Messages

1741

Yeast and Fermentation / Re: German Ale Yeast 1007

« on: November 18, 2009, 12:19:39 pm »

I'm picking up a good bit of sulfur one week into fermentation.

Don't worry about sulfur during primary fermentation. I'd only worry about it if it sticks around after primary fermentation. I use this yeast as well, but I don't remember if it threw off sulfur or not.

Kai

1742

Equipment and Software / Re: Condensation in Chest Freezer

« on: November 18, 2009, 11:04:50 am »

BTW, Calcium Chloride is very hygroscopic too. So you may just place a pan with CaCl2 in the freezer if you already have enough CaCl2 on hand. That is also the reason why brewing salts should be kept in sealed containers. Some of them attract water from the air which will dilute their strength and you end up adding less than you think.

Kai

1743

Equipment and Software / Re: Condensation in Chest Freezer

« on: November 18, 2009, 11:00:39 am »

What procedure do you use to bake the crystals?  Temp, time, spread them out on a sheet?

I haven't done that yet. I figure I just place them on tin foil set in a pot or baking sheet and bake them at 300-400F for a while. When they absorb water they get all gooy and translucent. Once they look white again they should be recharged. The crystals are just a very hygoscopic salt that attracts water from the atmosphere. That water can be driven off with heat. They also sell refill packs.

If you don't open the chest freezer/fridge much, one charge should last for a while.

Kai

1744

Equipment and Software / Re: Condensation in Chest Freezer

« on: November 18, 2009, 10:37:55 am »

I use DampRid: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UGTLWC

You can "recharge" the crystyals by baking out the water in the oven.

Kai

1745

Kegging and Bottling / Re: Keg, bottle or both?

« on: November 18, 2009, 09:57:44 am »

A little off-topic, but I'd really like to perfect a way to bottle from the keg so I can start entering competitions.

Here is what I do:

- put the beer in a corny keg with a shortened dip-tube and let it carbonate in there (natural or artificial)
- move the keg into a cold fridge (32F is good) and let it cold condition in there, You may even add finings to accelerate the clearing process
- Sanitze a few bottles. I do this by adding a squirt of water, cap with tin foil and bake them in the over at 250F for ~2 hrs.
- Once the bottles are cooled place them with the beer in the fridge/freezer. Make sure the bottles don’t freeze. This will create ice crystals that cause gushing during filling.
- Sanitize a picnic tap and a short piece of a racking cane. Put the tube into the picnic tap to make a “beer gun”
- W/o moving it connect the keg to CO2 and release the pressure until you have only 2-3 psi in there. Set the regulator to the same pressure.
- get a large sanitary mug into which you can rest the “beer gun” and catch any foam flowing from the bottles.
- place bottle caps into sanitizer
- now take a bottle, remove tin foil and fill the bottles. If it foams too much, reduce the pressure.
- let foam drip into the mug
- cap on foam to eliminate head space O2. If the beer doesn’t foam enough squirt some more beer into it or tap the side of the bottle.
- keep filling as many bottles as you need.

I bottle from a lagering chest and have a large black pan like this one (http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=19252-000001569-ST3608&lpage=none) set such that I can keep the bottles and all the mess in it.

Once I’m done I wipe off the bottles and label the caps.

Kai

1746

Kegging and Bottling / Re: Keg, bottle or both?

« on: November 18, 2009, 09:40:45 am »

I do both.

When cold conditioning is completed and the beer is carbonated I bottle about 6-12 bottles from the cold keg into cold and sanitized bottles using a picnic tap with a short tube attached. The cold keeps the CO2 from gushing out and I can bottle clear carbonated beer. These bottles are then for sharing, evaluating and sampling. The rest gets transferred to a serving keg. Evaluating beer from bottles eliminates possibly inconsistent carbonation from serving and any possible infection or taste change that may happen during serving. Something I seek to eliminate as well, but it is nice that I can cut this out of the loop.

For beers that I plan to age (Doppelbocks for example) I bottle the whole keg into about 2 cases the same way.

Kai

1747

Commercial Beer Reviews / Re: Octoberfest beers

« on: November 18, 2009, 09:29:22 am »

One thing that I also noticed with many German beers is the quality of the bitterness. Especially beers brewed by large commercial breweries tend to have a very clean bitterness that even at higher levels does not taste harsh. It may linger but doesn’t stick around for long. The hop taste, if present, never feels “raw” or harsh either. I don’t exactly know how they get that since I had beers from smaller breweries (pub or museum breweries) that show a less refined quality of the bitterness while they would be using a similar procedure and similar ingredients.

