Windbreaker Bohemian Pilsner

A Mount Breithaupt Brewmance partnership!

Andrew and I set out to try a much more challenging brew: a (relatively) authentic Pilsner. But it drifted into less authenticky territory as (a) we decided against a decoction mash and instead decided on a simple recirculating step mash in Andrew's 10 gallon Blichmann mash tun and (b) I got a series of messages the night before where Andrew exclaimed that the plentiful supply of Pilsner malt he thought he had was, in fact, Canadian 2-row pale ale malt.

Preparing a starter for the yeast

But it's cool, man. Lots of people brew pilsners with 2-row. The character will be a little different, but we need to focus on execution.

Sunday was a very warm day that started off nice, and turned into a windy, blustery affair that forced the garage door closed. (Lest you think we were setting ourselves up for CO poisoning, the front door was not completely closed and the side door and back window were both opened.) Regardless, a very pleasant day to be outside!

As nice as that Blichmann pot is (it has a false bottom, a nice siphon, a temperature probe and even a sight gauge), it has always proved to be a temperamental and this time was no different. Drawing liquid from the bottom and pumping it to the top while the pot sits on the burner is the general idea: the mash bed "sets" well, filtering the wort and also gets more evenly heated. Unlike my Coleman cooler, this kind of mash tun can adjust temperature on the fly.

That's if the pump will stay primed, though. Pumps like Andrew's March and my Chugger can't run dry, and don't do well if they're fighting against air in the line. And for reasons not completely understood yet, this is very easy to cause.

But Andrew doggedly worked with the pot and though we may have wandered a bit with our ability to control the mash temperature, we still got a good mash out of it, and some extremely clear wort that very efficiently drew off sugars. In fact, our final runnings measured 1.010 gravity, right around the lower cut-off point beyond which you risk drawing tannins out of the mash instead of sugar.

Wort gathering in the boil kettle

The wort didn't stay clear, though.

When you boil the wort, you get a certain amount of "break"-- proteins that coagulate and clump together. (Specifically, this is called "hot break". "Cold break", on the other hand, are the proteins that precipitate when you cool the boiled wort.)

Well, there's lots of hot break, and then there's Egg Drop Soup. This beer managed to look like the latter. But, the nice part is that it's easy to make sure this break doesn't end up in the fermenter (most of it, at least) and it will all settle out nicely anyway.

So, between the weather and the wort, we get Windbreaker.

The Coleman serves as Hot Liquor Tank for sparge water going into the notorious Blichmann.

Undershot volume a bit this time but gravity was a little over. What that meant is we could top up the fermenters to hit both volume and gravity targets pretty much on the nose. That took a bit more time, of course-- more boiled water, subsequently chilled. I believe we got something like 4.6gal in each fermenter, and topped up with another half a gallon each for just over 5 gallons at 1.050.

Now, it ferments for a while on lager yeast, at as cool a temperature I can manage in my basement. I'll likely have to move it into keg to let it cold condition, as it's the only way to fit in a fridge. But if it turns out, it'll make a great beer in June or so.

Speaking of great beer...

Recipe below.

Spring is a Tough Nut

Welcome to brewing season 2014!

With sunny weather and temperatures forecast to hit six whole degrees I knew it was time. We've had a long hard winter (and we still are having one, according to the inestimable Spring Indicator) but on this sunny Sunday, seeping tendrils of warmth would penetrate into Mount Breithaupt's deep, dark hibernation cocoon, and quicken the slow pulse of a sleeping dream.

In other words, let's brew something already!

MBB is still transitioning to 10 gallon batches, and today was my first solo 10 gallon brew day. So, there was very little routine about it. I also have a new pump, pretty much a necessity when it comes to moving up to hundred pounds of boiling hot liquid.

Old 8 gallon brew pot is now on mash water heating duty.

And that pump only sprayed me a little bit in the face with acid sanitizer when I was doing an ill-advised sanitation/diagnostic run. It's a tricky beast. The worst part of it is that it cannot run dry, so the pump must always be located below everything, so it can be gravity fed before starting up. Of course, that places an electrical appliance closest to a potentially wet floor and underneath all the vessels full of liquid. At least the power source is GFI.

10 gallon batches really push this Coleman cooler mash tun to the limit.

Still, I avoided real problems, and I now have some hard-learned SOPs that should ensure that I don't  face the risk of groping my way towards the garden hose to flush my burning eyes in the future. (Okay. Maybe not burning, but I'm pretty sure Star San solution stings pretty bad, and I got a hint of that today.)

