Hiatus...

Well, if you read this blog, you might wonder what a hiatus is, since I went for two months without a single update. I will be away from my brewery for over two weeks around the holidays and I won't be brewing again until I return. Once I return, I'm making another porter and another IPA.

For Christmas I'm giving my uncle a six pack of my recent Heffe Weizen, which I bottled on Thursday. I'm not certain that it will be carbonated by Christmas. Probably not.

Spoiling...

That was the story of several beers, including Goat Scrotum and a second shot at an IPA. It sucked.

I'm back in the saddle. The third try at an IPA was a monsterous beer. Not bad all in all, but 78 IBU bitter without much sweetness or hops to balance. There were only six pounds of dried malt in it and frankly it was too damn much. That's not to say that I didn't drink it all: I did. But it was less that ideal.

I've been giving a lot of thought to my next IPA, which I want to be truly good. It will be my fourth try at an IPA. My goal is to have it between 45 and 50 IBU with a serious hop flavor. To that end, I plan to use one ounce of centenial or amarillo or maybe UK Target (one of the dudes at my beer store loves UK Target) and one ounce of low alpha fuggles to bitter the beer with a sixty minute boil. To flavor, I'm going to use an ounce of fuggles and an ounce of horizon five minutes remaining in the boil. One ounce of cascade will go in at the very end, for aroma. I'll be using one pound of 20 or 40 L crystal malt and a half pound of victory--at least I think I'll be doing victory.

I have another Heffeweizen, momentarily named "Wheat Christmas", which should be fucking rocking. My last heffe, by the way, was fucking rocking--best heffe I've ever had. The new one is a pound heavier on the malt and I added two adjunct grains--flaked wheat and something else. I need to ask the beer store guy what something else was. (I chose it on his recomendation but I didn't make a mental note of what it was.) Anyway, it tastes great--I transfered to secondary today. The yeast is one of white labs platinum series: Bavarian Weizen Yeast. I love that yeast so much I bought three vials so that I can continue using it. One day I'll have to switch to Heffeweizen Ale Yeast, which I'm sure is also good.

My most stalwart brewing companion also owns a fermenter, which lives at my place. He made a great amber ale that's exactly what we were seeking: sittin' around and drinking beer beer. Tonight I've got some people coming over for to drink it.

Since I have more fermenters than dollars, I offered to let two other friends of mine fill a fermenter. They made a nice appricot IPA. I've only tasted the less than fully fermented product but I really liked it. Tonight I'll get some more of that stuff. I'm totally hoping some brewing gift certificates for christmas so I can crank out another batch of the Browncoat ale and that IPA I was talking about above. And some all grain brewing equipment. I want to do another Porter. The last one was merely very good beer, and I want outstanding beer. I was critical of it's sweetness. To reduce that next time I will be using Dry English Ale Yeast, which is more attenuative than the yeast I used last time. I will also bitter it more heavily--a heavy dose of fuggles and target, I think. To flavor: half ounce... something, maybe santiam as I have a half ounce of that already and I like the description "excellent sweet and floral flavor and aroma."

Foam Hopping...

A new technique developed by home brewers to improve beer...

"It smells like fucking pumkin pie!"

"Yeah, it does. Exactly." Responded my brewing companion. We'd just finished the Goat Scrotum Wort and put it into fermentation. He'd gone to The Beer Store (that's the store where I buy my Pilsner and Franziskanner, just up the street) and asked for a recommendation. Only the guy who used to work there and has excellent taste in beer doesn't work there any more. So we had to ask for a rec from a different guy. He assured that the Pumpkin Ale is good.

It's not fucking good. It smells like pumkin pie and it tastes like pumkin pie and fuck that.

This is how foam hopping was invented: that goddamn pumkin pie ale needed to be fixed. I had about half an once of old cascade pellets. I crushed one into the pumkin pie beer. Wait five minutes. The bad beer now smells like hops. This makes it more drinkable bad beer.

Foam hopping is best avoided. To avoid it, drink better beer. Failing that, foam hop it.

Goat Scrotum.

I've been promising to make this insane beer since awhile. Now I have.

