The Phuckented Spring IPA contest

Ted, Paul, Brad and myself are going to do a friendly contest. If you're interested in joining in on this, shit you can even use my gear and I'll help, email me! The more the better!

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The “Phuckented” IPA brewing contest.

Evaluation Day:  Saturday, April 9^th @ 2:00p (this is subject to change)

Location: TBD

All Grain Requirements for 5 gallon batch:

10lbs. American Two-row

1lb. Specialty malt of your choice

1lb. Pale Malt – Maris Otter

8oz.  specialty malt of your choice

8oz. of a crystal malt (Levibond: your choice)

Extract Requirements for 5 gallon batch:

EITHER

(6.875lbs dry malt extract – pale malt)

OR

(8.125lbs liquid malt extract – pale malt)

1lb. Specialty malt of your choice

1lb. Pale Malt – Maris Otter

8oz.  specialty malt of your choice

8oz. of a crystal malt (Levibond: your choice)

*you can round up or down for the amount of extract, we don’t really care, but if you can get close, that’s RAD like Crew Jones.

Must include:

9oz of Hops. (2oz of these are left for a 7 day dry-hop)

Recipe must include THREE different kinds of hops.

Example:

3oz Cascade, 4oz Centennial, 2oz Simcoe = 9oz

Or: 7oz Cascade, 1oz Warrior, 1oz E. Kent Goldings = 9oz

2oz of dry hop must be chosen at random – and put in the freezer for dry hopping later

1oz hop addition (2 cups) at 60 minutes. (pick two cups, add them and write down what they were)

1oz hop addition (2 cups) at 10 minutes. (pick two cups, add them and write down what they were)

All subsequent hop additions added from 6 minutes to 1 minute left in your boil.

American Ale yeast US-05 Ale yeast

            (Safle or Wyeast – your choice)

Bottle Conditioned or bottled from your keg.

Variables

Levibond of Crystal Malt

Your choice of which 3 hops you want to use.

Strike and sparge temps are your call (but you must record your target and actual temps)

Rules

(1)  No brewing software may be used to calculate anything other than strike water temps and volumes.

(2)  All hops are put into plastic keg cups in ½ oz increments.  No scales, only eyeballing the quantity in each cup.

(3)  The type of hop is written onto the bottom of every keg cup into which it is placed (you may want to do the labeling BEFORE dumping in the hops.

(4)  Hop cups are randomized on your counter/brewing table

(5)  After each hop addition, the brewer must record which hop was added and when.  After your 10 minute hop addition, you should have 10 cups left.  The brewer must roll a die ten times and record the roll.  The brewer must add one half-ounce of hops at every incremental time left in the boil specified by the dice.

The number rolled on the dice specified the minutes left in the boil you add a half-ounce cup.

For instance, if your dice looked the picture below, the hop additions would be:

1 cup with 6 minutes left in the boil (1 six was rolled)

3 cups with 5 minutes left in the boil (3 fives rolled)

2 cups with 4 minutes left in the boil (2 fours were rolled)

1 cup with 3 minutes left in the boil (1 three rolled)

2 cups with 2 minutes left in the boil (2 twos rolled)

1 cup with 1 minute left in the boil (1 one rolled)

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So with that said, I'm a little bummed about a few thing, but it will make it fun. 1. No brewing software. As some of you know I use beersmith to help me design my beers. It doesn't do the work for me, but it does do some of the math. 2. I just got a scale from my father-in-law. I was really looking forward to using it on this, guess I won't be.


Now on the other hand I just bought a refractometer which should be getting here soon. E-bay Hong Kong special baby!! At least I can use that and feel cool, though I'm sure the wife will make fun of me as I'm looking though it.


-Ryan

Chemistry with Cousin Mike

I know what you're thinking.. "Holy Shit! Ryan posted 2 blogs in 2 days. What the hell? I hope he doesn't keep doing this like some crazed asshole who can't stop tweeting about everything s/he is doing ever second!" Fear not readers as I don't plan on doing that. This post is special to me. It's not written by me at all! HA! Now you don't have to read my bastardization of the English language for this wonderful Friday.

A while back I asked my cousin Mike to write an entry for me. Mike is currently working on his PhD in Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin - Madtown (Madison). Mike is an extremely smart individual so before writing I asked him to drink a beer or 4, then compose. Well, last night I got an email with his entry. I'm pretty excited. Real quick let's review Mike's qualifications... Czech heritage.. Check! Grandfather grew barley for Coors (R.I.P. Grandpa Joe. Miss you!)... Check! Lives in Wisconsin.. Check! Enjoys beer... Check! Has a degree in chemistry.. Check!  Ok.. I think he qualifies. On to his entry:

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Light Beer?

