Oatmeal Breakfast Stout

I just finished up the 10 gallon AG brew of Oatmeal Breakfast Stout with the help of Nathan Rowland. Missed my OG again! Hit 62% efficiency and I left a full gallon in the boil kettle because of the willamette whole hops plugging the SS strainer. I'm ordering another false bottom today and I hope I can find some Zymico bazzoka tubes somewhere too. You can also see my awesome little brew buddy, Riley James McClain, who is just over 11 months old now.

Black Butte Porter

Here is the Black Butte Porter in a side by side. The taste is quite splendid, and has a very nice roasted tasted to it. The color is very nice, though still settling a bit and is not quite as clear yet and is a bit lighter in color (ever so slightly) than the real thing . I think I shall like this beer very much, indeed. I can only hope that the Breakfast Oatmeal Stout I'm making this weekend will be as nice.

Pappony Cider (Pear-Apple-Honey)

I have been wanting to do a hard cider for a while (actually, my wife said if I really wanted to brew something she might like, I could try matching Ace Pear Cider...sigh). Anyway, I did a little research and found a ton of conflicting comments/instructions. Some emphatically saying boil to kill native yeasts, some saying don't, the native yeasts are the best ferment. Some saying you can't use pasteurized, some actually preferring it. Some saying use beer yeast, some wine, some champagne.

Anyway, I finally just decided that the best way to figure it out was to write up my own recipie and try it out.

So, I got the following together:

• 4 gallons Apple Cider (no preservatives, but it had been Pasteurized)
  
• 6 29oz cans of Bartlett Pears in juice (again, no preservatives, but Pasteurized).
  
• 2 lbs Rasins
  
• 5 lbs Pure Clover Honey
  
• Lavlin 1118 Wine/Champagne Yeast
  

Blended the pears and honey up to a fine puree. Blended Rasins in some of the apple cider. Brought entire concoction to boil for 30 minutes.

Now came the hard part. The rasins and puree plugged every method I used to try to CFC chill it. SS scrubbies plugged, even trying to pump it was bad. So in the future, I will try using the juicer I bought just for this (but I was convinced I should be able to just blend it all and boil it for a while and get more fermentables).

Anyway, I finally just poured the remainder through a strainer/funnel into the carboy sitting in an ice bath and let it cool. Pitched yeast, and 5 hours later, it is just starting to bubble. This looks like it is going to turn out more like Apple Jack than any sparkling cider (grin) as it is very dark and looks like a Wiezen more than cider.

The taste of the original solution is great though so far...we'll see how it filters (any ideas on filtering the final ferment?.

I ended up with an OG of 1.118 (refractometer says it is 1.106). Anyway, this is going to probably be pretty high in alcohol content unless I chill it early to stop the ferment. I'll plan to rack to secondary in one week and just keep it in my beer fridge at 40'F (I know they recommend secondary fermenting at around 55'F, but I don't think I can handle drinking my beer that warm).

The pictures below are all out in my shop on my counters next to my plumbed in deep sink.

Black Butte is bubbling!!

The Black Butte Porter is bubbling away after about 30 hours of lag time. Here are some pictures of it and my little brew buddy (who looks like he has had too much...grin.

Deschutes Brewery Black Butte Porter Clone Brew

Everything went pretty well. Was done with brewing and cleaned up by 1:30PM. I even cleaned the remaining 3 kegs and racked the Easy Wiezen to a keg (almost certain that this is going to be a "dump out beer" due to the nasty burnt taste when I took an SG reading). The Fat Tire is actually coming along pretty well, and the color is almost a perfect match with the real thing, unlike the partial extract we did a couple months ago (see further down). The taste is a little more mild and a little less "burnt" tasting. Not sure why, but tasting the AG brew vs the Real Thing makes the original taste just a little burnt (not hoppy, just wierd). I think I'm going to like the AG version I did (which is on the left in the image below).



