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Executive Brew on October 5, 2003
EHG executive members Roxanne Hastings, Boyd Oberhoffner, Jim Whittome, Bob Boufford and I gathered at long time EHG member and past president Frank Kuzemski’s garage on a beautiful Sunday morning to brew this year’s December holiday treat. The brew is a Belgian Spiced Dubbel – a two-step mash recipe spiced with orange, coriander and candy sugar conjured by Roxy and Frank that that will be served at the December meeting and holiday pot luck dinner.
Frank’s home brewery is impressive to say the least – a three-tier RIMS system fuelled by propane and with modifications can be converted over to natural gas. A simple system actually - no pumps - with all transfers conducted by gravity even though a pump can be quickly brought online. The tanks are recycled ten-gallon kegs that sit on a sturdy 2” square metal tube frame.
Frank uses an immersion wort chiller made from 3/8” copper tube. Roxy showed us a quick way to speed up the chilling of the wort by lightly shaking the chiller causing agitation of the wort. The 5 gallons of wort chilled down to 70°F in less than 20 minutes.
Frank transferred the wort from the boiling tank to the primary fermenter and then conducted the ceremonial “pitch”ing of the Belgian Ale yeast starter cultured by Roxy.
The day was both educational and eye opening as I gained more knowledge and appreciation for all- grain brewers and Frank’s homemade burgers.
If you want to treat yourself to a fine example of a spiced Belgian Ale I highly suggest you come out to the December meeting / pot luck. This brew started with an OG of 1.100! Consume with caution! See you at the November meeting.
As I write this, the snow is flying and it's time to enjoy those nice heavy gravity beers to warm the innards. As you have seen, the Executives were busy this past month, brewing up a nice strong Belgian ale for the upcoming December meeting and holiday potluck gathering. "Strong English Ales and Barley Wines" is the theme and mini-competition for the November meeting. It should be a very nice warming event.
As announced in a previous issue, The Edmonton Homebrewers Guild First Annual Brew House Brew-Off is off and running. We hear The Brew House kit brewers are excited and already lining up to participate in the competition. Details on the competition can be read later in the newsletter with entry forms available from two of the local homebrew shops and shortly on our website. If you have friends and relatives who are Brew House kit brewers, encourage them to enter the competition. This is a great opportunity to show as Roxy puts it "We are not just a bunch of all-grain beer snobs, we are simply a bunch of beer snobs, making the best brews possible by whatever means we choose."
Besides leading the current Executives in an all-grain brewing session, I want to also say congratulations to EHG member and past president, Frank Kuzemski in taking second place for his Kölsch in the recent Dixie Cup in Texas. It was definitely a tough competition with over 1000 entries. Great going, Frank!
The December theme will be on Strong Belgians followed by Porters and Stouts for January. If any of these are your favourite styles to brew, we would like to hear of your experiences. Feel free to send me anything. If you don't feel you are skilled in writing a short article, send me comments or notes and I will compile them in to "notes on a beer label" for the other members. Also, send any tips and tricks about brewing that may help other members such as using wallpaper paste trays to soak racking canes. You can you’re your comments, notes and articles to BouffordR@earthlink.net. I look forward to hearing about your brewing experiences.
Edmonton Homebrewers Guild First Annual Brew House Brew-Off
February 21-22, 2004
The Edmonton Homebrewer’s Guild in co-operation with Southside Brew Crew and Harvest Brewing Co. are having the first annual contest for the Best Brew House Brewer!
Competition Deadlines
Entries are due on Friday 13 February 2004.
Entries can be taken to:
Alley Kat Brewing Co
9929-60th Ave, Edmonton
Southside Brew Crew
5718-111 Street, Edmonton
Judging will take place on the weekend of February 21-22.
Awards will be presented at the monthly meeting of the Edmonton Homebrewers Guild at Alley Kat Brewing Co. on Monday 1 March starting at 7:30 P.M.
All competitors are encouraged to turn out to the awards night and to bring some of their beers for other competitors to try out.
