Oktoberfast

That's not a typo in the title.

I'm sure my large audience has been quietly wondering why I never posted my annual March/April Oktoberfest brewday blogpost.  Answer: I didn't brew my Oktoberfest this year until just yesterday.

Early August (at least in the US Southeast) is not an ideal time to be outside brewing.  But with Oktoberfest 2015 just over 2 months away I had to do something.  I had to brew something.  And I had to brew something FAST.  Enter: Oktoberfast.  It will be a Marzen/Oktoberfest style very similar to my previous year's batches.  But with the heat of August bearing down I wanted it to be as fast a brewday as possible.  I also need to turn this traditional lager around pretty fast.  So the name works.  And the brewday went swimmingly.

Process: BIAB (Brew-in-a-bag) 10 gallon batch.  No decoctions, no sparging, no extended 90 minutes boils.  Just full volume mashing, squeezing the grain bags and a regular 60 minute boil.  My brewdays for 10 gallon batches usually take 7 to 8 hours (including cleanup).  Yesterday I got it done in 5.5 hours, with a small amount of prep work the night before.  I'll get to the recipe shortly but let me share a pic first:

This is a 32 qt electric canner (I've posted about it before but haven't really employed it in my brewery).  Friday night I filled this with 7 gallons of water and plugged it into a mechanical timer so it kicked on at 3.30am.  By the time I woke up and got to the garage at 6.45am, the 7 gallons was at a gentle rolling boil.  I was able to drain this water into my boil kettle and add room temperature water to get to my desired strike water volume and temperature.  This shaved a solid 45 minutes off my brewday as I didn't have to wait for the water to heat up.

I got out to the garage around 6.45am (again, I had to beat the heat so I started earlier than usual too) and I was already set to dough in.  Here's the recipe:

8# Weyermann German Pils
7# Weyermann Munich I
5# Weyermann Vienna
1# Weyermann Melanoidin

4 grams CaSO4 and 6 grams CaCl added to mash to boost Ca levels and bring pH to ideal range.

45 minutes at ~146F (I had to goose this a little) and then a steady 30 minute rise up to 168F with about 10 minutes spent at 156F.

At mash-out I simply removed the grain bags and squeezed them over a bucket to extract extra wort, put the wort back in the kettle and added about 2.5 gallons of make-up water.  This lack of sparging again shaved about 45 minutes off my brewday.

1.6oz of 6.8% Tradition at 60 minutes
0.6oz of 6.8% Tradition at 20 minutes
Yeast Energizer and Whirlfloc at 15 minutes.

Chill to 55F, hit with O2, and repitch a washed slurry of WLP820 (from a large 'zwickelesque' starter I made two weeks ago) and set in a fermentation chamber set at ~55F.

Clean-up was pretty simple and at 12:15pm I closed down the brewery and got into the house.

With 21# of grain it was much easier to have two grain bags going in the mash..made for a tight squeeze but I hit 80% efficiency so it works.

At mash-out I simply removed the grain bags and squeezed them over a strainer/bucket.

Boil

This Arkansas heat puts chilling to the test.  With ground water temps around 75F, I could only chill the wort to about 90F without wasting a ton of water.  At this point I employed my pond pump inside an igloo cooler with 36 pounds of ice and a couple gallons of water.  This 40F water bath got my wort down another 35F to 55F.  Total chilling time was about 40 minutes.

Humidity, condensing on the side of chilled boiled kettle. 

Dats the color.  Not bad but it's honestly a bit lighter than I expected...

A butterfly came to visit on brew day.  We like to think our little daughter, Everly, will grow to love butterflies so I like to think this a good omen.

Taken by my beautiful wife while I was brewing.  All the Oktoberfast excitement wore out our sweet Evie B

24 hours after pitching there are still not signs of fermentation but I have a smaller jar of wort in the house for a fast ferment and it has achieved high krausen.  So I know the wort is fermentable and I know the yeast is viable.  Things should start moving here in the next few hours.

