicious, but the Vienna adds something that can stand up to all those hops.    

22 lbs of crushed grains about
to go into a 100 quart no sparge
mash tun. 

We crushed the grains fine  (35 mils) the day before at a friends who has a seriously big mill.   Like the kind you see at a home brew shop... But like an idiot, I left the grains in the car overnight, so they were at 51 F as we started the brew day.   We know from experience that when we brew no sparge in our cooler we loose about 7 F.   Even if we pre heat the mash tun.  So our software suggested we should be at 160 F Strike, so we added our grains first and then added 165 F water.    John had treated the water with Camden,  Lactic (2ml) and Calcium Chloride 2 g.   Our pH settled in nicely at 5.2, at temperature, so it was probably closer to 5.4 or 5.5... which is fine with us.

Brew in a bag in a mash tun
our favorite way to brew.
We know that 5 F to 6 F over
strike temperature will hit
our strike temp every time. This
cooler has a door in the lid, so
we can stir during the mash.

The mash went well.  We stirred every 15 minutes.   Our mash tun has a door on the top of the lid that we can open with out losing too much heat.  Our mash temps remained perfect at 149 to 152 F for the entire 60 minutes of the mash.   And we ended up overshooting by .004... which means we got 77% efficiency on a no sparge, brew in a bag, in a cooler... pretty darn cool.  This is by far the easiest and fastest way to brew.  Even with our complex boil schedule.  We were done brewing in 3.5 hours.   Although the brew day was much longer, due to bottling 20 gallons of beer, and the vertical tasting.

East coast IPAs are fun to brew, and relatively easy.  The boil went as planned due in no small part to organization of the ingredients, and preparation.   Jake got the group more disposable plastic cups for measuring hop additions.  The cups were labeled  and set out in order.  There was well over a pound of hops going into this 10 gallon hop monster.

Jaded hydra is the king of
all worth chillers.. pay heed
and homage!

The fun thing about the ECIPA style is so many of the hops go in at the end of the boil, and there are hop additions during the wort chill.  We made our flame out additions and then we used our trusty Jaded Hydra to chill the batch to 180 F.  At 180 F we added more hops and let them whirl pool for 30 minutes.  Then we chilled the batch to pitching temperatures.  The jaded hydra makes chilling the entire batch lightning fast.  It chilled from 212 F to  179 F in under a minute.  Of course cool ground water temperatures helped a lot.

10.5 gallons in the
chamber turning in to awesome
ECIPA.

Early in the day, John re hydrated three packs of US05.  They were ready to rock and roll when we pitched.   As of today (Tuesday) Both batches are fermenting well in the fermentation chamber at 65 F.  Tonight Jake and John will add 1 ounce of Mosaic, Citra, and Cascade to the fermenters.   In a couple of days the batch fermentation temperature will be raised to 68 F to encourage complete fermentation, then in a week another charge of dry hops.   The second dose of dry hops will only be exposed to the beer for 3 or 4 days.   Then it will be time for packaging.   We package beer when it is ready.  Well how do you know it is ready.   It is really simple,  take a gravity sample.   Take a sample and when it is at terminal gravity let it sit a couple of days to clean up.  That is all it takes.

We should be drinking this beer in about 2.5 to 3 weeks.   Can't wait.  This one should be great.

At the end of the brew day, after all clean up, we gathered in the house for a vertical tasting of Boulevard Rye on Rye.   2012 through 2016.    If you are not familiar with Boulevard's smoke stack series... Smoke Stack brews from boulevard are made on their smaller original brewing system.  And they are world class.   This is where Boulevard makes their limited release beers.  This is where Boulevard brewers are encouraged to experiment.   This is where Tank 7, and Lovechild, and Tell Tale Tart were born.  And Boulevard Rye on Rye is an outstanding beer.  It is a Rye Beer, aged in Rye Barrels.

