Hydrometer Down!!!

 Homebrewing  1 Response »
Aug 182010
 

My first hydrometerWell, it was bound to happen eventually.

That picture is of my very first (and only) hydrometer. I got that in the starter kit I bought over five years ago, when I began this long and crazy descent into brewing madness. Over the years, I’ve treated this thing with kid gloves – especially as the time and brew sessions kept adding up. “How cool would it be,” I mused, “to still have that original hydrometer, that connection to my humble beginnings, forever?”

I had planned to eventually retire it, perhaps mount it and hang it over that bar I’m going to build one day. I daydreamed about its last task being the measurement of my first professional wort’s gravity. It served me very well throughout the years, and today, it is no more.

My dear wife accidentally dropped it today when she was helping me clean up some of my brew gear. She feels horrible about it – she knows how much that hydrometer meant to me – and she’s keeping the pieces to make some sort of tribute or memorial to my trusty friend. Perhaps it will still find its rightful place in my personal brewing museum, as time keeps marching on and I try and make this less of a hobby and more of a profession.

However, as I think about it, I can’t be that sad. After all, it’s just a hydrometer – an easily replaceable tool, and one which I have been considering replacing with a refractometer for some time now anyway. When I stop and think about what’s really valuable, what’s been with me since the very beginnings of my brewing journey and what has always encouraged and supported this passion of mine, it’s my wife.

She took me to my first brewery tour at Harpoon in Boston, and we brewed our first beer together. She came with me to pick up the kit, to learn how to use that tricky hydrometer for the first time, and to drink that brew which was the best beer I’d ever had because I had made it myself. And she has put up with the never-ending array of gadgets, freezers, buckets, and CO2 tanks which have taken over our home. She encourages and inspires me, and I truly think that helps me brew better beer more than any tool could.

So, rest in peace, hydrometer. You served me well, and you will not be forgotten. I raise a glass to you tonight – to brews of the past, and the brews of the future you will not be there to measure. However, I shall not be sad, for I still have the really important things in life, and to lose sight of that would be the real tragedy here.

Double the Beer, Double the Problems

 Homebrewing  1 Response »
Aug 162010
 

The flags of Köln and DeutschlandThe good news: I now have ten gallons of Kölsch fermenting in my chest freezer (which just BARELY fits two 6.5G plastic buckets inside).

The bad news: In brewing my first 10G batch, I completely botched my water measurements and had a generally sloppy brewday.

OK, so the good news outweighs the bad news – assuming the beer turns out well! I’m glad I was able to rumble through the day and finish with two fermentors full of beer, but I’m mad at myself for fudging my processes…I know, relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew, right?

I measured the water into my mashtun by weighing it, like I have for the last two brews, in an attempt to pinpoint losses and grain absorbtion rates in my system. My big mistake was not weighing the wort runoff – I figured I could estimate the volume based on how many times I filled the 1/2 gallon pitcher I use, but later found out that pitcher is not exactly accurate and holds a bit more than I thought. I can’t say why I chose not to weigh the runoff, but I think it was a mix of laziness and impatience. I’m kicking myself now.

Long story short, I wound up with 15.3G of wort (which I thought was 14.4G). I was quite confused when my 15G kettle wouldn’t hold all the runoff – I figured I had a smaller kettle than I thought I did. Looking back on my notes today and inspecting the pitcher, it became clear that estimating the runoff volume was a huge mistake.

Just to kick a brewer when he’s down, my pump decided to be a pain in the ass, and my pellet hops turned into a solid sludge at the bottom of the kettle, completely blocking my bazooka screen when I was pumping to the fermentors. I’ve never seen pellet hops clump up like that – it was a pretty solid mass! Not sure if that was a result of whirlpooling while chilling or the specific pellets I used (they were Hallertauer, for what it’s worth). I think I’m going to use a hop bag next time.

So, it was a rough session and all my numbers for this brew are a bit fuzzy, but I’m not going to stress about it. I didn’t miss my OG by much, and the beer should turn out just fine. I just wish I could finally reach the nirvana which is truly knowing my system and hitting my numbers every time. For the next session, I will weigh both water in and wort out of the mashtun, and I will make a dipstick to measure kettle volume before and after the boil. There are a lot of variables to pin down, but I hope being overly precise now will give me the data to churn out consistently great beer down the line. I need repeatability, and I will not allow myself to build or buy an automated brew system until I can get this right manually. It’s a frustrating endeavor, but I will get it one of these days…

…and hey, no matter what, I have TWO buckets of beer happily bubbling away!

Finally – LootKölsch is Coming!

 Homebrewing  1 Response »
Aug 122010
 

In trying to decide what my next brew should be, I contemplated many styles. A pumpkin spice ale is definitely on the list, but I want to wait a few weeks until pumpkins are available before attempting that one. I’d love to do another stout, but I’d rather schedule that for colder weather. I need to make another couple batches of my steam beer, which is my flagship house beer, but I can whip that up anytime and I want to try something new.

Enter the Kölsch. I’ve wanted to brew one of these ever since tasting them in Köln, but never got around to it for whatever reason. I think in the back of my mind I associated them with true lagers, and didn’t want to deal with the huge yeast starter and conditioning times. This style is sort of a hybrid in that it ferments at low ale temperatures, but is best with at least four weeks of lagering after primary – not to worry, though, because at my house, lagering is best conducted with pint-sized samples taken every evening.

So, it’s time. I even have stanges for proper serving and everything. I smacked two very old (two years!) Wyeast 2565 smack packs today, and am picking up two more fresh packs this evening. I plan on making a gallon starter with one fresh and two old packs tonight, and pitching that into a 10 gallon batch brewed on Sunday. I’ll keep the second fresh pack in case of stalled fermentation, or for the next batch.

The recipe is going to be 95% German pilsner malt and 5% Vienna, with light Hallertau hopping. The mash will be low (149°F) and long (90 minutes) with a 90 minute boil. This will be my first 10 gallon batch, and the wort will be split into two primaries and fermented at 60°F. I’ll post an exact recipe once I work out the details in BeerSmith.