A big step forward

It's been a while since my last post. I haven't been doing much brewing, only three batches so far this year. Unfortunately I have been preoccupied with some home and auto repair projects. I'd much rather be brewing. With the purchase of two new March 815 pumps I just took a big step, and financial commitment, forward toward all grain brewing. Of course the commitment doesn't stop with the pumps. I need three new valves, an assortment of fittings, and a few feet of tubing to connect everything together and control the flow. As I mentioned above, I have brewed three batches. The first was the Hefeweizen from previous posts. The second was a Scottish Wee Heavy that I brewed for the Kansas City Irish Festival Homebrew Contest, I will update later with the results. The third was an IPA that I have brewed before but with some changes. It is better than before but still needs a little adjustment to the hop profile. The IPA boil was also the first time I have used pellet hops and is something I will do again.

Kettle sight gauge

Before using the sight gauge it needs to be calibrated. I filled the kettle, 1/2 gallon at a time, marking the sight glass with a maring pen as I filled. I marked it up to 12.5 gallons. Once this was done I engraved on the marks to give them more permanence. Every piece of equipment added to the brewery means more set up and cleaning time. But this is really nice to have and worth the extra work. It means I can add water directly to the kettle, no more filling buckets to measure the water volume and lifting them over the kettle. Also, it will me to measure the volume of wort in the boil kettle when I finally am able to move to all grain.

Bottling the Hefe-weizen



Bottle blaster



  



Sanitizer pump



  When bottling beer, like most home brewing activities, the majority of the time is spent cleaning and sanitizing. Many people prefer to keg their beer so they don’t have to deal with bottles. Why clean and store cases of bottles instead of a few kegs. And besides, bottles are breakable. For one, bottles are a lot less expensive way to get started with brewing. Besides, I can’t imagine totally giving up bottling. Once you have the process in place preparing bottles is not so bad. That is, as long as you have rinsed your bottles soon after pouring a beer. I have not kegged any beer, so I don’t really know for sure, but I think one of the big advantages would be carbonation control. I do think it would be nice to eventually have both options available.

Bottled beer



Draining on the bottle tree



Bananas and cloves

On Tuesday, May 1st, I racked the hefeweizen to a secondary fermenter (5 gallon carboy).  I thought it had strong aromas of banana and clove. Both my wife and daughter said they smelled peaches, cloves, and general spiciness. Either way it had good fruity esters, just what you expect from a German style weiss bier.

I have also ordered the ingredients for my next beer. It will be a Wee Heavy. It is the beer I also brewed the last two National Homebrew Days, which is always the first Saturday in May. This year I won't be brewing on Saturday but I will be where it is being done. And, of course, I will toast the day with a couple of home brewed beers.

First brew day of 2012

I finally brewed for the first time this year on Monday, April 23rd. I brewed a hefeweizen using a 65-35 wheat, barley blend DME for my base. I am fermenting with a Bavarian wheat style yeast. While I haven't been brewing this year, I have been working on the brewery. I now have three burners installed and propane connected to all. I am currently adding some fittings to my newest ketle for a sight gauge, ball valve, and thermometer. On a side note, I tried out some silicone tubing for my blow off tube on the hefe fermentation. I really like it and am planning to gradually change to silicone tube throughout the brewery.

Propane distribution

A couple pictures of the assembled and painted propane gas distribution system installed on the brew stove.

Two burner test

I hooked up the two burners and operated both at the same time. I now know I can get them both to burn at the same time. Of course I still have to make sure I still get good performance out of each burner.


The next step is to get the gas plumbing properly sealed and attached to the stove. I have been working on some brackets but still need to add some holes to the frame.