Local guiness to teach brewing class

I was reading the paper this morning and noticed the community college was offering a one day class on the basics of brewing and beer appreciation this weekend.

I thought, "Oh, that is interesting.  I wonder who is teaching it?"

It was me.

I had a mild heart attack when I realized I had agreed to teach something back in November and totally spaced it out.  Hmmmmm, that's odd.  I thought beer was supposed to make you smarter, not make you forget things.

In three days, I need to come up with brewing supplies and figure out what in the hell I am going to say.  It is possible the class will be canceled because of a lack of interest but I don't think it's something I can count on.

So let's pose this question:  What do you wish someone had told you about brewing before you brewed the first time?

For me it is a toss up between the importance of StarSan and temperature control.  I think I ruined more beers with poor sanitation but had more mediocre success by stressing my yeast out.

Death to all hops

I have rode through the world of hops like a Horseman of the Apocalypse, leaving a path of fire and death in my wake.

Hops are widely believed to be a hardy breed and, once established, can be very difficult to remove. I challenge this assumption by offering up the wrecked bodies of numerous hop plants I have killed.

Before you rush out and buy a bunch of hop rhizomes, the big question you need to answer is, what, really, do you want to accomplish with your fresh hops? The advantage to pulling hops right off the bine and tossing them into your wort is you will get a fantastic fresh taste which most commercial beers can't even match. It will also give your brew a sense of terroir which beer does not normally possess.

However, unless you have the equipment, homegrown hops are hard to dry and store. Also, without a lab analysis you are going to have no idea what the alpha acid levels are and so it will be impossible to accurately formulate recipes and calculate IBUs. If you are a better brewer than me you may be able to do all of this by taste but I can't so I like to make one or two fresh hop beer a year and the rest of the time use pellet hops. I can accomplish this with one or two plants.

Many homebrewers dream of having a few extra plants and selling the additional hops to other homebrewers or hop processors. According to Niko from Nikobrew.com, there is really not much of a market for small production hop farms. If you are interested in selling your hops I would contact your local brewery or homebrew club to see if you can get something going but don't expect to quit your day job to adopt the swanky pimp-like lifestyle of a hop farmer.

Anymore, you can buy hop rhizomes directly from places like Freshops.com or most large online homebrew supply stores. Morebeer.com has them. The selection is somewhat limited to open source plants. Varieties like Citra and Simcoe are proprietarily owned so you wont be able to grow your own.

The rhizomes are harvested in February so they will be available for planting in March and April. If you want to expand your own hopyard by splitting apart an existing rootball try to leave the majority of the roots intact. If you just chop it up you will kill the plant.

Once you pick out the hops you are interested in growing, buy two rhizomes. I experience around a 50 percent kill rate. You are supposed to plant the rhizome in sandy soil with the buds pointed up. I never really figured out what this meant because the rhizome looks like a stick and most of the time it doesn't have any noticeable buds. Plant both of the rhizomes in one hole, horizontally. If you don't have a ton of room they can be planted in a five gallon bucket or large pot but this will not give the roots a ton of space and you will not get great yields.

Ideally, hops should be planted in sandy soil to reduce standing water, which will cause downy mold and kill the plant. Hops like lots of sunlight, nutrients, frequent watering and walks on the beach. Pretty much like any other plant.

I have had some issues with aphids and grasshoppers. I normally try to spray everything with soapy water and then give up, when it doesn't work, and switch to the deadliest pesticide modern science can provide.

What not to do

When one has been brewing and drinking all day, it may seem like a good idea to dump your trub on your hop plant. This will kill it. I don't know if it is the change in soil pH, or if hops refuse to cannibalize, but your plant will die a horrible death.

I've done this twice. The first time I dumped hot wort on my hop plant and it was totally dead the next day. The second time I let the wort cool and then poured in on the hops. Then the all the leaves fell off and most of the bines dried out. It did kind of rally but was pretty sick for the rest of the year and never yielded any cones.

