Dropkick's (James) Deadeye Stout is a brewing

So as my first post here I decided it was probably a good idea to have lots of info so a week ago Bill and I did our first all-grain brew with the leftovers from my uncles metric shit-ton of brewing equipment and goodies that he gave me.

"Deadeye Stout" (or Shortin' Stout, haven't decided yet)

7.5lbs Cargil Idapils (yeah I know its a light pilsner malt, but its what I had)
8 oz. Roasted Barley
8 oz. "Special B" (Dark Carmel Malt. Google it)
12 oz. Oatmeal flakes
1 oz. Perle Hops (Whole leaf 8.2% Alpha - added 1 hour boil time)
1 slap pack of Brewers Best Irish Ale Yeast

Yields 5 gallons

-We started off milling the malt at a medium grind at about 4pm .
-Single infusion mash in 3 Gal of water at 160°F for 1 1/2 hours.
-Laurtered for 50 minutes.
-Guilt tripped Bill for 20 minutes for breaking my thermometer in the sparging water, causing us to dump out the lead pellets and re-heat the water.
-Sparged for 45eque minutes (until we hit our final boiling limit (roughly 4ish gallons)
-We ended up boiling in 2 pots for 1:45 (note to self: buy a 6 gal propane turkey fryer)
-Post boil we cooled off the wart with a couple of gallons of sterilized water that we put on the front porch to get cold, half of it was ice by this time).
-Everything was still way to hot to pitch the yeast so the only thing we could really do was cover the bucket with clingwrap and let it sit overnight to cool off.
-Sunday I had to do family stuff up in IL all day so I asked Bill to rack the wort over into my 6 1/2 gal carboy and pitch the yeast which he did awesomely, and took an initial gravity reading of 1.042 (thanks bro, I appreciate it again)

The carboy was under the table at a nice, comfy 72°F. About 16 hours after pitching it wasn't just bubling, the airtrap was rattling like it was an old coffee pot percolating. It kept that up for a day or so and slowed down to a nice bubble every couple of seconds. We left it in Primary until last night (Friday - 5ish days) when we racked it over into my 5 gal carboy for secondary. Second gravity reading is showing 1.003 so we're looking at right around 5% alcohol content.

And of that reading, we got our first taste test. It was a little lighter than a Guiness, but still very tastey. Yep its a stout.

I'm going to leave it in secondary for about a week before I bottle condition it, that will give me some time to find more 12oz bottles.

Next project is an Irish Red (like Killians)

Side note: We have a lot of Keystone light left from the game of "Beer Hunter" we played around New Years. And unfortunately it is currently the only beer in the house. So we braved it. 2 1/2 cans fit into our Viking mugs, and we tried to stomach it. Someone take it from us or we're throwing it away.

Brewing and bottles and rackings! Oh my!

OK! Quickie entry!

James and I brewed beer! Film at eleven! (not really)
Fun with whole grains and sparging and such.

Afterwards, I bottled the Maple Cinnamon Mead with one Campden tab (I'm calling it MCM from now on).
4.5 bottles (I had a 375ml bottle shapped like a cat and painted black[it was a real pain in the ass to fill because I couldn't see the level in it at all until it ran up to the top]).
- It's a medium bodied mead that is still pretty immature or 'green' tasting right now. Definitely gonna let it sit for a while.

Then, I racked the Apple Lager of some KING into two of the gallon jugs. I put one outside in the garage and one in the minifridge in the basement. The fridge will start at 55F and I'm gonna decrease it 2-4 degrees per day. The spot in the garage at the moment is 40F. Being that it's right up against the door, it only gets down to about 32F at the lowest.

THEN, (I was bored tonight, can you tell?) I racked the wassail with three campden tabs. I managed to leave MOST of the fruit debris and lees behind, but still got a fair amount of it. I'll rack again fairly soon.

Lager checkup

I looked at the bucket this morning and nothing seemed to be going on yet.
I was a little concerned, but decided to not worry about it for now.

I looked again tonight, and there appears to be a couple of bubbles sitting on the surface, but still very little activity. Now, I know that this lager yeast will sit on the bottom and ferment, and I know that it will be a slower ferment than an ale or wine because it's a cold fermentation, but this is till bugging me.

