Batch 88, Arrogant Bastard clone

I made an Arrogant Bastard clone last summer. It came out alright, it was a good beer, but nothing like Arrogant Bastard. I realized today what I did wrong last time. I pulled up the recipe in qbrew, and realized that I'd put in the FWH as 90 minute hops. FWH is more like 20 minute hops, so my IBU calculation was way off and this explains why the batch last year was not as hoppy as expected. I redid the recipe, then modified it a bit when I was weighing out the grain and found that I didn't quite have enough 2 row. The recipe last year used 27 lbs of 2-row, I only had 23 lbs on hand.

I had some trouble grinding the grain last time. It wouldn't feed through the mill, the rollers would just spin and not grab the grain. Others in my beer club said they'd had the same problem with the Gambrinus 2 row and suggested "conditioning" the grain. I added 2 - 3 tablespoons of water per 5 lbs, then stirred the grain so it all got a little wet. This makes the grain a little sticky and helps the rollers catch the grain. This worked pretty well, although it left some residue on the rollers that doesn't want to come off easily.

10 gallon batch

23 lbs 2-row

2 lbs Crystal 60

.5 lbs Chocolate malt

Mash at 152F for 60 minutes. Outside temp was 52F. I mashed with 9 gallons at 165F, which hit 152F in the mash tun on the dot. I used the heat exchanger again to keep the temp constant, however, it didn't work quite so well this time. The mash temp had dropped to 150F before I got the HLT heated up again.

2 oz Chinook FWH

2 oz Chinook 60 min

2 oz Chinook 30 min

2 oz Chinook 5 min

90 minute boil. All hops are home grown from my garden, harvested last September.

Wyeast 1272 from batch 87, 1 quart slurry.

OG: 1.068, 1.072 actual

FG: 1.017

SRM: 15

IBU: 93 (assuming 11.5%AA)

ABV: 6.6

Getting caught up

I'm finally getting caught up. I like to have a few kegs on stand-by. Right now, I've got 4 kegs on tap and 5 ready to go. I've got just one empty keg at the moment.

From left to right:

Panama Red, batch 87

Panama Red, batch 87

Oatmeal Pale Ale, batch 86

Scotch Ale, from the group brew, batch 84

IPA, batch 85

Yeast 104

A question came up on my beer club forum titled "Saving Yeast". Here is my response:

I do this all the time. I buy yeast maybe once or twice a year. Of course, sanitation is critical. Here's how I do it:

1. Rack off the beer to wherever you rack it to.
2. Depending on how much beer is left in the fermenter, I'll add up to a pint of water. I use store-bought bottled water.
3. Swirl around until the yeast cake is all liquid, nothing clinging to the sides or bottom of the fermenter.
4. Pour out into sanitized 1qt mason jars. I generally get 2 or 3 jars per 10 gallon batch. I leave about 1 inch head space.
5. Drop in one of these per jar: http://www.rei.com/product/736898 This is a tip that Jeremy posted a while back. This helps prevent infection.
6. Refrigerate until you need it. My refrigerator is set for 37F. On brew day, I get out a jar or two (I use 1 jar per 5 gallons) in the morning and put them on the kitchen counter to bring them up to room temp. Shake every now and then to get the yeast in suspension.
7. Pitch when you're ready.

You can do even more if you want. Between #4 and #5, set the jars on the counter for 15 or 20 minutes. It should settle out into 3 layers, the top layer is beer/water, the middle layer is your yeast, the bottom layer is trub. You can pour off the beer/water and yeast into another jar and leave most of the trub behind. You can repeat this several times until what you have is pretty much just yeast.

I've used yeast as old as 2 months doing this and have not had any problems -- well, not any problems that I can attribute to the yeast, anyway.

Some pictures while harvesting yeast:

Mason jars are sanitized and draining.

I added a bottle of water because it looked like I got most of the beer siphoned off and it looks there is some yeast stuck to the bottom.

Yeast in the jars. I let them sit for a couple of hours so I could take some pics of the yeast separating out, but they really looked just the same, so I just put them in the fridge. It seems to me that the combination of whole hops, which form a filter bed in the boil kettle and the counter-flow chiller, there really isn't much trub that makes it into the fermenter.

Blowout!

I've never had this happen in this fermenter. 10 gallons of beer in a 15.5 gallon keg, I've never had a blowout, until today. This is the batch I brewed on Wednesday, I pitched directly on a yeast cake from a batch I brewed about 2 weeks ago. Perhaps I should have removed some of that yeast. After I got it all cleaned up, I put on a blow off tube into a growler of star-san.