Beer is delicious. Let’s get that out there first. I may be weird, but I drink beer because it tastes great! I don’t drink because it gets me drunk (an unfortunate side effect of the beverage), or because it is healthy (how many Miller Lites can be burnt off in one 10 k road race?) or because it is the socially acceptable thing to do with my friends (my two best friends cannot or do not drink alcohol for various medical and personal reasons). I drink beer because it tastes so damn good. Hence, like Ryan, I have begun a career in drinking craft brews. If I’m only going to drink one to two beers in a given night of “heavy” drinking (yes, I don’t drink much), I’m going to drink something that is possibly going to give me an out of body-, virginity losing-, finding Jesus-like experience. Bud Light probably isn’t going to get that done for me.

Phew. Glad I got that off my chest. Now to my true specialty: chemistry.  Beer is arguably the reason why my field exists in the first place. The pH scale (measure of acidity/basicity) was developed in 1909 to assist in control of wort production (this work was done at the Carlsberg brewery/ laboratories, yeah, pretty much a dream job.  They give a daily beer ration of a 6 pack a day, or so I’ve been told by chemists who would know). Louis Pasteur (the guy that pasteurization is named after) studied bacteria in beer, and developed his famous process for beer production, milk go eat your heart out. The reality is that you cannot (in my opinion) truly understand and appreciate a beer without understanding some of the science behind it, and in it.

Ok, quick disclaimer. I am a scientist. Currently I would be described as a bioorganic, biomaterials chemical biologist. I used to do speciation/evolutionary studies in entomology. I make my living by trying to understand things in the world around me that no one else understands yet. And that sort of mentality cannot be left in the laboratory if you truly are a scientist. You take it to the tap room after work, too.

So, let’s start with something that I hold as scientific truth, and even my cousin (whose knowledge of beer I greatly admire and respect) may disagree with. Beer tastes best out of a keg. Ok, I know Ryan agrees with that. Beer taste second best out of a can. Yeah, I went there. Beer taste third best out of a bottle. Now good beers generally are sold in bottles and the awful cheap stuff tends to be sold in cans, but if we throw out that trend, I feel this order holds true.

Here is why:

Light is an awfully nasty form of energy in the chemical world. It does all sorts of crazy shit to molecules. Riboflavin (vitamin B2) is in beer and it is a photo-sensitizer. This means that when a photon of light of the right wavelength strikes it, the chemical is energized (activated) and can give its energy to another molecule. This activated B2 forces iso-alpha acids (from the hops) to undergo a homolytic cleavage forming a free radical, which reacts with the amino acid cysteine to form 3-methylbut-2-ene-1-thiol.

Ok, what the hell does all that shit mean?

Light puts energy into the chemicals in the beer, which leads to the formation of a thiol. And all you need to know about thiols is that they smell like skunk. Hence, the infamous skunky beer smell and taste. Sad day. Free radicals (like political or religious radicals) equal bad tasting beer.

Back to the container debate.

So, a keg lets practically no light through, which means the formation of this nasty thiol is slowed to a crawl. A can is basically a handheld keg. You can’t taste the metal, it is coated with a polymer (plastic lining) which prevents any metal actually making contact with your beer and the polymer does not degrade into the beer, leaving beer the way it is meant to be.

Now to bottles discussion. Amber bottles are that particular color because it is most effective in reflecting the particular wavelength that begins this cascade of beer flavor homicide. But the reality is that some light does get into the beer. Corona, in their brilliance, uses a clear bottle. I think it is fair to say that their beer degrades faster than any others, because pretty much all light is let into the bottle. They might counteract this problem with what is called a “free-radical scavenger”, which is a chemical that reacts quickly with the light-activated chemicals that lead to the skunk flavor. I don’t remember seeing free-radical scavengers as one of the four acceptable ingredients of beer.

Now, for a final thought on all of this: drink beer when it is fresh. It is easy to find fresh beer. The fresh beer is the stuff made by your local craft brewery or in the garage/basement/kitchen of people who are practice a tradition that goes back to the beginning of civilization. So, drink craft brews because they are going to be the highest quality, least photo-decayed beer that you can find.

And if you like it out of the bottle more than the can, I won’t judge you. Beer taste too good to fight over.