We might have pitched the yeast too hot and killed it, so, I added another packet of the same Saflager S-23

A couple of hours later, and there are noticeable patches of foam starting to form. It's alive! ALIVE!!

The temperature in the corner is going to flux anywhere between 52F and 60F. A stroke of luck had the drier, hot water heater, and furnace on the other side of the room all running at the same time and it got as warm as 60F. I still think this is as good as any of a spot for primary fermentation.

Apple Lager! of some kind...

I don't like that title..

We'll call it : APPLE LAGER!! Of Some King

There, that's better. Paul was taking notes for me while I was brewing and he was watching anime.

- 2 gallons of water
- 2.5 lbs of dry malt extract
(55% wheat / 45% barley)(this stuff turns to glue when the concept of moisture is simply thought of in it's presence)
- James farted!
- 2 tbsp moe-lasses
- 1/4 lb Belgian Candy - ed. note: Are we selling this to InBev?
(this was added about ten minutes into the boil after a gravity reading showed 7%)
- 1/2 hour initial boil - removed from my upper-left thigh
- 1/4 oz Sterling Pellet Hops (6% alpha acid)
- Bill eats the rest of Leigh's fries
- 20 minute boil
- 1/4 oz of the same shit on the last line that starts with "1/4 oz"
(no more heat)
- 1 gallon of cold apple juice, added for cooling
- put pot in the sink w/ ice to help cool it
- cooled to about 110F (gravity showed 7%)
- poured wort into bucket
- pitched yeast (Saflager S-23)
- stirred vigorously to aerate
- covered with two layers of plastic wrap and James tied a wire around the lip of the bucket to hold it closed
- put in the back corder of the basement where its 55F - 58F

The plan is to let the primary fermentation run in the bucket in the cold part of the basement. Then, for secondary fermentation, I'm going to split the batch. I'll put half of it in the garage right by the door to the house (it was 45F when it was below freezing outside). The other half I'll put in the minifridge in the basement and slowly drop the temp from around 55F, down to 34F about 2-4 degrees per day.

Quincy day!

We went up to Quincy to visit relatives today. TJ got to play with his cousins.
I got to see my Grandpa Wade and he got to see his great grandson.

Him and I talked for a bit about making wine. We came to the conclusion that the older 5Gal Carboy that I have now is one that he used to make wine in years and years ago (at least 20).

My aunt Laura had a couple of empty C&R 1Gal jugs that she let me have.
(I should probably mention that Liz pointed out the fact that they're actually marked 4L, which makes them slightly larger than a gallon. I'll have to pay attention to that as I continue to use them)

Apfelwein bottling!

James and I bottled the Apfelwein tonight.

It was fun. :)

I crushed up 7 or 8 campden tabs, dissolved them in about 2 cups of water, and poured it into a clean 5 gal carboy. Then we racked the wine into the fresh 5 gal.

We attacked the entire collection of bottles here : 7 1.5L bottles and 15 or so various 750ml. I chucked them all in the bathtub full of hotwater and soap. After cleaning out all the broken glass... lol kidding

5 Gal = ~ 19L -- Holy crap that's a lot of bottles...

We used all seven of the 1.5 bottles and 11 regular ones.

We siphoned out of the carboy and had a hose clamp from James's stuff to regulate and stop flow. Piece of cake.

We bottled half of it, and then I used the (Winexpert brand) Wine Conditioner on the second half. It's liquid invert sugar and potassium sorbate. It's to help ensure dead yeast and sweeten the wine a bit.

It calls for a minimum of 2oz / gal. I measured out 6oz for 2.5Gal figuring that I'm leaving a fair amount behind in the measuring cup.

I labled the bottles with my sophisticated cat-hair-roller-masking-tape labling system. (I need to start adding pics to this blog...)

It's very light and dry on it's own, and the conditioned wine has a very light, semi-sweet quality to it. AND I'm happy to say it is crystal clear.

A side note of discovery from a couple of nights ago.

This particular yeast in the wassail is very bubbly happy.

We were drinking some of the top up bottle like it was wassail soda pop because it was so fizzy.


And I also just figured out, with Pat's help, that I've been butchering the tags on all my posts by not putting comas betwixt the words. I'll go back and fix them sometime soon.

Aluminum BAD!!!