Update, next day: I need a bigger blowoff tube. I had more mess on the floor this morning. It's a good thing I'm fermenting in the garage with a concrete floor. I looked back through this blog, and found that there had been a "massive blowoff" on a previous batch of Panama Red. Hmm.

Inside the fermentation box, what a mess:

More mess:



Inside the fermenter:



A shot of the Panama Red that I went to get a glass of when I noticed the mess. As it happens, it's another batch of Panama Red in the fermenter. It's hard to tell from the picture, but that beer is crystal clear with a nice rocky head. My guess is it's close to the last glass out of that keg.

Batch 87, Panama Red

I still have a lot of empty kegs and some time, so I brewed on a Wednesday. A pretty smooth day, except for the grinding of the grain. For some reason, the new Gambrinus 2-row that I have didn't want to feed. No problem at all with the Crystal 60 or Chocolate. Maybe next time I'll try conditioning the Gambrinus first.

A 10 gallon batch.

20.25 lb 2 row (Gambrinus, Canadian)

1.5 lbs Crystal 60

4 oz Chocolate

Mash at 154F for 60 minutes. I used my IC as a heat exchanger again, and again was able to keep the mash at very consistent 154F.

2 oz Mt Hood, FWH

2 oz Nugget, 60 minutes

2 oz Cascade, 30 minutes

2 oz Cascade, 5 minutes

2 oz Mt Hood, 5 minutes

All the hops are home grown, the Nugget is from Steve P, the rest I grew myself. I only did a 60 minute boil today instead of the usual 90 minutes. My propane tank was a little light, and I wasn't sure there would be enough to do 90 minutes.

Pitched this batch on the yeast cake from batch 86, Wyeast 1272.

Some notes:

165F water from the HLT put the mash right at 154F. The outside temp was 50F. I used 8 gallons of water to mash.

First sparge, I added 2.5 gallons of water from the HLT, then ran off 7 gallons into the BK.

Second sparge, added 5 more gallons of water from the HTL, then ran off 5.5 gallons into the BK for a total of 12.5 gallons to boil.

OG: 1.064 actual. Recipe says it should be 1.056, so somehow I did better than usual.

Some brew day pics:

Weighing the grain

Grinding grain. I had some trouble with the 2-row

Mikki the brew dog keeps an eye on the pump.



I noticed my hops are coming up in the garden when I was dumping spent grains on the compost pile. The sprouts are tiny, but there they are, mid-February!

Just about done, pumping from BK through CFC to fermenter.

Batch 86, Oatmeal Pale Ale

I wanted to make a batch of Gemutlich, but I didn't have the ingredients, so I made this Gemutlich-inspired oatmeal pale ale instead. Like Gemutlich, the oatmeal will give this a nice mouth feel and body.

10 gallon batch.

Grain:

20 lbs 2 row
1.5 lbs Quaker oats
2 oz Chocolate malt
4 oz honey (add to BK at 30 minutes)
6 oz molasses (add to BK at 30 minutes)

Mash at 153F for 60 minutes. I used my immersion chiller again as a heat exchanger to keep the mash temp even, and that worked very well again. I brought the water in the HLT to 170F, then I adjusted the flow on the output side of the pump to be fairly low, and the temp stayed constant for the entire mash. That's probably the first time ever that has happened.


Hops:

2 oz Fuggles, an experimental variety, 5% AA, FWH
2 oz mixed hops, 60 minutes (a mix of HG Chinook and Willamette)
1 oz Cascade, 30 minutes
1 oz Willamette, 30 minutes
2 oz Fuggles, an experimental variety, 5% AA

60 minute boil. The "mixed" hops is a combination of homegrown Chinook and Willamette. The plants had grown together, and I couldn't tell what was what.


Wyeast 1272 from batch 85, pitched directly on the yeast cake.


OG: 1.068 (actual)
FG:
IBU: 42
SRM: 10
ABV: 6.8%


A few pics of the brew day, it snowed most of the day. I started at about 9 am, and was done around 1:30 pm. Just getting started:


Using the immersion chiller as a heat exchanger:



Hops. The FWH hops are already in the boil kettle. I used 8 ounces total for this batch.


Transferring from mash tun to boil kettle. The bucket is to keep the snow off of the pump.

