In the Fermenter

Just brewed my first true-to-style Saison last night. I pitched a 2 day starter of 3711 at high kreusen into it, getting machine gun-fire bubbles in several hours. That 3711 is the Toyota of yeasts. The smack pack activator I had was dated August of '09 and started right away. It ate into the starter and visibly increased itself about 1/3-1/2 in less than a day. That stuff is amazing. Plus, since it doesn't have the often-maligned horse blanket farmyard flavor and aroma, it makes a very good all around, attenuative yeast that provides a nice phenol profile. I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out. Regardless, the fermentation should be knocked down from 1.065 to 1.010 within this week.

Beer Dealer wrote:

Mike P how did your Begian Wit turn out?? did it clear nice and gold...and shouldnt have been to hoppy..Jeff

It tastes good, in my opinion, just not where I want it. Due to the cold crashing, a lot of yeast settled out and it's almost crystal clear, so it actually looks and tastes more like a Belgian pale. Next time I'll use more biscuit/aromatic malt and more spice, particularly coriander, which I didn't use at all on this batch. The other thing I intend to do is rack more yeast over to keep in suspension. Worst case scenario on this batch is I just shake the keg to kick up the yeast before serving!

Mike P how did your Begian Wit turn out?? did it clear nice and gold...and shouldnt have been to hoppy..Jeff

just bottled an english brown!


next is an october fest

Just brewed an American Ale ..and ended up with only 4.5 gallons...the new burner is just awsome...heats up fast and the boil gets way more boil loss than i am used to.. But i wanted to do a batch today before i use it tommorrow for the class... the brew turned out good my OG was a tad over at 1.050 due to half gallon loss and a tadd darker as i didnt have carmel 4 and just upped the 60 ..still need a recipe for class...Jeff

Looking good! I've got empty fermenters right now, so I guess it's time to brew. Hopefully this weekend.

Just did a traditional Belgian Wit last night. Not my typical fare, but I figured it's getting warm out and I wanted to bring something to work that everyone will enjoy. Did it the "normal" way with a little of my own preference - 5 lbs 2 row pale, 5 lbs malted red wheat, 1.25 lbs malted oats and .15 lbs Belgian Biscuit malt and 1 oz of Tettnanger at 60 minutes. The wort was out of this world, especially with everything dialed in on the SABCO. Threw in a nice 3.5 day old starter of Wyeast Belgian Wit yeast and she had a huge crown of kreusen this morning. Can't wait to try it out. Pictures, of course:

That's great! Well, you know where to go if you need more bottles

and my first beer period! i bottle it on saturday! i can't wait, but realized i have to drink more beer because i will be starting my english brown on the 31st! man i really hope this beer tastes good! if so i will bring some to the meeting on the 20th in might still be on the young side, but we will see!

Just put a revised version of the Black Shox Porter into the fermenter yesterday evening. It's going crazy right now. Got the system really dialed in now since going to 11 gal batches. Perfect mash temps, and OGs. Now that that's solved, onto a bit of recipe development for a very interesting American brown ale.

Just finished the revamped version of my Belgian Strong Dark ale. I should call it Busted Bit ale because I had so much grain to crack with my drill, the bit was hurting. This baby should be about 37 IBU, God knows how many SRM and should end up with roughly 10.5% alcohol. To get the biggest bang for my buck, I boiled it for two hours to ensure every drop of fermentable goodness reaches the yeast. We'll see if she's a worthy successor to the original.

And, yes, it does have home-made dark candi sugar in it.

dpnelson1978 wrote:

I have three Belgian Ales in fermentation right now. All three use the same recipe using German Pils, Victory, and Caramunich malt with EK Goldings and Saaz hops.

I varied the yeast for each batch using:

1214 Belgian Abbey Ale
1388 Belgian Strong Ale
3787 Trappist Ale

A single 152°F infusion was used for simplicity.

The brews were pitched on January 1st, and I am doing a 20 day fermentation for this period so I should know the results before February.

The OG was 1.062 (higher than theoretical) and we are expecting an abv in the 7.0 range.

As the resident Belgian beer enthusiast of the group (being half Belgian myself), I'd be happy to provide any input on your brews when they're complete. Just shoot me an e-mail and let me know what you think.

Tyler wrote:

It might be worth noting that the Bismarck city water has chloramines added to it. When I was investigating a band-aid off-flavor (which is sometimes attributed to chlorine and chloramine), I called the people at the Bismarck water supply and they mentioned adding chloramines to the water supply.

I've been using Campden Tablets to combat the evils of chloramine, but it seems like very few other people are actually experiencing any negative effects from the contents of the water supply. It might be worth doing a side-by-side of two small, identical batches with one batch using water treated with Campden Tablets (something like 1/4 tablet per 5 gallons of water, crushed, and dissolved in the water 24-ish hours before mash-in). Of course, the recipes should be fairly delicate so the water profile is more evident.

Good point, Tyler. I looked into it a little more and found that Potassium Metabisulfite works well to counteract the chloramines in water. It's cheap as all get out at Midwest Supplies (like $3.50/lb) and also doubles as a great wild yeast killer. Good stuff you should always have on hand. Anyway, when brewing our coffee porter, I added a tablespoon to the mash water and another tablespoon to the sparge water. We'll see if it helped things at all.

It might be worth noting that the Bismarck city water has chloramines added to it. When I was investigating a band-aid off-flavor (which is sometimes attributed to chlorine and chloramine), I called the people at the Bismarck water supply and they mentioned adding chloramines to the water supply.