On found hops

Nearly every brewer has, at some point or another, come across some random hop plant growing in a friends back yard or along the fence of an abandoned farm. I've done it and gleefully harvested a bushel of hops out of an irrigation ditch, dried them and brewed a beer. Guess what? It tasted catty like I had filtered the beer through a meth whore's merkin. If someone told me they had found a sack of mystery grain in their basement I would politely decline brewing with it. Actually, I would probably taunt them as dipshits because I'm kind of a jerk but the point remains the same. Using fresh hops is difficult enough without adding in the additional complication of having no idea what kind you are dealing with.

Fresh hop beers are great and can be another brew in your seasonal brewing schedule.  But don't expect your backyard hop plant to supply all of your hop needs.

Sorry to everybody

So I have been gone for awhile.  I wish I could say I have been drunk in a ditch but I have been moving and painting, which is much less glamorous. 

Coming soon will be a real post about how to kill hops. 

First trainwreck for the new kegs

Breaking in new equipment is a lot like finding a hooker on Craigslist. You know what they look like, but have no idea what kind of wacky shit you're going to run into.

Readers of the blog know I am in the process of totally revamping my brew system. Gone will be the cooler mash tun and old coffee pot hot liquor tank. The end plan is to roll with a 10 gallon 3 keg system in which I am able to perfectly control the temperature of my beer from the moment I dough in until I drink it. Of course, after having an only semi-successful brew day it makes me wax poetic for my cooler because I know how it works.

 

Taking my kegs, I measured a 10 inch hole in the top and drew out my cut mark with a piece of string and a marker. I also went to a restaurant supply store and purchased a huge stainless steel cookie sheet for $8. I drew a 10 inch circle on that also.

 

After I had depressurized the kegs I took all of this to a local welding shop and had them make the cuts with a plasma torch because I had heard this would produce a smoother cut than using an dremel or angle grinder. Don't fool yourself. Smoother is a relative term and it still took quite a bit of grinding in order to make the edges not jagged and sharp. This cost about $35.

 

I decided I needed to clean my kegs. The inside was filled with soot and slag from the cutting process and the outside had a bunch of old stickers and glue residue. So I put a wire brush on my angle grinder and polished the outside of the kegs. This turned out to be a huge mistake. The wire brush generated just enough heat to melt the sticker glue, but not enough to burn it off. It just smeared all this shit around and made everything sticky. I ended up having to scrub them again with GooGone in order to get the black shit off. Then I had to buff everything again in order to get them to shine.

 

Constructing a false bottom for the mash tun took a little bit of work. I took my 10 inch cookie sheet piece and a dremel to cut one small slit, just big enough for the hook on a paint can opener. Then I used the angle grinder to shape the piece until it dropped perfectly into the concave keg bottom. I drilled one hole in the center of the false bottom big enough for your drop tube and then about a billion little holes to act as the screen. Then I used the wire brush to shine it up.

 

After drilling and installing the spouts I came to a realization. The fundamental problem with making a kettle out of a keg is the bottom of the keg is concave. So you have to put the spout up where you would be leaving a couple of gallons of wort in the kettle. That shit is unacceptable! The easy fix is to use a bent piece of copper tubing and an $8 compression fitting. This works fine for the mash tun but there are a few issues to be aware of with your boil kettle. After the boil I turned on the valve to run my wort through my plate chiller and the I ended up with about a cup in the carboy before my drop tube sucked up a big wad of hops and clogged the shit out of the plate chiller. Yaaaaayyyyy!

 

So I had to take everything apart, blow out the clog and re-sanitize. While I was doing this I stirred the boil kettle a little to get a better whirlpool in order to try to keep the trub out of the damn way. It worked better the second time.

 

There are experts out there who advise changing one item on your brewing system, getting used to the change, and then changing something else. Of course, I am changing everything at once. Balls to the wall. I tried to test it out by filling all my kegs with water to see how things would flow but there is, honestly, no way to test the operation without brewing a batch.

 

So this is something I did right. I had some legitimate concerns about possible mash efficiency. If I failed to extract enough sugars, or titanically fail as it turned out, it could severely impact the IBUs of my finished beer. Therefore, I needed to pick a recipe which was more malt focused but had a sliding scale of success. I chose to do a Scottish ale because the recipe difference between a wee heavy and a /60 shilling is basically just amount of grain. I ended up getting only about 50 percent efficiency so it is a lot closer to a thin /60 shilling than anything else. Not the worst beer I have ever made, but not something I am super excited about.