My brewing companion (call him "BC") (who has gotten a fermenter himself--it's in my living room) and I were at the bar. "We're brewing Goat Scrotum" I told the bartender. She smiled "where are you gonna get goat scrotums for the beer?" (She likes us.) "Well, they're hard to find. I might have to do without getting any." BC: "he's just gonna have to make do with the goat scrotums he already has." Something like that was the conversaion.

Here's what eventually was done with the goat scrotum:

-5 lbs. dried munton's dark malt extract
-1 cup brown sugar
-1 cup blackstrap molassas
-1 lb. 120 L Crystal Malt
-1/4 lb. roasted barley
-1 oz. Northern Brewer's hops (9.2% AA)
-1/2 oz. Cascade hops (6.0% AA)
-1/2 oz. Cascade hops (finishing)
- ~1/3 cup grated ginger
- 3 serano chilis
- ~1/4 cup dried juniper berries
- 2 tsp. gypsum

There was a one hour boil. I forgot 1/2 oz. cascade boiling hops in the start, so they went in with 45 minutes to go. The grains were steeped for 30 minutes at around 155 degrees. The finishnig hops were added with three minutes left in the boil. OG = 1.062.

This beer generates great excitment. Frankly, I suspect it's less than outstanding. It will be less bitter than I want in a beer.

The Tripel is really still fermenting a lot. I got out my stop watch to measure time between bubbles: 53 seconds between each, on average, with a sample of four bubbles--total varriation was 4 seconds.

My second IPA is still fermenting but there appears to be a leak, because it's not showing up in the airlock. (I peeked inside and there's still a fair amount of yeast on top, which means floculation hasn't occured. Besides, continued fermentation is what I should expect right now.)

Count down of Missing Shade of Brew: Eight days before drinking.

Wow...

I've fallen behind. In writing. Not brewing. No, I have been brewing.

Missing Shade of Brew, the Heffe Weizen, is in bottles. If the warm uncarbonated stuff tells me anything, I've created a lovely Heffe Weizen. This has me enthused about creating a Weizenbock, which is dark wheat beer with some the character of a bock--mostly the higher alcohol content. Missing shade was bottled last night, Sept. 26th. The final specific gravity was 1.014. I never got the original, which should have been 1.050.

The Tripel presents a great story. The wort had a specific gravity of 1.081--fucking potent stuff. The yeast predicatably took a bit of time to begin fermentation. Once it did, the kause rose so high that it was pushing through the airlock. The yeast clogged that up. When I came home the lid had blown off. It settled quite a bit over the next twenty-four hours. Hasn't blown off again since. That beer should be ready to transfer to secondary fermentation in two days--I say should because frankly fermentation is still pretty vigorous.

My second IPA is started. I pitched the yeast on the 25th. I used a different recipe, which is most notable for the use of a proper yeast from White Labs. I upped the malt content; original SG was 1.054. I use Northern Brewer's hops for bittering--2 oz. 7.1% Alpha acid; for flavor, 3/4 oz Cascade and for aroma 1/4 oz. of the same. I added the Cascade hops with nine minutes left in the sixty minute boil and the aroma with only a minute left. I should digress on the original IPA: I felt like it lacked hop flavor and aroma (not to mention body). That the reason for a later addition of flavor hops and aroma hops. I also worked a new cooling method: place the pot next to a hose spigot and turn on the spigot (keeping water out of the wort, of course.) This worked well. I'm told that using a proper yeast (English Ale Yeast) should enhance the hops flavor quite a bit.

Browncoat is in bottles now. I'm very excited about this beer. The warm flat stuff has a great balance of malt and bitterness, and a nice aroma too. Once chilled an carbonated, I'm expecting very good things.

There's a name for the Heffe Weizen: "Missing Shade of Brew".

I got stuff to make another IPA yesterday. I'll say more about that later.

The ingredients for the Tripel (whose name I'm inclined to change, maybe just "Triple Decade Tripel") are all purchased and once shipping is complete, I should start that. I look forward to it.

That's all for now. I'll be back to talk more about the future IPA, along with some general plans for my homebrewing carreer.

