My Minimal Oxygen Transfer Method

Author: Andrew October 2, 2018

I made a NEIPA, which I love and hasn’t turned brown… for those unaware, these things oxidize quickly.

I fermented this in a plastic carboy to give me the potential to transfer to a keg with minimum oxygen. This was the first try, so I did have some issues (which are addressed in the procedures, I’m not talking about my screw-ups here).

1: Cold Crash (if possible)

Cold crashing will remove much of the yeast from suspension, and that will likely improve flavor. I skipped this because my fermentation chamber is unable to go below 55 (actually, I’m not even sure if it’ll go below 60, but it can keep an ale at 68).

2: Setup

The basic bare-bones of this is a gravity transfer. That being said, the fermenter needs to be up on something and the destination keg needs to low (like on the floor). You should already have a racking cane in a siphon cap and the other end should be prepared with a CO2 line. Since I don’t have an extra CO2 tank, I fitted mine with a gas post. Make sure you use Oetiker clamps or worm clams on the gas lines!

Carboy cap. The port that is going straight up-and-down is where the racking cane goes and the other end should be able to fit a barbed fitting for the CO2 line. Click on this to buy one on Amazon and support this blog.

You can see the top has a racking cane to a tube (which goes to the liquid line on the keg) and a tube to the CO2 source (which are worm-clamped to ensure one doesn’t fire off)

The destination keg should be purged of oxygen (fill it with CO2 and pull the pressure-release valve or otherwize depressurize the keg (mine are pin-lock, so I fill and then use another gas post to depressurize). Additionally, if you’re like me and don’t want to move your CO2 tank, you can use an empty keg as a temporary tank – purge that keg and then pressurize.

If you keg hop, as I did with this, bag the hops and place in the keg before purging.

The only time the fermenter has any oxygen exposure is if you have to remove a blow-off or airlock to place the carboy cap. That should be done quick, and prior to doing that, the cap, cane, and line should be sanitized and the posts (on the ends of the lines connected to the carboy cap) should be fully assembled. If you’re using a CO2 tank, connect it and push a little CO2 through it before making the switch.

3: Begin Transfer

Connect the lines in this order:

Fermenter to Keg
Keg gas out (into a container of sanitizer, like a blow-off tube).
HOLD ONTO THE FERMENTER CAP!
Push (DO NOT CONNECT) the CO2 keg (if using a CO2 tank, use a very low pressure)
DURING THE TRANSFER, make sure to continually supply CO2 to the fermenter – if it is closed it will start to implode and the siphon will slow.

At some point, the flow will stop. It is unlikely that there will be enough pressure to force beer out through the gas line, what tends to happen is that once the beer gets to it, it’ll stop. If there happens to be enough pressure, you’ll see beer getting into the sanitizer – that’s your signal to stop! Disconnect the keg liquid line (be prepared to wipe up some spillage) and the gas line.

Once that’s done, proceed to carbonate as normal. For this beer, I force-carbonated on about 12 PSI for about a week.

Cheers! This has a lovely tropical fruit aroma dominated by mango but with some hints of papaya.

Beer, Brewing

beer, kegging, neipa, racking, transfers

Imperial Hoptrooper Brew Day and Tasting Notes

Author: Andrew December 14, 2016

On November 20, I brewed my biggest (and most successful in terms of numbers) beer – a double IPA. Recipe inspiration came from MadTree’s High series, which is a series of IIPAs that are quite popular and very well rated (note: there are three “highs” that I know of, the Galaxy and Citra, which are linked in the text, and Azacca which is not… but it’s also f**king tasty! There may have also been a Mosaic High).

The recipes are similar. I did a fair bit of ‘back of the napkin’ analysis on the two beers, looking at the percentages of grain, the AAU at each addition, etc. I ended up with the recipe below.

Recipe Details

Batch Size	Boil Time	IBU	SRM	Est. OG	Est. FG	ABV
5.5 gal	60 min	123.7 IBUs	5.9 SRM	1.074	1.014	7.8 %

Style Details

Name	Cat.	OG Range	FG Range	IBU	SRM	Carb	ABV
Double IPA	22 A	1.065 - 1.085	1.008 - 1.018	60 - 120	6 - 14	2.4 - 2.9	7.5 - 10 %

Fermentables

Name	Amount	%
Pilsner (Hoepfner)	10.5 lbs	72.41
Vienna Malt (Briess)	2.25 lbs	15.52
Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L	8 oz	3.45
Carapils (Briess)	4 oz	1.72
Corn Sugar (Dextrose)	1 lbs	6.9

