May 14th, 2009
Legend tells of a beer most foul, which when loosed from its growler, scorches the nostrils of any who dare to drink it.
This prophecy was fulfilled, and my growler batch was virtually undrinkable. There was a distinct smell of sulfur that was tolerable at first but became overwhelming after the first few sips. From what I have read, the sulfur smell is a common symptom of yeast autolysis, which is probably the most likely culprit given the circumstances.
The beer was given about 1.5 weeks to ferment, and another 1.5 weeks to carbonate—3 weeks is a fairly young beer, but in this case, the beer was sitting on the yeast cake for that entire time. Most resources recommend no longer than 10 days on the primary yeast cake.
I was aware from the outset that this could be a possible spoiler in my experiment, but there is a lot of controversy about autolysis. The 10-day rule seems to be pretty common received knowledge. After that point, the theory goes, the yeast begin to cannibalize themselves and contribute off flavors; thus the need for a secondary vessel for longer fermentations. On the other side of the debate, there are those who claim that the effects of autolysis are overblown. It’s not that it doesn’t occur, or that it doesn’t effect the beer, but rather that the yeast eventually clean up their own byproducts and the off flavors dissipate over time. Thus, they claim, a long fermentation can just as easily be carried out all in one vessel.
I was turning all this over in my mind while pouring the remains of my sulfury beer down the drain, and then a thought occurred to me: I have one more growler of this stuff, so I have a good way to test for autolysis. At data point one (this beer), the effects of autolysis were obviously evident. But I have another growler full of the same beer, sitting on the same yeast cake, which I can open a couple weeks from now to get data point two. My growler batch experiment has turned into an autolysis experiment.
There is actually a lot to be hopeful about. As you can see to the right here, it was a pretty good looking beer, pretty well carbonated, and with a good flavor (at least as much as I could detect through the smell). If the off flavors do indeed take care of themselves, then the growler batch may still be a viable system.
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April 25th, 2009
The growler batches are primed. To protect all involved, I put baggies over the tops, and I sat them on a nice thick towel. If there’s any ’splodin, at least I can clean it up.
I wasn’t sure if I should prime these batches as usual, since they had so much yeast sitting at the bottom. But I got some good input from a fellow brewer: they won’t carbonate any more, just more quickly. I went ahead and primed near (just a bit under) the normal rate (1 oz. sugar/gallon), but I bagged em up, just in case.
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April 16th, 2009
No matter how sketchy this setup looks, I assure you, it’s just homebrew.
Here’s the situation. I had just a bit of grain leftover from my last all-grain batch. Scaling down my batches was already my current theme, and I was also trying to think of ways to tighten up my bottling process to minimize oxidation. That’s when the thought occurred to me: why not brew a tiny batch that never has to be bottled, because the fermenter IS the bottle? Thus, growler batches were born.
This really has the feel of something that shouldn’t work, but the thing is, I can’t think of a single, specific reason why it won’t. At least not from the outset. Since I plan to pour the finished product right out of these things, I felt that a couple of additional precautions were necessary. I had to minimize the trub by (i) brewing 2 gallons and just siphoning off the top 1 gallon and (ii) using whole-leaf hops. I also had to minimize blowoff during fermentation, since even a little could cost me half my batch. As soon as I saw the krausen rising, I beat it back with foam control drops.
Things seem to be going well so far, but a couple of obstacles remain. I have to figure out how to prime the growlers, since the potential exists that all that yeast laying at the bottom will go crazy as soon as it gets another taste of sugar, and I have to try and drink them in a reasonable time frame, since the beer will be spending more time than usual sitting on the yeast.
I must say, I really love the idea of this process and hope to see it work out. If the idea of a “living” bottle-conditioned beer is romantic, how much more so a beer that is served right out of the fermenter? Even so, I still hedged my bets. In the background, you can see my safety beer.
Tags: all-grain, blowoff, bottling, growler, krausen, oxidation, priming, trub
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April 5th, 2009
Never, ever underestimate the power of the yeast. Shown here is the formerly muddy pale ale after 1 week in the bottle. Not a bad head for such a short time. Given these results, I think it’s clear that the yeast were tough enough to survive my clarifying techniques (gelatin and a cold crash).
In other good news, the off flavor seems to be gone. But it’s still a little way from “good.” The beer is too green to judge right now. I’ll give it some more time in the bottle before I consider condemning it to the drain.
Tags: clarifying, cold crash, fining, gelatin
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March 28th, 2009
Here we go. Time to try out my half-batch all-grain system. I decided to make a stout—I am a malt guy by nature, so it’s time to brew like one and stop playing with the hops.
So here we see my 7 pounds of base grains in the grain bag. The bag is actually a paint strainer I bought at the hardware store. I highly recommend them. They are strong, flexible, and elastic at the top—best of all, they are cheap. Once the grain is spent, just take the whole bag and toss it in the trash. For the superstitious among us, I assure you that those are not spirit orbs, but just grain dust that I was trying to spank out of the bag.
Here’s where things get a little stupid. They call this step a “dough-in” for a reason. I dipped the whole grain bag in the mash water, and I instantly got a huge dough ball. I had to stir like crazy to break it up, and of course I forgot to turn off the heat during this process, so the temperature went out of control, too. I had to stick the pot in the fridge for a few minutes, but I got things back under control. To the right you can see my sparge pot, where I am steeping the specialty grains separately.