Entry Forms will be available at:
Southside Brew Crew
5718-111 Street
Harvest Brewing Co
9872-63 Ave
Edmonton Homebrewers Guild webpage:
http://www.ehg.ca
For the competition, only brews made using the following four Brew House Kits as a base are eligible: American Premium Lager, Cream Ale, India Pale Ale and Munich Dark Lager. For each kit, participants can enter the style of the base kit or any of the other styles associated with that kit Prizes will be awarded for the best three beers made using each of the four kits. In addition to other prizes, winners will receive memberships in the Edmonton Homebrewers Guild from March 2004 until August 2005. All non-EHG entrants receive guest memberships in the Guild from March 2004 until August 2004.
The Brew House Kits and Associated Styles
1) American Premium Lager
a) American Premium Lager
b) Olde Stock
c) Belgian Golden Ale
2) Cream Ale
a) Cream Ale
b) American Brown Ale
c) Scotch Ale
3) India Pale Ale
a) India Pale Ale
4) Munich Dark Lager
a) Munich Dark Lager
b) Bock
c) Dobbelbock
Saskatoon Headhunters Beer Club Homebrew Competition.
November 15, 2003
This is we believe Saskatoon's first competition being held independently of Regina but as part of the ALEs network. It's important that we show support for other western brew clubs, especially one of the younger competitions. We know Regina will be shipping a lot of beers and it's a great way to start of the season with a bit of friendly regional rivalry. We are sure this will be an AHA sanctioned event so we should organize a car pool of judges to go and help out. Billeting will be available so travel costs will be low.
Entry Deadline: November 8, 2003
Competition: weekend of Nov. 15, 2003
Fees: $5.00 per 2-bottle entry.
Classes: All styles welcome, some categories may be collapsed, according to entries
Further information can be found at The Saskatoon Headhunters Beer Club web site, http://www.paddockwood.com/headhunters/ or Paddock Wood Brewing Supplies web site, http://www.paddockwood.com
Other competitions on the horizon
Lethbridge @ early March
Montreal @ late March
Regina @ early May
EHG Aurora Brewing Competition @ early June
Calgary @ late June
Part of the strategy of any successful homebrewer, from novices just learning the art, to seasoned competitors, is careful record keeping. About 12 years ago I started carefully recording all my data on my brews. Coming from a science background I eventually decided to develop a systematic approach to my record keeping. The result was a 3-page table based summary that describes my objectives, ingredients, methodology, results and description, and how I can improve on the brew. Anybody who has taken a basic science course will recognize this structure. What makes the data sheet work is the simple elegance of its table format.
I print out the first 3 pages and then print page 4, Beer Evaluation, on the back of each page. I use this last page to record the detailed description of the beer including my own comments and feedback from competitions. It was originally produced in WordPerfect for Windows but this version was imported and then modified in MS-Word. Yes, because most of the literature is American based, I still use a lot of English system measurements, that’s one thing you will probably want to change.
A few explanations:
Mash Runoff Properties
-runoff stage = how many gallons (litres) have been run off. (I have found that the gravity of the runoff at 3 U.S. gallons will be very close to the O.G. of a 5 U.S. gallon beer and the same is true at 2 gallons for a 3 U.S. gallon beer)
-Deg. Extract@ temp = hydrometer reading and temperature
-Real Extract = specific gravity (previous column corrected for temp)
Good Things/Bad Things
-things that worked according to plan and things that did not. This really helps when you are trying to figure out what went wrong in a brew. Be completely honest in this section.
Changes and Improvements Done
-things you changed from the last time you brewed this recipe
Improvements to Make
-things you plan to do the next time you brew this beer.
These last two items really help improve the quality of the beer. Making notes on how you plan to improve the beer, while you still have some on hand, makes it far easier to remember what to do when you get around to brewing it again months or years later. This is sort of the abstract of your own strategy for improving the beer, taking into account what judges tell you and your own perception of what’s needed.
The file will be put on the EHG web site shortly so that you can download and modify it for your own purposes. For those interested in obtaining a copy sooner, can send an email to The Worthouse News Editor.
Many EHG members believe one of the main points of infection is the racking cane during transfer between fermenters. A common suggestion is to always keep racking canes soaking in sanitizer such as idophor or Star-San. Unfortunately most buckets are too short to completely submerge the canes. The solution - the tray used for wetting pre-pasted wallpaper.
A 30" tray is usually available for under $3.00 at most home improvement stores. There is plenty of room to hold several racking canes submerged in sanitizer.