Hops

Name	Amount	Time	Use	Form	Alpha %
El Dorado	1 oz	60 min	Boil	Pellet	15
Galena	1 oz	60 min	Boil	Pellet	12.5
Centennial	0.5 oz	30 min	Boil	Pellet	10
Mosaic (HBC 369)	0.5 oz	30 min	Boil	Pellet	12.3
Centennial	0.5 oz	15 min	Boil	Pellet	10
Mosaic (HBC 369)	0.5 oz	15 min	Boil	Pellet	12.3
Centennial	1 oz	15 min	Aroma	Pellet	10
Mosaic (HBC 369)	1 oz	15 min	Aroma	Pellet	12.3
Centennial	2 oz	0 min	Dry Hop	Pellet	10
Mosaic (HBC 369)	2 oz	0 min	Dry Hop	Pellet	12.3
Chinook	1.5 oz	0 min	Dry Hop	Pellet	13
Citra	1 oz	0 min	Dry Hop	Pellet	12

Mash

Step	Temperature	Time
Mash In	152°F	60 min

Download

Download this recipe's BeerXML file

I kept closer to the size of the Citra High recipe, mostly because I am still working through efficiency issues (it’s getting better, though). I still didn’t get MadTree’s efficiency, but to be fair, I’m targeting 75%, not 82%!

Brew Day

I’m happy to say that the only issues during brew day was how long it took and higher than expected grain absorption. I started later in the day (around 2:30 PM) and it didn’t end until maybe 6:30PM. There were no stuck sparges, clogged lines or chillers, boil boiled. I ended up with about 4.5 gallons into the fermenter, which is less than the 5.5 gallons I was targeting. However, the lower volume works better with my 7.5 – 8 gallon kettle.

Heating initial mash tun preheat water

Lots of hops!

1.070! The most this hydrometer has ever floated!

Airlock Action Shot!

1.004 (ultimately final gravity)

Throughout fermentation, the temperature (as measured on the side of the fermenter) stayed at 68, which is a nice perfect temperature.

Tasting Notes

The Beer

Aroma: Grapefruit mostly

Appearance: Copper, opaque. White head that starts thick and persists as a thin head.

Taste: Tongue lashing bitterness with citrus tones. Some alcohol flavor.

Mouthfeel: Moderately carbonated, slight citrusy tartness lingers past the dry finish.

Overall Impression: I’m biased, but I love this beer. I’ve been drinking the heck out of this!

OG: 1.071
SG: 1.005
ABV: 8.7%
IBU: 124
SRM: 6

What’s Next With This Recipe?

I want to try two things – one is maybe a little less bitterness. The other is honey instead of sugar. I’m wondering if some Orange Blossom honey would work well with the citrus based hops.

Cheers!

Beer, Brewing, Recipes

beer, brewday, DIPA, homebrewing, hops

Hammerdown Brew Cup Soapbox

Author: Andrew April 16, 2016

I entered four beers into the Hammerdown Brew Cup. This is by far the most that I’ve ever entered into a competition. These beers I feel really good about.

Revised_Hammerdown_BrewCup_BraxtonBrewingCo_Logo-01

Mesa Cerveza Vienna Lager

This is from a recipe I copied and adjusted from Five Blades Brewing. The adjustments were because of my less efficient system and because my LHBS didn’t have Blackprinz (and I’ve never seen it there). I used Carafa III instead, which is a dark de-bittered malt. The taste is slightly nutty, not at the level of a nut brown, though. I find it quite pleasing and it pairs well with Mexican (or well, Mexican-styled American) food. There will be more of a blog post about this one coming soon. Entered as 07A: Vienna Lager.

Don’t Pout Cherry Stout

This is a milk stout where I racked a gallon onto some canned cherries. While the base beer is just okay, the cherries make it taste quite pleasing. The base beer uses Carafa II, which doesn’t really have the roasty flavor of roast barley that I was looking for (the LHBS was out of roast barley when I was getting ingredients). Entered as 29A: Fruit beer.

Brew United Kölsch

This beer has been talked about extensively before and it scored pretty well at Brew United. However, I’m not a huge fan of the beer and gave away copious amounts of this beer – everyone else loved it. So I’m seeking validation. Entered as 05B: Kölsch.

Vampire Dust

Sometimes I just want to experiment. So I did. This is a pre-prohibition lager, but with Citra instead of historical hops. The BJCP 2015 guidelines specifically say that for pre-prohibition lagers, “a fruity or citrusy modern hop character is inappropriate” (57). So entering it in category 27 (historical beers) would not have been the right thing to do and would have guaranteed a poor score. Entered as a 34C: Experimental Beer. Not guaranteed to place well, of course, as it isn’t really an experiment… well, yeah, it actually was.