So, I posted the following:

I lost a post the highlights of which were:

• I racked the Heffe and the uncarbonated product tastes and smells right.
• I tasted some of the half-carbonated IPA. It is weak in body and hop flavor and aroma.
• Browncoat is ready to bottle.

And the post below--the one I thought didn't make it up--was in fact real. What the hell?

The Heffe Weizen is now in secondary fermentation. The specific gravity upon transfer was near 1.015. The beer seems much lighter that the wort. It has the color of heffe weizen. It tastes like it's going to be a heffe weizen. I'm even predicting that it will be good. The odor is just right.

I also tasted some of the under-carbonated IPA today. It's not going to be great. It has a slightly tart flavor that worries me a bit. The beer is bitter, but not strongly so. It lacks the level of hop flavor and aroma that I would like. And the body is thin. It kinda reminds me of a pale ale rather than an IPA. All that said, I expect that I will be quite happy with the beer. My first attempt at homebrew has the promise of being other than abject failure. Indeed, a beer you pay a buck a piece for could be worse.

I'm thinking of trying my hand at an IPA again before I mix up that porter.

I'll be headed to the brew store in the next few days. Things to buy include:
Bottle Caps
Priming Sugar
Trappist Ale Yeast
gypsum
2 lbs. Light Dried Malt Extract
Styrian Goldings hops
Water (from the grocery store)
Honey

I might also get bottles.

I might also get:
dark malt extract
crystal malt
black patent malt
roasted barley
brown sugar
blackstrap molasses
more hops, as-yet-undecided variety
yeast
ginger root
spruce essence
juniper berries
a fucking habanero or two

That's crazy talk, but I'm serious. There's a porter recipe I've got called "Goat Scrotum Ale". This awesome name belongs to a genus rather than species of brew--there are too many options in this recipe to say that it's a recipe for a single kind of beer. The above describes my own ideas on how to realize it.... I might put some cranberries in too.

Oh, I'll be bottling my brown ale this weekend and racking the heffe.

My Heffe Weizen and the Browncoat Ale have settled in their fermentation. Yesterday morning, Heffe was all abubble. Today, it's still for minutes at a time. I think each has about twenty-four hours to go in primary fermentation.

By the way, I think I've discovered a good way to measure whether there's fermentation going on in a fermenter that's clearly past the fermenting peak. This only works if you're fermenting in a bucket.... Anyway, press down on the lid until some bubbles escape the airlock. Release the lid and make sure the bobber in the airlock is resting on the tube that rises into it. If the bobber rises after a short time, the gas pressure inside the bucket has increased and there's still some fermenting going on. If it doesn't rise, or take a long time (hours) to rise, fermentation is nearly complete (the yeast is producing little to no carbon dioxide) and it's ready for secondary fermentation.

i just saw a bubble from Heffe.

Credit where it's due:

I must mention that I've had some help with my brewing. Not with the research or the decisions, but with stiring worts, siphoning, and the like. Most importantly, I've had good company to while brewing, and that is invaluable.

The naming of beers is a difficult matter.

Events in my life work for me. That's where I've gotten names for them so far.

You might be wondering about Browncoat Ale. Well, it's a pretty good story. But first: from where the name? I'm a big geek. I named it because it will be complete around the time of the release of Serenity, a movie based on the TV show Firefly. The Browncoats are the Confederates in the sci-fi civil war, and they're the good guys. And it's a brown ale. Somehow the release of this movie counts as a life event.

Anyway, the browncoat looked like a flop when I started it. I saw no signs of fermentation for several days. I called the beer guys. They said it was probably fine. Maybe a slow start. Maybe a leak in the fermenter. I didn't believe it. Nothing indicated a leak--I smelled nothing like fermentation around the fermenter. Well, expertise is cool. They knew what the hell they were talking about. Fermentation on the Browncoat is nearly done. (I went to the beer store today to get some yeast to make fermentation happen. The guy said to take the gravity first. The gravity is 1.020, a full .032 less than the initial. This beer is mostly fermented. After I resecured the lid today, the airlock began to release bubbles...)