Oktoberfast for Oktoberfest.  Who will be here to share this beer with us?

Zwickel Split Batch to German Ale and Belgian Pale

Split batch.  Somewhat sadly it came off my Zwickel batch.  I'll end up with a keg of Zwickel and a half keg of a German Ale (semi-zwickel) and a half keg of Belgian Pale.  And let me tell you why:

A local brewing house is having a brewing competition for our local homebrew club.  Members of the club can brew any beer they wish using an extensive list of malts and hops and then inoculating with one of their 3 house strains.  I want to compete.  I want to put my brews up against my comrades and see how they fair.

My zwickel batches are a convenient way to build up my yeast culture for my Oktoberfest brew session (happening in a couple weeks) but if truth were to be told I get as excited for the zwickel as I do for any of my other beers throughout the year.  Anyways....

My Zweet Zweet Zwickel recipe is essentially unchanged from last year:

16# German Pils
2# Crystal 20L (Carahell)
1# Carapils (Carafoam)

60 minute addition of Hallertau to 20 IBU
15 minute addition of Hallertau to 3.5 IBU (essentially 1/3 of the 60 minute addition by weight assuming the same AA of hops)

Mash at 128F for 20 minutes, 149F for 30 minutes, 158 for 30 minutes and then 170F for 20 minutes.  I didn't hit my 158 or 170 steps and I don't know why.  Some weird thermal phenomenon with the mash tun.

Chilled to 55F pretty easily with the ground water temps being in the 40s.

OG: 1.050

5.5 gallons got hit with a 2 liter starter of WLP833 German Bock Lager Yeast
2.5 gallons got hit with WY1007 German Ale yeast from Apple Blossom Brewing Company
2.5 gallons got hit with WY3522 Belgian Ardennes yeast from Apple Blossom Brewing Company

I will have a taste-off between the two 2.5 gallon batches to see if either are worthy of the competition (in late-April).  I think the German Ale will have some Zwickel character and the Belgian will turn this recipe into a classic Belgian pale ale.

Every good brew day should involve previous brew days' beers.  This is some of the last of the mild I made for Christmas 2014 and had to drink by myself.

These hallertau hops were smelling really legit.

The ying and the yang.  Hops getting to know the malt juice.

Back to Brewing 10 Gallons of American IPA, Again

You may be saying to yourself, "I've already read a blog of this title from Matt".  And with the exception of the ", Again" you'd be correct.  But the truth of the matter is that this is my first brew session since I damaged my foot back in mid-November.  It's been a lot of sitting around on couches, eating more than I should, sleeping with my foot elevated, and being patient while my wounds heal.  I had a doctor appointment last week and he was happy with the progress.  Gave me the green light to essentially resume normal activity.  Let's brew.

This recipe is very similar to the IPA I brewed nearly a year ago.  My local HBS doesn't offer floor malted Marris Otter so I got creative there and the only other subtle differences are from changes in hop availability and AA%.

16# American 2-row
8# Golden Promise
1# Carapils

Target OG was 1.060 but I only hit 1.055.  Whatevs.  I didn't adjust my hops to account so this batch of IPA will likely be a little more bitter and hop-forward than my last batch.  Of course the golden promise may bring the final gravity up or at least the perceived maltiness.  So it may all be a wash.

2oz Northern Brewer  9.6%AA at 60 min
0.3oz Chinook 11.6% at 60 min

1.7oz Chinook 11.6% at 15 min

1oz Willamette 7.8% at 5 min
1oz Mosaic 11.6% at 5min

2oz Simcoe 12.7% at 0min

Had my first ever hop boil over!  It was exciting too!  Gotta picture down below.

Groundwater is still really cold so had no issue getting my 10 gallons to 62F in about 20 minutes.

23g (2 packets) of S-05 Safale American Ale Yeast rehydrated per Dr. Clayton Cones advice.