Judging is on April 23. Cheers!

Beer, Competitions

beer, braxton, competition, hammerdown, NKYHomebrewers

Blogging Lull (but not a homebrewing lull)

Author: Andrew February 20, 2016

I logged in to this blog today with the intent to post something. I have five drafts started, but none of them are finished. And I somehow doubt that I’ll finish any of them soon.

Lots of stuff going on:

I bottled my first lager a few weeks ago
I LOVE the flavor – it’s everything I wish American Lagers were. It has a slightly sharp citrus flavor that makes me feel like it’s summer when I’m drinking it. Unfortunately, it’s undercarbonated. I can’t seem to find any style for it in BJCP, so it might be in 34B or 34C in the next competition, because even if undercarbonated I think it’s worth getting some comments from the judges (especially because it’s clean). I have two more beers for that competition. I’m absolutely going to get beers into this one since I missed the last one.

Boring pic of yellow capped bottles of lager
I bottled a black IPA
I haven’t tasted this one in a carbonated form, but it took FOREVER to ferment. I had issues with my mash temperature, I used lactic acid for the first time (to bring the strike and sparge water down to a pH of 5.5), fermenting initially stalled at 1.030 (from 1.062), and the temperature in my basement fell to 60º F. Some of the tastes had a very harsh bitterness, but that fermented out (thank God!). I think it’ll be good enough, but I’m not sure if I’m going to enter it into the next competition.

Boring pic of red capped bottles of black IPA
I chased a WHALEZBRO
Local brewery MadTree released a BBA/Red Wine Barrel Aged Rubeus Cacao. Given work meetings, a conference call, a run over lunch, it was tight but I made it… and man, I haven’t ran that fast on a training run in a long time! The beer, BTW, was excellent!
Grain Absorption
I learned to keep copious notes since I was having some difficulty hitting my mash temperatures. I decided to log everything I could think of. In looking back in the last few logs, I found that my grain was absorbing A LOT more than BeerSmith’s default 0.96 fluid ounces of strike water per ounce of grain. In fact, I’m around 1.4720 fluid ounces per ounce of grain. In searching for this on Google, this number is not out of line, but it does mean more sparge water (I find it slightly interesting, although not wrong, that it has no effect on strike water volume).
Mash Tun Modification
Since I tend to feel like I religiously have a stuck sparge, I cut my mash manifold slots deeper and added a few more. Of course because of that, I’m going to continue to monitor the grain absorption to see if I need to make on-the-fly adjustments.
Expansions
I just looked on the “Where’s My Refund” tool and found that my Federal refund is due in a few days. As soon as it hits the account, I’m buying kegs. I’m also going to buy another boil tun (going with a 10 gallon instead of an 8 gallon). Lastly, I’m going to buy a few more fermenters. The current one may become a sours fermenter.
Science!
I ordered an inexpensive eBay China special microscope. It’s a waste of money. I started a post, but I have a few things to do before it is ready. The tl;dr: “buy a real microscope, don’t skimp on cheap crap from China”. The other tl;dr: “You can’t see yeast with something you paid less than $20 for”.
MOAR BREWING!!!
I have three or four or five things I want to brew, including an IPA (of course!), a saison, an American wheat (or maybe a hefeweizen), a berlinerweisse, and a Vienna lager. I am going to run in to an issue with controlling fermentation temperatures and having a kegerator. I have ideas, but nothing that I’ve done… yet.
This Weekend in Beer Drinking
I may start posting something weekly about notable beers I’ve drunk. This could get interesting.
Running
I’ve managed to keep my injuries at bay since before Christmas and I registered for the Moerlein Beer Series for the fourth year in a row. I’ve made some changes nutrition-wise that may mean that I can keep things together (pun intended!) permanently.

Beer

beer, blog, homebrewing

Kegerator! The Plan.

Author: Andrew October 6, 2015

If my last post didn’t indicate that I LOATHE bottling, I’m not sure what I could have said to get that point across.

He’s really talking about bottling his homebrew, not those poor little Whos in Whoville.

While bottling has the cost part down (a 6-pack of bottles costs around $10 and comes with free craft beer), it has a number of disadvantages:

Bottles are breakable
Bottles take up a ton of room
Capping 30-50 bottles at a time is no fun
There’s no reliable, easy way to store clean bottles

The last point may be what has aggravated my wife. Despite the basement being “mine”, she is not at all happy with the several 6-packs of bottles in the middle of the floor. They’re in the middle courtesy of a crack in my foundation that leaks after extreme rains. Which has so far been twice, the second time left several 6-packs of empty bottles in a puddle. So they’ve been moved out for now. Into the middle of the floor.