Until next time, enjoy that beer. If it tastes skunky, blame free radicals forming thiols in your beer.

Scrumps!

Mike Kratochvil

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Awesome entry. Now some quick side notes. No, I do not disagree with you on your discussion about cans. Surly Brewing which is extremely well known here in the Minneapolis area only offers their beer in cans. At $10+ for a 4 pack of 16oz cans, it better be damn good. 

Well here's a Prost to my cousin for his help on this entry. Note the beer is Angry Hank's, a local tap room from Billings, MT where Mike grew up. 

If you're interested in being a guest blogger on Brew It Yourself, feel free to contact me! 

Prost!

-Ryan

I'm going to get yelled at for this one...

So I was just talking with a coworker, who shale remain nameless to protect him, about trying different beers. He dropped the following quote on me:

Tastebuds change/evolve.  And, unlike a wife, you can get tired of your old beer and try something new whenever you want!

I found that very funny. Note that like me he is also happily married.

So enjoy the quote and I encourage everyone this weekend to try a beer you've never had before. I'm hoping you're going to pick a craft brew and not a bud select, which is total crap.

A link for the guys (work safe)

Prost!
-Ryan

Houston we have a problem.

So let me start off by saying that no, I did not complete my goal. Now let me explain why. I had a giftcard to midwest brewing. I *very* quickly spent that on my kegorator setup and the supplies for the Bombs Away I-Paul-A. When I was looking at kegs, the options at midwest clearly were hit hard by the holiday shopping. Yes I understand that they are used kegs, but the dents in these kegs were not of my liking. I went back 2 different times and both times they had almost no kegs with massive dents. With that being said, I decided not to make the 3rd brew yet, but I will soon. Now onto my issues.

I ran into a lot of issues over the last few days. After 3 days, the irish red stop fermenting. It shouldn't stop that soon. UGH. I gave my buddy Paul a called and talked about a few choices. I decided I'd run to midwest and pick up a 2nd package of yeast because I thought that might kick it back off again. When I was there I was talking to one of the very helpful employees. He informed me that I might have not aerated the wort well enough before I pitched the yeast. Wtf is aerating? I had sort of read about it, but I had no clue so I picked the midwest employee's brain about this. What he informed me is that the only time it is ok to aerate your beer is just before pitching the yeast. I've actually never done this. They sell items which hook up to an electric drill and spin the beer extremely fast. Otherwise there's a few different ways to do this which don't require buying more gear. Well, my dumb ass didn't buy that and I just pitched the 2nd yeast pack. It's now been 4 days and the stupid thing still hasn't taken off. My gravity is still reading at 1.022. So I sanitized my plastic paddle and I stirred up the beer. Let's hope I didn't screw up the batch. Now onto the real issue..

The Bombs Away I-Paul-A is not a cheap beer. That sucker cost me $38 in materials alone. $13 in grain, $3 in yeast, and the rest in hops. I started heating up my strike water (the initial water which is added to the mash) and my electric thermostat says that I've reached my target temp of 168. Awesome. Of course I didn't check it and I dumped it in with the grain. I take a temp reading on the mash hoping to hit 150, the thermostat says 181. This is not possible. I freak out and run to grab my manual thermostat. It's at 135, which is way to low. I scramble to get it warmer by taking 1qt of water and bringing it to almost boiling. I dump that in which only brought the water up to 140. I just accept that i slightly screwed that up and try to recover. I let that soak for 40 minutes, then I hit it with the 2nd round of water at 160. I let that soak for 40 minutes then went onto the boil. In the end I was shooting for a gravity of 1.072 and hit it at 1.060. Not bad for a major issue. Tonight I put it into the 2nd stage for dry hopping after 5 days in the primary fermentor. This beer is tasting great and will only get better.

So onto what I learned:

• Brewing isn't necessarily a science, go with the flow. This is something that sometimes I get frustrated at my wife with because when she cooks she tends to go exactly by the book. I try to remind her that just because she doesn't do exactly what the book says doesn't mean the police are going to show up and arrest her. I needed to take a bit of my own medicine with the Bombs Away. In the end, it seems like everything worked just fine. 
• Aerate the Wort. I'll be making sure that I get a good aerate before pitching from now on so that I don't wreck 4+ hours of work. 

So I know I've been bad about updating the blog over the holiday's with my brewing, but here's some picture's over the brewing of the Bombs away. Enjoy!