Tasting Score Sheet

Date	Mar 5, 2010
Batch #	86
Beer Name	Oatmeal Pale Ale
Style	10A, American Pale Ale, more or less
Packaging	Bottle | Draft
APPEARANCE	1 [2] 3
Head	spare | small | average | large | huge | rocky | creamy | frothy | fizzy | white | off-white | light brown | dark lasting | diminishing
Lacing	excellent | good | fair | spare
Body	clear | sparkling | flat | cloudy | hazy | murky | muddy
Particles	None | lightly cloudy | cloudy | heavily particulate | chunky
Color	light | dark | yellow | amber | orange | red | brown | ruby | black | tawny
Comments	This beer is always hazy due to the oatmeal.
AROMA	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 [10] 11 12
Malt	light | average | heavy | harsh | bread | cookie | molasses | caramel | grain | hay straw | cereal | chocolate | coffee | toffee | toasted | roasted | burnt | nutty | meal
Hops	light | medium | strong | heavy | harsh flowers | perfume | herbs | celery | grass pine | spruce | resin citrus | grapefruit | orange | lemon | lime
Yeast/Bacteria	light | average | heavy | harsh dough | sweat | horse blanket | barnyard | leather soap | cheese | meat | broth | earth | musty | leaves
Miscellaneous	alcohol: light | average | heavy banana | bubble gum | clove | grape | raisin | plum | prune | date | apple | pear peach | pineapple | cherry | raspberry | cassis | wine | port | cask wood | toffee butter | butterscotch | smoke | tar | charcoal | soy sauce | licorice | cola | honey brown sugar | maple syrup | vanilla | pepper | allspice | nutmeg | cinnamon coriander | ginger | tobacco | dust | chalk | vegetable | cooked cabbage/corn | cardboard | paper | medicine | solvent | bandage | skunk | sour milk | vinegar | rotten eggs
Comments	Good hops flavor, not overwhelming, lingering hops aftertaste.
MOUTHFEEL	1 2 [3] 4 5
Body	light | medium | full
Texture	thin | oily | creamy | sticky | slick | alcoholic | thick | minerals | gritty| smooth
Carbonation	fizzy | lively | average | soft | flat
Finish	metallic | chalky | astringent | bitter
Comments:	Smooth pale ale.
FLAVOR	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 [16] 17 18 19 20
Duration	short | average | long
Sweet	light | moderate | heavy | harsh
acidic	light | moderate | heavy | harsh
bitter	light | moderate | heavy | harsh
other	vinegar | sour milk | salty | minerals
Comments	Really good hops flavor. Hint of honey and molasses, but maybe that's because I know that both are in this beer.
OVERALL	1 2 3 4 5 6 [7] 8 9 10
Comments	I like this beer. I'd make this again and I'd drink another.
TOTAL	38

Batch 85, Imbolc

This is the same as St. Brigid's Lake IPA from batch 70. I made a change in the hops -- I don't have any Centennial, so I used Perle instead and am calling this batch Imbolc. Imbolc is the pagan name for St. Brigid's day, which is the Catholic name for Ground Hog's day.

10 gallon batch.

Grain:

21 lbs 2-row
4 oz chocolate malt

Hops:

This is the hard part.
1/4 oz Chinook (whole)
1/4 oz Cascade (whole)
1/4 oz Perle (pellets)
Add all of the above at 90, 80, 70, 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10, 5, and 0 minutes. That is 11 additions of 3/4 oz hops.

Wyeast 1272

OG: 1.059 actual: 1.065
FG: 1.015 actual:
ABV: 5.7%
SRM: 11

IBU: 98

I ended up with a little extra in the boil kettle, 13 gallons, so I turned up the heat to get to the right volume at the end. I guess I had it a little too high, since I only ended up with 9 gallons in the fermenter instead of 10. OG came out a little high because of that.

