2nd Brew Day Success!

Tonight I brewed my 2nd batch, I'm really excited that this will turn out much better than the first batch, given some extra equipment this time around to help control my temperature a little better.  The brew I cooked up tonight is an extract + speciality grains kit from Midwest Supplies; a cream stout.  I intend to rack to a secondary after fermentation is completed, at which point I am going to add 2 whole vanilla beans - hoping for a nice vanilla cream stout.  I can't link directly to it for whatever reason but here's the description from Midwest Supplies website:

Our recipe is similar to Milk Stout recipes of old. Sweeter than traditional Stout, this style is a nice alternative for those who find traditional Stouts too bitter. This beer is perfect for dessert after a satisfying meal. Our ingredients for this recipe include: 6 lb. Dark liquid malt extract, 8 oz. Lactose, 8 oz. Black Malt, 8 oz. Caramel 80L specialty grain, 1 oz. German Northern Brewer bittering hops, yeast, priming sugar and a grain bag.

For this brew, I got to use my new propane burner.  I was concerned this thing would be loud as hell - when I tested it the other night with just water, I had it on full blast and it sounds like a godamn jet engine...

I also wanted to do a full boil, instead of a 2.5-3g boil and then adding top-off water to the fermenter.  I have a 7.5g pot, so I figured with 6g of water in there, accounting for some boil off, that I would have enough head room.  If you look you can see I have maybe 2 inches of headroom at the top there.  I also had to mess around with the burner quite a bit, keeping it relatively low, to make sure I didn't get a boil over.  I completely over estimated the power of this burner and had a little mishap when I first added my LME.  I lost some hops during that boilover, but I am hoping enough stuck around after that for the beer not to taste like shit.

Aftermath of the boilover... my poor hops!

  Once I got the flame under control, the rest of the night went smooth enough.  I dropped a whirlfloc tab and my immersion chiller in @ 15m - luckily by that time there was enough headroom to account for the wort displaced by the chiller (something else I hadn't thought of).  The immersion chiller didn't work as well as I was lead to believe - I think this is because it was about 90 degrees F outside when I was trying to cool everything down.  That said, I did get the wort down to about 100 relatively quickly, and without the headache of an ice bath.  I am hoping when it gets just a bit colder out, during the fall and winter, the immersion chiller will work like a champ.  I am going to look into building a CFC at some point, however.  Right now, my brew is sitting in a better bottle, inside my new Cool Brewing cooler with a couple of jugs of ice.  I am hoping I can drop the temp enough to pitch tonight, otherwise I will have to do it tomorrow morning before I head to work.  I've got a blowoff on there anyway, mostly just to keep nasties out - I don't expect any fermentation without some yeast!

Lessons learned, tips for next time:

1. Apparently a 7.5G pot isn't quite big enough for a full boil
• There was technically enough room, but it was a little too much adventure and excitement for this to be worthwhile moving forward
• I am thinking a 10G pot at least for a full boil, but since I want to (eventually) get into AG/BIAB I am going to look into getting a 15G pot
2. It's easier to control the boilover by messing with the flame than the wort itself
• I found that if I stood there and stirred the hell out of my wort, it stayed down.  If I stopped even for a second, it was like Yosemite in there.  Simply dialing up or down the pressure on the propane seemed to be much more effective. 
• Subsequently, I found out I can leave the pressure quite low while maintaining a vigorous boil
3. Late extract addition means a 2nd hot break
• I have read a lot in the past few days about ways to improve extract brews, one thing that comes up time and time again is adding extract late.
• A lot of members at HBT said they add just a bit at the beginning, and most of it at the end.  In fact, some people just add it at flame out - that seems wrong to me, but I really don't know wtf I am talking about just yet
4. There is plenty of time to sanitize while the wort is chilling
• During my first brew and in most of the kit instructions, everything says to sanitize at the beginning.  The problem is after heating to a boil, and then the hour long boil on top of that its a good 90m or so before I need my primary fermenter, racking equipment, hydrometer etc...
• It only takes a few minutes to sanitize with StarSan - plenty of time to do so while the immersion chiller is doing its job.
5. Making a starter was easy
• There are already a ton of articles floating around about this so I won't make one of my own, but this was easy and I have way more yeast now than if I hadn't done one

Psyched for my next batch

My first batch is bottled, sitting in the basement carbing up (hopefully!).  I have been checking out the bottles every couple of days, though I don't really know what the hell I am looking for since it was the first time I have ever done this.  I am excited, however, to take all the things I have learned from the first batch and hope my 2nd batch will be much improved!

New Process and Equipment

As I noted in an earlier post, I went on a bit of a homebrew shopping spree for this next batch.  The one thing I haven't yet received is my immersion chiller.  I was able to find this bad boy on Amazon

Immersion Chiller, sold by HomeBrewStuff, image from Amazon

This is the only thing I am waiting on right now before I start my next batch.  I'm also planning on making a 1L starter with this batch, fermenting in a Better Bottle, controlling my fermentation temperatures, as well as a turning my spare racking cane into a venturi device.  This is something I just read about which is neat and basically free. 

I asked a question on the HBT forums about aeration; for this next batch my primary will be a 6G Better Bottle instead of my plastic bucket so I can't exactly dump the wort from my kettle directly in.  The cheapest easiest way to get air into the wort was to use SCIENCE!



Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill!



The Venturi Effect

The Venturi effect is a jet effect; as with a funnel the velocity of the fluid increases as the cross sectional area decreases, with the static pressure correspondingly decreasing¹

Basically what this means is if you have wort whizzing past a little hole in a tube, the speed of the fluid will suck air into the mix - automagically aerating it without having to splish splosh or roll around afterwards. 

You can get this effect by either heating up a straightened out paperclip and poking holes in your tubing, or using a small drill bit.  Obviously you would only want to do this racking from the kettle to the primary as you don't want O2 introduced after primary fermentation!

Better Cooling

I also ordered a Cool Brewing cooler off Amazon, which will better allow me to control my fermentation temperatures.  I didn't really control temperatures at all on the first batch, and it tasted OK going into the bottle.  I wouldn't say it was great, but again it was my first batch.  I am hoping that with some more careful temperature control, I will remove any off flavors that might have gotten into my brew and make for a better finished product.  I'll post a review here, as well as on Amazon and let the folks at HBT know my experiences as well.  As far as I can tell, Cool Brewing is a startup who just got into business within the past 3-4 months, so if this is a solid product I want to help the guy out!

New Style

My first batch was a kit called "Oompah Altbier" from HomeSweetHomebrew in Philly.  It is described as a "Traditional malty Dusseldorf style Copper Ale" - we'll see how it actually turns out.  I didn't like the other kits that HSH had, so I bundled a kit in with my equipment order from Midwest Supplies².  The kit I got is their cream stout - a sweet stout recipe.  I plan on adding a couple of vanilla beans to the secondary as well to give it a little somethin somethin.

All in all I'm pretty excited about everything for the 2nd batch.  If I am able to get the chest freezer from my mother's house in a timely manner, I'll pick up kegging equipment because bottling sucks.

Cheers!

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venturi_effect
2. As an aside, MWS was awesome.  They packed and shipped out my order within hours of it being placed on their website.  Everything arrived in a single box, packed very nicely, and as I noted in my website security post - they are one of the few vendors who actually seem to give a shit about it.  I will definitely be ordering from these guys again!