 

Instead of installing a dial thermometer in my mash tun I opted to instead put in a thermowell. The plan is to eventually use my Johnson two way switch temperature controller to run the pump for the HERMS system. This led to to the big fail of brew day. I had mashed in just a touch hot and poured some cold water in my mash to regulate the temp. Nothing happened so I added some more. Then a little more. Suddenly the reading on thermometer dropped 10 degrees. I tried adding back some boiling water but by this time my mash was so thin I couldn't really do anything beside put the lid back on and go drink a beer.

 

Before the next brewday I plan on putting together a few more pieces of the brew system. I want to get a burner and I have already finished my HERMS coil. Also, I have put a screen around the drop tube on my boil kettle and now I know the temp controller only takes a reading every 20 seconds or so.

What? Brewing supplies can be found on the Internet?

In the year 2000, homebrewing in Idaho was like the Wild West.

 

I had found a recipe which had been smuggled out of Soviet controlled Czechoslovakia by a beer patriot who had encoded the grain bill and had it tattooed on his chest. I had painstakingly translated it into English and took it down to my local homebrew shop.

 

"I'm out of pilsner malt," said the red-headed shop owner. "Just use extra pale malt extract. It's pretty much the same thing."

 

I didn't really know the difference then but now that kind of attitude just drives me crazy. The reason I'm a homebrewer is I want to make the beer I want to make, not whatever is good enough. There is a dichotomy there. A homebrew shop should have every malt, hop and yeast a chubby beer nerd can think of but all of these items have a shelf life and who wants to buy stale supplies. I want to support my local homebrew shop, which is still 100 miles away, but most of the time I end up ordering stuff online anyway.

 

To the Internet!

 

In the Internet era, there is no excuse for not being able to source anything your perverted mind can think of. There is a ton of companies out there, each with good and bad attributes.

 

My current ingredient supplier is brewmasterswarehouse.com. I love their BrewBuilder software, which allows you to customize a recipe down to the ounce, then they will fill a bag and ship it for $7. No more buying a pound of specialty grain for 2 ounces, no more measuring and weighing, no more trying to source exotic ingredients because they have a great selection. It is like having a customizable kit where you just mash in and go.

 

However, I have had a couple of problems with Brewmaster's Warehouse. Once they forgot to put the hops and yeast with the order, once I created a pilsner but when I mashed in it was a dark amber color so I have no idea what they put in there and one time I ended up on back order for three weeks. Also, I'm not sure who they use for a malt extract supplier, but both times I ordered liquid malt extract I could not get anywhere near my OG and the beer had the weird "extract" flavor. They do have very good customer service and have always made things right.

 

The bottom line is, I love them for all grain ingredients but I look else ware for other stuff.

 

I used Northernbrewer.com for a long time and had really good luck. They have quality malt extract and are supposed to have good kits. Anytime I have had a shipping screw up it has been my fault and not theirs.

 

If you are looking for bulk hops, check out Nikobrew.com. You can buy pounds of hops, down to 2 oz. packages. The prices and shipping are cheap. I have not ordered yet but I have talked to the owner and he seems pretty cool. It also looks like the only place you can still get Citra hops this year.

 

Most of the time when I am looking for equipment I go to Morebeer.com. The deal of the day can be a pretty good value and gives me an excuse to randomly buy something. They have a big selection of grain but I don't order from them because they only sell in one pound quantities.

 

These a just a few companies I have used. If you have a personal favorite, or someone who has jacked you around, post a comment.

Let's all appreciate a good paddling

"Slap me, spank me, make me convert long chain starches to fermentable sugars with the utmost of efficiency, like a dirty girl," my mash whispers. "Are you going to hit me with that? Oh no, I've been very bad."

 

The paddle comes down with a sharp stroke and plunges into the sloppy mixture of grain and hot water. The mash resists at first, struggling to keep the husk material bound up in tight dry clumps, but after a couple of firm swats the moisture seeps in. A trickle and then a gush as the mash relaxes and accepts.

 

It takes a nice paddle to administer a good paddling, so it is project time here at Screw Up Beer.