Tasting Score Sheet

Date	Feb 14, 2010
Batch #	85
Beer Name	Imbolc
Style	14B, American IPA
Packaging	Bottle | Draft
APPEARANCE	1 2 3
Head	spare | small | average | large | huge rocky | creamy | frothy | fizzy | white | off-white | light brown | dark lasting | diminishing
Lacing	excellent | good | fair | spare
Body	clear | sparkling | flat | cloudy | hazy | murky | muddy
Particles	None | lightly cloudy | cloudy | heavily particulate | chunky
Color	light | dark | yellow | amber | orange | red | brown | ruby | black | tawny
Comments	Under carbonated, but looks good otherwise. Could be clearer, but that will come with age. Update 2/23/10, carbonation is very good, beer is clearer now but still has a slight haze.
AROMA	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Malt	light | average | heavy | harsh | bread | cookie | molasses | caramel | grain | hay straw | cereal | chocolate | coffee | toffee | toasted | roasted | burnt | nutty | meal
Hops	light | average | heavy | harsh flowers | perfume | herbs | celery | grass pine | spruce | resin citrus | grapefruit | orange | lemon | lime
Yeast/Bacteria	light | average | heavy | harsh dough | sweat | horse blanket | barnyard | leather soap | cheese | meat | broth | earth | musty | leaves
Miscellaneous	alcohol: light | average | heavy banana | bubble gum | clove | grape | raisin | plum | prune | date | apple | pear peach | pineapple | cherry | raspberry | cassis | wine | port | cask wood | toffee butter | butterscotch | smoke | tar | charcoal | soy sauce | licorice | cola | honey brown sugar | maple syrup | vanilla | pepper | allspice | nutmeg | cinnamon coriander | ginger | tobacco | dust | chalk | vegetable | cooked cabbage/corn cardboard paper | medicine | solvent | bandage | skunk | sour milk | vinegar rotten eggs
Comments	Nice hops aroma, pleasant, not overwhelming at all. Need the carbonation to help bring out the flavor. Update 2/23/10, the flavor is now excellent. The carbonation has brought out that nice hops sharpness that make this an IPA.
MOUTHFEEL	1 2 3 4 5
Body	light | medium | full
Texture	thin | oily | creamy | sticky | slick | alcoholic | thick | minerals | gritty| smooth
Carbonation	fizzy | lively | average | soft | flat
Finish	metallic | chalky | astringent | bitter
Comments:	I think the lack of carbonation is negatively affecting the mouthfeel. Update 2/23/10, the carbonation is much better, I've moved the mouthfeel from sticky to smooth.
FLAVOR	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Duration	short | average | long
Sweet	light | moderate | heavy | harsh
acidic	light | moderate | heavy | harsh
bitter	light | moderate | heavy | harsh
other	vinegar | sour milk | salty | minerals
Comments	Good flavor, but could be better with more carbonation
OVERALL	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Comments	This beer is a little young and isn't quite ready. It is still lacking in carbonation, although it's been on the tap for 10 days. I'll rate this again, either later on this keg or on the second keg. Update 2/23/10, same keg, beer is much better the past few days now that the carbonation is up to where it should be. I bumped the overall score from 6 to 8.
TOTAL	38

Update Feb 23, 2010: Bottled 2 bottles for future drinking. Updated the tasting sheet, this is quite a good beer now.

Update on the Brown Ale

Here is an update on the Brown Ale that I made along with the Rumcake a while back. As expected, a week or so in the kegerator and it's a quite good beer. The alcohol content is fairly low (4.2%) compared to most beers I make, so it's easy to drink several of these. The flavor is very mild. It's a little over carbonated at the moment, which adds to the perceived lightness. I doubt I'll make this again since it was the second runnings of a bigger beer, but I wouldn't have a problem making something similar either as the main recipe or as the second runnings of a bigger beer.

Batch 84, David's Scotch Ale

My brew club did our annual group brew on Jan 9. It was sort of a complicated brew, bigger than what we've done as a group before. We had 9 brewing rigs in Rob's shop (heated!). It was pretty organized, more so than last year, I think. The crush on the grain seemed a little course, and just about everyone missed the OG. Here is the recipe:

David's Scotch Ale
Style: Strong Scotch Ale
Type: All grain Size: 8 gallons
Color: 49 HCU (~22 SRM)
Bitterness: 29 IBU
OG: 1.093 FG: 1.023
Alcohol: 9.0% v/v (7.1% w/w)

Grain: 21.9 lb. American 2-row
5.87 lb. Belgian biscuit
7.7 oz. Briess Special Roast
0.64 lb. American crystal 40L
1.92 lb. American crystal 60L
5.1 oz. Peated malt
5.1 oz. British crystal 135-165L

Mash: 65% efficiency
Mash @ 154°. Boil a portion of first runnings for added kettle
caramelization.
Boil: 90 minutes SG 1.074 10 gallons

Hops: 0.41 oz. Fuggles (5.5% AA, 60 min.)
0.73 oz. Northern Brewer (8.5% AA, 60 min.)
0.83 oz. Centennial (10.5% AA, 30 min.)
0.41 oz. Fuggles (5.5% AA, 30 min.)

The Fuggles was actually an experimental variety, a Fuggles and Mt Hood cross. We ended up using Nugget instead of Northern Brewer, and both the Nugget and Centennial were home grown by Steve P. David made a big pot of wort and let it simmer for a long time, then topped off several of the boil kettles, which helped with the final gravity. I ended up taking 7 gallons home with an OG of 1.082. The plan is for everyone to ferment individually, then in a month or so, we'll all meet up and dump it all into a wine barrel for aging. That should be interesting. Since I had 7 gallons, I'm fermenting in two 5 gallon corny kegs. I volunteered to bottle one of the kegs without the wine barrel aging so we'll have something to compare with.

