First State Brewers Blog

I recently received an order from Libbey.com of their Poco Grande glasses which work remarkably well as tulip glasses for belgian beers. My dogfish glass bit the big one a few months back, and it has been paining me to drink my belgians out of wine glasses (I know, how snobbish). The Libbey glasses aren’t the perfect tulip shape, however they do not have crap printed on them and they were relatively inexpensive, so I won’t complain. If I wanted, I could even go out and get these ones printed or etched with a logo.

I am also entering a couple beers in Malt Madness with my buddy Brian. Two of them are my own (Travelers & Tourists and an Abbey Brown, both in the Dubbel category), along with a co-entry of our Saturday IPA and the Gnarleywine we brewed in October of last year (Which is fan-f’ing-tastic, by the way). I think Brian is also gonna enter some of his own beers - maybe the Hazelnut and another. I am interested in hearing some feedback on my belgians and our hop monster children… And hopefully I’ll be putting one of my kegs of it on tap here in the not-so-distant future.

No brewing this weekend for me - at least not beer. Instead I’ll be polluting my equipment with some dirty crustaceans - turns out a 14 gallon kettle with a false bottom is the perfect crab-steaming vessel too… Booyaa!!! We’re getting a half bushel of #1s to split between Donna, myself, one of my sisters and her husband, and my parents. While not brewing related, guarenteed we will be sucking down some suds to go with our crabs and I am using brewing gear to do the deed :-D.

So I haven’t been Blogging very much lately… I have been kind of busy. Doing what, you ask?

Bottling and brewing my friends. And both in large amounts. In the picture you’ll see 10 gallons of American Brown Ale on the left that I brewed this past weekend with the help of my friend Brian. It was a 20 gallon batch we split 2 ways, and we did some experimenting with my equipment which went really well. He did a better job summarizing everything that happened than I could, so I won’t even try to repeat it here. For a change, our experimentation all payed off. I think one of my favorite points was when we shoved my squirrel mixer in the mash tun and managed to get a perfectly mixed mash within a minute or so… that squirrel mixer is just the perfect size for a 28 gallon mash tun, and I’m fairly certain our arms would have fallen off trying to mix that much grain by hand.

The middle 2 carboys are actually the starter batch we did for the ABA, our hoppy-as-hell, used 1.5 POUNDS of hops IPA. Once again, Brian did a great job summarizing that day here in his blog. I bring it up because I also experimented with this batch, and it was a failed experiement - I tried to weight the hops down using glass marbles and a hop bag. As you can tell from the picture… it didn’t work. After spending many frustrating minutes trying to shove a hop bag full of marbles and hops into that tiny friggin opening in the top, I was conviced it was a bonehead idea - but I was determined to persevere in my endeavor. Lesson learned - next time I’ll leave them in there loose and just shake the carboy every few days. And NO I WILL NOT TRY TO USE MORE MARBLES. If you tried stuffing it through a one inch hole, you’d understand too. God help me trying to get them back out.

On the right is 10 gallons of peated scottish (from the previous post) that will soon be racked ontop of several ounces (like 3 per 5 gallons) of bourbon-aged oak cubes. 5 gallons of this batch is going to a friend… so I hope it turns out as good as the last one did.

That brings me to bottling. LOTS of bottling. 15 gallons in a week, to be more precise. The 20 gallon batch of TnT that I brewed several weeks ago has conditioned enough and was ready for packaging, so I kegged 5 gallons and the rest went into glass containers of various sizes. The 1L bottles on the lower left are for Joe and Marlana at HDYB, 1 case of the 12oz bottles are going to my cousin Drew and his bandmates, and the rest …. well, I’m sure that Donna and I will put them to good use.

All that bottling certainly reminded me why I like kegging so much. I’ve got like 8 cornies sitting empty at the moment - But with 30 gallons to keg in the next few weeks - They’ll fill up really fast.

Its a little after 5am and I’m already frustrated. After this morning’s mash-in, I may become a Marty Drinan disciple….

Promash calculated a strike water temp of 176 for me to hit my desired 151-152 range. I heated the water, and it hit 178 before I could catch it…. so I turned the burner off, let the kettle sit for about 5 min in the 50 degree air, and it cooled… to 174. So I turned the burner back on, and a minute later the thermometer said 176, so I killed the burner. I gave the water a quick mix with my spoon - 178!!! D@mnit!!!! So I said screw it and into the mash tun it went.

And I mashed in my grains, using my trusty mash paddle. I check the temperature - 162. SAY WHAT?!?!? OK… time to stir like hell…. so I grab my stainless spoon and stir-stir-stir for 2 minutes. 156. Eh… not too bad, but not great. More stirring ensues…. 156. OK… time to adjust down a hair.

So I add about a half quart of cold water… stir stir stir stir - 155. Ugh… this is gonna take forever. Add another half quart. Stir stir stir stir…. 3 minutes later… 154. GOOD LORD, this is insane!!! OK… dump another half quart in, declaring that’s all I’m doing. If its a little high, then so well… it’ll be fuller-bodied than I intended. Mix, mix… stir stir stir… 155. WHAT?!?!?? The temperature went UP!??!!?!! Stir-like-the-mash-did-me-wrong hopping-mad for 3 minutes… 149!!!

(Flurry of four letter words and not-so-nice 5 letter words ensue)

I have been all-grain brewing for 2 years now!!! I SHOULD @!#@ING KNOW BETTER!!!!

So, after calming down and proclaiming that “it is a belgian-style abbey dubbel, and if it ferments way low then so be it”… and going to go grab some coffee, I think back to Friday night’s meeting where Marty showed us his latest tool for mixing his mash - a drill-powered paint stirrer with every other fin taken out…. And I wondered how much of this heartache could have been avoided if I just had a more efficient means to stir my mash.

I am going to Home Depot. I am buying a paint stirrer. And I am going to use that b!tch on my next mash.

As for the dubbel - I may just have to leave a pound of corn sugar out of the recipe and deal with a lower initial gravity to compensate for the lack of dextrins in my wort. Or maybe I’ll add it in and see what the hell happens. I guess I’ll wait until 9:30 or so and see how I feel when that addition comes up.