 

Sourcing your wood

 

There is a lot of debate on the best wood for a mash paddle. Honestly, I don't give a damn what kind of wood you use. Just remember, what kind of wood do you want to be sticking in your beer?

 

The ideal mash paddle is made from a hardwood with small pores. The opening size is fairly important because you don't want your paddle to stain from dark wort. We will see if this is true.

 

Soft woods, or some hardwoods like red oak, aren't used for cutting boards because they have large pores and can harbor bacteria. While any bacteria on the paddle will be killed during your boil, hardwood is a lot more durable. Maple, white oak or poplar are all good choices.

 

I wanted only quality wood in my beer so I used maple. It was a little tough to find because big box building supply stores do not carry it. They do, however, carry poplar. Out in the hinterlands of Idaho, where I live, a local lumberyard won't carry it either. Call around to try tracking down the best wood you can get your hands on.

 

Something to be aware of is your pieces of hardwood will come in random lengths and widths. No one could explain why. Somewhere between four and six inches width and three feet long is about what you are looking for.

 

The Design

 

When adding grain to hot water the grain has a tendency to clump together in balls. The outside of the dough ball will be wet and gooey while the inside will be bone dry. In function, a mash paddle has to be able to stir a fairly viscous liquid but it also needs holes to break apart the clumps.

Like any good paddle, you want it to take control of your mash. It should leave the mash stinging, breathless, supple and submitting to your wishes. You don't want it hurt, scarred or damaged.

 

For a truly basic model you would just drill holes in the paddle.

 

But who wants to be that boring? Take some pride in your shit. Your mash paddle is a statement on your brewery, and by association, your beer. The brewer who says, "I just use a plastic spoon because it is cheap," is violating Brewing Maxim #1: "Don't be a cheap ass!" This is the same person who will cut corners in their beer by using a cheap grain bill or cutting their mash with Captain Crunch.

 

With tools as simple as a jig saw or a dremel you can do pretty much anything which could go on a pumpkin. A skull, bio-hazard symbol, sports logos, the bat symbol or any letter would all look cool. If you have access to a scroll saw you could do some pretty complex designs like Darth Vader's head, pin up silhouettes, a picture of your favorite beer blogger or pretty much anything you can conceive.  It is a given, your biggest passion is brewing beer so just Google stencils of your second biggest passion and print something out which will fill most of your paddle width.

 

I wanted a grizzly bear track because I thought it looked badass and I call my homebrewery the Bear Track Brewing Company. My second choice was Darth Vader's head.

 

Before I brew I lay all of my brewing supplies and equipment out and double check everything. Do the same thing with your paddle. Use a pencil to draw a line down the exact center of your board. Measure your palm to get an idea on how big you want your handle and shaft to be. This is going to be YOUR paddle, make it comfortable for you to use. Evaluate the size of your paddle and make sure you have at least one straight edge. Then tape your chosen stencil to the paddle.

 

At this point, take a moment to consider your paddle. Is the handle long enough? Is the paddle spoon wide enough? Is your shaft too big? Did you giggle when you thought about your shaft size?

 

The Cut

 

Once you are 100 percent committed to the paddle, make your cuts. I had a new dremel so I incorporated a lot of curves into my design. However, I had better luck and found there was more control with just a jig saw.

 

When the cutting is done you are going to look upon the new paddle and say, "Dammit, this looks like shit!" The edges will be all splintery, the straight cuts will look like they had been made during the height of a severe epileptic seizure and you will swear your stencil cutout had been done by a beaver on meth.

 

At least that is what mine looked like.

 

Giving a Sand Job

 

In order to slap your paddle into shape it takes sanding. A lot of sanding. You will spend hours slowly sanding your paddle. It will not take long before you will hate sanding. Start with a 60 grit until all the dings and pits are gone, smooth it out with 100 grit and polish with 220.

 

So this actually happened to me.  I go to my local lumberyard and buy a couple of packs of sandpaper. I take it to the counter and the guy actually said, "Doing some sanding?"

 

It took all the self control I could muster not to say: "No, masturbating."

 

The Finish

 

I have chosen not to finish my paddle. In theory, I could use some sort of food grade mineral oil for a finish but I would rather not add anything oily to my beer, which could effect head retention. I'm going in commando and hope there are no problems.