Batch 83, Panama Red

A fresh batch of Panama Red. The previous batch got hit pretty hard over the holidays.

10 gallon batch

20.25 lbs 2-row
1.5 lbs Crystal 60
4 oz Chocolate malt
6 oz wheat

Mash 60 minutes at 153F, collect 12 gallons.

2 oz Mt Hood (whole, last of the 2008 crop), FWH
2 oz Nugget (whole, HG from Steve P), 60 min
2 oz Cascade (whole, HG), 30 min
2 oz Cascade (whole, HG), 5 min
2 3/4 oz Mt Hood (whole, HG), 5 min

90 minute boil

Wyeast 1272, a brand new packet, I made a 1 gallon starter

OG: 1.059
FG: 1.015
IBU: 70
SRM: 13
ABV: 5.7

I bumped up the Mt Hood on the finishing hops a little bit to use up the last of the 2008 crop. It was a longer brew day than expected, I ran out of propane and had to make a run to get a refill, then I got a vapor lock and it was about 20 minutes before I realized it, so it took forever to get to boiling. I ended up about a gallon short, so having the gallon starter worked out just right. I really need to get 13 gallons out of the mash, the whole hops suck up a lot of wort.

The wheat is a new addition. I just used all that I had, it should help a little on head retention. 6 oz won't make much difference on the final product.

I used my immersion chiller as a heat exchanger to keep the mash at the right temp in this cold weather. That worked out really well. I put it in my HLT and ran the wort from the bottom of the mash tun into the inside of the IC, then back out to the top of the mash tun. It was real easy to keep the mash temp just right. I (finally!) added a valve on the output side of my pump, which is really handy. I used that valve both with keeping the mash at the right temp and with the CFC. I got 60F into the fermenter just by slowing down the flow to about half.

Tasting Score Sheet

Date	Feb 15, 2010
Batch #	83
Beer Name	Panama Red
Style	doesn't fit a standard BJCP style, closest is 14B, American IPA
Packaging	Bottle | Draft
APPEARANCE	1 2 3
Head	spare | small | average | large | huge rocky | creamy | frothy | fizzy | white | off-white | light brown | dark lasting | diminishing
Lacing	excellent | good | fair | spare
Body	clear | sparkling | flat | cloudy | hazy | murky | muddy
Particles	None | lightly cloudy | cloudy | heavily particulate | chunky
Color	light | dark | yellow | amber | orange | red | brown | ruby | black | tawny
Comments	pretty beer
AROMA	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Malt	light | average | heavy | harsh | bread | cookie | molasses | caramel | grain | hay straw | cereal | chocolate | coffee | toffee | toasted | roasted | burnt | nutty | meal
Hops	light | average | heavy | harsh flowers | perfume | herbs | celery | grass pine | spruce | resin citrus | grapefruit | orange | lemon | lime
Yeast/Bacteria	light | average | heavy | harsh dough | sweat | horse blanket | barnyard | leather soap | cheese | meat | broth | earth | musty | leaves
Miscellaneous	alcohol: light | average | heavy banana | bubble gum | clove | grape | raisin | plum | prune | date | apple | pear peach | pineapple | cherry | raspberry | cassis | wine | port | cask wood | toffee butter | butterscotch | smoke | tar | charcoal | soy sauce | licorice | cola | honey brown sugar | maple syrup | vanilla | pepper | allspice | nutmeg | cinnamon coriander | ginger | tobacco | dust | chalk | vegetable | cooked cabbage/corn cardboard paper | medicine | solvent | bandage | skunk | sour milk | vinegar rotten eggs
Comments	strong hops flavor
MOUTHFEEL	1 2 3 4 5
Body	light | medium | full
Texture	thin | oily | creamy | sticky | slick | alcoholic | thick | minerals | gritty
Carbonation	fizzy | lively | average | soft | flat
Finish	metallic | chalky | astringent | bitter
Comments:
FLAVOR	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Duration	short | average | long
Sweet	light | moderate | heavy | harsh
acidic	light | moderate | heavy | harsh
bitter	light | moderate | heavy | harsh
other	vinegar | sour milk | salty | minerals
Comments	This is my favorite beer, so this flavor evaluation is certainly biased.
OVERALL	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Comments	This is a good batch, but I've made better. This batch used a lot of home grown hops. The hops flavor is not as sharp as previous batches using commercial hops.
TOTAL	42