About the time I had my first sip of beer in the mid 50's (It really was just a sip as my dad wasn't about to give me a full bottle at the early age of 5), TV dinners were becoming a very "hot" item. Mom was able to get a Swanson's TV Dinner out of the frozen section of the grocery store, bring it home, pop it in the oven and 30 minutes later, a hot meal! The big advantage was the convenience of no cooking, no messy pots and minimal cleanup. Of course, the taste wasn't exactly like a home cook meal and often required generous amounts of ketchup and other condiments.
In homebrewing, we are now seeing a brewing version of the old TV dinner with pre-packed wort kits such as The Brew House (http://www.thebrewhoue.com), Festa Brew (http://www.magnotta.com) and ReadyBrew (http://www.paddockwood.com). These kits just require pouring the wort into a sanitized fermenter, maybe adding some additional water and pitching the yeast. After that, it's the usual racking to a secondary if desired and then bottling or kegging. No grinding, mashing, sparging, boiling or toiling to get the wort into the fermenter. From start to finish a brew can be in the fermenter in the same time it took to cook a TV dinner in the oven.
While pre-packaged wort kits make an acceptable brew, there have been comments that they tend to be at the low end of a good tasting brew. So like the old TV dinners, they may require some "enhancements" to improve the taste. But no ketchup please! Instead, a change in yeast, water concentration or hopping can turn a typical beer into a good beer. While the full strength worts (Festa Brew and ReadyBrew) are limited in what can be added, the concentrated worts such as The Brew House kits offer a wider range of flexibility.
I like to think of the Brew House kits as a "very watery can of no-boil hopped extract". You can make the beer following the directions or like those "cake doctor" cookbooks, use the kit as a starting point for another style of beer. As found in canned extract brewing, just changing from the supplied dry yeast (usually Coopers) to a good liquid yeast will often enhance the flavour of the beer.
Depending on the labelled style of the kit, the gravity of the Brew House kits is somewhere in the range 1.070-1.080 for 15 litres (4 gal US), so it's a good starting point for several related styles. With some of the kits, reducing the amount of water will change the style to a related higher gravity style. For example, the Pale Ale kit, which normally requires 8 litres of water, without water will give an American Barley Wine styled beer and with 4 litres of water, an Old Ale styled beer.
| Brew House Kit | Liquid yeast suggestion |
| Pilsner | Wyeast 2278 Czech Pils |
| Pale Ale | Wyeast 1056 American Ale |
| Cream Ale | Wyeast 2565 Kolsch |
| Premium Amer Lager | Wyeast 2112 California Lager |
| Munich Dark Lager | Wyeast 2308 Munich Lager |
| Wheat | Wyeast 3068 Weizen |
| Stout | Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale |
| Mexican Cerveza | Wyeast 2112 California Lager |
Changing the yeast and reducing the water is just the beginning. At The Brew House web site are recipes for modifying the kits by adding different yeast, less water, more hops, additional extract (DME, LME) or a partial steep/mash. I have a Porter in the fermenter right now made from the Pale Ale kit, steeped dark grains and a British Ale yeast. We will see how it turns out at the Porter/Stout mini-competition during the January meeting.
A kit makes it easy to split into multiple batches to brew two different styles, try out different yeasts or experiment with ingredients as it provides a uniform base style. Since the kit normally makes 23 litres (6 gal US), there are a variety of ways of dividing the batch. I have found it helps to have a sanitized bottling bucket if the kit is to be split into multiple batches. The Brew House kit is packaged with a very low pH to retard spoilage and requires the addition of an acid neutralizer before pitching the yeast. A bottling bucket makes it easy to empty the wort out of the box and mix in "Pack #1". The wort can then be dumped into the different fermenters with additional water, extract, hop tea and yeast.
I've been using The Brew House kits since I moved to Canada a year ago. They are a great addition to the brewer's larder for such situations where you want to do a batch of brew and just don't have the few hours it takes to do an extract or all grain brew. Also, for those of us who live in apartments (or homes) with lousy stoves, they are very nice to have when it's too cold (-40C) in winter to fire up an outdoor burner and there is an "itch to brew".