 

Be nice with your new paddle. Don't smack anything hard enough to hurt it, just enough to mean business. And even if you ask nicely, it is unlikely your wife will let you take a picture of her butt being smacked.

Ring in the new year with your pants on, for once

Like a karaoke singing elephant, with its lipstick smeared and tits hanging out, the new year approaches.

Every year, New Year's Eve produces two things.  There will be neo-prohibitionist jerks treating every responsible adult like a child by trying to convince the world that having a drink is the exact same as committing the crime of drinking and driving. 

Then there will be the small minority of drunk assholes proving the neo-prohibitionist correct.

If you brew you love beer.  You may like the chemistry of the brew, you may dig building cool gadgets to make brewing easier or you get off on the artistry of building the perfect recipe.

However, let's not kid ourselves, hand in hand with the love of making beer is the love of drinking beer.  On an intellectual level we enjoy the taste of beer and appreciate the play of malt and hops across our tongue like rollicking fawns on a spring day.  To love beer is to appreciate the mastery of a well made beer.

But.

Beer contains alcohol, which is one of the reasons we like it.  Alcohol stimulates the pleasure sensors of the brain and makes us feel good, it relaxes us and makes for better dancers.

 

 

We have a very peculiar relationship with alcohol in this country.  As an adult, it is perfectly acceptable to drink socially, in designated places, and even go out and drink yourself blind on approved holidays like New Years Eve, St. Patty's Day and Halloween.  Even while this behavior is accepted it is also demonized because of the lack of control.  But if your homebrew club were to meet in a local park on a spring day and trade 2 oz. tasters of beer the party would be shut down fast by jackboot wearing thugs terrified everyone involved would soon lose control and start pooping in the dog run.

There is a very vocal segment of the population who believe, and want everyone to believe, people do not have the ability for self control.  No one has ever been harmed from responsible drinking.  However, every time some drunk gets behind the wheel or makes and ass out of themselves they hand the neo-prohibitionist crusader the ammo to chip away at the rights of responsible adults.

This year lets all make the same resolution:  Don't be a douche bag.

Here are some possible situations from reader questions:

1.  Should I drink and drive?  Is there an exception for a clown car full of jello?

    -Tempting but no.  It would be acceptable to sit in the clown car full of jello and pretend you are driving.

2.  Can I get drunk in front of my disapproving in-laws and piss on their dog?

    -No.  Your in-laws think you are a loser already.  Try not to prove them right.

3.  That girl in the corner, the one sitting on that guys lap, keeps making eyes at me.  Can I send her a drink?

    -Unless you want to guarantee a stranger is going to get laid then probably not.

4.  I keep having the nagging suspicion everyone wants to see my junk and hairy man ass.  Should I lose my pants?

     -No.  No one wants to see that.  The people who would like to see it is probably not the ones you want looking at it.

The bottom line is; have a good time, drink a homebrew, have a happy new year and don't be an asshole.

Once again, I try to kill everyone by brewing.

The wind came screaming out of the west.  It was dirty and bitter, like a truck stop prostitute, and it carried ice and a hard fine snow.  The snow was needle-sharp and could easily pass through the pores of human skin into the soul.

I pressed my nose to the window pane.  The weather mocked me and I could hear an evil cackle on the wind.  It was brew day and the week before Christmas.  My wife and I would be gone for the holidays and I needed to brew while my yeast starter was still worth a shit.

The outside thermometer registered five degrees below zero.  Much to cold for wind or snow, but this was Wyoming, where the laws of God and nature hold no sway.

I was brewing an extract batch of stout so I just set up my camp chef burner in the basement and started brewing.  On some level I knew I should be venting the dangerous gasses generated from burning propane but when I tried opening a basement window the cold wind froze me out.  As with most worries, the concern for proper ventilation eased with the amount of beer I drank.

The brew day went well.  There was no major train wrecks to piss me off and I was able to get my equipment cleaned up and the yeast pitched.  I staggered upstairs, propositioned my wife, and when that failed, I passed out.

The horror began with the sweats.  A sticky ooze drenching the bed and pillow.  My eyes couldn't seem to focus but it was different than normal booze fueled mayhem.  My breathing was shaky.