Every good brewday involves drinking previous batches of homebrew.  I'm still working through the porter and mild I brewed for Christmas.  Wish I had some brewthers nearby that could help.  This is the Mild and I think it's delicious.

My janky sparger.....does the trick though.

More of a background photo than a foreground photo.   The camera doesn't do justice to the view.

Holy Hops, Batman!

My first boil-over with my 60 minute addition.  Pretty crazy....

I will dry hop this baby with another 2oz of Simcoe 12.7% after primary has finished.  Can't wait to try this one on the first day of Spring!  I shall call it 'Fussy IPA' in honor of Budweiser.

Up next is a brew I know will be an annual tradition.........Zwickel!

Brewing for Christmas 2014, Another Mild and A Smoked Brew

Christmas 2014 is upon us.  Every other year the Milliren clan closes in on the homestead of Mike and Martha Milliren.  All previous gatherings were in Chesterland, OH but with our folks having relocated to western North Carolina our future Christmases will be in Marion, NC.

Each time we gather, the brewthers and brewisters (Willie, Mark, Amber, and myself) try to bring homebrew offerings to sip by the fire.  Those that drive can bring more than those that fly and have to ship their brew.  Ashley and I have big plans to drive this year, so I have big plans to bring copious amounts of delectable (hopefully) homebrew.  I hope to arrive in Marion with 3 different 5-gallon kegs.  Brewing 10 gallon batches makes it easy to have beer on tap at home while saving enough for family gatherings.

The beers in order for me are:
Amber Lager (This is actually the beer I made for Oktoberfest 2014 and I had one keg left....decided to save it)
English Mild
Smoked Brown Porter

The English Mild was the same recipe from my first ever ten gallon batch.  If you'll recall from that recipe I ended up with an OG much higher than anticipated but the resulting brew was quite delicious.  I decided I would try to recreate that batch and ordered extra base grain to be sure to hit my target OG.  Well the base grain I ordered from an online retailer showed up with minimal crushing.  Long story short, I ended up with a lower OG than anticipated but was the exact OG from the original recipe I intended to brew from my first batch.  An interesting twist of fate.  Either way, fermentation went fine and I kegged that brew up last weekend.  I used the 1028 London Ale yeast and recycled that yeast into my next brew, a smoked brown porter.  Before I get to that recipe, here's a few pics from the Mild session.

Might be hard to see here but I rigged up a sparging system to pump hot water over my grains during the lautering process.

Collecting the run-off, good color.

Boil

Post-fermentation.  Going into the keg.

The smoked brown porter recipe was one I developed based off a few recipes and concepts I've read in JZ's 'Classic Recipe' book.  The primary recipe is supposed to be very similar to Sam Smith's Taddy Porter but I added rauch (smoked) malt to add some smoky complexity.  Here's the recipe I came up with:

14# Marris Otter (Had to supplement with 4# of locally sourced Marris Otter to get to target OG)
5# Rauch Malt
2# Brown Malt
2# Crystal 40L
1# Chocolate Malt
0.5# Pale Chocolate Malt

2.8oz of Fuggles (4.5%) at 60 minutes
0.3oz of EKG (5.7%) at 60 minutes (had it left over and thought, eh, I'll add it)
1.2oz of Fuggles (4.5%) at 10 minutes

Repitch of 1028 London Ale yeast, ferment at ~65F.

As I type this the smoked brown is winding down primary fermentation.  I will keg it in one week.  One thing to note is that throughout this entire process I've detected very little smoked character.  Not in the mash, not in the boil, not in the fermentation.  Further research shows that brewers experience varying levels of smokiness with rauch malt.  So I may have just gotten my grains from a lighter smoked batch...which is unfortunate.  Who knows, maybe the smoke will be there in the finished product. Pictures:

Used the pump to transfer my strike water to the kettle (I'm trying to save my back).

Nice looking mash

Took my sparking a step further and secured the pumped water outlet to a copper piece that spans the mash tun.

