BREWDAY: Wise Pumpkin Says Dunkel for Halloween

The seasonal brews are one of my favorite things to do. Most brewers don't like pumpkin beer. It is a plebian affair, after all, and you have to like what pumpkin tastes like to like it in a brew. Pumpkin has a flavor. It is not necessarily a pie flavor. In fact, most pumpkin pies are made with butternut squash. Still, for those of us who do enjoy pumpkin, a seasonal brew with the fruits of the autumn harvest is the perfect time to celebrate that pumpkin love.

Ah, pumpkin. Ah, Halloween. Halloween pumpkin. Ah. Yes.

Here's what I came up with from my handy brew closet supply:

3 gallon batch

1 whole roasted pumpkin pie pumpkin (about 2 1/3 pounds, cleaned, in this case)

2 pounds of red wheat malt

8 ounces of 2-row

8 ounces of caramunich

8 ounces of piloncillo sugar

2 ounces of carafa i

2 ounces of quaker quick oats

.8 ounces of Styrian Celeja hops @60

.2 ounces of Styrian Celeja hops @30

1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice blend (in this case, McCormick's brand. I did a good strong amount because the container is years old. Were this a fresh batch of homemade stuff, I'd use 1/3 of a teaspoon!)

1/2 teaspoon of Chinese Five Spice (in this case, a homemade blend, about a year old, containing fennel, star anise, clove, szechuan peppercorn, and cinnamon)

Things I did differently this time:

I used 3.75 gallons of storebought spring water to fill my kettle, this time. I want to see if I can isolate either the water or the sanitation process. I kept my sanitation the same, with the bleach and the rinsing of bleach. Let's see if it is (as I suspect) likely coming from the hard, chlorinated San Antonio tap water.

I've had good results with overnight mashing, and I'm going to keep doing it, for now, until I can get a refractometer. I've ordered one, but it is not here, yet.

So, I got my strike water up to 175 degrees, doughed in with my fresh crushed grain and pumpkin, and got the temperature up to about 155. Then, I placed my kettle in a pre-heated oven at 170 degrees. I flipped the oven off, went to bed, and did the rest of the boil in the morning. Simple. 

Pumpkin. I love pumpkin. I could take a cured cinderella pumpkin, slice it up like fine cheese and eat it raw. I could make pumpkin bread, and pumpkin alcohol, and pumpkin cinnamon rolls... I love pumpkin!

How do you process a pumpkin for homebrew if you don't have a food processor? Ours was dirty, and I was too lazy to clean it, so I had to find a different way. I put the roasted pumpkin in a plastic bag, and smashed it up with my hands, crushing it inside of the plastic bag into a gooey paste. It was clean and easy to work with, and seemed to lead to good conversion in the kettle. Time will tell. Time will tell. Refractometer en route.

Anyway, the wise pumpkin says dunkel, because yeast should have a flavor, and the spicy, fruity German yeast will complement the spicy, fruity pumpkin brew. It will not be another commercial amber pumpkin ale. (I could buy that in the store, if I wanted it!) It will be something I haven't seen out and about. And, my hope is that the piloncillo and caramunich will impart a rich caramel flavor to go with the pumpkin and the spice. Caramel pumpkin is a wise combination, no?

Pictures:

BREWDAY: Red River Dunkelweizen

I have named this beer "Red River" in honor of my family's move to Texas. Also, I am hoping it will be red. My process is still working out the kinks, and there's just no way to be sure that I'm going to nail the color red. The name is hopeful. I am placing the name upon the beer, as if it might cast the spell upon it that encourages the color red to appear. (A brewer's mantra: A red river flows through you... A red river flows through you... A red river flows through you...?)

Why red? Because with the hint of chinese five spice and bay leaf, I'm really hoping to get a little taste of autumn in the glass.

Recipe:

2 lbs and 11 ounces of Rahr Red Wheat

1 lb of 2-row pale

4 ounces of homemade caramel/crystal malt

2 ounces of homemade chocolate wheat malt

.2 ounces of Styrian Celeja at 60 minutes for 8.81 IBU

.2 ounces of Styrian Celeja at 15 minutes for 4.37

1 bay leaf at 15 minutes

.5 tsp homemade Chinese Five Spice Blend at 15 minutes

.2 ounces of Cluster at 5 minutes for 2.73 IBU

Mashing this, I put all the grain in to room temperature water, and brought it up gently to 120-125 degrees, and held it there for ten minutes, stirring and allowing to settle. I thought it might help with the haziness of the last brew, even though such things are to style. After that, I brought it up to mash temp for medium body at 154, and then threw it into the pre-heated oven. 