I had a headache on a biblical scale.  An artillery battery of fighting aneurysms.  A bus full of drummers driving off of a cliff.   A throbbing cacophony of hellish fire exploding right behind my eyeballs.

 I staggered to the bathroom.  My beer buzz had been replaced with a mustard yellow nausea.  My stomach had decided everything was being evicted but was in a serious argument about which was it was heading.  It turned out, up was the winner.

My wife knocked on the door.  "Are you OK?"  I moaned but a few seconds later she said, "You need to get out of there, NOW!"

I crawled into the hallway, getting lightly trampled by my wife, who had not been drinking at all, as she had her own bathroom disaster.

The sickness lasted all night and most of the next day.  At first I thought it was some sort of food poisoning but that didn't explain our headaches.

The sickness turned out to be a case of CO2 poisoning caused from the burning propane.  It wasn't a really bad, but enough to make us sick as shit.  Be warned, improper ventilation is not something to screw around with.  You will regret it seriously if you do.  Be a man and brew outside or, if you have to brew inside, use electric elements or a hood.  I would rather freeze my ass off than puke any day.

Flex your Keggles

There is a tendency to push this brewing shit as far as it will go. From spaghetti pot to kettle to fridges to draft system homebrewers get drawn in. They buy a gadget here and there. Then they start looking through catalogs of brew systems and diddle themselves at the idea of having a Brutus 10 or a tippy dump.

 

 

I admire some brewers who have, with Amish resolve, decided, "Piss on it, I stop here with partial mash. No need to go on." Don't they wonder what lies on the next horizon? Don't they realize in some garage out there is a pasty and chubby beer dork, who has dialed a recipe to the single ounce of grain, mashing in an old cooler?

 

 

So with willpower common to brew geeks and meth whores I have decided to build a brew system. Regular readers know right now I brew like a common hobo. I use an old coffee pot, a cooler and a kettle on a turkey burner. It turns out pretty good beer but I want more. With a frothy, aching need I want something which will accomplish two things. It needs to heat, boil and move wort with NASA precision and it needs to be easy to clean, store and move. Of course, since I have little disposable income, it has to be obtained a piece at a time.

 

 

Last week I took the first steps on this harrowing journey. I had been perusing Craigslist and in two weeks found two different guys unloading tap systems cheap, complete with a few kegs, CO2 tank, regulators, and taps. Suddenly, I had seven stainless steel kegs.

 

 

The thing with kegs, is it is illegal to take one from behind a bar or just pay a deposit, drink the beer and keep the keg to make a 15 gallon kettle out of. The brewery still owns the kegs and destroying their property is stealing.

 

 

So I loaded up four of the kegs and took them to the local distributor for a multi-national brewing conglomerate. I anticipated turning them in for the deposit, taking the cash and buying a couple of kettles. Just like a damn boy scout.

 

 

Upon arrival the employees seemed surprised. Apparently, it is relatively rare someone returns a keg, let along four. They weren't even sure if they wanted them. A couple of the guys from the warehouse acted like total bitches about it. "These kegs are really old," they whined like a 16-year-old.

 

 

"Has the structure of kegs changed some way in the last 5 years that I am not aware of?" I asked. It has been awhile since I have purchased a keg of commercial beer. Were they square now?

 

 

"No," the warehouse guys said with pouty lower lips. "But they are too old to get a full deposit. Did you know you can make bookshelves out of them?"

 

 

I considered for a moment. My wife is very understanding of my brewing/beer drinking hobby/obsession but would she allow a bookcase made of old kegs to become a central keystone of our decor? Could a self-respecting homebrewer even allow a bookshelf made from macro-brew kegs in his house?

 

 

The simple truth is I just didn't need these kegs. Even if the distributor for the major beer company was acting like a total bitch I would rather have the 12 bucks a piece than a buttload of old kegs lying around.

 

 

Bottom line, don't steal a keg from behind a bar or jack one after paying a deposit. Go your local distributor and ask if they have any old ones because they are, apparently, worth less than ball cheese.

 

 

In further episodes, I will cut the kegs apart and install spouts. We will see if this can be accomplished without ruining them.