The middle picture is cooling down the beer. The floor in the basement is ghetto. The 2nd to the bottom picture is me moving the beer into the secondary fermentor with the dry hops. We had a shower added to our upstairs bathroom which required cutting a whole in the wall. We haven't picked a color for the office yet. The last picture is the beer wrapped in towels to keep out the light hanging out in the office which is a wonderful 68 degrees.

Until next time...

Prost!

-Ryan

Kegorator Project nearing completion

I took a little trip to Midwest Brewing Supplies today. Picked up all the materials needed to finish adding 2 additional taps. So all I need now is some hosing, a faucet (what the beer comes out of) and that 3rd keg. I would have picked up the keg but their slim selection (they had 3) were looking pretty beat up. So part of my delema with my kegorator is the tower only had 1 tap. My kegorator will fit 3 homebrew kegs. I looked at getting a 3 tap tower, but they run in the $250+ range. I wasn't real interested in spending that amount. I found tower extenders which add an additional tap, but that's just one short. I ended up cutting a 2nd hole in the tower extender. Here's the final product. Note that I'm missing the 3rd faucet.

Yes.. I couldn't get a black tower extender so I have a bit of a mis-matching tower. It works so that's really what matters to me. Not bad if I do say so myself.

Also while I was there I picked up all the materials for the Bombs Away I-Paul-A. I must say this is the most expensive beer I've ever brewed. $37.40 of materials looks like this:

10oz of hops and 14lbs of grain. Just crazy. Hopefully tomorrow this will be in the fermentor.

Prost!
-Ryan

One Down.. Two more to go.

As I'm sure you all saw earlier today, I gave myself a challenge. This afternoon I brewed the Irish Red ale from Midwest Supplies. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on this as you can read all about it from their website. Brew day went fine with myself sitting and watching a whole lot of water boil.

Took this picture while waiting for the batch water to heat up. The final numbers came in almost pin-point what beersmith said they should. OG: 1.054 with 5.25gal going into the fermentor. Brewhouse efficiency: 71.68%.

Color is a little darker then I was thinking it should be for a red, but things always look different after everything settles. Tonight I plan on starting to work on my helle recipe. Not sure when the next brew day will be as Erin's car is having some weird sounds which I'll need to address. It's looking like wed may be the next brew day.

Tomorrow I'll make a trip to Midwest to spend some (or all) of the giftcard I got. I'm still working out the details of how I'm going to run 3 taps on my single tower kegorator, which talking with the guys at Midwest should help. Look for an update soon. 

Prost!
-Ryan

The Challenge.

I have a major issue here at the house... an empty keg. Actually, I'll have 2 empty kegs once I go to the homebrew store and buy a 3rd one. Major issue. My goal is to brew 3 brews before the end of my holiday shutday, which is Sunday Jan 2nd. Yes.. 3, two to fill the empty kegs and one for backup when one of them goes down. Sounds easy enough, but with brewing taking about 5 hours and other commitments over my break, it can be a little tricky. Here's the 3 brews I've picked:

1. Irish Red Ale from Midwest Supplies. This was the 2nd brew I ever did, granted it was extract. I figured I'd give it another round. This was a request from my friend Lee as he enjoys reds.

2. "Bombs Away" I-Paul-A. This is a crazy ass IPA recipe developed by my buddy Paul. He holds the recipe close so I feel good that I was given the grain profile. So I cannot go into details of what drops all into this, but I will say that it has 9.5 oz of hops (That's stupid high, the most I've used so far has been 3) and beersmith is predicting the following: Est Original Gravity: 1.072, Est Alcohol: 6.7%, IBU: 100.2. I've had this beer twice and it's amazing. It's close to a Surly Furious. With all those hops I'm gonna have to open up the wallet.. it's gonna be spendy.

3. German Style Helle. It's been a few months since I had a helle on tap. I'm going to develop this recipe on my own. I guess I should probably start here soon. LOL.

A little update: on Christmas Eve I tapped the Sophie Coffee Stout. It's amazing. My fear that the coffee was going to be too strong was fine. Great stout flavor with a nice coffee aftertaste. One of my better beers yet. I think the thing I'm most excited about with that brew is it's my first recipe that I created.

I'll keep you all updated as I attempt my challenge. If you're sitting around this week and want to learn about all grain brewing, drop me a line. It can be a bit tricky to brew with just me at times. I'll also be updating this blog a little with some links to recipes that I care to share along with some other goodies.

Prost!

-Ryan