This is pretty much the worst way to store bottles.

The Plan – “Begin With The End In Mind”

My ultimate goal is a three tap keezer. One tap will (occasionally?) be a stout faucet. 95% of my beer is consumed by me, so I can have an IPA, a stout, and something else on tap. And nothing says that I can’t bottle the remains of a keg if it gets low, although the bottle guns I see look like a pain to use.

After looking at this guy’s nice keezer build on Reddit, my wife feels that it must be black and I must build a similarly nice looking collar. However, she feels mine should have a red pinstripe on it because it would make it look good with University of Cincinnati Bearcat decor. It’s really cool of her to say that since her degree is from Southwest Florida College, mine are from UC and University of South Florida.

After looking at my budget, my first few kegs will be with picnic faucets. I have more budget numbers, but they’re boring. I have more plans, but that’s boring too. The overall plan is something like:

Paint Keezer Black, fix temperature sensor issue, and run it (for now) with the Raspberry Pi
Begin using (seriously, I LOATHE BOTTLING ENTIRELY!)
Build collar (may be done before #2, depending on many things)
…?
Profit
Add nice faucets

I taped the insulation to paint around it. Of course I used gloves when moving the insulation to remove the handle.

The kid’s on work detail. This is what happens when you don’t respect your elders!

Painted!

There’s a few other things I want to do. I’d love to have some way to know how much beer is left in a keg. One way I can do this is using a flow meter (such as in this article on Adafruit’s website). I don’t like the idea of a flow meter. Adafruit’s has a 1/2″ inlet and outlet, and the beer lines are smaller, so the geeky engineer in me questions the accuracy, and the homebrewer in me questions what happens to the beer in this thing. Then I thought about using weight sensors that I saw on Sparkfun’s website. As I was typing this, I found a post on HBT that even points to Sparkfun’s tutorial on their kegerator. While my implementation might deviate from this, it will be with inspiration from Sparkfun… although the first thing I thought of was this.

The Mystery Cylinder

I have a 5 lb beverage cylinder that I evidently purchased for another use in May of 2000. Yes, fifteen years ago. The gas shouldn’t go bad, but there was no label on the cylinder ever. I thought I’d call the place that I purchased the cylinder from (because it was either “air” or “CO2”, IIRC), but it appeared they went out of business many years ago (they may not have, but earlier I thought they did). I looked into things and found that as long as your tank was filled by a legitimate business (and this was), the ONLY valve on top of the tank should be a CGA 320… Okay, it could be Methyl Flouride, but I’d be shocked if I got that from a Fire Suppression Store and that it’d have a green collar on it, normally flammable stuff is red (but I could be wrong, I didn’t look into this).

I know of no other tests, but since I’m 99% sure this is CO2, I’m going to go with it.

This is the date collar ring. May of 2000. This means that I will have to have the tank inspected and re-certified prior to having it filled.

This does say CGA 320, which can only be used for CO2.

This confused me a little. There are threads on the inside as well as the outside.

Cheers!

Beer, Equipment

beer, freezer, keezer, kegging, raspberry pi

Hops and Fermentation Controllers

Author: Andrew May 24, 2015

I spent most of the week in Atlantic City. The running injury ruined the potential run on the boardwalk (when you’re a runner, you do these things and look forward to them). The beer is nothing particularly special (although I may have under-rated Tun Tavern’s Irish Red), but I paid for very little of what I drank. And the conference I was part of organizing went very well.

Dry Hopped Bud Light Update

Shitty beer on the left, shitty beer with hops on the right.

I’ve made it through seven of these. Cascade, Zythos, Green Bullet, Amarillo, Columbus, Mosaic, and Galaxy. I’m sticking to 3-4 per day, and I’m using the unhopped Bud Light to reset my palate. I’ve noticed that Amarillo, Columbus, Mosaic, and Galaxy were all much more flavorful. It may be just mis-measurement in hopping, though.

I’ve been thinking of doing something like this for malt. The flavor of hops is pretty important in some styles (like IPAs), but will traditionally take a back seat to malt in other styles (like damn near every other style, to widely varying degrees).

Homegrown Hops Update

I got a text from my wife on the day I was to leave Atlantic City noting that one of our kids noticed that the hops seemed taller. They indeed grew over the week.