So, when you want some brew but just don’t feel like "cooking", open the box, pitch the yeast, "relax and have a homebrew!"
Ahh, barley wine. As the weather gets a little colder, brewer’s thoughts turn to those high gravity winter warmers like barley wine. Personally I like barley wine at any time. One of my favourite summer past times is sitting around the campfire with a barley wine in one hand and a cigar in the other. You can’t beat that. We’re very fortunate to have many excellent brewers in the club and I’ve had the great pleasure to sample some of Roxy’s wonderful old ales as well as barley wines from the king of the big beers, Bryan Halliday. I’ve been inspired by those beers to try to make some of my own.
The recipe below is from a barley wine that I brewed on February 18, 2001. I still have 2 or 3 bottles from that batch and they’re wonderful. The biggest mistake I always make when brewing a beer like this is to drink too much of it too young. These high gravity beers just improve with age and develop a wonderful complexity. You’ll notice from the recipe that I used a lot of dry malt extract (DME). I just use a 2-bucket lautering system and it won’t handle all the grain I would need for a 5 gallon batch of high gravity beer. I could brew a smaller quantity but I’m relatively pleased with the results I’ve gotten. It took a first in its class in the 2002 ABC and more importantly, I like it. I apologize for the mixture of metric and imperial measurement but most of my reading on brewing is American and I just don’t bother converting everything to metric.
Grain
10.5 pounds 2 row pale malt
1 pound Crystal malt
0.5 pounds Carapils malt
0.5 pounds Wheat malt
1 ounce Chocolate malt
6 pounds DME
My water was 50/50 tap and RO water from Safeway and I mashed at 150 F. I had calculated about 26 degrees of extraction per pound from my grain and about 40 degrees per pound from the DME. That would have given me an original gravity of 1.104 but I actually got a little less and ended with an OG of 1.098. Not bad. The DME was added in the boil right at the beginning.
Hops
60 minutes
26 g Columbus at 15.1% (~ 45 IBU)
30 minutes
24 g Centennial at 10.3 % (~ 15 IBU)
40 g Cascade at 6% (~ 15 IBU)
20 g NZ Hallertauer at 8% (~ 10 IBU)
5 minutes
26 g Cascade at 6% (~ 3 IBU)
13 g NZ Hallertauer at 8% (~ 2 IBU)
Dry Hop
14 g each of Centennial, Cascade and NZ Hallertauer.
I was aiming for about 90 IBU and a significant hop presence but found that although the bitterness was good for balance I would have liked more hop flavour and aroma.
Yeast and Fermentation
The yeast I used was good old 1028 London Ale. I like this yeast and was encouraged by an issue of Zymurgy that I have noting that the 1997 AHA commemorative brew was a barley wine brewed with London Ale. However, I don’t like a barley wine that just sort of sits there and droops with little carbonation. I want something with life so I added fresh yeast at every step as well as 4 tsp. of yeast nutrient. The beer was brewed on February 18 and I pitched 1600 ml of London Ale yeast at that time. I kept an eye on fermentation temperatures to make sure they didn’t get too high. I didn’t want to end up with a 5 gallon batch of simply stupefying higher alcohols as opposed to a tasty batch of barley wine so I kept it at around 65 F. By March 17 the specific gravity had dropped from 1.098 to 1.040. On March 26, I transferred the beer and added another 600 ml of London Ale. On July 22, I bottled the beer and added my usual 1/2 cup corn sugar boiled in 2 cups water for carbonation but also another 600 ml of London Ale. So far my record keeping is pretty good but my notes don’t record what the final gravity was. I must have been sampling already!! In any case, my intent was to make a hoppy American style barley wine and it turned out to be less hoppy that I had hoped for. It competed as a British barley wine and tastes just fine with a cigar.
