Matt and I have been pretty blessed to have access to an industrial kitchen. It’s made the processing of learning and improving our homebrewing incredibly comfortable. So comfortable, in fact, that I can’t believe anybody actually brews in their kitchens at home. Besides trashing your kitchen, 95% of kitchens just aren’t equipped with decent enough gas or cleaning tools to manage the process. Add to that being cramped and risking spillage and it seems like just a deal breaker to me. I suppose that’s why you meet so many people who “used to homebrew” as opposed to people who actively do it.

But just because we’re blessed doesn’t mean we’re not greedy, and restless, and curious, and thirsty. Where brewing in an industrial kitchen with 10 gallon kettles sufficed for the first six months of our investigation, we’ve now run up against the limitations of our set up. In short the limitations of our present system are:

• 10 gallon kettles can only yield 5 gallons of brewed beer on a good day, hardly enough to last two (ahem) big-boned alcoholics.
• Guessing at volumes of water is ultimately hampering us from getting the repeatability we’re shooting for.
• I just can’t get comfortable with the continued danger of having to carry and pour multiple gallons of boiling hot water across a slick floor and into a small bucket. Odds are, sooner or later, there will be an accident.

To solve this we decided to build a 3-tier keggle system.

We just built our first keggle last weekend and found the process to be fairly simple. I’ve got some experience with metal work and am modestly competant with some DIY tasks, though I am by no stretch of the imagination terribly capable. Even so I found the keggle conversion to be quite simple.

The biggest decision you need to make when doing this is whether to use welded or weldless fittings for your keggle. After some deliberation and research I chose to use weldless fittings which I purchased from the appropriately named weldlessfittings.com. The weldless fittings relieved me of the need to travel to Michigan to use my friend’s welder, it allowed me to avoid having to weld with aluminum which is a tricky task, and I was curious to see if these weldless attachments were as effective as a welded keggle. Also, with weldless fittings you have the added advantage of being able to completely disassemble and clean your keggle when ever you are compelled to do so.

There’s plenty of sites to find directions on how proceed with your keggle conversion. Here are the two that I used predominantly:

http://www.homebrewing.com/articles/keggle.php

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Keggle

We used an angle grinder to remove the top of the keg and I’m glad we did. We still went through probably 4-5 blades per keg so I can’t even imagine trying to use a dremel for this job.

The fittings from weldlessfittings.com seem to have worked great once we properly wrapped them with teflon. We’ve had some issues with the swagelok on the dip tube though I’ve contacted Dave at weldlessfittings.com and really without much questioning he’s sent me a new kit to try out. We’ll see if that solves the problem, but either way I was impressed with his responsiveness.

The one criticism I have for weldlessfittings.com is that their instructions are either pretty vague and lousy on some items and just plain on non-existent on others. However, with some digging around the internet we found the instructions we needed fairly easy (boy, I can’t find those instructions now to save my life). Other than that weldlessfittings.com is great and their prices are really hard to beat.

For our false bottom we went to the unfortunately named Climax Homebrew. They’ve got a 16 gauge stainless steel false bottom for half the price of anywhere else on these here tubes of internuttiness.

This is a fairly low-stress project that yields satisfying and helpful results. I’ll post some updates when we build our sculpture and also when we add our hot water heating elements which we’ve decided to use instead of propane for several reasons. We’ll be adding a March 809 pump eventually as well.

We’ve been struggling a bit with our bottle conditioning. The main issue is that we’re not thoroughly stirring in our corn sugar & water mixture into the beer and as a result we’re getting variation in the amount of carbonation in our beers.

But we just finished our first batch of Saison and surprisingly got it nice and dry with a 1.010 FG. Now I’m on pins and needles to get the right carbonation on this beauty. I realize that if we bottle condition we might not be able to safely get the carbonation appropriate for a Saison since we don’t use thick glass or corks. With this in mind we may just put it onto gas and drink it that way.

But if we do put this monster into bottles I want to make damn sure we get the carbonation right. Thankfully BYO.com provides this very handy chart to insure proper carbonation with dextrose monohydrate (corn sugar).

To get the level of carbonation you desire in your homebrew, choose a level of carbonation (from Section A) and subtract the amount of residual carbonation in your beer after fermentation (from Section B). This is the amount of carbonation you to add via priming sugar. The amount of carbonation produced by three different priming agents (anhydrous glucose, glucose monohydrate and sucrose) in 5 gallons (19 L) of beer is given in Section C.

For example, let’s say you fermented an American pale ale at 68 °F (20 °C) and plan to carbonate it with corn sugar (glucose monohydrate). From Section A below, you decide that you want your carbonation level to be 2.4 volumes of CO2. From Section B, you see that you should have 0.85 volumes of CO2 in your beer after fermentation at 68 °F (20 °C). Subtracting 0.85 from 2.4 gives you 1.55 volumes of CO2, the amount of carbonation required from the priming sugar. From Section C, you see that adding 4.5 oz. (128 g) yields 1.53 volumes of CO2, which is pretty close.

Section A: Levels of Carbonation in Various Beer Styles

Section B: Residual Carbonation Left Over After Fermentation

Section C Carbonation Levels Added to 5 gallons (19 L) of Beer by Priming Sugar

C1.) Priming with anhydrous glucose (anhydrous dextrose)

C2.) Priming with glucose monohydrate (dextrose monohydrate)

C3.) Priming with sucrose

To download a PDF file (156KB) of this document, click here.

We’re tearing through our Iodophor sanitizer and wanted to start reusing iodophor. My research shows that you can’t reuse iodophor and that it loses it’s efficacy along with it’s color after about 24 hours.

