Yesterday I brewed a 5 gallon batch of Revvy’s Vienna Lager. I had to make some substitutions though. My homebrew store only had 3 pounds of Vienna Malt, and I needed 8. One of the employees told me that Munich malt would taste the same, although it may make the beer darker.

I’m not really too concerned with the color, and I was going for a Negra Modella type beer, so dark was OK with me.

I ended up using the 3 pounds of Vienna they had, then 4 lbs of Dark Munich, and 1 LB of light Munich. All this is being fermented by some Munich lager yeast.

This is actually my first lager, and I’m hoping it turns out well. I had purchased a chest freezer on craig’s list, and a temperature controller. All this time I had been brewing in warm weather, and I’ve only recently realized that the challenge may no longer be keeping the wort cool, but rather keeping it warm. My garage has been a cool 40 degrees lately, which would be ok for the lagering stage, but could cause issues with the fermentation stage. (Lagers generally ferment around 50 – 55 degrees.

I left the carboy in my kitchen overnight, and had some nice activity going in the vapor lock when I woke up this morning. Then I moved it into the freezer (which isn’t plugged in) in the garage, and the temp quickly rose from 40 degrees to 50 degrees. I’m hoping that the fermentation activity and the mass of the liquid will keep the temp in the freezer in the 50’s.

This should be the first batch that I keg. I’ve got everything to keg now except for some tubing, and the Cornelius kegs.

I’m very much looking forward to kegging the beer, bottling is just a pain in the neck sometimes.

Posted in Lager, HomeBrew No Comments »

UPDATE 08:29: I posted over at the Home Brew talk forums, and the consensus is that I’m looking at krausen (where the foamy yeast action happens) with hop particles suspended in it. Whew! That’s really a great site with some terrifically helpful people.

Original post:

At Christmas I tried a batch of beer I had made, luckily it was only a 1 gallon batch, and there was something terribly wrong with it. It tasted like water, but with a funky taste to it. I figured I must have had an infection in it.

So now I’m a little paranoid, and I’m wondering if I did something wrong with my last batch of Centennial Blonde. It has these green floaty things on the top.

I made a 10 gallon batch, and split it between two carboys, and used a starter of a American Ale yeast in one, and a package of Nottingham yeast in the other. The American Ale yeast carboy has these green things across the entire carboy, and the nottingham yeast carboy only has a few of them, in a 4 inch circle.

I took a whiff of both carboys, and they smell fine to me. I’m just a little concerned since I had the problem with that 1 gallon batch, and I was planning on putting a Stout on the yeast cake of the American Ale Carboy.

I’m going to post to the Homebrew forums to see what those knowledgeable folks have to say, but I figured I could share here as well.

Posted in CentennialBlonde, HomeBrew No Comments »

  Last Friday, I mentioned that I was going to be doing some brewing, which I did do yesterday. It was the first time I had attempted a 10 gallon batch, usually brewing in 5 gallon batches, and things went pretty well.

It took quite a bit more time to get the water to boil off, I ended up with almost 14 gallons of wort to start with, but it ended up only taking an hour or so more than I’m used to. I also ended up with 11 Gallons of wort instead of 10, which was good because after reviewing the recipe, it turns out it was actually for a 11 Gallon batch.

I think I’m going to have to buy a real immersion chiller soon, that would probably cut close to an hour from my brew day.

I was a little worried that the Wyeast 1056 American Ale yeast that I had rinsed from a previous batch wasn’t going to be ready in time, but Saturday it just took off, and I was able to use it in one carboy after all. The second carboy has the Nottingham yeast that the recipe calls for.

So my storage room now has 2 carboys full of the delicious Centennial Blonde. I’m curious to see if I can tell the difference in flavor between the two batches, since I used different yeasts.

I’m planning on doing a quick extract American Stout recipe in 2 weeks, and I’m going to put it on the American Ale yeast cake.

The only strange thing is that I still seem to be running a pretty bad efficiency, this time it seems to be 65%, but I keep hitting my Original Gravity targets. So I’m not too concerned with it.

Once I open a bottle of the Centennial Blonde, in about 4 weeks, I’ll have to take a picture.

Of course, this week is Christmas, I hope yours is wonderful!

Posted in CentennialBlonde, HomeBrew No Comments »

Or is it that brewing is excitement? A few weeks ago, I set a brew date for myself, and it’s this Sunday! I started getting excited as soon as I set it, and have just been gearing up since.

I won’t be brewing at Great Divide Brewing Co, but it was a fitting picture for the post.

This time, I’m making a 10 gallon batch of a recipe called “Centennial Blonde” that I found over at Home Brew Talk forums. I’ve made it once before and everyone loved it, but I only made 5 Gallons of it, so this time I’m going to double the pleasure, double the fun.

This will also be my first 10 gallon batch, so I’m hoping it doesn’t add too much to the brew day. The original idea was to use some yeast that I “rinsed”, which is basically a way to re-use yeast, but my starter doesn’t seem to be active, so I think those yeasties are either really sleepy, or dead.

To add a little interesting twist to the recipe, I think I’m going to use the Nottingham yeast that it calls for in the recipe for one of my 5 Gallon Carboys, and buy some new American Ale yeast for the second carboy. This way I can compare them and see if I can tell a difference.

I’m already plotting to try and put a Stout on top of the yeast cake after I bottle, but we’ll see if that happens.

Oh yea, and Christmas is coming up too. I am pretty psyched up for Christmas, I think I got some good gifts for my family, and I’m looking forward to having some good friends over for Christmas Eve dinner. Maybe they can help me empty some beer bottles for my next batch.

Posted in HomeBrew, Beer 1 Comment »

Now, is this what they meant by “immersion chiller”

I was worried about getting my un-fermented beer cooled down quickly, and had been looking around at immersion chillers. Having spent enough this week on brewing equipment, I was thinking that I could probably just use a clean garbage can full of water, and pump cold water from the bottom every now and then.

I know it’s not a perfect solution, but it worked pretty good. I only had water in the pot, and it brought it from boiling to 100 degrees in about 20 minutes, and I wasn’t changing the water out very much.

It took about another 20 minutes to get it to 70 degrees, but when I have real beer in it, I’ll have some ice on hand to help it out.

I’m sure I’ll be in the market soon for a chiller, but for now, I think this will do.

Posted in HomeBrew 2 Comments »