We all had different impressions.   My favorite was the 2015.  It still had some of the Spicy Rye character.   I think everyone else preferred the 2014 version.   Love this beer, and I am thankful that my brewing partners can store and save beer.  I don't seem to have that discipline.   If you have never tried it, stop what you are doing and go get some.

Local Home brew store Brewday: Desir Tripel and Flower Child Saison

Brew Lab in Overland Park, Ks. 

So Saturday the gang was all back together.  But there was a twist.  We were all together, but we were brewing at our Local Home Brew store.  I have been to many home brew stores across this great land. And I have to say, for brewing beer, BrewLab in Overland Park, Kansas is one of the very best.   BrewLab has anything you could need to brew anything you want to brew.   If you live anywhere near Kansas City, or if you are just passing through and want to try a beer, stop by the Brew Lab.

BrewLab Selection of Grains!  There are more under the
counter in 5 g Rubbermaid containers. 

Their selection of grains is with out match in this area, and they sell them down to the 1/10th of a lbs.   The hops are available prepackaged, or in bulk.  And again you can buy down to 1/10th of an ounce.   Pretty Dang Cool. But the coolest thing about BrewLab is that they have 2 fantastic electric HERMs 3 vessel systems.   Andrew, invited us to come brew with him.   So, we did. But we are Counterbrew and we wanted to stick with what we have said in previous posts. So, rather than using his fancy systems, we used our 100 quart mash tun for mashing, and used his stuff for heating water, and boiling.

27.7 lbs of grain.
fills a 5g bucket

Our goal today was to re brew our belgian tripel inspired Desir et la Nuit.   We all love this beer.   It is a Belgian Tripel made with orange peel, and honey.  The resulting beer is fantastic the strong malt profile of a tripel, with a remembrance of honey and orange.  Strong but graceful.   The manager of BrewLab Andrew had the water de-chlorinated, heating and ready when we got there.  But there was one challenge, the water in old Overland Park is very high pH.   The pH meter read 9.2... Holy Hard water Batman! So we had to use some acid, some gypsum, and some Epsom to get it where we wanted.  Our grain bill has 12 ounces of acidulated malt, so once we got to 6.2 pH, we trusted the grain bill to take it the rest of the way.   Our grain bill was 27.7 lbs of grain and 4 lbs of organic local honey.  That is a lot of grain.  And our predicted OG was 1.082. So we decided to partigyle the grains and make a Saison  with the second running.  The Saison was inspired by Boulevard's Spring Belle Saison.   (More on that later... floral hops, floral additions... should be amazing).

Jake and Ben, hanging out and talking during the mash.
The 100 qt cooler has a door on top for stirring and additions.

Once the water was adjusted, we set up to dough in.  Doughing in this much grain is a 2 person job. But once doughed in we hit our target rest temperature of 115 F.   This is a step mash.  We began with a beta glucan rest. The wort turned milky over the next 15 minutes.  Our next rest was achieved by adding boiling water to take the mash to 132 F.   Where we again rested for 20 minutes while our next infusion heated to a boil.   So far so good, everything was going smoothly...

One of 2 eHERMs systems at BrewLab KC

And here is where we goofed up.  We were impatient on the next addition.  It was probably only at about 200 F when we added it.  The laws of thermo dynamics are not something to be trifled with.  So rather than rising to 146 F as we had hoped, we rose to 139 to 142 F.  Well Damn! Still firmly in Beta Amylase Saccharification range, but seriously?  There is really no curing this screw up.  We could have pulled a decoction and brought it to temperature, but this was supposed to be a tripel, we didn't really want that color to change. So we just went forward.   Our next addition (final addition) brought the mash to 148 F.  Where we rested for 30 minutes.   To get closer to mash out, and to get the deep golden color we wanted, we pulled a 4 gallon thin mash (no grain) decoction, boiled it and brought the temperature back up to 158 F.

the tripel boiling in
a 20 gallon kettle

We collected 13 gallons of wort (mout) as we had predicted.  The boil on their system is fast and awesome.    We knew that after kettle loss and boil off we would package around 11 gallons of wort.  We did meet one challenge in the boil,  our preferred hop for this brew is Styrian Golding.  Unfortunately, Styrian Golding is 1.4% Alpha Acid this year.  To get our bittering IBUs we would have had to add 7.8 ounces of hops for 60 minutes, and 4 ounces for flavor.   And that would have made a grassy, grassy beer.  So we switched the bittering hops to Willamette.  At 10 minutes we added 4lbs of local organic honey.  We pitched T58 and BE265 (abbaye) into well aerated wort.    This should be amazing beer, if it is anywhere close to our last batch of this, well be in for a treat.

