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!

This weekend... Stella Clone

We make lagers in the winter here for consumption in early spring.  We like to take advantage of the cold Kansas winters.  Our basements and garages turn into perfect places for lagering.  In truth  I can lager small batches year round... well to be honest I can lager a full 5 gallon batch but that is another story.   The point of counterbrew is to help new and intermediate brewers grow into some of the more intimidating aspects of home brew.  To help remove the fears associated with all grain brewing, with partial mash and with things like lagering.  If you like me have a spot or two in your home that stays around 52 F all winter long... make some lagers.

For me, on top of the fridge in the garage is the perfect spot.  It stays right at 50-54 all winter long.  it doesn't seem to matter if it is 32 F or -4 F outside.  It stays right around 50.   How do I know?  Simple, I put a thermometer up there.  When I walk out to the garage fridge, I check the temperature.  Last year, it stayed right around 52 all winter long.  I think in part it is from the heat coming off the Refrigerator, and from the kitchen, which is just on the other side of the wall.

So this weekend, MA and I intend to put up some Stella Clone, that we are calling Soldier Svejk.   Soldier Svejk is a Czech legend.   Not a true legend, but still an inspiration to the Czech people.  So why are we naming an American Lager, made in Leuven, packaged in Germany, by a company from Belgium / St Louis, after a Czech Legend?   Simple, originally Stella was Belgium's answer to the growth of Bohemian Lagers.   It is light, and crisp and assertively ( although no aggressively) hopped with Saaz hops.   And Saaz hops are Bohemian, and Bohemia is Czech.  So there.

This beer will be a partial mash.  My favorite way to brew.  Here is the recipe.

https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/soldier-svejk-bohemian-inspired-lager-80f303

If you have never checked out brewtoad.  You should.  It is the easiest brewing software I have ever used.  The tools and calculators continue to improve.  The customer service is fantastic.

Some quick updates for you.

• My golden bret beer has started bubbling away again.  Not aggressive action but some.  Everytime I drink a sour I pour the dregs in... I know that flies in the face of what you have read... but the choices were pour it out, or pour in the bret... I chose the later.
• My Champagne Lager has finished primary and is ready for transfer into secondary.  Ill handle that this weekend.  I want it off of the yeast.  Ill save the 2112 yeast one last time.  That makes 4 batches out of that yeast.  I never go more than 5. I dont think I posted about this one.  Think it was just for me.
• The groups, Belgian Strong Dark ale, with brown sugar, d180, pureed dried plums has finished primary.  It needs also to be racked and aged.   MA and I will probably handle that.  Ill save what I can of the yeast.  Probably give to friends and any one who wants it in KC.  We don't get WLP 500 year round so you make it last. 
• The 2.25 gallon  light lager is force carbing right now, in 3,  2 liter bottles.  You may recall that was one of the batches made with 34/70 at ale temps.  It takes longer when you force that yeast to perform at 64 F.  But it does ok and eventually cleans up into a great lager.  

That's all for now.... Prost!