After all that, what I had was a pretty routine brew day, with a lot of head scratching moments when it came to logistics. And I learned I can't really stretch almost-empty propane tanks, as the burner output makes boiling 12 gallons really a long wait if I'm not getting a strong flame.

Today's brew is an Amber Ale recipe adapted from Dirty Fawcett to fit with available ingredients. It's designed for simplicity, and for quick turnaround. After all, I have an empty keg fridge, and now is not the time to lay down a long-aging beer. Oh no. I want something quaffable by the time the deck is habitable.

And the beauty of it? A 10 gallon batch means I get two kegs for the price (well, the effort) of one. Check out these beautiful twins.

Different yeasts for each. Should make an interesting contrast!

Still underestimating my system's efficiency. Pegged 77% and ended up with about 85%. As a result, this beer will be closer to 6% than 5%. I'd consider watering it down, but I have precisely the volume I wanted, and any more means I'd have to bottle the excess.

Recipe below.

Brew Day: Ten Gallon Hat

Lots of pictures this time, thanks to assistant brewer Andrew's camera. (I'd call him "co-head brewer" but usually one or the other of us is in charge with a recipe. Yesterday, it was me.)

This means I get to realize how much I sometimes look like a hillbilly.

And it's great that we have some photographic evidence, because this brew was a trial run of a bigger 10-gallon batch size (hence the name!) with some new equipment thrown in. The brew day took a lot longer because of unfamiliarity and heating times on the larger volumes of liquid, but generally the surprises were pleasant ones.

Extracting wort from the mash into the kettle

The weather was unseasonably warm for November, with some glorious morning sunlight that turned to cloud but we still enjoyed 11-degree weather that made life a lot easier on everyone.

BELGIUM

The true title of this blog post is what we kept looking at each other, Mrs. Mountbreithaupt and I, while we were there:

"Mother****ing Belgium, man!"

I'd make that the real title, but I'd feel bad if someone shares this out and gets dirty words all over their URL. But it's a word necessary to express that deep and fundamental amazement about being in mother****ing Belgium and drinking its fabulous beer.

We planned this trip a long time back-- and after some delay, it finally happened. The centrepiece of our foray across the water was a week-long tour hosted from a river barge (the good ship Fiep) by Ruth and Mike who together make up Bon Beer Voyage.

Mike and Ruth, in the middle, along with the good folks at 't Waagstuk in Antwerp

The Fiep, our home for a week, resting in Amsterdam

The trip started in Bruges, with a foray into the nearby countryside to visit the Westvleteren abbey and see the monks chant. Only, the monks were sick, and there was no chanting. Fortunately, we had a plan B.

and plan C and plan D

I don't need to say much more about Westvleteren, except we shepherded a 6-pack of Westie 12's back from Belgium without casualty. No, you cannot have one. Westvleteren 12 is the highest ranked beer in the world at Ratebeer, and also in the top 10 at Beeradvocate. It is a simply superb Belgian quad by any measure, and it sets the standard. What a way to start!

In comparison, De Dolle Brouwers was much more quirky, a small but well-established brewery near Esen, Belgium. But no less worth the visit.

Literally, "The Mad Brewers"

Who doesn't like a cheery yellow keg of oerbier?

Bottling Dalek

After Bruges, our stop in Ghent proved to be very interesting, and not just because of beer. Ghent reminds me of KW: 250,000 people, of whom 65,000 are students. While the town has lots of history, it is energetic and seemingly always reinventing itself. It is also the home to Gruut, a brewery specializing in beers without hops. While the herb mixes used to balance each beer's sweetness left me finding some fault with their thin-tasting Wit and pale ales, their malt-forward dubbels and darker beers were simply fantastic.

After Ghent was a grueling (or at least challenging) 3-brewery day. Bosteels, home of the Pauwel Kwak:

A traditional Kwak glass. The beer inside is a nice malty golden ale.

The stainless steel halls of brewing

Bosteels' recently retired owner pours a champagne-style beer for Erin.

The giant Duvel, which despite their size have some fantastic beer.

Also, Hop Straat.

And another small brewery, Malheur, in the wonderfully named town of Buggenhout.

Got to catch the brewer recovering yeast from one batch to start the next.

Tripels a la Malheur

That's a paddlin'.

