Last week I realized how soon GABF was upon us. And soon there would be even more beer lovers in Denver. And how soon I had to have a lot of beer ready for them all to drink.
Kell and I created a brewing schedule, and decided to brew so that when everyone is in town, we can hand out tons of beer to thirsty people. That meant getting the all grain system operational again.
A few months ago, I got lazy and left some spent grains in the mash tun, closed, outside in the sun, for a few days. Bad. Bad bad bad things. It smelled like.. well… I won’t get into details, but I decided that any container that had held that smell would not hold my ingredients anymore.
Since then, I’ve just been brewing partial mashes. But this weekend I rebuilt the all grain system. It’s pretty close to the previous one, though it took a lot more work to get right. Thank you to Ben at Beer At Home for his help getting that going.
Taking a few months off brewing all grain is like taking a few months off riding a bike. Or some other analogy. Whatever. I was rusty. I brewed a Scotch Ale on Sunday.
Scotch Ale almost at boil
My efficiency was crap. I had to boil off a lot of water to hit my target gravity. While it was boiling, I wrote a little calculator to help figure out how much water to boil off. You can play with it at http://pjhoberman.com/tools/volume_adjustment.html. The formula is pretty easy. You figure out total gravity:
Total Gravity = Current Gravity x Current Volume Desired "Pre-Boil" Volume = Total Gravity / Desired Gravity
So, I had 6 gallons at 1.053, and I wanted a pre-boil gravity of 1.071. I like to call something like 1.071 just 71:
Total Gravity = 53 * 6 = 318 Desired Volume = 318 / 71 = 4.48 (or 4.5)
So I had to boil it down to about 4.5 gallons. Oops.
I messed up earlier than that, but I didn’t realize it till too late. I had to cut a braided washer hose for the mash tun. I grabbed one from my brewery box – a random collection of tools and whatnot – and it was good to go.
Until right before the boil was over, when I realized there were two in the box, and the one I cut was the connection from under my sink to my wort chiller. So I had to run to Ace and get a new one. Oops.
But, I hit my target gravity pretty closely. I got 1.069 when it was all said and done, though only about 3.5 gallons or so. It should be damn tasty though.
We also bottled three batches last week: Black something (seriously, no idea what style it actually is), a Grand Teton Bitch Creek (ESB) clone, and the Blonde. They’ll all be ready this week. Here’s the rest of the schedule:
7/23 – Soak oak chips in scotch
7/24 – Brew Rye Dry Stout
7/26 – Move Scotch Ale to secondary, add oak chips
8/3 – Move Rye Dry to secondary
8/7 – Brew something – probably the IPA or a Pale
8/8 – Brew something else
8/18ish – Move previous two batches to secondary
9/6 – Bottle Scotch Ale, Rye Drye, and whatever else we feel like
9/16 – GABF starts
There will probably be more in there, but that’s the plan for now.
And that my friends is my update. Please let me know if you’re in town for GABF, we’d love to share some beer.
Well, it appears as though I’ll have some serious fridge-raiding to do. Good thing your couch is a scant fifteen feet or so away ;^)
Don’t forget about the one behind the couch!
When you break it down like that, GABF isn’t that far off… shit, screw this-old-house house work thing!
I need to brew some more beer.
All my work getting the under-sink hook-up and you cut the wrong line !!!!!!
You have no idea how pissed I was at myself for that one!
Reading about your gravity issue made me smile today. My buddy and I had a similar issue over the weekend brewing an Irish Red Ale. We didn’t have nearly enough pre-boiled make-up water to add to the fermenter and had to run to the grocery store to get some purified water fast. When I floated the hydrometer the first time expecting 1.063 I got 1.104! Add to that losing 3/4 of a vial of yeast upon opening (it sprayed everywhere on my brewing partner) and we had a hell of a brew! That of course culminated in a panic run to the local home brew shop for another tube.
Luckily the Pale Ale we did immediately after that came out better. We’re hoping to do the same thing you are in Michigan, though we’re a bit farther behind you as we just started getting serious in January. My girlfriend turned me on to your blog. We’re hoping to go to all grain in the fall for the first time. In the meantime we’re trying to refine calculations and workflow to be able to hit target gravities, IBU’s etc. Check us out at blackhopsbrewery.wordpress.com if you care to.
We have a calculator we’ve thrown together in Excel if you ever care to take it for a test drive. You put in the vitals, malt bill, hop bill, yeast, etc. and it does the rest. It allows for tweaking and seeing what the effect will be before shopping.
Hey Mike,
Sorry it took me so long to respond. I’d love to see the calculator!
It’s funny, when you first start brewing, how it’s all “relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew.” and then you keep brewing… and you keep screwing up.. and it keeps tasting damn fine. What a world!
Thank you so much for reading. Let me know if you have any questions I can help with. Mmm beer!
Do you know where you lost your efficiency? Mash or sparge?
I used a different 2-row which has a lower efficiency. That alone might have been a big part. I should have added a pound or two. But ah well.
My mash was also probably not efficient enough. I just set up my mash tun again. I didn’t recirc the mach very much, so that might have had an effect.
Overall, the grain tasted pretty bland afterward, so I’m not exactly sure where I lost so much. Every day is a learning experience, right?
You’re welcome buddy! Brew @ the store Sunday maybe?
I’d love to, but I can only work the shift and then I gotta jet. Silly freelance project owns me for the next week and a half or so
Wow, too funny.
I also took several months off from brewing all grain. However, my equipment was in good shape. Just two days ago I managed to find time to brew again, on a Sunday, 10G of Scottish Ale.
Can you guess what else was similar?
My efficiency was off and I only ended up with about 4G of beer in the second carboy. :/
Ah, the trials and tribulations of making beer