So once we burn through this batch of iodophor we’re going to start using StarSan for sanitizing which you can reuse for upwards of 6 months.

This is a great article on how to clean off your yeast to reuse in your next batch of homebrew.

This is one of several ways to drop your costs for making your delicious homebrew.

So we bottled what may be our best (3rd) batch of an IPA yesterday. The whole process went incredibly smooth from sparge to bottling. We were so happy with ourselves that we felt a celebratory beer was in order. We put the beer in the back of Matt’s car and headed over to the Small Bar.

They had some great pulls yesterday: Surly Furious, Bockor Cuvee Sour Ale, Victory Prima Pils, Half Acre’s Baume, Tyranena’s Dirty Ol’ Man. It was a fine, fine celebration indeed, well armed and strategically executed. We even tried some of Rogue’s Whiskey, which, like Stranahan’s Flying Dog, they make from left over mash from their Dead Guy Ale. Rogue’s Whiskey was remarkably smooth with a touch of sweetness and a salty back end that is probably from them aging it in oak barrels by the Ocean. Though they only age the stuff for a week, so it’s also possible that salty flavor is from their talented marketing department as well.

But I digress. It was a monumental celebration. And goddamn, the Victory Pils and Dirty Ol’ Man were fantastic. Of course, all the beers were great, especially the sour from Bockor, a pitch-perfect modestly bodied sour that makes instantly weak any devotee of the flemish sours. But I hadn’t had the Victory Prima Pils until yesterday, so it really stood out for me.

Victory refers to it’s Prima Pils as a German Pilsner and though it may come off sounding initially a bit derisive, I would call Victory’s Prima Pils an American Pilsner, or maybe a New American Pilsner as I feel this is the first beer that actually deserves it’s name. It’s hop heaviness serves as a refreshing compliment to the crispness of the beer, the stuff practically snaps off and crunches in your mouth. There is some discussion amongst the beer geeks as to whether Victory is stretching the truth claiming they only use German malts in the Prima Pils. Some brewers are convinced the slight sour apple taste – the often undesirable acetyldehyde – on the front end is derived from wheat. There’s also some discussion as to whether this is an all Saaz brew or if there is some Northern Brewer at the bittering point. Wherever the flavors are coming from they are well proportioned. This beer is crisp, bright and hoppy enough to keep my filthy fingers digging back in for more. And I will.

This may be one of only, oh, three or four times I will say this in my life, but… that Dirty Ol’ Man, he was very good to me last night. Strong chocolate notes in a creamy body with just enough roasted character and hopiness to keep the stout from going past it’s surprisingly sessionable self.

And, as always, the food at the Small Bar was great, too. The pork nachos are incredible, the poutine is fucking trascendental, but yesterday we started with their Buffalo Chicken Spring Rolls:

chopped chicken sautéed in our house buffalo
sauce then wrapped with crumbled blue cheese
and fried in a traditional spring roll. served
with carrots, celery, green onion and blue
cheese for dippin

They’ve somehow managed to achieve the impossible and improve upon buffalo wings, making them easier to eat, and crunchier with a deep fried shell to safely transfer them from plate to face.

And as always the staff at Small Bar are some of my favorite people in the world, they always take good care of us.

But, OH SHIT! I forgot! The whole reason we came into the Small Bar to celebrate in the first was because of our beer. That we left in the car. In 20* weather. For now almost 24 hours.

Shit.

I woke up this morning, and while sharing a lovely breakfast with my equally lovely wife she off-handedly reminded me of my orphaned babies in the truck. This is, perhaps, as good as any argument for why I shouldn’t father children as well. It would be a shame to go out and properly celebrate my kid’s learning to ride a bike, or learning to read, or using the toilet only to come to the stark realization the next day that I would up leaving him in the car for 24 hours while I proudly drank in his honor.

But, in my defense, children and yeast are pretty resilient. After moping for a few minutes I hit the Beer Advocate forum and queried the geeks. And in under ten minutes I had 2 responses that put my mind at ease. Essentially, all I needed to do was give the beers a god swirl or two, put them back in the crate and expect full carbonation as if nothing had happened. My fear was, leaving the beer at around 35* for about 10 hours (20 hours in the car in 15-25* weather) that the yeast had gone dormant and wouldn’t get back up anytime soon to eat. But apparently, I have more than one thing in common with yeast, not the least of which is the will to perservere through a decent night’s rest with more than a little bit of snacking.

So, our team of crackhead brewers here at OA have found a new and interesting way to try and ruin our beer. Fortunately, this attempt was a bit easier to recover from than some mistakes of the past have been. I now wait patiently for the next manner in which we can subjugate ourselves on the road to delicious and plentiful beers.

It’s like the subject says, just like the subject says. It’s at the Small Bar on Division, too.

Here’s more info.

This is a great survey done by Popular Mechanics on different beer brewing set-ups. #4 is pretty slick, me thinks.

We’re brewing a Bell’s Two Hearted Clone this weekend for our second batch of beer. The thought on this was that with a clone we’ll have something to compare the final product to and, hopefully, have a better idea of what we are doing well and what we’re doing, well, not so well. Not to mention, if this thing is even vaguely successful it’ll be great to have a keg of our very own, homebrewed IPA clouding up my judgement.

Part of the clone recipe calls for dry hopping. I had a fairly good idea what this meant, figuring we should be throwing in some more of the Centennial hops after we pull the wort off the flame, but I wasn’t sure just exactly when after the flame goes out that we should be adding the hops. I was surprised to find out that to dry hop a beer you add your hops after the end of the initial fermentation, around 5-7 days after adding the yeast.

Here’s a nice overview of dry hopping the helped school me on this.