I missed my OG on the Black Butte Porter. Tried for 1.057. Got 1.046. That was in 10 gallons. This sucks. I think I need to adjust my efficiencies down to 65% until I get this under control. I just did a 152'F single step mash in 7.5 gallons (this had initial runnings of 5 gallons at 1.057). Then sparged 7 more gallons (recirculated for 20 minutes single step sparge) in and hit 12 gallons pre boil at 1.036. Boiled 90 minutes to get down to 10.15 gallons and hit 1.046 SG. That works out to a 61% efficiency. One thing I might need to think about doing is using more water in the initial mash. I guess as I adjust my efficiency down, this will naturally raise the initial grain and the amount of water in the mash and require less volume for the sparge to hit the 12 gallons pre boil.

The O2 worked great on this. Just ran it slow and steady and low on the preasure. I put the carboys in a cooler of ice water to get the temps down better on the initial, but the stupidly forgot to turn the damn CFC water flow on for half the second 5 gallon batch. Put both in a nice bath water, and they are at 76'F right now. Pitched the yeast in (forgot to set it out and break the slap pack last night, so I did it at 6AM today, and gave it 7 hours by the time I pitched...instructions say 6-8 hours..should be good. We'll see how fast it takes off.

The color on this latest brew is sure wonderfully dark. I'll think about doing a coffee hop in the secondary on one of the 5 gallons.

Kegs all cleaned and plumbed

Finally got two kegs all cleaned up and sanitized. Plumbed the CO2 lines and quick disconnects. Should be ready for beer tomorrow!

Brewed some Easy Weizen LME

I took the time to finally brew 5 gallons of "Easy Weizen" Liquid Malt Extract (LME) tonight. Phew...it was more than I expected:

I just did my FIRST extract brew this past weekend, after jumping straight into HERMS brewing and AG (yes, I do everything backwards). I had purchased a "starter" set from a LHBS for the bottles, carboy, etc. and had 7# of LME for an "Easy Weizen" 5 gallon recipie with dry yeast that came with it that I never had done. Well, I figured this would be CAKE after doing the AG brews, and I had a couple hours last Saturday night, so I pulled the LME out of the fridge and got it warming up in some hot water, while I boiled 5 gallons of sterilization water in my HLT (to be run through the CFC and QD lines and pump).

Heheh...first the recipie called for me to bring to a boil 2.5 gallons (blah...blah..blah..screw that, I have a 15 gallon boil kettle, I'm doing a full wort boil here!!!)... Grin, well, I got a nice full flame boil going, dumped in the LME, and hops, and immediately smelled my mistake. I jumped for the flame controls and turned it down, but the thick smoke (not steam) that was rolling out of the top of the kettle told me it was too late.

Well, I decided to finish it and see how it would turn out. It smelled pretty bad (burnt sugar/LME/Hops smell), but then the LME smelled ucky (technical term) to me to begin with..shrug. I finished the 60 minute boil and then cooled into the carboy with CFC and aeration stone and did lots of aeration shaking even after that and pitched the dry yeast (I guess you just dump it into the carboy on top of the foam and shake it up?).

The SS boil kettle had a nice black teflon coating on the bottom from the carmelized/burnt LME that was hard to scrub off, so I just decided to try drying it out. Surprise...if anyone ever has this same problem, let it dry...the black stuff had all peeled away and curled up leaving nice clean SS behind after 24 hours. I'll BKF it and make sure, but I sure hope there isn't any permanent smell left behind.

Well, within 4 hours after pitching the dry yeast, this stuff was bubbling away like nothing I've done before (OG was only 1.040), and it was pretty much done after about 28 hours. The trub has a nasty looking black soot stuff on it that has collected, but the beer looks pretty good (for a weizen) and the smell wasn't too bad coming from the ferment. Any experience on how beer tastes that has been burnt/carmelized in the boil?

Couple things I've learnd:

1. Turn OFF the flame before adding any extract to the boil.
   
2. I've begun thinking about how quickly I try to bring my mash wort to boil (also a full flame on the first runnings and on the batch sparge that I add over time), and I think I'm going to take a little more care to not super heat it so much. I always reduce the heat once it is boiling to keep the hot break down, but never thought about the possibility that I could possibly be even burning some of my wort as I bring it to a boil.