Our last brewery in Belgium proper (before heading into the Netherlands) was maybe our favourite. Brouwerij De Dochter van de Korenaar, whose name translates literally to "Daughter of the ear of the corn", an old Belgian reference to beer. This operation was the closest thing to a home brewery (in fact, speaking technically, it is a home brewery) and also hosts its own retail shop on premises with the brewer's family home.

Goes to show what's possible in Europe and not in heavily over-regulated North America: In Belgium, the brewer installs a condensation chamber on his vent hood so he doesn't bother his neighbours with lots of steam. In North America, you're just not allowed to run a commercial brewery at home, you criminal, now go back to your desk job.

The head brewer alongside the equipment he custom built: insulated mash/lauter tun and kettle.

What's that? It's a recirculated hot oil kettle! The oil is heated to 130 celsius and run through these tubes to boil the wort.

In addition to being a wonderful example of why North America suck with its hyperprescriptive zoning and puritan attitudes towards alcohol, the Dochter brewery also makes some amazing products. In particular, their barrel series:

Yes, they have both Laphroaig-barrel and Lagavulin-barrel aged beers.

The Charbon pictured in the corner above was also a standout smoked porter. And we got a few sips of something special: some Eisenbock ice-distilled beer, clocking in around 30% alcohol, served from a plastic iced tea bottle.

Which is also probably illegal in about 4 different ways here in Nanny Canada.

After Dochter, the famous La Trappe trappist brewery is almost unremarkable despite its size and history. Except when we got a hint of what brewing at that scale means:

Malt delivery, La Trappe style.

But by the time we were at La Trappe we had crossed into the Netherlands. There, we also visited De Molen brewery and Brouwerij 't IJ, two Dutch breweries with one thing in common.

Apart from the fact they both have fermenters...

they both...

...are under windmills.

Thanks to Untappd and a few other notes, I know I tried some 69 kinds of beer (in sample size or larger) during the whole time we were there... including some opportunities outside the tour like our finding one of the only meaningful Parisian beer spots (La Fine Mousse) and discovering a great brasserie in Amsterdam Oud West called Gollem's Proeflokaal.

What this trip has left me with is a new appreciation for Belgian styles I had only sparingly tried and not really grokked... now I want to be able to replicate some of the dubbels and tripels-- and possibly even quads-- in their rich flavours.

It also left me with a hat.

Once a kwak, always a kwak.

Brewery advances!

Brewery advances!

I was up early this morning, which meant I had time to put an order in to OBK before going to work (where the site is annoyingly filtered). A relatively modest order, but an important step in moving to a 10-gallon brewing process. The main item of the order is a 19-gallon 2-port brew pot that will cost about half of what the 8-gallon pot I ordered from Morebeer did. (The quality may not *quite* be the same but functionally, it should be equivalent. And I don't get shanked on shipping costs.)

It is, of course, not the only part of upgrading batch size. Andrew is loaning me some equipment needed to prototype the process-- namely, his pump and counterflow chiller (and swank silicon hose). Moving and cooling a greater mass of scalding hot liquid becomes a real challenge and these tools become a lot less optional above 5 gallons. Hopefully A will also be present for the inaugural brewday next Saturday (as well as the weather staying comfortably above freezing...)

This is only the first step, though. Based on the experience of next Saturday, I'll also be looking at chiller, pump and hose setup so that A and I don't have to do a brewmance divorce. The process will still be fairly low-tech but then I can start to investigate mashing improvements like recirculation (HERMS or RIMS), as well as paying some attention to the fermentation side.

I've also done some work on the mash/lauter tun, after some hands-on experience with Grub of Biergotter. A better lautering manifold, built of copper, to replace the finicky dishwasher hose filter, I hope will buy me a mittful of mash efficiency points as well as removing a serious headache from my brewing process (a flexible filter hose that is pinched or that folds upwards in the mash bed can cause unwelcome variability.)

At the moment, though, my main goal is to just get the batch size up. I want to be able to keep the keg fridge pouring for less time than it currently takes me, so that I have more time for interesting experimental brews (and other things in life.)

Speaking of experimenting, a recent trip to Belgium has me hooked and interested in replicating Belgian beer styles. That will be quite the challenge. My only foray in that direction resulted in the regrettable "Banabel" tripel, and I hadn't had the courage to try since.

Saw a lot of breweries while I was over there, too. Might put together a future post on that.

Bombe!

