Home Brewing - First Brew of 2011!

Saturday marked the first day that Dunz and I busted out the home brew equipment for 2011.  Its also the first time we took it upon ourselves to brew a beer from a recipe we created ourselves.  We weren't quite sure what to expect other than the fact that we hoped the final product tasted like beer.  We had brewed enough in the past to know our own brew process so our worry level on our first recipe was low.  However, the Minnesotan weather elements were not on our side this brew day.  More on that in a bit.

Our recipe was slated to be a big American IPA.  For you beer nerds out there our grist bill consisted of 10 lbs of Pale Crisp, 0.5 lbs of Crystal 40, and 0.25 lbs of Pale Chocolate.  We figured this would be a unique version of the IPA style since we would add a mild, bittersweet chocolate flavor to the whirlwind of hops that we were going to add.  Our hop bill was on the verge of insanity: 2 oz of Centennial, 3 oz of Cascade and 3 oz of Amarillo.  The Centennial was for bittering and the Cascade and Amarillo was used for aroma since it was added towards the end of the boil.  We also have an oz of each Cascade and Amarillo for dry hopping when we get to that point.  For those of you who are not savvy to home brewing that is a friggen lot of hops for your standard beer at the home brew level.  This made us excited to get this brew started.

It had been a few months since our last brew.  In August we brewed an Oktoberfest and since then we had yet to get back to brewing.  So first things first, we needed to thoroughly clean everything.  If you brew with dirty equipment you are setting yourself up for failure.  When I first started brewing, a wise brewer once told me that brewing is 75% cleaning and 25% brewing.  Today it was closer to a 90/10 ratio with all the crud that was built up in our equipment.  But, after a solid cleaning session, we were all set to brew.

I installed a carbon filter for our house water since I know from experience that our water is most likely filled with rat corpses and human remains.  Not something you want to brew with.  We heated up our carbon filtered water and got the mash ready.  60 minutes later we were ready to sparge and get the boil going.

Thumbs up from Dunz

Lets start talking about the weather.  As you can see in the above photo Dunz looks somewhat cold.  This was at about 3:30 in the afternoon.  The temp was right around 12 degrees at that point.  Tolerable, but not favorable.  As the sun went down, and the boil started rolling, the elements became a factor.  Once we had enough liquid in the boil kettle it was nearly dark and the steam was billowing out from the kettle.  I'm pretty sure the temperature was around 2 degrees now.  We couldn't see if our boil was a steady roll or a vigorous explosion of pre-fermented grain sugar.  We set the flame for what we thought was the norm at let it be.  After 60 minutes of boil time and hop additions we were ready to chill this baby down.  But wait!  We realized at this point that our immersion chiller, a device you stick in your kettle and run cold water through to chill down your boil, would not work in the winter.  The hoses we normally use are stored away and my outside taps are turned off... damnet!  Time to improvise.  We took the kettle off the burner and stuck it on the cold driveway.  This eventually cooled it down, although not nearly as fast as we would have liked.  It also made for some nice circular melt patterns in the snow on my driveway.

At this point it was time to clean again and let the kettle chill.  Our carboy was ready to accept the hopped wort and nearly an hour later we were ready to pour it in.  After 5 hours of work and 1 hour of chilling we put the yeast in the carboy and let the little yeasties do their job.  We had ourselves our first beer of 2011!

 A little darker than anticipated, but an IPA none the less.

This brew session was not without its hiccups.  Because of the cold, we couldn't see our boil.  This caused our heat to be too high and boil off more than what we wanted which also means our sugar concentration will be higher which translates into more alcohol.  This is a problem because we only had enough yeast for what we originally calculated.  I'm not all the worried though since we had about a gallon less liquid to ferment which also means less sugar.  

Overall, it was a good brew session.  We had some fun, drank a few beers, and got back into the home brewing spirit.  The original beer we wanted to brew will not be what ends up in our glasses in a few weeks.  But I do think we will still have a decent beer on hand.  We have yet to determine what our next home brew is going to be.  What has been decided is that we will not be brewing when it is damn near 0 degrees outside!  Stupid Minnesota...