The brew went really well and is already bottled.  I won’t bother you with all the silly details but, I will give you all of my tweets from then:

1. @mikebiewer just about to start the sparge, did my first step mash… We will see if it helps. #homebrew Monday, May 31, 2010 12:52:36 PM via SocialScope in reply to mikebiewer
2. Don’t #homebrew and read, I’ve spilled beer and sparge water on the book so far. Monday, May 31, 2010 12:58:55 PM via SocialScope
3. @mikebiewer 110 for 20, 128 for 30, 147 for 60, and 160 for 10. Monday, May 31, 2010 1:14:00 PM via SocialScope in reply to mikebiewer
4. @mikebiewer pretty ok, I overshot 160 by 4 degrees, but all in all it is going very well. Monday, May 31, 2010 1:36:38 PM via SocialScope in reply to mikebiewer
5. @mikebiewer it’s a recipe I found online, which makes it my first non-northernbrewer recipe also. Next step is building my own recipe. Monday, May 31, 2010 1:54:18 PM via SocialScope in reply to mikebiewer
6. @benrokke heck yeah, two guys on scooters == chick magnets! Monday, May 31, 2010 2:21:30 PM via SocialScope in reply to benrokke
7. RIP hydrometer #3 #homebrew Monday, May 31, 2010 3:30:47 PM via SocialScope
8. @jelseth maybe I should buy a digital hydrometer Monday, May 31, 2010 3:51:54 PM via SocialScope in reply to jelseth

As you can see, I again didn’t get a hydrometer reading because I seem to have an issue with hydrometers smashing on the ground.  Refractometer, here I come!

Anyway, here is the label I created this morning.

RECIPE: Bill’s Cream Ale

BATCH #1:

Well, my wife has been trying to get me to brew the IPA again from last summer.  It was really good (really good).  Probably the best thing I have ever brewed since moving back to Fargo.

BATCH #2:

Jake also wanted to brew something more on the hoppy side.  He took the idea one leap forward and decided to brew a black IPA.  This is an emerging style from the pacific northwest (and darn tasty one at that) where the brewers use roasted malts and keep the high IBU’s.  The official style is called the Cascadian Dark Ale.  A common one you can find in and around Fargo is the Widmer Brothers W’10 Pitch Black IPA.  You can find it at any of the better liquor stores or at JL Beers on tap.

Batch #2’s Process:

We raised the water temperature to 162* and threw in the grain.  The sacch’ rest was 152* F for 60 minutes.

The mash-out was 170° F for 10 minutes.  Doesn’t that grain look good?  Looked to me like making ishy-cookies before everything was mixed together.

Jeremy showed up and we all decided to try our hand at total world domination!

During the hour boil our hop additions went like so:
1 oz. Summit (60 min)
1 oz. Simcoe (15 min)
1 oz. Centennial (10 min)
1 oz. Cascade (5 min)
1 oz. Amarillo (0 min)
1 lb Corn sugar (0 min)

Jake looked pleased (or psychotic, hard to tell).

Jake then made fun of my rubber boots.

I don’t have a photo of the Black in the bucket, but I’ll leave you with the Hefeweizen and Magnum IPA in secondary and primary respectively.

The Hefeweizen has since been bottled and both IPA’s have been put in secondary.  Jake should be adding the 1 oz. Ahtanum hops to secondary tomorrow for dry-hopping.

1. A Black IPA done by Jake

2. A remake of the IPA I brewed last summer.  Since it uses Magnum hops, I present to you the Magnum IPA label!

I tried to warp the text so that IPA looked like “PI” somehow, but I failed… I think the point came across though.

A week ago Sunday I brewed the Hefeweizen.  I had a few minor issues, but for the most part it went very well.  I had some folks visit from the Prairie Homebrewing Companions to tell me where I was going wrong (actually I wasn’t doing that bad I guess).  Ended up with an OG of 1.044 instead of 1.049 like I had hoped… should have used more of the sparge and boiled off more liquid, but was pinched for time.

Here is the beer for the brew day:

And here is the new sparge system in action! (insulated, new shelves, and new sparge arm):

I have since thrown it into secondary (yesterday) and it looks very good!  Cannot wait to taste it at the beginning of next month (shouldn’t need too much bottle conditioning).

Next week is either a Warrior Hops IPA part deux, or a Rye IPA (will decide tonight at the Country Cannery).