In Designing Great Beers, Ray Daniels has some good advice about trying to brew a barley wine, which I took to heart but two specific points stand out for me. Firstly, make sure the wort is extremely well aerated. The yeast will tend to get a little sluggish as the alcohol level climbs and you want to give it a running start. Secondly, pitch twice as much yeast as you’re used to and be prepared to rouse the yeast in the secondary or add yeast at each step as I did. Daniels notes that some brewers have used wine or champagne yeast to help with attenuation but you may run the risk of producing odd or off flavours. Since this is a beer I like the idea of sticking with a hardy ale yeast like London although I’ve seen lots of recipes that use 1056 American Ale as well. In his chapter on barley wine, Daniels concludes by saying, “ . . .it is clear that there are a number of different barley wine formulations to try based on your choices of key variable as U.S. or English hops, use or omission of flavour hop additions, and high or low attenuation levels. The breadth of opportunity offered by this style makes it one that could truly be explored for many years.” The winter 1997 edition of Zymurgy is called Warm Up With Barley Wine and has lots of great commentary and barley wine recipes. It’s got a picture of a couple sitting in front of a blazing fire and toasting each other with glasses of barley wine. Perfect.
‘Tis the season for raking leaves, carving pumpkins, dressing up in Halloween costumes, and of course making pumpkin beer. For years I’ve been promising myself that I will make a pumpkin beer for Halloween. Visions of having friends over sipping on this delicious beer as kids cry outside for candy come to mind. So this year I finally timed everything right so that this long desired endeavour would be ready on time for October 31.
I like to experiment with many different recipes and styles. So, before I attempt a new beer style, I always research articles and books to see what other experienced brewers have to say about the process. For this beer, I read several articles regarding the use of pumpkins in brewing, and I’m very thankful that I did. After several horror stories of stuck mashes or beer that lost all pumpkin character, I decided that I would heed the advice of those who had made this beer successfully. I am not, therefore, an experienced pumpkin beer maker – I’ve only made one batch – but it was better than I had anticipated. Those who have tasted it call it “pumpkin pie in a glass”. There are a few things you need to know before combining this Halloween vegetable with wort.
When do you add the pumpkin?
For best results, pumpkin should be added to the mash. If you add it during the boil, most of the pumpkin flavour will be lost by the time you taste the final product. If any of the brewers out there have managed to successfully brew a flavourful extract version of this beer please tell me how you did it.
Be sure to bake the pumpkin in the oven at 350F until slightly browned and soft. You want to caramelize some of the sugars, but you don’t want mush. Be vigilant. Leave the light on in the oven and watch it every 5 minutes or so. When its done, the skin will be a little brown and peel off easily. It’s kind of like making a perfectly toasted marshmallow, except that it’s much bigger and orange.
How much pumpkin do you add?
Apparently, you don’t want to add too much pumpkin. Doing so will result in beer with an extremely vegetal character. I used only 340g of baked pumpkin in a 20L batch. By using this amount I found that my final product had a slight pumpkin character, but it certainly didn’t dominate the flavour. I think that raising the amount to 400g or 500g would be an interesting experiment, but be careful. More pumpkin isn’t necessarily better.
How do you prevent a stuck mash?
Many brewers warned about the dreaded stuck mash due to the gelatinous nature of the pumpkin. I have a great aversion to stuck mashes, so I did a long protein rest (30 min at 50°C) during the mash. My guess was that the peptidases would break down the gelatinous proteins enough to prevent gooping up the grain bed. Did it work? I had no problems with the mash sticking at all. However, it was interesting that I only lautered for about 5 minutes before the wort came crystal clear. Perhaps the pumpkin goop helped with filtration instead of sticking the mash.
What should the base beer be?
The background beer should be malty and have just enough hop bitterness to balance and a subtle hop flavour that compliments pumpkin pie. Since I have plenty of Munich malt, I went crazy with it. However, any amber or pale ale would make a fine base with pumpkin. I strongly recommend spicing the beer with cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg. The spices really add to the experience. Feel free to experiment. Anytime you add spices to beer, add them in the last 20 minutes of the boil so that the flavour comes through in the final product.
Here is the recipe I used:
3 pounds Westcan 2 row malt (for diastatic power)
6 pounds Munich malt
1 pound Crystal malt (40°L)
340g baked then blended pumpkin
Mash 30 min at 50°C, 15 min at 62°C, 30 min at 69°C, and 5 min at 80°C. Sparge at 80°C
Boil 90min. Add 18.5g Mt Hood (5.1%) at 60 min and 25g at 20 min.
Add 10g of each spice at 15 min – cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and clove
Ferment at 15°C with Wyeast 1028 (London ale) OG1.047 FG1.015
Cheers