Neat boil photo with hops

I hope all these brews turn out good and that my breathers and brewisters can enjoy them with me in a few more short weeks!

Zwickel tasting. Tasty. Zweet zweet zwickel. Tickle my zwickel?

Craziest/Longest Brewday Ever, 1/2BBL Oktoberfest

Who likes to spend ~12hrs on a beautiful Saturday decocting a 1/2BBL of all grain Oktoberfest?  Apparently me.  All that is left now is for the yeast to do their end of the deal. And as of this morning, about 18 hours after pitching, they are doing their end of the deal.

Oktoberfests, by tradition, are brewed in March.  So I'm a little late but I'm not expecting it to significantly impact the final product.

If you'll recall, I brewed a similar 5 gallon batch of Okto a little over two years ago.  With wedding activities last March (2013) I was unable to brew a batch and I feel my 2013 Okto party suffered because of it.  I had the time this year but it had to wait until this weekend.  I like my recipe so much that I did my best to maintain the same grist ratios and hop ratios, just scaled up.  One thing to note is that I'm not as obsessed over water chemistry right now.  I recently installed an 'under-the-sink' water filtration unit in our kitchen and the city water tastes pretty good.  This is my third brew with the water and each time my pH during mash is OK so I'm just letting it ride.  No extra brewing salts or dilutions with distilled water.  Here's the recipe:

10# Weyermann German Pils (1.6L)
8# Weyermann Munich (5-7L)
8# Weyermann Vienna (3.5L)
1.25# Crystal 40L
1.25# Crystal 60L
1.0# Weyermann Munich Dark (8-10L)

Dough in to roughly 148F first Sacc rest for 30 minutes. Pull 15 qts of thick decoction and decoct (I don't think the details are necessary....comment if you disagree).  Return to main mash to raise temp to 158F for 30 minutes.  Pull roughly 12 qts (I seriously eyeballed this amount so I may be way off) of thin decoction and boil.  Return to mash to raise to mash-out temp of 170F.  Sparge.

90 minute boil
2.4oz of 6.9%AA Tradition (mainly Hallertau I think) at 60 minutes
0.8oz of 6.9%AA Tradition at 20 minutes

Target OG of 1.055 on roughly 16 gallons (I hit the target!)

Chill to 56F (took about 30 minutes to get the 16 gallons to around 80F on ground water and then another 30 minutes using an ice bath pump to get down to 56F...that was as good as it was going to get on this fine day).

Hit with O2 and WY2487 Hella Bock yeast (repitch off the Zwickel).

I will ferment this at around 52F for 2 or 3 weeks and then keg and lager at 33F for 6 weeks before carbonating and storing at 45F, for the rest of summer, until Oktoberfest 2014 arrives.

Pictures now:

To brew a 1/2BBL I had to make a couple upgrades.  Added another Blichmann burner (these burners are awesome), and the ~22 gallon frankenstein kettle on the right.  My usual 15 gallon boil kettle (on left) became my mash tun.

The original Zwillingsbrudder copper manifold is always ready for a mash.  Here I've used a piece of food grade silicone hose to connect the manifold to a stainless barb connected to the ball valve on the kettle.

Brew shoes. White Socks.  The Dude abides.

Dough-in.  My favorite picture from the day.

So the frankenstein kettle had a hairline crack (probably not visible in the photo but its at the bottom corner of the spout) on one of the welds and it had a slow leak.  I tried  to flow some solder into the joint but it wouldn't take.  Had to use liquid nails on the outside to temporarily seal the leak.  Hopefully not to the detriment of the beer.

First Sacc Rest.  About to pull a the first decoction.

THICK decoction about to boil.

I was grateful for my beautiful wife's help on this hectic brew day.  She was a huge help.  Here she is stirring that mash!

Sparging.  I connected the ball valves on each kettle through a march pump and another ball valve (outlet side).   This allowed me to restrict the output flow of the pump and fill the boil kettle at roughly 2qts/min.  Worked great.