Columbus

Cascade

Tettanang

Centennial

Fermentation Controller Update

I worked a lot on the fermentation controller. The Brewery IoT page now shows real temperatures (it’s my basement’s temperature, but it’s real). I’ll post more about this sometime, but the short version is that it is 100% Raspberry Pi based. There are three scripts that run in cron (scheduled tasks in Linux) – a script that sends the data to my offsite webserver (the one that is serving this page), a script that checks the temperature and turns the solid-state relay on and off, and a third ’emergency stop’ script that ensures that the freezer doesn’t fall to 32 or below (which would be disabled if I ever decided to brew an eisbock).

I’m itching to brew another beer. I’m considering another IPA (shocker there!), and then almost immediately brewing a Marzen style to prepare for September. Late in the year, I have been thinking about a maple bock to brew. I still haven’t made any improvements to the setup except some hose clamps.

Cheers!

Beer, Brewing

beer, brewing, hops

Five Books Homebrewers Should Read

Author: Andrew April 19, 2015

Thanks to Old Man Winter and Mother Nature (both of whom SUCK), I hurt my back shoveling snow and was resting a lot over the weekend and week. Since I couldn’t work on the electric kettle (and I had the incorrect solid-state relays), everything was held off for a week.

So I started reading another beer book and thought that I’d post something about them. This list is NOT EXCLUSIVE! There is a lot of great brewing literature out there – I’m just going to talk about the four I’ve liked the most so far. These are in no order, either.

1. How To Brew by John Palmer

I’ve read this probably three times, twice on his website and a third reading the Third Edition on Kindle. The thing I like about this book is that it is very step-by-step and practical, and when he goes into discussion about what is happening behind the scenes (particularly in the all-grain chapters), the author clearly indicates that he is going to explain things for a while and what chapter to go to if you just want to brew. In fact, the author does that in another place – the beginning. The book starts out with brewing your first extract brew (which I believe is a good place to start, even if you brew one extract brew like me).

2. The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian

After reading How To Brew, this is a little bit of a review, but I think this book clearly shows that brewing beer is not an uptight process. The book drives home the point of “Relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew”. It is somewhat of a review after reading How To Brew, but still a good read nonetheless. The book also talks about the historical context of beer and brewing.

3. The Brewer’s Apprentice by Greg Koch and Matt Allyn

First off, brewing books written by some of the most respected craft brewers should ALWAYS be read. Greg Koch is the CEO of Stone Brewing, brewers of such high-quality brews as Arrogant Bastard Ale, several excellent IPAs (Levitation*, Self-Righteous, Ruination 1.0 [and probably 2.0, too], and many others), as well as one of my favorite milk stouts. And while I’ve skipped out on the recent Green Tea and Golden Stout collaborations, the Xocoveza Mocha Stout collaboration was excellent. Anyway, the book is more of a thinking book than a howto book (unlike the two above). There is a lot of discussion about specific ingredients (like hops) and specific processes (like mashing). This is a book to read with a beer in your hand when your carboys are full and you want to think about brewing the next beer.

4. Tasting Beer: An Insider’s Guide to the World’s Greatest Drink by Randy Mosher

This book is not about brewing, it’s about tasting. Tasting is an important part of brewing beer, especially if you want to brew better beers (and who doesn’t?). Taste is a critical part of evaluating beer, whether it’s your own or someone else’s. It’s also an important part of recipe formulation. This book really hits its stride around chapter 4 when the discussion moves into the sensory evaluation of beer (judging), beer presentation (glassware, pouring, etc), and beer and food pairing.

5. Mastering Homebrew by Randy Mosher

This is a book that should be purchased as a printed book as opposed to an eBook version. While it is a little more expensive that way, the book is full of pictures and tables that explain a lot of the more complex brewing processes in a simpler, almost infographic-with-text-explanation style.

See this page? It looks awesome printed. It’d be nearly impossible to read on a Kindle!

I think I like reading this one at this point (6 or 7 brews, 4 or 5 all-grain brews) because of the intense discussion of grains and hops (so far), and I’m probably about 40% of the way through the book.

Cheers!

Beer

beer, books, Charlie Papazian, greg koch, jon palmer, matt allyn, randy mosher

Friend of Hades IPA Recipe

Author: Andrew February 14, 2015

So I’m starting to experiment with different malts. I started looking into various SMaSH recipes and started seeing people use different base malts. So I decided to base this one on Vienna malt instead of the normal 2-row malt. I also added some carared for color, some carapils for head retention, and crystal 40 for a touch of sweetness and color. I also kicked up the hops quite a bit since my last (extract+partial mash) IPA. The last (also first) IPA I brewed had 7oz of hops (3 oz of Cascade, 2 oz of Citra and Galaxy). This time, I added an extra 3 oz of hops. I also experimented with first wort hopping and steeping (the closest I can get to hopstanding right now).

Here is the recipe.