OK, so I'm not gonna use my yellow, 4 quart aluminum pot anymore for any of my brewing activities. It's what had the water in it that *might* have had crap floating in it from when I racked everything. It's what I used to gently boil the peaches and apricots for the wassail. And it's what I used to make my simple sugar syrup last night.

I read that aluminum bad ALUMINUM BAD!!!!! when it comes to working with fruit because the acids in some fruits can react with it and produce wonderful toxins!

Funny, I'm not sure why I didn't remember this. My high-school french teacher loved to tell a story about how he almost rolled into the Mississippi once on a camping trip. He said they made jelly from wild berrys the night before in an aluminum pot. The next morning (after it sat out all night) he licked the pot and had pretty bad food poisoning. He said he was rolling around on the ground cause his stomach hurt so bad and he rolled down onto the lower bank of the river. His buddies had to come fish him out.

Fortunately, the only time I put fruit in it, it only cooked for about 2 or three minutes and then I pretty quickly took it out.

Wassail follow up

I stirred the wassail for about five minutes to aireate tonight.

I was doing some reading in the wine making book that I have and found that you should almost always have a Specific gravity close to, if not above, 1.100 to start. That way you have a potential alcohol content of 10%. That 10% is needed if the wine is going to be stored long term (like longer than a couple of months)

I went back to the wassail to re-evaluate this. It's still not bubbling very much, and it being a day later I'm a bit concerned. So I measured it again, and it still reads 1.052. Now, there is some fruit pulp floating around in there and I know that that can throw an SG reading off a bit, but I'm not sure which way. I don't have a whole lot of space in the jug to add simple sugar water (syrup), but I'm gonna try.

I mixed up ~4 cups of sugar in ~2 cups of water on the stove and heated slowly. It took a lot of stirring and time to get it all to dissolve.

I tried (laughingly) to get an SG measurement of this mixture and it was so off the charts that I thought it was a Beatles album. (nothing? OK, I'll leave out the bad puns that makes no cents)(whups) I'm *guessing* it was somewhere above 1.200. I did some convoluted math to try to estimate how that would translate when diluted out to the five gallon total.

200 in 1/4 gallon cut to four gallons would be 200 / 8 = 25 or 1.025.

I realize now that I'm shooting for five gallons, but this was cowboy'd to death already, why not take it a little further? Seeing as 1.052 (initial reading) plus an estimated 1.025 only got me 1.077, I thought I needed to go a little further. I managed to get 3 more cups of sugar to disolve into the syrup, and holy crap it is thick and syrupy.

Anyone know how much sugar you can disolve in water at 100F?

Anyway, this stuff was much hotter than that, so I killed the heat, covered it, and cooled it quickly by wrapping it in a cold wet towel and blowing a fan at it. While cooling, I used a turkey baster (poor man's wine thief) to suck some must off and put it into a plastic beer bottle, to make room for the syrup. (I'll keep this as a "top up" supply for when I rack this) Once the syrup cooled to about125F, I poured it into the carboy with the rest of the must and it filled it very close to the top.

My yeasties love me! It wasn't but 5 minutes later that I checked it and the bubbling had taken off like mad.

I'm gonna have to vent the plastic bottle every day or so and I'll keep it right next to the 5-gal jug until I need it so that it's temperature exposure is pretty much the same as the rest of the must.

Apples, APPLES, ALWAYS with the apples

Matthew made wassail for us back on the 7th (Crackbaby Thanksgiving). He kept it virgin in the pot for all to enjoy the way they wanted to. Much was leftover. I stashed it in the garage with the rest of the leftovers that night.

It has been left out there freezing and un freezing for the past month. I had half forgotten about it until Matthew asked on New Years. We opened the pot and the entire garage INSTANTLY turned into an apple cinnamon stick. He dipped out a glass, drank it, said it was good, and was still alive 32 hours later.

Last night, I decided to use it up. This really turned into a cowboy'd recipie.

It's in a 4-Gal pot and about 2/3rds full. I started heating it up.
I took a can of peaches and a can of apricots, both in heavy syrup, and put them into another pot with about 2 cups of water and just brought it to a boil and then allowed it to cool for about 15 minutes.
Then, I took the big pot off of the stove and strained / mashed the peaches and apricots though the old conical colander that I found in the basement. (It's an old aluminum one with really wide legs and a big wooden pestle) I put it back on the stove and the hydrometer measured about1.050 (I think... damit, I should have written it down. Oh well, it didn't matter at this point, because I further modified it as we go here. Keep reading)
I added enough water to bring it up close to the top, and added some more sugar. (again cowboying it, I just grabbed the sugar container and poured for a couple of seconds. It *might* have been about two cups, maybe more.