I've been using Campden Tablets to combat the evils of chloramine, but it seems like very few other people are actually experiencing any negative effects from the contents of the water supply. It might be worth doing a side-by-side of two small, identical batches with one batch using water treated with Campden Tablets (something like 1/4 tablet per 5 gallons of water, crushed, and dissolved in the water 24-ish hours before mash-in). Of course, the recipes should be fairly delicate so the water profile is more evident.

We have good water here. The last report I got from the city was showing an average of around 100ppm of calcium ranging from 90 - 120 at times.

No, we will definitely be doing infusion, decoction is not worth the effort! I've only done it a few times, but it was enough for me to learn to hate it.

I haven't really had a problem with tannin extraction in the past unless I stirred it too much, or screwed up the pH, but I'll be on the look out. Realistically we don't need to push the efficiency to make our numbers work, so I won't be playing with fire.

Any issues with the local water? I haven't checked out the report yet since I've been using RO for test batches (and not adding any salts).

As far as mashing goes, I use a single infusion mash. I don't do a protein rest, and I don't mash out at a higher temp. I do sparge at 170F. With today's modified malts there is really no reason to do a decoction anymore. The reason they were first done this way was because the malt was very low quality. Not many breweries practice decoctions anymore... but there are a few that still do, I think mainly for the tradition of it. If you are thinking of doing decoction mashes, I would suggest brewing the same beer with an infusion mash, and then with a decoction. Then do a double blind triangle test to see if you can tell which is which and if it's worth doing the decoction if you find out that it gives you a desired result. Most studies I have heard about show that people really can't tell the difference, but that will be up to you. And if you don't need to do the decoction, you'll save yourself a lot of labor and probably have better consistency with the single infusion, or step infusion.

Repeatability is key, and consistency is a must. I really don't want to get more than 80% efficiency out of my mash. Once you start getting into the higher 80s and 90s you start to pull a lot of tannins from the malt which is undesirable.

Yeah, I was the assistant brewer at the Rattlesnake.

I guess I meant more along the lines of infusion vs. decoction, and how many rests, mash-out, etc.

We are still trying to determine our ability to reproduce a recipe, and how it is being affected by various lauter processes.

We obviously want the best efficiency we can get, but consistency is the #1 priority.

You must be the guy Tyler was referring too. He said he knew the guy who brewed for Rattlesnake.

My system is on a single tier with 2 March pumps. So, after conversion, I vorlauf it on top of itself using pump 2 and the sparge system (which is a 1/2" flexible copper ring I built that is about 9-10 inches in diameter, connected to the keg with a weldless bulkhead). I'll do this for about 5 minutes to get clear runnings, and then I start my transfer over to the boil kettle. I pump with pump 2 to the boil kettle, and with pump 1 I sparge from my HLT.

It mimmicks the 7bbl system I brewed on at the Rattlesnake Creek Brewery, minus a vorlauf tank that had a float switch.

What kind of lautering process are you using?

Made an IPA on Saturday. It was my first 10 gal brew on the system. My efficiency went up from 74% to 81% for an O.G. of 1.073. Little more than I had planned on, so I guess it'll be a Double IPA. The new fermenter is working awesome after I reattached the bottom dump valve with some thread tape. Turns out there was none on there upon shipment, and when I filled it, I had a small leak. Not much to fixing it, but a bit of a pain when the fermenter is full.

Also going to have to put it in the fridge upon beginning fermentation with the temp controller. The 11 gals in the fermenter raises the temp a bit more than the old buckets. Can't wait to put the next batch through it.

Almost ready to throw the 6 ounces of dry hops into it. YEAH!!!

Did a double infusion, but ended up having some serious issues hitting my rest temperatures. Need to give my calculations a second look...

I also really need to insulate my sparge hose. I was losing way too much heat.

Looks like I'm going to end up with a 6.5 abv primary, and a 3.0 abv small beer. Lots of room for improvement.

Two more batches should be going into the fermenter by tomorrow.

The 1214 was too sweet, and obviously a bit lower abv than I wanted. I think the problem was poor aeration of the wort prior to pitching.

I'll be tweaking the 1214 recipe a little bit and using rinse water to make my first small beer. We'll see how it pans out, I'd like to end up with a 8 abv and a 3.5 abv.

Glad to hear you got the first brew out of the way. It's always nice to know that everything works! Looking forward to seeing it in action at the end of the month.

Mmm... sounds good.

We finally got to do a brew this weekend. We've now got a Trappist ale bubbling away in the fermenter. The new system worked swimmingly.

Sounds great! My fermenters are currently empty, but not for long. I'll have another IPA up shortly, and probably an American Style Amber Ale if I don't think of something else before then.

I have three Belgian Ales in fermentation right now. All three use the same recipe using German Pils, Victory, and Caramunich malt with EK Goldings and Saaz hops.

I varied the yeast for each batch using:

1214 Belgian Abbey Ale
1388 Belgian Strong Ale
3787 Trappist Ale

A single 152°F infusion was used for simplicity.

The brews were pitched on January 1st, and I am doing a 20 day fermentation for this period so I should know the results before February.

The OG was 1.062 (higher than theoretical) and we are expecting an abv in the 7.0 range.

I'll be bringing a new IPA, Porter and Citrus wheat beer to the next meeting. That is if everything goes according to plan and they are carbonated by then. Keep your fingers crossed.

What kind of beers do you have in your fermenters? Let the club know! Keep up the good work mashers.