Winter porter

Winter is coming. It's a great time to brew a winter ale. My last 2 brews were a Belgian Wit but now it's time to try out some heavier brews. I had a friend's home-brew of a porter and was floored by the flavor. After chatting with some folks at work, I decided to brew this recipe:

• 3lb Porter/Stout liquid extract
• 4lb Dried malt extract (light)
• Safale US-05 dry yeast
• 0.5lb Crystal 60 grains
• 0.25lb Carared grains
• 0.75lb Chocolate grains
• 1oz Willamette hops
• 1oz Nugget hops
• 1 whirloc tablet

I did a mini-mash of the grains at 155F for 30 minutes. OG was 1.056 and my target was 1.06 so it's not too bad. I plan to add vanilla beans during the secondary.

2nd reading of specific gravity

The second reading of final gravity shows it at 1.014, temp around 70. This puts the ABV at 6.04% with 76% attenuation. We are ready for bottling!

Took a gravity reading today. SG is at 1.014.  This puts the beer at about 6.01% (with 76% attenuation for this yeast, thank you starter!).

Belgian Wit Redux, Brew Day

Trying again with the Belgian Wit. This time, I got a bigger kettle (7.5 gal thanks to Elizabeth's Christmas gift!). I've also mashed the grains at 160F (instead of 170F). I also used a yeast starter too. Let's see how it turns out!

Sweet wort after mashing: 1.04 SG. Not bad!

Color is looking good so far!

Sanitizing the wort chiller by submersing in wort during the last 20 minutes of the boil.

In the fermentation bucket. Color looks dark (again). We'll see how the yeast handles it.

OG at 1.06. Nailed it! Hopefully temperature stays around 70F this next couple weeks.

Belgian Wit: First Tasting After 1 Week in the Bottle

• 12/20/14: 1 week after bottling, 3 weeks after brew day
• Color is a golden amber, not too clear (but that's ok for a Wit)
• Very little head
• Smells like hops, sugary
• Missing carbonation
• Young beer -- flavor is there, but almost no carbonation
• Smell some coriander, no orange

Belgian Wit: First Tasting After Bottling for 1 Week and 5 Days

• 1 week 5 days after bottling (3 weeks 5 days of fermenting since brew day)
• Carbonation is better (than 1 week bottling)
• Color is a dark amber, malty
• Head holding better
• Smells malt, wheat
• Tastes like hops (bitterness)
• Under carbonated
• A taste of sweetness
• A hint of coriander, not much taste of the orange

Belgian Wit: Bottle Day

Took another reading on 12/13 and the specific gravity settled to 1.028. 

Belgian Wit: Brew Day

Sorry for the late post, but it was brew day on 11/29/14.

Last tasting of the German Hefeweizen

• 12/24/14 (8 weeks after brew day)
• Color remains a dark amber
• Medium to low head retainment
• Bubbles are a bit big
• Carbonation looks good
• Smell: slight scent of bananas
• Taste
• Clove taste
• Hint of banana
• Phenol flavor characteristic of a German Hefeweizen
• Light and refreshing

After 1 week of bottle fermentation

After one week of bottle fermentation on 11/10/14...


Some notes:

• Visual
• Little bit of head and bubbles are a bit big
• Color is more of a hazy caramel, not the hazy yellow of a hefeweizen. Perhaps due to caramelization during the hot boil? It would also explain the high original gravity (1.056).
• Aroma
• Hint of bananas.
• Couldn't detect any hint of cloves in the smell.
• Taste
• Minor carbonation.
• Tastes like a "young" beer, flavors aren't as pronounced. Doesn't taste "full bodied".
• Has yeasty taste of a hefeweizen.
• Slight after taste of alcohol or phenol.

Bottling day!

Took one more hydrometer reading on 11/3 and it looks like the SG has settled at 1.014. This puts the hefeweizen at an ABV of: (1.056 - 1.014)*131 = 5.5%.

And....after much work, all bottled!

Second reading

Around 11/2/14 7am (today) I took another hydrometer reading. Temp around 67F. Specific gravity at around 1.014 (dropped from 1.015 yesterday). I'm going to give it another day and see if the specific gravity drops again.

Day 12: Checking in on specific gravity and first tasting

It's 11/1/14 around 8:00am. That puts us at about around 11 days 20 hours from initial pitch time.

Here's a video showing the bubble rate, it's slow down dramatically:
Bubbles are about 30 seconds apart.

Here's a screenshot of the color of the beer outside of the fermenter. Fortunately it's lighter than I thought, but it's still a bit dark:

Here are screenshots of the various temperature and hydrometer readings:

Temp around 65F. Specific gravity at 1.015. With the OG at 1.056, this means the ABV is around (1.056 - 1.015) *131 = 5.37%.

Here's a video showing the tasting:

It's light, with an initial smell of sourness, which disappeared. It's flat, light, no sourness in taste. Smells good -- bananas and cloves. Color is a little dark.

Continued fermentation...

The yeast is busy eating up all the sugars in the wort. My blow off tube is working nicely. In retrospect, I may have panicked a little; I could have left the airlock overflowing for a bit and then cleaned it out after the krausen settled down (which it did).

Anyways, here's a video taken at 10/22/14 12:12 PM (about 48 hours later):

Notice the bubbles come out every 3-5s in the bottle.

Explosion in the airlock!

At around 5pm 10/21/14, the airlock is literally bursting:

So I head over to More Beer and ask for advice. I get a blow off tube and attach it the airlock. The other end goes into a bottle of sanitized water. This lets the CO2 come out of the bucket, the prevents contamination:

Day 2: Active fermentation

Just checked on my beer and she's starting to ferment!

Here's a video showing it action (10/21/14 14:04, about 26 hours after pitching the yeast, temperature around 75F):

Brew Day

It's finally here! Brew Day!

Here is all my equipment, cleaned:

Here is the fermenter, all nicely sanitized by Star San (thats the bubbles on top): 

Yeast and hops out and ready to go:

 Ice in the box:

Me, ready to brew:

 Just after boiling and adding in the DME:

After the initial boil off, added the wort and boiling for 60 minutes:

Preparing ice bath:

After 60 minutes, the wort in the ice bath:

Dumping 2 gallons of ice water and the wort and into the fermenter:

Hydrometer readings (looks to be around 1.056, around 60F):

Pitched yeast and capped (10/20/14 11:44 am):

A couple notes:

• Taking temperature measurements is awkward: I need to stick it close to the wort and risk contamination (from my hand, etc.)
• Cooling the wort with ice is awkward: I wish I had a wort chiller.
• I sanitized everything in the fermenter. I would have been easier to sanitize in another bucket (like my bottling bucket) so I wouldn't need to fish out the thermometer midway during cooling.