Idiomatic Expression

While I was attempting to make a La Fin Du Monde clone a couple of weekends ago, James took a couple of pictures. This was also my first attempt at brewing an all grain batch of beer. If you look closely you can see some mistakes.

In other news when I transferred the beer to secondary it tasted good, and the specific gravity was down to 1.010 from 1.072 giving about 8.3% alcohol. Now it will sit in secondary for a week or two before bottling.

Now that I have a mash tun out of a 10 gallon Igloo cooler and various bits of hardware I am going to attempt my first all grain batch of beer Tomorrow. I will also be making my first high gravity beer, which means I am making my first yeast starter to breed a couple of million extra yeasties to attack all that sugar. It has the making of a first-rate disaster! This is designed as a La Fin Du Monde clone.

Recipe Characteristics

Ingredients

Recipe Notes

75 minute total boil
Starter made from .25 lb pilsner DME and .25 gal water

Dough-In 12 qt @ 166 for 150 90 minute rest
Mash-out 8.5 qt @ 208 for 170 dump
Batch Sparge 1 8.1 qt @ 170 10 minute rest dump
Batch Sparge 2 8.1 qt @ 170 10 minute rest dump
Expected wort 6.55

Seperately Bring Honey to 150, hold temp for 30 minutes, add to primary after wort

Of the beers that we made at the Flying Barrel, Katherine’s Hefeweizen turned out the best, but it still seemed to be missing something. Then I found the stye description for Dunkelweizen! Now that sounds good. I could not find a good looking extract plus mini-mash recipe for this style so I adapted my own with the help of an all grain recipe, Designing Great Beers, and qbrew. Let me know what you think at this first shot at rolling my own. Hopefully I will get to brew it this weekend, or next weekend.

Recipe Characteristics

Ingredients

Recipe Notes

Mash in at 130 deg F water and allow a 20 minute protein rest. Gradually raise mash temperature to 154 degrees F either by direct heating of your mash vessel or by decoction of a portion of the mash. Rest for 30 minutes and then raise to 168 for mash out. Batch Sparge

Boil for 60 minutes

After the boil, chill and pitch. Ferment at approximately 64 degrees F ambient temp for 5-7 days, Secondary at 60-62 degrees for 7 days.

I took a quick look at the Fairfax County Water Authority’s Inorganic and Metal Water Reports today and it looks like according to John Palmer’s How to Brew site that we are grossly lacking in Calcium, Magnesium, and Sulfates needed for all grain brewing. At least when I get to that point it should be easier to add these to water than to to take them out if the numbers were excessive.

I am also not quite sure which water supply is serving me in Fairfax Circle. I am officially on the City of Falls Church’s water system, but for areas outside of the beltway (aka my house) they buy the water wholesale from Fairfax County. The FCWA site says that Southern Fairfax is mostly served by Lorton and Occoquan supplies, while Northern Fairfax is served by the Corbalis plant. Fairfax circle is almost dead center of the county so no idea where that puts me. Luckily all of the sources seem to be about the same.

*All number are in PPM

With the help of James and Chris I made my first attempt at brewing beer at home this Saturday. Other than some numbness in my extremities legs and finding out how absurdly long it takes to filter 6 gallons of water through a brita filter, the process was relatively uneventful. The fermenter is bubbling away happily in my upstairs bathtub (the warmest room in the house at 64 degrees) so I believe it will turn into beer, perhaps bad beer, but beer none the less.

Now all I have to do is wait. I am planning on 5-7 days in the primary at 64 degrees, 10-14 days in the secondary at around 59 degrees, and priming with corn sugar prior to bottling. Then after only 2 short weeks of bottle conditioning I can get my first taste of the product.

More pics available in Petrilli’s flickr set.

Recipe and more details after the jump.
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Now that I have emptied a case and a half of the first of the beer that we brewed at the Flying Barrel, I am planning to brew my first beer at home. After a bit of thought I have decided on a Belgian Pale Ale Extract + Mini-Mash recipe. It looks easy enough for my first time, and should produce a tasty beverage. The recipe is after the jump.
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Do you have a bottle in need of capping? Just let me know and I will be right over to cap it for you. Of course I don’t have any new bottle caps, so you will need to provide your own. I picked this up from ebay for ten bucks plus shipping. This is my first piece of equipment for my home brew set up. Now if someone would only buy me something like this, I would be all set. Although I might be hard pressed to keep up with the capping on that one, perhaps this would be more my speed. And don’t be a spoil sport, I know that I don’t need such complicated equipment to make good beer, I can dream can’t I?

On the home front, the Hefeweizen that Katherine made is fizzy and ready to drink. The IPA that I made is fizzy, but could do with another week or so in the bottle for the beer to absorb the CO2 and for the hops to mellow out a bit. I am still amazed that we turned water, grains, yeast, and some flowers into beer.

Way back on NYE (aka December 31st), Chris, James, Katherine, and I went back up to the Flying Barrel to bottle our newly created beer. Bottling is a relatively simple proces which involves transfering the beer from the fermenting bucket to the bottling bucket with a racking cane. Then the final specific gravity is measured, and a simple formula is used to compute the alcohol content of each beer.

Alcohol percentage by weight equals 76.08 times Original Gravity minus Final Gravity divided by 1.775 minus Original Gravity. It is easier to scribble this down: ABW = 76.08(OG-FG)/(1.775-OG).

The results are:
James’ Guiness-like Stout 4%
Chris’ Mocha Stout 6.1%
Katherine’s Hefeweizen 5.3%
Randy’s Extra Hoppy Pale Ale 7.3%

Once the once you know how many of each beers you need to get your buzz on, you add a bit of corn sugar to the bottling bucket, fill each bottle and cap them. Then the last step is to wait, then wait a bit more, and then wait even more. One week after bottling we still have more waiting until the beer is fully carbonated and ready to drink.

Katherine and I bought some 3/4 inch round sticker to label each of our beers, hers have paw prints, mine have flowers (for the hops!). Now once they hit the fridge we will know which beer we are about to drink.

I got tired of waiting and sampled one of Katherine’s beer. It is good, but will be better in another two weeks.

Yesterday, I defied the brewing gods and made beer. I guess technically I made wort, and right now a colony of yeast is slowly turning it into beer.

It all started when Katherine saw a Washington Post article about DC Metro brew-on-premises establishments. The prices at Shenandoah Brewing were ridiculous so we made an appointment at The Flying Barrel Frederick, MD. The have a beginners special that allows you to brew 5 gallons (2 cases) of beer for seventy-five bucks. After a bit of confusion for each of us in finding a good recipe, Chris, James, Katherine, and I boiled, measured, ground, mashed, sponged, measured some more, stirred, boiled again, hopped, strained, added yeast, measured a bit more, and capped off the fermenter. Then we sampled some beer another customer brought in, and went home empty handed while the yeast (hopefully) went to work. In two to three weeks we can bottle, and two weeks after that we can finally drink our beer. Katherine made Hefeweizen, James made a dark Guinessy brew, Chris went for a Chocolate Stout, and I went for an Extra Hoppy Pale Ale.
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