How about the use of crystal and carmel malts. I know that many American beers have a distinctive crystal note in their aroma that is missing from most German examples of that style. SA Oktoberfest, for example is a good and tasty beer but I would not use it as a reference for judging Oktoberfest style beers.

Kai

1748

Extract/Partial Mash Brewing / Re: Extract and DMS

« on: November 18, 2009, 09:15:54 am »

A friend made an Oktoberfest extract beer that was reeking of cooked corn or cabbage, he used Pilsener extract and boiled with the lid on.  Unfortunately, he did not have the best control on fermentation temperature, so I can't say the problem was isolated to the extract.

I think the lid during the boil is to blame for his DMS problem. Aside from that I don't have much to add to this though I'm curious where the line is at which you may get too much DMS in the cooled wort. Variables would be type of extract, amount of late addition extract, boil time and chill time.

Kai

1749

Beer Travel / Re: Lay-over in Munich

« on: November 17, 2009, 08:30:09 pm »

Thanks, but I'm already back.

Kai

1750

Beer Travel / Lay-over in Munich

« on: November 17, 2009, 03:56:07 pm »

I just spent the last week in Germany visiting my Parents. On the way to
Germany I scheduled a 12hr lay-over in Munich. I learned that a long lay-over
can be a great way to add yet another destination to a trip w/o much added
cost when I had a forced lay-over in Amsterdam a few years back:

It started out with landing in Munich on time (9 AM) and not having to 
wait at the boarder control. Then I headed to Munich center to have a 
Weissbier breakfast with white sausages at the Weisse Brauhaus. This 
was a suggestion from folks at hobbybrauer.de. And I was glad that I 
followed it.



Weisses Brauhaus is the official Brauhaus for Schneider Weisse. I 
started out with a pair of white sausages, a glass of Schneider Weisse 
and some Brez'n. If you don't know white sausage, they are a Bavarian 
specialty, boiled and eaten with sweet mustard. You don't want to know 
what is in them. Even I don't want to know. As I'm ready to leave I 
had to have a look at the menu. There I found Hopfenweisse, a 8.6 % 
Weizendoppelbock with an aroma of lemons. And yes, it was an American 
IPA done as a German Wheat. And I thought all German brewers are 
traditionalists. The beer didn't have the assertive bitterness of an 
actual AIPA or the clove and fruit notes of a Weissbier. But it had 
the full favor and aroma of American hops balanced buy lots of alcohol 
and some sweetness. I learned later that this was the result of a
collaboration between Schneider and the Brooklyn Brewery.



So I decided to stay and have another pair of Weisswurst and Brez'n. 
Those two beers set the mood of the day.

Next was finding an open wi-fi network. Apparently Germans don't like 
to leave their networks open (they are sold as password potected networks
by default). And the only place I could find was the  Apple Store. At least I
found something.

Now I had a few hours to kill before the Paulaner Brewery tour. I 
decided to kill them at the Deutsches Museum (German Museum). This is 
a museum dedicated to technology. Unfortunately they don't have a section
about brewing technology.

Then the Paulaner Tour. There were also 3 Americans for which I ended 
up playing translator and tour guide. I did this tour before, so I knew what
to say. Later at the tasting, the beer was delicious and surprisingly close 
to my own attempts at the respective styles. The only problem was that 
the tour guide, a retired Paulaner brewer, was not able to eat with us 
and I wasn't able to chat him up about brewing.

Then back back to the airport to catch my flight to Leipzig. 
Given that my body was still at Boston time, I wasn't tired anymore  at that
time

Kai

1751

All Grain Brewing / Re: Malt conditioning rocks!

« on: November 17, 2009, 03:42:07 pm »

I never thought that malt conditioning would find so many fans so quickly since it is one of those techniques that aren't really necessary and add a bit more work.

Let me see if I can address concerns and questions raised here:

Major, I see your problem. Conditioning 20+ lb of malt is difficult unless you build yourself a cement mixer type apparatus in which you can mix the malt while you spay it with water. I thought of adding something like this to a mill-stand if I ever find the time to build one. But there is no need to condition the malt in the first place if you don't have run-off issues.

Wheat malt doesn't have husks by a pericarp that gets somewhat preserved through conditioning. Just look at the link that was posted in the original thread. It shows pictures of dry and conditioned wheat malt.