Amazing but true: when I turned the heat off and just wrapped these towels around the lid of my pot, the mash held its target temperature (150-155F) for 60 minutes. I think I only had to turn low heat on once for a minute or two when it threatened to drop below 150F.
After the mash, I combined the specialty grains and base grains in the grain bag, and then I let them sit in the sparge pot (170F) for a few minutes. Then I lifted the bag out and used this cup to wash the grains for a few 
minutes. That metal strainer that fits over the top of my brew pot, I feel like it’s one of best pieces of equipment in my whole kit. Also, please take note of my super high-tech kitchen with all those fancy knobs. I brew beers for the atomic age! Duck and cover.
After the grains dripped dry, I combined the sparge water with the mash water and brewed as usual. Despite my slip-ups, in the end I was just a hair away from my target gravity. Not bad for a first try.
Tags: all-grain, brew in a bag, dough-in, grain bag, mashing, paint strainer, sparging
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March 26th, 2009
So far, all of my batches have been extract-based. I have been wanting to move into all-grain brewing, not necessarily because I buy into anti-extract snobbery, but because I want to play around with grains a little more and learn how to make beer from scratch. As they say: it’s one thing to make the soup, it’s another to make the stock.
A few things were holding me back though: I don’t have room for much more equipment, I don’t have the option of brewing outside, and I’m limited to the volume I can boil on my stovetop. I knew that the main process I had to negotiate was mashing the grains, and the more I learned, the closer I realized that I already was—I was already steeping grains, and mashing grains is really only different in time and temperature. So I started to collect information about how I could do all-grain on my stovetop using the equipment I already had.
I noticed that Charlie Papazian mentioned mashing in a grain bag in his book, and once I found this thread, it was a done deal. I decided to set up a simple all-grain process using two pots, two grain bags, and not much else. Because I can’t fit tons of grain in my brewpots, and because I can’t boil down 7 gallons of wort, my all-grain batches will have to be cut in half. No worries though. I’m not too concerned about yields—I’m starting to brew faster than I can drink anyway.
Tags: all-grain, mashing, steeping
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March 22nd, 2009
Here we see the formerly muddy pale ale with a layer of whole-leaf cascade hops (1 oz.). A couple days later, I also added a half ounce of American oak chips. Yea, I know I’m just masking the flaws, but some of the best recipes in the world have been stumbled upon in this way. Not that I hold out such high hopes for my own brew, I just want to make sure it’s drinkable, which it wouldn’t have been otherwise, unless you like the flavor of wet dog. Hey, I’m not judging. What you do with your wet dog is your business.
Tags: dry hopping, oak
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March 22nd, 2009
Ye of little faith. Did you think I would give up on this beer? Well, I did consider it, but then I thought instead that this might be a good opportunity to test out some clarifying techniques.
There are some clarifying agents that you can add at (or near the end of) the fermentation stage, but I asked around and every one of them seemed to come with the warning “That’ll drop your yeast out of suspension.” I could have been intimidated into repitching before bottling, but I thought that this might be a good opportunity to test whether the original yeast was hardy enough to survive the clarifying process.
I decided to take a shot with the seemingly least harmful option: good old-fashioned unflavored gelatin. I took one packet, dissolved it in 2 cups of water, and poured it in the carboy. I let that sit for a couple days, and then I transferred to a secondary carboy (with a hop bag over the end of my siphon, as a filter). Then I attempted to do a cold crash: I took a couple shelves out of my fridge and stuck the carboy in there until it dropped to about 30 degrees. (Wish I had a picture of that. Talk about a bachelor fridge.)
As you can see, the results were pretty striking. This is the clearest, best-looking beer I’ve ever made—it’s muddy predecessor now just a bad memory. But there are still problems ahead. (1) I won’t know if it affected my yeast until I bottle. (2) Somehow in all this, the flavor has gone off. The bitterness and alcohol are on point, but there is a faint wet dog smell that is throwing everything off. I doubt that this is going to work itself out in the bottle, so I’m going to have to perform a little more surgery to take care of it.
Tags: clarifying, cold crash, fining, gelatin
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March 19th, 2009
You could say that this is the beer that started the blog. I had always made up my own recipes, and after a couple batches I had started to dial in my brewing process. That’s when I got cocky.
I wanted to push a little bit, make something complex. I put together a recipe for an American pale ale with rye, peppercorns, brown sugar, and oak. It was kind of a bastardized version of a couple of Sam Calagione’s recipes from Extreme Brewing. I may not have treated the rye properly, since I basically steeped it with some crystal malt…but the real problems came when I added the brown sugar.
I waited until fermentation got started, then I melted the brown sugar into some water and poured it all in. But then I started to think, “Well, that must have just went to the bottom. I better stir it up.” My beer immediately lost its mind. The krausen started to pump like a heartbeat and blow off, and all the sediment kicked back up and swirled around like the gulf stream. The beer bubbled loudly next to my bed for three nights and I had nightmares about exploding carboys.
At this point I was still holding out hope. Maybe it’s not a problem? It could be just a vigorous fermentation, right? Right? But even once things calmed down, the beer looked terrible. What I came to realize was that all of that agitated sediment had no way to drop back out of suspension. The Irish moss had already done its work, and the cold break after boiling had dropped out as much crud as it could. I had canceled all that out by stirring up my carboy.
Tags: brown sugar, oak, rye, sediment
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