Concerned about my conversion last time, and still sans refractometer, I went the other extreme. I did an overnight mash, in the oven. After about an hour, I flipped the oven off, and left it closed. I let the grain and water rest until the next day in the warm oven, hopefully converting everything. (My PH and water chemistry research continues, naturally, but I'm trying simple solutions first.)

In the morning, I put it all out on the stove and it was 144 degrees! (I'm sure I got about as much conversion as possible when it stayed successfully warm for so long!)

From there, I brought up the temperature to mash-out at 170, and then drained out the grains. (With those grains, I brewed up some bread to go with the beer. See prior post!)

This was the easy boil I had heard about in a biab, with no boilovers and not even a moment's unrest over such things. Additions were added. Coffee was enjoyed. Cooling off in the sink was simple.

Breaking up the brewday process with an overnight mash was very nice. It gave me something to look forward to in the morning, and spreads the time spent brewing out a while.

Once the wort cooled to pitching temps, I put this straight down onto the yeastcake from the Golden Cloud Ale, and it seems to have made beer. I hit it with lots of ice during the week, and kept it down. The smell out of the fermentor has a lot more balance of banana against the clove. I'll be bottling soon. Hopefully, I'll be drinking soon, too!

Pictures:

 <-filtering out the hops and escaped grains before the primary! In small batch brewing, I want all the beer I can get, and I don't want to lose any to trub and crud like this!

Man, I need to get me one of these:

BOTTLING DAY: Golden Cloud Ale

Today was the day. The beer had stopped fermenting, and it was time to put it in a bottle. I've used Danstar Munich before and gotten good results, but I have to wonder if the difference between extract brewing (and water PH?) had any effect on this batch. It was a mess. The beer was not clear. It was not clearing. It was just sort of stuck exactly where it was supposed to be, at my target gravity (1.014). It wasn't cleaning itself up, and I needed the bucket and the yeast cake. So, I made a judgment call. Bottle this gloopy mess. Hefeweizens are supposed to have some yeast, right? Right? If I had known how much yeast was still hovering in the wort, I'd have tried again.

I got 15 bottles before it was too sludgy to move. It tastes all right. The yeast is definitely a part of the beer, and gives it a creamy texture enhanced by the use of oats in the mash. The head is thick and foamy and rich. Coming in warm, I'm tasting a lot of clove in the beer. I wanted to see what that meant, when people talk about the clove and the banana, and try a couple beers to find that range. Well, I found the clove range, for sure. It's not unpleasant when cold, but it's definitely something i'd like better if there was blood oranges in the batch. The next batch (currently bubbling away) will be kept much cooler to aim for the banana esters. The toasted malts have definitely improved the recipe, as well. There's an indescribable something in the malts, sweeter and nuttier than expected. There's something there, and it's wonderful, and it's hard to place on the palate. The color is beautiful. The beer is refreshing and spicy and there's just that nice hint of sweet toastiness somewhere, riding over the clove esters. It's not a caramel malt sweetness, and not a roasted barley toastiness, but it's there, just on the palate and gone. Give it time. Maybe the beer'll get better. Takeaways: 1) Research how Danstar Munich reacts to different kinds of water, because maybe that's why it would not drop clear out of the wort. 2) Research my own water, here in San Antonio, and see if I can't find a way to do it better with either water treatments or Reverse-Osmosis water, or even just the spring water I used to use in Decatur, GA, because the tap water was no good. Did the hard water I used impact the flavor? 3) Be more disciplined with temperature control. I wanted to let it run hot to see what it tasted like that way, and now I know. It isn't bad. In fact, in a blood orange hefeweizen, I'd say it would be ideal for me to have more clove, but in this toasted malt hefe, it isn't the right balance. Cool it off, and aim banana with toasted malts. Aim banana. Lesson learned. Hey, want to find out about the Blood Orange Hefeweizen that's so popular on-line? Sure ya do: Right! A great time was had by all, and some beer is in front of me that needs drinking. Next time, BREWDAY: Red River Ale!

Caramel Malt Experiment #1

I have nothing against commercial caramel malts. I use them, and will use them again. Right now, though, what interests me is doing it myself. I read about a guy who made his own caramel malts at home. I've noticed in on-line discussions there's a lot of debate about whether these are actually caramel malts. You see, commercial caramel malts are made by sprouting green barley grains, then roasting them. It's just not the same to do it at home with dry grains. But, some homebrewers will tell you that you aren't changing the chemistry, just the process. The enzymes that make the whole process work are still present in the grain. Or something. I don't know. It doesn't really matter to me if I'm getting a true caramel malt, or just something different that works the same.