Malt conditioning is not wet milling. The latter involves milling malt under water. This is very messy and unpractical for a home brewer. Malt conditioning only uses a little water to raise the husk moisture content. If properly done, there is only little to no free water on the grains during milling. That's why it works so well with conventional mills.

You can condition and mill the night before. I have done it many time w/o problems. The amount of moisture added is too little to get bacteria, mold or yeast started on the grain. These days I condition and mill the grain while the strike water is heating. It fits well in that time and does not lengthen my brew day.

If you do decoctions, you also have the option to mill much coarser since the intensity of the decoction mash can deal with much coarser grists while giving you the same conversion efficiency (i.e. amount of extracted sugar)

I haven't tried conditioning the night before and milling the day of brewing. I thought that the moisture would have penetrated further than the husks and the conditioning would not be as effective. I guess there is still a lot of room for experimenting and finding practices that may even work better than what I have published.

I have not tried it with a corona mill but are very interested in hearing about your experiences. Some brewers in my club have them and I may try to borrow one some day to test it for myself.

Malt conditioning raises the grist volume by about 30%. But that doesn't mean that the mash volume will be greater since the actual volume of the malt solids is not increased. The grist is just "fluffier" and more open. Which is a nice thing in thin mashes, which I'm advocating as well, since the grain is distributed more evenly throughout the mash.

I don't have a problem with rusting rollers. The only rust I have is on the adjustment knob and that doesn't get in contact with the conditioned malt anyway.

I used to say that less husk shredding means less astringency, but I have backed off from this statement as there is no mention of this in the literature and I have no data to support that. Bamforth and Lewis say the same in "Essays in Brewing Science".

In the end you should see it as just another tool that you may or may not use in your brewing. It's not the key to brewing excellent beers nor will be a guarantee against stuck sparges. It just allows you to mill a bit finer while maintaining run-off speed. If you mill too fine you'll still get a stuck sparge since there will be too much flour in the grist. As with all new techniques: If you are interested give it a try and see for yourself if it is worth the added effort. If you can hide the added time behind a longer process step (e.g. heating strike water) wile improving lauter speed, malt conditioning can actually save you time. But I have not done good enough side-by-sides to confirm this.

Kai

1752

Beer Travel / Re: Schneider Hopfenweisse

« on: November 17, 2009, 02:38:15 pm »

That's the Brooklyn Brewery collaboration, no?  I had the one they brewed in the US but I don't remember if I've tried the version brewed in Germany.

Yes, it is the Brooklyn Brewery collaboration I found that out later. I even happened to read about it in a BYO article on the plane.

Kai

1753

Beer Travel / Schneider Hopfenweisse

« on: November 10, 2009, 04:22:30 am »

I'm in Munich right now and just went to the "Weisses Brauhaus" to have a Schneider Weisse with some Weisswurst (white sausage) for breakfast. As I check
out the menu after already having one beer I noticed somrhing that caught my interest. Schneider Hopfenweisse, a wheat with 8.6% alc and American hops. Correct, it tastes like a wheat IPA. Denny, even you would like it. The percievef bitterness is that of a regular wheat but it has the full taste and aroma of C hops. None of the clove though. I think that would have fought the hops anyway.

I'll have to post pics when I'm back.

BTW, they put it on the menu just yesterday.

Kai

1754

All Grain Brewing / Re: Length of decoction boil for bock

« on: November 08, 2009, 06:15:57 pm »

You don't have to brew a side-by-side on the same day or weekend. It's nice if you can, but if you can control lots of the process parameters you can brew "side-by-sided" one or two weeks apart. That's what I do. The most difficult factor to control might be yeast. But you can use dry yeast for that.

Kai

1755

Equipment and Software / Re: RO system Qs

« on: November 07, 2009, 08:15:08 pm »

Maybe look into another way to remove the carbonate fromyour water. A link to get you started.

http://www.tutorvista.com/content/chemistry/chemistry-iii/hydrogen/methods-hardness-water.php

I was about to suggest something like this as well. Lime treatment to precipitate temporary hardness (which is mostly CaCO3) seems to me the most economical way of getting softer water on a larger scale. I have an RO system now, but If I were to brew substantially larger batches that 5 gal I'd look into integrating lime treatment into my brewing. You can use simple alkalinity and hardness tests they sell in aquarium stores to check the results.

Kai