First off is the label for the Bourbon Barrel Porter that was bottled last week.  I couldn’t think of anything clever that my friends liked so I decided to use the Random Beer Name Generator and kept clicking “Generate” until I got one that was for a Porter… here is the result:

Next off is the Hefewiezen that will be brewed on Sunday (I’m really excited!)  I got this idea one morning listening to ELO… seriously, you can’t help but have a good day when you listen to ELO.

And for fun, the music video “The Diary of Horace Wimp” that inspired the label.

The day prior I made the yeast starter while enjoying an imperial stout homebrew that has finally come into it’s own.

It started about an hour later than I was hoping because of a meeting, which meant we really had to get this mash going!

Mike from MikesBrewReview came over with some tasty homebrew along with Jake and Jeremy.  While the water was heating up for the mash, we sterilized our equipment and got the colts game going on my laptop running mythtv.

The mash went extremely well, and the pot once again retained more heat than I would have expected.  We stayed solid at 152* until the very end of the mash, when we needed to raise it t o 170* anyways.  The smell was fantastic, a malty chocolate flavor permeated my entire garage.

Next up was the redneck sparge system, and multiple problems.  First off, my homemade sparge arm started to fail, water dripped to the edges and down the side of the lauter tun.  Secondly, because of this we ran out of hot water to sparge with.

As you can see from the above photo, the sparge arm has fallen into the lauter tun and we had to keep the tube up in the air with a piece of cardboard.  I believe it is about time to build two shelves in the garage for this and buy a good setup.

Well, even with all the issues during the sparging step, we did get 6.5 gallons of sweet wort ready for the boil stage.

I decided that I was going to add some extra hops during the boil to see what would happen.  So, outside of the recipe I followed I put in 2oz of pure styrian goldings with a low aa range of 2-3 at 45 minutes.  It should only raise the IBU to 29 (which is only 4 higher than the normal recipe).

After the Colts win (woooooooooooooooooooooooo!) Jeremy and Jake had to leave to go watch the Vikings game.  No problem, more beer for Mike and I!

As you can see, it started getting cold then.

Everyone needs a sunflower heater for the extra propane tank.

After we were finished with the boil, we cooled down the wort and pitched the yeast.

The next day it was already bubbling away (thanks starter)!

I’m really excited for the transfer into secondary.  I get to throw bourbon soaked oak chips into it, along with 16oz of bourbon!  This might prove to be the tastiest yet!

-Troy

I should be brewing again next weekend if the weather doesn’t turn, and hopefully will be cheering on the colts and the vikings the next day!

Brief history, I guess from what the folks at BeerAdvocate tell me, this is a relatively new style.  First having been produced post-world war II.  It is usually high on the fermentables (triple the amount actually, hehe) and when finished is usually golden in color, creamy, and in my opinion a slightly fruity/citrus flavor.  In other words, very delicious.

Last Christmas work sent me on a trip to Belgium to work out some issues with a client we had over there.  The trip was a success, and made me a HUGE fan of the Belgian beer culture.

Here is a photo of me playing the wife in scrabble at a bar in St. Niklaas enjoying a Karmeleit Tripel.  You can tell a Belgian beer by it’s glass, they are always served that way.  The brewers design the glasses to make the beer’s aromas and tastes come out in the best possible way.  For example, Stella Artois is a pilsner and is served in a smaller, thinner glass with ridges at the bottom to promote the bubbles and as an added benefit, promotes less slippage in your hand .  (Sorry for the in-bev / anheuser busch example.)

Saturday afternoon I made my yeast starter for the belgian tripel.  I recommend this to everyone, get a starter made!  Every time I neglect doing so, or do it too late in the process I have been disappointed in the beer’s fermentation.  See my post on the Stout, it took 4 days to start fermenting and it now imparts a strange after-taste (still really drinkable, but it could be better… hopefully this remedies itself by bottle conditioning).

Well, the big day happened (brew day!) and it was ridiculously cold outside… so I talked my wife into letting me get a secondary propane tank and sunflower heater.  Seriously, it was sub-zero with worse wind chills.

When I put that in front of me with the garage door insulated a bit better… it wasn’t so bad.  I could still see my breath, but it was actually quite pleasant!  Now I can brew in comfort.  On a side note, it ran out of propane halfway through the brew right before I started the boil.  That meant that the burner kept me warm and I needed more propane anyway… good luck there!

Also, you can see my laptop running mythtv.  I was watching the Vikings… good game, one sided, but good.  Really glad I wired my garage for cat-5.