19 gallons on the way to a boil.

Spent grain.  Extra spent from the decoction.  85% brewhouse efficiency baby!

Towards the end of boil, copper coil ready for work.

Hit my gravity.  I like the color too. It might be a little more pale than my last Oktoberfest.  Whatevs.  In case you care, it's because the Munich Malt on this batch was Weyermann brand and roughly 6L where the munich from my last batch was Briess and was 10L.

Chillaxin while the fermentors fill.

Zweet Zweet Zwickel

'Zweet Zweet Zwickel' is a registered trademark of Zwillingsbruderbrau and cannot be used or replicated in any form without the express written consent of Zwillingsbruderbrau.

One year ago I was in St. Louis with good friends and family tearing up the town for my bachelor party.  One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to Urban Chestnut Brewing Company.  A relatively new brewery on the St. Louis scene, they had an amazing line-up of old school european ales and lagers along with more popular american craft brews.  One of the beers I enjoyed most was their Zwickel.  Zwickel can be paralleled to (if not 'also known as') German kellerbier.  It's young lager.  Hazy, malty, yeast turbid, raunchy, young.  All kinds of different and delicious flavors that are typically muted when a lager goes through a traditional lagering period.  These beers are meant to be fresh and funky.  I loved it.

I want to brew another batch of Muhleisen All Grain Double Decocted Oktoberfest again this year, but in order to do so I need loads of fresh healthy lager yeast.  I couldn't think of a better way to build up a yeast culture than with a lower gravity Zwickel-style wort.  Working off the ingredients provided by Urban Chestnut and also off the recipe from brewing legend Michael Dawson (linked here), I came up with this recipe (for 10 gallons):

16# German Pils
2# German Carahell
1# German Carafoam

128F for 20 minutes, 149F for 30 minutes, 158F for 30 minutes, 168F for 10 minutes.

1.5oz of 6.9%AA Tradition hop at 60 minutes (basically Hallertau)
0.5oz of 6.9%AA Tradition hop at 15 minutes

Target OG: 1.048
Target IBU: 20

My mash got all screwed up so my schedule was really like 132F for 20 minutes, 151 for 40 minutes, 154F for 20 minutes, straight to sparging.  We will see what the result of this debacle is.  Hopefully it doesn't cause another 'Debockle'.

For this batch I had to make a 1 gallon starter using 4 smack packs of WY2487 Hella-Bock yeast.  I hit my gravity numbers and with the ground water still cold I was able to chill to 60F in 15 minutes with my JZ style immersion chiller.  I could have gone colder but I wanted to pitch the yeast starter a little warm and once activity has taken off I will get it into a 50-55F fridge for primary.

This brew will not be lagered.  In two weeks I'll keg it and rinse the yeast cake for the yeast I need for my Oktoberfest.  As with all my brews, I can't wait to see how this one turns out!

I bought a new 'large-face' thermometer for my boil kettle.  Just cuz.

Mash.

First runnings, you can see how short the thermometer stub is.  Also the color of the wort.  Also that awesome mash paddle.

Another shot to see the color in hose.

Sparging.

This is my new 'graduated cylinder' for taking gravity measurements.   My old tube gave out on me so I had to think on my feet.  Footed pilsener glass just seemed fitting and it worked well.  I like the color.

BOIL.  I collected a little too much pre-boil but that's because I got a  better efficiency than expected.

Hops.  Smellin right.

I really like this Spiedel fermentor.  Makes life very easy with these 10 gallon batches I've been doing.  I also bought an oxygenation system to step up my game.  The red can is a disposable canister of O2 from Home depot ($10, should provide oxygen for at least 5 batches).  I got the regulators, hosing, and stainless oxygenation stone (2 micron) from more beer.  We will see what results it yields.

In two weeks I will have a crazy Oktoberfest brew day.  Hopefully it goes well.  In about 4 weeks I'll be tapping into some young and hazy Zweet Zweet Zwickel.