It's also tasty. I hauled a bit out with my sanitized ladel to get the gravity. I'm not putting that contaminated stuff back in once I've taken the gravity. I have to (get to) taste it. The taste is, well, like a brown ale. Good. The sweetness compliments bitterness. I think it might be thin, but you maybe can't tell that before bottle conditioning.

The color is lovely.

Here's the recipe that I used, based on "Elbro Nerkte" in the Complete Joy of Homebrewing:

5 lbs. Muntons Dark Dried Malt Extract
1/2 lb. 80L Crystal Malt
1/4 lb. black patent malt
2 oz. Fuggle hops (bittering), 4% alpha acid
1/2 oz. Cascade hops (finishing)
White Labs English Ale Yeast

O.G. 1.052

The Schedule:

Name	Date: Pitch	Date: Second Fermentation	Date: Bottling	Date: Drink!
I Passed Ale	1 Sept. '05	4 Sept. '05	11 Sept. '05	21 Sept. '05
Browncoat Ale	12 Sept. '05	NA	18 Sept. '05	24 Sept. '05
Heffe Weizen	13 Sept. '05	18 Sept. '05	20 Sept. '05	3 Oct. '05
Tripel Décennies	20 Sept. '05	26 Sept. '05	30 Sept. '05	21 Oct '05

In all cases, dates in the future are plans, dates in the past are actual events.

Heffe Weizen...

Have I mentioned my discovery of beer style? I love Heffe Weizen. Not that shitty stuff they make in the US. I'm talking the genuine, German wheat ale--Hacker Pschorr, Franziskanner, Paulaner. In fermenter number two, there's a Heffe Weizen. Vigorously bubbling through the air lock are little pockets of cidery-smelling gas.

Here's the recipe, almost to the letter Charlie Papazian's* Lovebite Weizenbier:
5lbs. munton's dry wheat/barley malt
3/4 oz. Hallertauer hops 4.6% Alpha Acid
White Labs Pitchable Bavarian Weizen Yeast

Now, here's what I suspect. I'm not going to get a Heffe Weizen. The wort was pretty dark. It looked dunkel to me. That's okay. It's still beer. And I like Dunkel Weizen. I like it alot. I'm unsure whether I should use a secondary fermantation. I liked the results of doing that with my IPA, but that's altogether different, for I want a cloudy Heffe. If you have thoughts, let me know.

I forgot to take the specific gravity of the thing before pitching the yeast. My guess is that it was 1.050. There's little doubt in my mind that I got all the available sugars into the wort and this stuff is pretty standardized. Hence, infer that the wort was what the recipe said it should be.

*from his book The Complete Joy of Homebrewing 3rd Edition. I've read most of the book by now. It's a nice work. If you're thinking about brewing, pick up a copy and read it as you boil your first wort. I guess that not everything everyone says about Papazian is great, but those people are dumb shits who've never taught anyone anything well. Papazian inspires a sense of pride, excitment and liberty in the brewer. Good teachers inspire a love of the subject in their students and Papazian does it masterfully.

Like I said in the begining: brewing beer is the coolest thing I've ever done.

It's so damned cool that I went out an bought a second fermentation system. It takes a week or two to ferment a beer (if it's an ale--twice that if it's a lager) so having only one fermenting system means fairly low rate of production. I can't get enough. I want to have two beers fermenting all the time. One batch is five gallons, which sounds like a lot--53 12oz. bottles--but you can't not share, so fifty bottles is going to go fast. Besides, once I get lagers going, I've got to ocupy a single fermenter for awhile, which means... Look, I love this and I'm not going to let in adequate facilities slow me down.

I've already mentioned that I've got two fermenters working right now. That might not be right... you'll have to get into some forthcomming posts to hear about those.

Now is for history. How did Next Week come to be?

I cut my beer drinking teeth on total crap. That's the way it starts beccause we start drinking beer when we're not yet legal and we do it to get drunk. There was Molson Ice, which I choked the fuck down. There was Henry's (a.k.a. Henry Weinhard's)--Private Reserve and Blue Boar--which are better than Molson Ice. They both suck. And there were other beers too, whatever we got our underage hands on. Corona occasionally, and this seemed like good beer, even though it isn't.