"I do not like this word 'bomb'. It is not a bomb. It is a device which is exploding." 

       - Jacques Le Blanc, French ambassador to New Zealand, 

on France's 1995 nuclear tests in the Pacific

Take your pick:

All bombs, or bombes. Some are more chocolate than others.

The reality is more like:

The rig above is a blow-off hose into a large plastic jar with water that serves as the airlock. While I've seen foam pushed through before, this blow-off rig has never been defeated. Until now.

In action:





And really, that's just the fermentation. I had a wonderful picture of the surprise boilover that occurred during brewing, but managed to lose it.

I'm glad I didn't name this beer beforehand! This was to be a self-indulgent brew day. An imperial stout is self-indulgent enough, but this one will see the addition of some booze-soaked cacao nibs and vanilla bean to make it a chocolatey. It already has the barley flakes to make it smooth and rich, and that's why it's so prone to explodiness-- it's almost viscous. And I think I've lost about 4 or 5 bottles' worth already to boilover and fermentation foaming.

Assuming it doesn't foam itself entirely out of the fermenter, this beer will get its cacao and vanilla additions in a few weeks, see some further aging, and be bottled in November. It will then get some nice shelf time, probably requiring until at least January before it's ready to be cracked open and enjoyed as a mid-winter treat.

Self-indulgent indeed, and self-named, too."Bombe" it is. Chocolatey and explodey.

The recipe below doesn't include the cacao or vanilla additions. Also, because of the boilover I mentioned, the hopping is... unknown. I don't know how much hops were lost when the pot turned into a mad, frothy god and whether replacement additions were less, more or about the same.

The Grumpy Urbanist

If a recipe is new, sometimes the name I give it when formulating it ends up being temporary. In this case, I had in mind something like "Dead Greek God", on account of the fact that I was using hops from the now deceased Zeus hop vine (it inhabited a large pot next to the driveway and unlike the ground-planted hops, was the victim of winter kill this year.)

The larger bowls are Zeus leaf, and the smaller bowls Palisade pellet.

But, I was feeling a bit grumpy and stressed out in the morning as I got the mash going, and depressed upon reading things like a bake sale with a drive-through. So anger-tweeting got me through the mash, and so too has it provided a new name for this beer.

Brew day went well, with a brief visit from our friends J and C. C has an interest in homebrewing and I routinely offer her an invite to see how an all-grain process goes. Oh, and J happens to be the namesake of the previous batch, which didn't get a brew-day post:

It's an "in" joke.

But back to the Grumpy Urbanist. For once, some accuracy in my numbers. Pre-boil gravity came out at 1.051 (vs a target of 1.050) with an Original Gravity of 1.060 (target 1.057). Much better than the terrible undershoots of the last few batches. Not that I've seen any meaningful efficiency improvements, mind. I've just dialed my expected efficiency down to a weepingly low 65%. Clearly, Chris needs a new mash tun.

This recipe is a little wacky. Brew with what ya gots. And I gots:

• The aforementioned Zeus hops - pungent, obnoxious, good for bittering
• "Palisade" pellet hops - similar to Willamette. Mixing pellet and leaf is a pain on my system, too.
• T-58 yeast - kind of a specialty yeast that produces some estery and peppery flavours
• 5lb of rye malt to go along with the last 5lb of pale, and a few more pounds of pilsner to round out the malt bill.

I figured that this beer could be a mess, in terms of flavour. Sometimes, though, you got to get a little freaky. But what I didn't expect was that this beer would quickly be a mess in the brewery, as well:

Airlock = insufficient.

Mad kreusen.

I've never seen a fermentation take off like this. These pictures are from ~20 hours into fermentation. I was already seeing strong gassing off at 6 hours! I should have known this might happen, since it's typically not until the next day that I see any activity.

So, cleanup on aisle three, change out the lid, and then back to the blow-off tube for the rest of fermentation.

Fortunately, at high kreusen like this, a fermenting beer is actually quite robust even in the event of a containment breach of the warp core. The overpressure means there's very little opportunity for outside air or microbes to get into the fermenter, let alone through the thick layer of CO2 foam. But I'm glad I caught it, because the sweet wort would also attract insects, and that would be that.

The recipe is below. I've also included the Golden Pockets, which turned out to be remarkably close to Dirty Fawcett that it's almost indistinguishable. It is slightly superior to it, though, so I'll regard it as a successful refinement of DF instead of a failed attempt to produce a different beer.