The thing that matters to me, as a homebrewer, is the beer. If the beer tastes really good, and the process was unique, that only makes the beer more appealing to me, because it makes it something that I cannot purchase at the store. It makes it something that I can teach to my nephews and nieces someday, when they're old enough for this hobby. It makes it artisan and craftsman and made with human hands.

Why not try to make our own caramel malts at home?

So, I'm going to try a couple different processes to produce caramel malts. This blog post will be my first experiment.

I soaked grain overnight, as if they were beans, and then rinsing them, again, like beans. 

Then, I spread them on a foil-wrapped baking sheet, and poured a little more water over them, to keep them damp during the roast.

I placed them in a cold oven, and then I set the temperature of the oven for 170 degrees (my lowest setting). 

Then, I stirred occasionally and added more water as things dried out, to keep the grains damp, for one hour and fifteen minutes.

At the end of that time, I set the oven temperature to 350 degrees. Now, it was pretty late at night, and I had some other things to do that would take a lot of my attention. Once the oven hit 350, I gave it a minute, and flipped it off, while leaving the grains in the heated oven. A few hours later, I checked and noticed there was still dampness in the grains, so I stirred and flipped the oven back on to 350. Once it struck, I gave it five minutes, then turned it off again and went to bed. In the morning, the grains were dry and a good color, so I put them in a paper bag to age.

These will age at least five days. 

Are they caramel malts? Are they some sort of super-toasted sweet malt? I don't know. I do know that they smelled grainy and sweet, and that they developed a golden red color that cooked in a bit darker during the drying phase. 

Until someone comes by to tell me precisely what I created, I'll call it Experimental Malt #1.

Man, but it was late, and I think the lesson learned here is to budget your time a little smarter. I needed to do it tonight to let it age for a few days before my next batch (hurled upon the yeast cake of Golden Cloud Ale) and I still have to roast some chocolate wheat for my next planned batch! Argh! I was so sleepy!

I'll do things differently, next time. I will roast earlier in the day. I will use a different process for the caramel malts. I will experiment, iterate, try new things!

This is a great way to keep my hand in the business while my Golden Cloud Ale is still fermenting.

Also, is it any wonder I'd want to do it myself when there's prices like this out there:

Fermentation Station

Danstar Munich is cooking right now. It took a while for it to wake up, possibly because I underpitched, possibly because I did a pretty rough and basic mash - no protein rest, etc. - and possibly because I used San Antonio tap water that was boiled in an open container to clear off the chemistry, leaving behind a lot of the minerals in our hard, limey water.

The spare room/office is still pretty crowded from our recent move. We're slowly settling in. In the mean time, this room is the perfect place for the beer. The ambient temperature is 74 degrees, and I'm throwing water bottles in and out of the freezer every few hours to get a fermentation range in an un-measured temperature that's probably about eight to ten degrees cooler. (As I unpack more, my thermometer might appear out of a box, and I could really know for sure!)

I'm hoping for most of the flavor out of the Danstar Munich yeast, and along those lines, I'm not aiming for a clean fermentation. I underpitched on purpose to stress the yeast a little, and I'm letting it go on the warm side of its range to up the yeast's distinctive characteristics away from a super traditional weizen.

For me, one of the reasons I love the system of a fermentation bucket inside of a larger water bucket with ice bottles, is that it will make every batch just a little bit different, even with the same ingredients. I will never perfectly nail any one temperature, and every batch will be an adventure. I will never know exactly what will come out each time. I only know that when I'm close, it will be good. How good? The excitement of not really knowing exactly how good it will be fuels my excitement for the batch to ferment.

There's an excitement in a more manual and less-machine-like process. There's an adventure to it. Also, it's a lot cheaper than running a second fridge just for buckets of beer, and it gives me something to do to stay close to my beer, interacting with it and helping it along.

Swamp coolers are recommended for busy bodies like me that like to feel like they're always doing something!

Next Entry: More Roasting of Malts!

BREWDAY: Golden Cloud Ale

Here is the recipe I put together for my very first all-grain brew, which - as expected - was not a perfect day, with some kinks in process, but a successful one that has produced something that looks like it will become a delicious beer.

2 gallon recipe, for a BIAB, small-batch brewer.

