Keg of Links

More beer and homebrewing links for your clicking pleasure:

• Brew Dudes tastes some year-old honey wheat from a beer time capsule
• Northern Brewer: The Blog has tested the store's exclusive new Neobritannia yeast and invites comment back
• BeerSmith has posted the first of a two-part discussion of attenuation and sugar conversion
• Blog About Beer reviews New Belgium's Hoptober 

Keg of Links

At the end of this fine brew day, as we retire the happy wort into its primary fermenters for a three-month rest, I provide these links for your clicking pleasure.

• The Mad Fermentationist provides a recipe for Fall Kolsch
• HopfenTreader discusses some tasty-sounding White Beer with Limes

Cheers!

Oktoberfest Brew Day

Today, we're brewing ten gallons of Oktoberfest Lager from Northern Brewer's all-grain kit.  Some slacker (read: me) forgot to create a starter for the yeast, so we'll be pitching the massive number of yeast packs (five) that I proofed earlier in the week.

We started out by crushing the grain for the mash tun:

• 10-lbs. German Pilsner Malt
• 10-lbs German Munich Malt
• 2-lbs German Dark Munich Malt
• 1-lb Weyermann Caramunich II

We infused the grain with six gallons of 175°F water from the hot liquor tank and gave it sixty-minute rest at 152°F.

Next, we added 3 gallons of strike water (boiling) bringing the mash tun up to 175°F for a 10-minute mashout.  This is where things went downhill.  The drain on the mash tun clogged, which we valiantly overcame by turning our boil kettle into a mash tun and draining the grain from there into a number of buckets. We finished with a 7-gallon, 180°F batch sparge for a total 14 gallon initial boil.

Of course, there are hops to be had: two ounces of tasty, tasty Hallertau in the boil for sixty minutes (plus a few extra to bring the total volume under 10 gallons.)

Finishing up we added a teaspoon of yeast nutrient, ran it through the chiller, divided it into two sanitzed buckets, and let it sit in the lagering fridge at about 50-55°F for a few weeks.  We'll move it over into a secondary fermenter and let it hang out in the cooler for a total of three months.

Photos after the break ...

Keg of Links

• The Mad Fermentationist asks how much ready-to-drink homebrew do you have on hand?
• Brew Dudes are have just brought in their hop harvest
• For those who are in the market, Northern Brewer is offering a sale on new beer kits, wine bottles, and corks

Glass

I do not like it in
thermometers
I do not like it in
hydrometers

I do not like them when they're wet
I do not like how slippery they get

I do not like it when they shatter
I hate to clean the mess that scatters

I do not like them in my wort
If one breaks there the wort is dirt.
Not to mention - you could get hurt!

Two things broke yesterday. The first was a standard, $6 floating thermometer. I set it in the sink to wash it, and the tip gently shattered. After a brief flash of happiness (when I realized that the nightmare that is cleaning broken glass wouldn't happen this time -- I could wash the few tiny pieces down the drain) I realized something else broke as well: my will to be cheap.

Now let me explain. I made my first homebrew when I was 19. I dabbled until going full-bore four or five years ago. My attitude towards equipment has always been dictated by the practicality of limited resources: get the cheapest equipment that gets the job done.

Over the last 5 years, I have owned 4 floating thermometers, 2 "lab" thermometers, and 2 hydrometers. All but one of the hydrometers have died tragic deaths, often ending in explosions of glass shards. And I'm sure that the surviving hydrometer's days are numbered.

So when the last glass thermometer I owned broke the other day, I decided it would be the last glass thermometer.

My new philosophy is simple: get the cheapest equipment that you can make work for the longest time possible. Wake up and realize nothing is going to last forever. And if it's essentially a tool that's made out of glass, it will break sooner rather than later. Do the math and figure out how long it must last to make it money well spent. And when choosing your brewing equipment, don't buy anything that will turn into shrapnel when its time is up.

My new instant-read digital thermometer should be here in a couple days.

Oktoberfest Smack Packs: It's Alive!

So, yeah: all four yeast packages proofed.  There are all alive.  All four.  I was pretty surprised given the recent warm weather.  It looks like there will be Oktoberfest brewing this weekend.

For your clicking pleasure:

• Northern Brewer has some photos from their personal hop harvest
• Beersmith has a discussion of Trappist Dubbel and Tripel beer recipies and some information about the Trappist style

I'm off to find something to put a giant yeast starter in.

Oktoberfest Smack Packs

Given the warm weather, the RocketScience brew team has had yeast shipping problems.  Lager yeast has proven itself more sensitive to the warm weather, which has consistently turned 100% of our live lager yeast into dead lager yeast despite any number of ice packs that get sent along for the ride.  Our excursion into lagering has been a learning experience for us, as we've never had problems with ale yeast even during the warmest weather.

We're trying a new tactic.  This weekend, we're planning to brew a bunch of uncrushed grain into ten gallons of Märzen/Oktoberfest wort.  To compensate for potentially dead yeast, we had five packs of Wyeast 2633 - Octoberfest Lager Blend rush shipped a few days ago.  I pulled the activator packs out of the fridge and have just broken the internal yeast nutrient pouches. I'm letting the yeast proof at room temperature for a few days to see which are still alive.

I figure: at least one of those suckers must have survived.   If they all prove viable, they'll be divided between two five-gallon fermenting buckets.  If only some of them are still kicking, they'll contribute to a yeast starter (lagers should be pitched with more yeast than ales.) If none of them survive, we're brewing a porter or a brown ale and holding out for lagers until it gets cooler.

Further news as events warrant.