Remind me next time not to have a few beers before doing this...

Anyway, I put the heat back on while stirring occasionaly and brought it just to a rolling boil and then killed the heat and covered. There's still a number of cinamon sticks and other things down there. Maybe a couple of rinds?

I wrapped it in a cold, soaked towel and put a fan blowing on it to cool it down some. Left it like this for half an hour and it was cool enough to stop steaming when the lid was opened.

I racked it into a 5-gal carboy (to try to avoid the cinamon and other things in it). As it siphoned, I added 1.5 Gal of cold Wal-Mart applejuice to help cool it all down and top it up. It still wasn't full enough, so I boiled a few more cups of water and topped the jug up.

I wrapped the jug in the wet towel and left it for about a half-hour with a fan on it. It was then at about 100F at the top and 90F at the bottom, perfect for pitching the (fill in the type later) yeast. (Blue colored packet of Red Star yeast) It called for that temp to start, but it wanted to be mixed in a small cup first. I just threw it in the jug and shook.

I left it overnight with the cap just sitting on it to cover it but not sealed. It's not room temp yet, and even if the yeast take off, the thermal contraction would still probably be enough to suck the air trap water back. This morning I popped it on, and it's progressing forward. Yay! Little bubbles!!

You've been kicked in the nuts. (more rackings)

Tonight, I took a closer look at the Mr. Beer thingy and it will NOT fit in my minifridge, but one of the 1 gallons will, so MAYBE I'll make a small batch of apple lager.

Paul helped out some tonight with the nut breaking, uhh, rackings.

We racked the JAO Mead into the Mr. Beer container with three campden tabs. Hydrometer showed it at 1.032. I had been worried about getting the oranges out of the carboy and was surprised at how easily they came out of the jug while cleaning. One or two of them just lined up and slid right out, the rest would stick in the neck of the carboy, but I could simply pinch them between two fingers and pull 'em out.

Once clean, I racked the apfelwein from one 5-gal to the other with 5 campden tabs. And forgot to thief enough to measure it with a hydrometer.

The mead is proceding nicley to being tasty, it's definitly young and rough. Paul said it had an almost chemicaly aftertaste. (fussel?) He also thought it was thin.

RACKINGS!!!! (protect your nuts...)

Tonight, I've been busy remedying small jug's needs.

I had Liz boil a pot of water on the stove eariler this afternoon and leave it sit covered all evening.

I've racked the Cinnamon Maple Mead to another 1 Gal jug with a campden tab and about 2 cups of water to top up and reduce air space in the jug. It's still not quite up to the neck, but it should be OK.

I'm a little worried because after topping it up, I noticed particulate stuff in the water. I'm not sure if it's undisolved campden or something from the pot not being completely clean.

Next I crushed up another campden tablet and disolved it into a 1.75L Jim Beam bottle (lol!) and racked the pineapple wine into it.

Finally I did the same with the Apple / Pineapple into a freshly cleaned 1 gal jug and filled it to almost the top. I still had enough left to fill a 1L fliptop bottle (no campden).

The mead doesn't seem very active after racking. Since it has so much air space in it, I've put a lid on the jug and will check it from day to day to make sure it doesn't build up too much pressure.

The pineapple is still gently bubbling, so I gave it a fresh balloon. The pineapple / apple is bubbling a bit more. Also ballooned. I'll have to watch the 1L glass bottle because of this.

Yay! I now have an empty 2.5gal Mr. Beer thingy to start a lager in!! AND an empty 1Gal jug.

Happy New Year!

Yay! James is moving in!

And with him comes more equipment! Woot w00t and 3riceW0O7!!!

This is good because I've realized I've made the mistake of using all but one of my fermenters. Now I don't have enough to rack items into.

The one gallon jug that I have left I'm going to put to use and just cycle a couple of containers worth.

Kruetz was in town for the new years party and he told me that a common problem with pineapple is that it's too acidic and most yeast can't survive in it. Maybe that combined with a dose of campden killed off most of it, and the survivors just took time to cross the barren wastes to reunite with loved ones and make lots more of said loved ones.