The Saison boiling in a 20 gallon
kettle.  Looks so small.

Here's a quandry,  what do you do with 27.7 lbs of grain on a infusion mash/ no sparge brew day?   I mean, they are just sitting there.  They still have loads of sugar in them.   Here's an idea,  Partigyle.   If you are unfamiliar with partigyling a batch of beer, it just means this.   After you have collected your wort,  you add more water to the mash tun and collect a second batch of wort.   We knew that in a beer that was generating 1.062 wort for our first batch, if we just added 7 gallons of 168 F water to the mash tun, we would collect a 1.031 wort 15 minutes later.   You see there is till a lot of sugar in the grains.  And as long as your pH is in line and your temperatures are not too high, you can still collect this wort and make a beer out of it.   It was a common practice among English brewers of old.  We'll be exploring this more in a future post.   But on this day, we used the second runnings to make a Flower Child Saison. A saison hopped with Noble Hops, and flavored with Heather, Chamomile, Corriander, and Black Pepper.   I'm almost as excited about that batch as I am for the tripel.   If you're in Kansas City in about a month stop by the BrewLab and give it a try.  BrewLab can not sell you a beer, but they can let you try a sample.  They usually have some pretty cool stuff on tap.  Ever tried a Cascadian IPA and a  Pliny the Younger Clone, on the same day?

Overall it was a fun brew day.  But our next batch is going to be a simple straight forward single infusion mash.   No complications, no decoctions, no step mash, just simple straight forward beer.  I think we all need a break from complication for a while.   I think were leaning toward an americanized ESB  that John Designed, or maybe a Centennial Blonde.   But for you brew geeks, don't worry, Mark and I will be doing another crazy small batch soon, and probably some wine.

Another dIPA Brew Day...

Saturday,  the gang gathered to brew another dIPA.   (see previous post).   Today we were using up the amazing hops sent to us by the good people at BSG, and all Cargill Malts.    If you have never used Cargill malts,   you really should give them a try. (although, you probably already have and didn't know it, Cargill brings you Dingeman's, Warminster, and Gambrinus Malts)  We get consistently great quality, and excellent extraction from Cargill.    Today's brew featured Cargill Pale Two Row,  Acidulated, Carapils, and C80.   Yes I realize C80 wasn't on the previous post.  We decided the color was too light so we added C80.

Jake's mom dropped by, and brought us a "todd the ax man"
Damned fine beer.

Today's brew was a no sparge brew in a bag in a cooler.   This has become our standard brewing method as a team.   It is true that you get slightly lower efficiency from this method.   But only slightly.   Your crush is what really influences your efficiency.  Today we got 75.96% efficiency.  When we do pure BIAB with a sparge rinse we generally get about 10 points higher.   But the brew days also last at least an hour longer.   I personally am just fine with our efficiency.  Too many home brewers are focused on efficiency, as if it is the goal of home brewing.   " Well you may have won a bunch of awards, and make world class beer but...(sniff, puff chest out)  I get 92% efficiency..."   My response, as always, is..."Dude Brah...I don't care, all I care about is flavor".  If I had to drop to 50% efficiency to make the flavor I wanted, I'd do it in a heart beat.   Although that would be really hard with Cargill malts, they extract so very well.

Crush your grains fine.  It will increase efficiency.