In college I learned that beer is good. Not good because it gets you drunk. Good intrinsically. Good because damn what flavor, what taste. That all started with you're standard British imports--Newcastle Brown Ale and Bass. I drank lots of Newcastle. It's a fine beer for introducing friends to beer. This is a beer that tastes like a beer. Tastes like quality. Tastes like you should care about it. Newcastle is a seven.

I had my first taste of creat beer in college. A Delerium Nocturnum as I recall. You couldn't get that where I was at the time cause it had too much alcohol. (Riciculous law! A nine dollar beer that less alcohol is illegal while a four dollar wine 150% as strong and shitty as can be is legal beause it's wine, not beer. Whatever.) That opened my eyes. Some beers are a ten.

I first identified style in beer with wheat beer, namely Franziskaner. It's not like I'd never noticed difference between beers before. But Franz opened my eyes to the idea that beer had style as well as goodness. Here's something I knew before Franz: all beer-rightly-done is good. Here's what I learned from Franz: the beery good has structure. Call the structure of the beery good its style. Now you know what I mean by identifying style in beer? It's like this: John Lennon and Miles Davis are both cool. But they have different style. Now, you have to have style to be cool, but not evey cool has the same style. Hell, it's antithetical to cool that there's only one style that can have it. Mutatis mutandis with the beery good and style.

I spent a summer in Ireland somewhere in the middle of college. The first beer I had there was a Guiness at the brewery in Dublin. Hotness. I found Smithwick's, an Irish Ale, easily drank, a seven like Newcastle.

That's a bit of the evolution of this beer lover. What's driven me to brew my own is harder to say. The confluence of factors is too great to summarize. Needless to say, I'm brewing.

The coolest thing I've ever done is brew my own beer.

That's not entirely fair. You see, my first brew is in bottles, still carbonating, not yet ready to drink. I'll uncap the first bottle a week from today, Wednesday Sept. 21st. I'll uncap my first homebrew next week.

This blog is about my fermenter, my wort, my yeast and my beer. I homebrew. I write about on nextweekbrewery.blogspot.com.

How the fuck did you come up with the name Next Week for a brewery? Wait a fucking minute, this is a homebrewing opperation and you're calling it a brewery? The answer to the second question is 'yep.' The answer to the first question is that I'm not telling exactly. It has to do with procrastination and planing, but that's all I'll say.

Let's roll back the clock, let's talk history. No wait. Let's talk now. History is for later.

Over in the corner, next to my bookshelf are two boxes of bottles, each filled with carbonating hopsy goodness. My first homebrew. An IPA. This brew was made from a nice little brew kit, Brewer's Best IPA kit. The process is simple. You should stop reading, bookmark this blog, brew some beer and come back here while you wait for fermentation to complete. Anyway, this kit came with to cans (6.6lbs) of light malt extract, a pound of 60L Crystal Malt, 2oz. Northern Brewer's Hops (7.1% alpha acid) for bittering and 1oz. Cascade Hops for finishing. You mix all that up according to a recipe no harder to follow than that for your favorite soup-from-scratch and toss it in a fermenter. My fermenter is a bucket, lid and a small rubber hole for an airlock. Siphon into fermenter. Ferment. Wait. Bottle. Drink... next week.

Okay, not everything went totally right in the brewing. There was a bit of scorching on the bottom of my five gallon stainless pot, but I don't think it hurt anything. I don't think it did because I tasted the warm flat result of my secondary fermentation after I bottled it. It tasted like warm, flat IPA. Ah, what promise.

The original specific gravity was too low and the final specific gravity a bit high. So the attenuation (rate of sugar to alcohol conversion) wasn't perfect. I think I'm looking at about 4.1% ABV, about 1% lower than the predicted yield. The low initial gravity is probably a failure to get all the wort into the bucket--I mean fermenter--because I didn't have a good strainer. I've fixed that glitch in the brew process now. In the second case, I'm not sure why the attenuation was low--might be that I pulled the beer into secondary fermentation too early.

Waiting is not so fun. That's why I went and got a second set of fermenters. So I would have something to do--brew more beer--while waiting. There are two buckets next to the boxes of bottles. More on those soon.