Sparge time!  Hello redneck brewing system ™!

If I ever upgrade these components (which I’m probably going to do sooner than later), I’m going to use the truck as long as I can.  It is seriously funny to me (the nerd in me laughs).

I was going this alone, so I did not have access to my brother’s sparge arm and extra kettle and burner.  So, I finally got to try out the homemade sparge arm I built out of some cpvc.  You need to use cpvc because regular pvc starts to leak contaminants when you run liquids through it that are warmer than 120 * F.

Then disaster struck!  Soon after taking this photo, I backed into my hot water tun and it spilled all over the floor.  One gallon of liquids instantly froze to my garage floor.  I let the mash tun water run into the pot and started the boil with only a little over 5 gallons of wort.  I was hoping to get 6 gallons or more and boil it down to 5 and a half gallons.

If I had done so, I would have both reached my OG I was targeting (I ended up higher by .07) and had 5 gallons of beer after fermentation/secondary.  I thought about adding more water to it prior to the boil, but decided not to.  You can comment below if what I did was wrong, or if adding water would have been okay.

I ended up doing the boil with the cover on to keep as much liquids as i could.

Here it is after everything was said and done.  I ended up doing the cooling and adding of the yeast in my basement.  I didn’t want a big ice slick in my yard, and this was much more comfortable.

The next morning fermentation was already rocking!

OG 1080

-Troy

In the year 1796 Thrale’s Brewery in London created a beer that was meant to satisfy the Czars of Russia.  They had tastes for the finer things in life, the best champagne and caviar, and this beer was created just for export to them.  And because it was to be transported across the freezing Baltic, it needed to be high in alcohol.  The first batch was sent to Catherine the Great.  Later that brewery merged with Courage, and then later with Newcastle.

Today, I’m happy to announce that my Imperial stout has been bottled.  Jake took some time out of his busy life and helped me out.  The final gravity ended up at 1.030 making the ABV only about 7.62% (lower than I had hoped, but still not something to be drank lightly!)  Tasting it was a treat, it had hints of chocolate and also had a nutty flavor.  Might be the best thing I have ever brewed (personal opinion of course).

On a side note… man do I want a kegging system.

We decided to brew a Rauchbeer.  Rauchbeer is literally, in German, “smoked beer”.  It is a lager that comes from the Bavarian city of Bamberg.  How you make it is by drying your malted barley over an open flame.  That sounded delicious to us… so we wanted to make it.

Here is how it went down:

First off, we as a rule, don’t try to start brewing after 5pm… Jake has a child, and I like sleep.  We had some extenuating circumstances.  Jake was leaving for the weekend and I really wanted to brew with the zen-master of brewing (Luke) so this was the only time that would work out for all of us.

First off while the mash water was getting to the proper 163* F we had some excellent supper.  What I have found out that works well is that if you have about 10 lbs of grain, getting the water to about 10* higher than the temperature you want to mash at will have it be about perfect after you pour in the grain.

After dinner, during the 60 minutes at 153* F, we decided to try some homebrew from the month prior.  Pictured is Luke trying the Scotch Ale we brewed last month.  It is a very delicious beer, very put together.  I would say the only way we could have done better is if we had the cash to ferment it in an actual scotch cask!

I am going to look a bit into if getting some oak chips soaked in Whisky… throwing them into the secondary fermenter… and letting it condition, is a good idea for the next time we try this.

We also tried the IPA and it is was way too early for it (only has been in the bottle for a week).  It didn’t have any carbonation and it needs more time… but, I did try it two days ago and it is coming along VERY well.  I think that it will be delicious in about 10 more days.

It was so good Jeremy decided to dance…

Sadly, I joined in.

Sparge time!

This time we decided to recirculate the first 2 quarts back through the hot water tun.  I’m still not sure how this effects the beer, for better or worse.  We had a bit of trouble because we didn’t add enough water to the hot water tun and had to let it sit for a few minutes while we heated up some more.

Mmmm the boil.  This is my favorite part because when you throw the hops in there, it just smells SO NICE!

By now it was getting very late (see the top of this post about the “never starting after 5pm”) and we didn’t decide to boil off enough water.  Our original gravity was about 9 points low.  But, we did end up with a LOT more wort… so, if it’s delicious… having the lower ABV won’t matter much.

All in all, a great night of brewing!

Here it is a week and a half later, looking forward to it next month.

Click here for the recipe for the Rauchbeer.