Listen to me people.  I am going to say it again.   There is more going on in the mash than the extraction of sugars.   There are so many flavor components happening due to the mash.   A little more grain is probably a really good thing.  Although this is strictly empirical observation, it is my belief that I get a maltier, bready-er, nuttier, flavor from efficiency around 75%.

Our crush is fine.  We set the mill to the thickness of a credit card.  There are no un broken grains, and many of the husks are torn.   "What?  that is heresy.  You can't shred the husks, you'll make tannins. "    No, no you won't.  Not if your water pH is appropriate,  5.2 to 6.0   you are just fine.   We even decoct with our crush, and never have issues with tannins.

We stir, check pH, check gravity, and taste ever 15 minutes.

We stir, check pH,  check the gravity, and check the temperature every 15 minutes.  We record the information in our brew log.   We were at 1.058 with in 30 minutes, which was our target mash gravity.   But, and this is a big but,  we kept going until we reached the magical taste that we were looking for.   How do you know when you have "the taste"?   Simple,  TASTE YOUR MASH, it will change how you brew.    We produced 6.6 gallons of wort, at 1.062 OG.  Lautering was easy,  we drained into the boil kettle, gave the bag a good squeeze, and proceeded to the boil.

The 210,000 BTU beast on what is left of my old 3 vessel
stand.  Can't believe there used to be one even higher...

Now, we have to talk about the boil, the chill, hop additions, and post boil gravity checks.   With my 210,000 BTU burner we get to a boil in under 15 minutes.  If we collared the stand we would get there even quicker, so expect that project in the future.   Just before the boil, I added the Nugget Hops, 2 ounces.   Centennial was next at 30 minutes, .8 ounces.  The idea of the Centennial was just to make sure there wasn't a hole in the middle of the beer.   We did use a bag for the hops this time.  All of the other hop additions were at flame out or dry hop.   At 10 minutes we put in yeast nutrient, and our Jaded Hydra Chiller.   The Jaded Hydra is the king of immersion wort chillers.  At the end of the boil we added 2.5 ounces of Mosaic,  1 ounce of Cascade, and 1 ounce of Galaxy.   Were hoping for a citrusy, juicy hop bomb.  That is what all calculators, including ScottJanish.com point to.

After 30 minutes our temperature
went up 1 degree?  Not really,
it just means we stirred out a
hot spot in the mash!

The chill was staggeringly fast.  We took our 5.5 Gallons of wort from 210 F to 68 F in under 5 minutes.   Yes, under 5 minutes.   If you are in the market for a wort chiller,  get a Jaded Hydra.  We'll post videos soon of the chilling.   It is truly amazing.  When you are checking the post boil OG of a hop monster I have a word of advice for you.  Have a sanitized thief, or sanitized turkey baster ready to go.   Hop monsters have so much hop oil in them that they can, and do throw off the gravity readings.   Do not argue this point with me, it is no supposition, it is fact.  Oil is lighter than water, and way lighter than a 1.078 OG beer. To get our final gravity, we had to get several inches down into the wort.   We got 1.078.  So we were a little high.  But not terrible.  We have seen this phenomenon over and over again with dIPAs.   So just be prepared.  Go deep young man!

Earlier in the day, John had made a brew day starter.  Another favorite technique.  Think of it as rehydration on steriods.   He makes a 1.035 wort, and in this case pitched 2 packs of yeast into it (04 and 05)  He does this before the brew day begins, so the yeast has all day to get going and ready.  We see activity quickly,  as quickly as with liquid yeast.   The yeast experience less shock when they go into the actual wort.   Good technique give it a try.

Over all an awesome brew day.  And what should be another hop monster.  We still have to dry hop with Citra, and Mosaic.  But already the flavor is extraordinary. We also tasted HOPTONITE, should be amazing.  And we made some corrections to the hops flavor and aroma of Pliny the Petulant. It just isn't quite "pliny" enough.   Mark Anthony brought a flight of Smokestack Series Boulevard Stouts. The 2014 Aztec Stout was flipping amazing.   That is part of the fun of a brew day.  Tasting amazing beer.

That is all for now sports fans.  Prost!