3.5 gallons of good water

2 pounds of Rahr Red Wheat

2 pounds of Rahr 2-Row

8 ounces of Badducky's Toasted Wheat and Barley Blend

4.63 ounces of Quaker Quick Oats (This is exactly 5% of the grain bill...)

0.2 ounces of Cluster Hops at 60 minutes for bittering

0.2 ounces of Styrian Celeja hops at 15 minutes for aroma/flavor

Danstar Munich Yeast

This will be my first BIAB, all-grain beer, and my first all-grain beer, at all, ever. I have done partial mashes with great success, and extracts with steeping grains, and even made some excellent meads. I've never gone all-grain, before. A big day. A banner day. Hooray for beer and for me.

There are steps in the process I don't have, yet, which are important steps, but for my first batch, I wanted to keep the process simple and skip anything that looked like it might add more work to the process, even if it meant producing a better product, just this once. To me, the goal was moving from crushed grain to a happy, fermenting primary with all the necessary steps one time, to see if I think there's things that will make it easier.

So, I didn't take a gravity reading. I have no tool for that, at this time. We moved a lot, recently, and the hydrometer is... I don't know where it is. Maybe I broke it. Hm. 

Well, I took 3.5 gallons of water in my kettle, brought it to a boil first to cook off any craziness, and to time how long it took to move from cold to boil, for my future reference, on this new stove. (45 minutes, give or take five minutes.)

Once boiling, I flipped it off, and left it uncovered, with the thermometer in place, to wait until it fell down to just under 170 degrees. I was hoping for a mash of 154 degrees. I have no digital thermometer, and, again, I'm aiming for pretty close this time to see what happens.

Yay, dough in! I used a big voile bag from Northern Brewer to hold my grains, and stirred them in. The temperature was dead on as close to 154 you can get without a digital thermometer, so I closed the kettle and put it in an oven pre-heated to 170 degrees, which was immediately switched off.

If you can see beyond the reflection in the glass, you will see the real picture. A kettle in an oven is turning water and grains into sweet wort. 

As I have no hydrometer, no ion paper, and no fancy doodads - plus, I was really uncertain about my first crush - I mashed for 90 minutes using a technique I picked up from partial mash brewing to know when I was done. I took a spoon and tasted the wort. When it tasted too watery, I put it back in. When it tasted like wort should, I pulled it out. 90 minutes. That's what I did. Sometimes, I turned on the oven again, to 170 degrees (the lowest setting on the range) and flipped it off to keep the temperature up.

I also put an extra pot on to boil, because I was uncertain about the volume of wort I was producing. I wanted two gallons of beer. New to the process, and to the stove, I had no true knowledge of the right amount of water for the BIAB method, with the sparge water included in the kettle.

I cannot say enough how great it must be to have some sort of hefty colander to haul the grains out of the kettle. This couple pounds of grain became quite very yes extremely heavy with hot water in it! I held it over the kettle to drain as best I could, switching hands and double-handing and switching hands again. Woof! 

Sturdy Colander. I need one. Eventually. Doing things by hand is not supposed to be a point of suffering.

Back to a boil, and it took not long at all. 

Cluster hops went in. We have now begun to make beer.

Anyway, with my 4-5 gallon kettle, and it less than half-full, I patted myself on the back for preparing extra water. But, I should not have. I had assumed from what I read that this should mitigate, if not remove the risk of boilovers entirely with such an amount of headroom. Not so, grasshopper. I hopped outside for a quick task of bleach-water-filling-in-the-sanitizer bucker...

I sat on the couch a moment to answer an e-mail, and soon I smelled the burnination. Oh, my...

Yeah, so anyone who tells you your risk of boilover is reduced with BIAB is selling you something. This boiled over in less than six minutes with a huge amount of headroom, after it appeared quite stably boiling along.

I made the best of it. I know we lost bittering, but it wasn't a highly bitter beer with IBUs around 12. I won't be upset if the first batch comes out unbalanced. First batches are all about learning. Learning that boilovers are just as common and normal and happening if you so much as look away from the kettle a moment!

Lovely mess I get to clean up, now. All over the new house's oven range, too. And the floor. and all the gunk all over the kettles, too.

The boil completed. The wort finished at only 1.5 gallons, thereabouts. Next time, I'll increase the amount of water in the beginning kettle to compensate. Also, I see why people produce those measuring sticks for their boil kettles, because if I had known I was running so short, I would have added more water at the beginning of the boil, not into the primary. I shall invest in a twenty-two inch PVC pipe, next, and measure out my gallon markers for my kettle of choice.

Wort cooled; yeast pitched. Wish me luck!

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Next entry: Fermentation In My Station