Fear, Loathing and the Case of the Missing Pants

It was somewhere about 9 o'clock when the booze began to kick in.

Was it hubris, which compelled me to attempt to fortify an unremarkable wee heavy with a fifth of cheap scotch? Or was there something else? Had my addiction to experimental beers became so strong I was willing to throw away any inkling of common sense on a KY coated Slip-and-Slide decent into the very depth of what a bad beer could become?

With a mad cackle I kegged the beer, poured the scotch on top and put the gas to it. No thought of blending to taste. No worry about ratios or possible ABV. "Piss on the Reinheitsgebot!," was the battle cry coming from my froth speckled lips.

I'm not sure what I hoped to accomplish. Is there some quality inherent to Highland Stag brand scotch which would lend itself to a beer? The peat-smoke character reminiscent of thousands of Scottish peasants coughing up their emphysema blackened lungs is not a nice flavor anyway; could beer somehow make it better?

No.

The carbonated beer was harsh as a Brillo Pad handjob. Scratchy and unforgiving, it wasn't so sharp as a straight shot but there was something unpleasant there, as if each glass had been personally tea-bagged by Groundskeeper Willy. But at the same time, it was not so unpleasant it was undrinkable. The scotch numbed the throat first, and after the first glass the other senses became lax.

Human trials were needed in order to observe the effect on consciousness. So, I invited a couple of college friends, J.R. and Jack, to have a beer drinking weekend. They prided themselves on being West Coast beer dorks but I had to wonder, "Could they even handle the Scotch-Scotch Ale? Would something like this ruin them on beer forever?"

No use screwing around, so I filled big 30 oz. mugs. Initially, they bitched about the taste; throwing around words like: possible infection, fusel alcohol and crappy. A simple challenge to their masculinity and the guys were chugging beer like a baby fresh to the tit.

By the end of the third mug I heard a roaring in my ears. Like the top two valves of a 4-barrel carburetor taking hold I could feel a sudden shifting in time and space as the scotch began to kick in.

The first noticeable effect was a sudden disintegration of cognitive function. J.R. had been regaling us with some story of Portland when, mid sentence, he lapsed into inane gibberish. With gleeful horror I watched his brain shut down to the point he was unable to form sounds into words.

The next stage was fear. J.R.'s lizard brain function realized he had somehow latched onto something which was beyond his control, the proverbial dog tied to a car bumper. He fought to choose an action. "Bed J.R. go. Sleep time is," he said, taking four steps toward the guest bedroom before he collapsed in the hallway.

For Jack the creeping madness came slower, like a touchy uncle watching from the shadows. He laughed at his apparent triumph over J.R. and drank another half a mug of English Oppression Scotch Ale.

The terror came with the darkness. A spinning bed, a cold sweat and a mouth suddenly filled with saliva; Jack knew the sickness was on him. The panic carried him out of the bedroom, through the kitchen, down the stairs and out into the back yard; his hand pressed against his mouth in a vain attempt to hold back a tidal wave of vomit.

Once in the back yard Jack collapsed in the dirt as his body tried to turn itself inside out. Once the first round of sickness passed he was filled with booze fueled remorse and, using drunk logic, as he crawled back into the house he removed his pants so he wouldn't make a mess.

By tracking his trail of vomit, I found him the next morning. He was asleep in the bathtub, wrapped in the shower curtain, and lacking pants.

I had found what I wanted. The proof my experimentation had gone to far. Just because I could do something didn't mean I should. But on the other hand, if someone offers you free beer there is always a catch.

J.R.  A Portrait of a Hangover

To much head can cause deadly explosions

Screw Up Beer's 5th rule of homebrewdynamics: A passionate homebrewer will always produce somewhat more beer than they have room to store. Example: A person in a tiny apartment with a one-gallon system will produce one six pack more than their dorm fridge will handle and a homebrewer with a personal storage cave will always have a truck load of beer they don't have room for.

Beer is a fickle bitch. It loves cool to cold temps, without a lot of light, temperature swings and movement. However, these kind of perfect conditions rarely exist for brewers.

I brewed a raspberry wheat beer while I was living in Missouri, at an elevation of about 800 feet above sea level. The beer was a little over carbonated anyway; but when I moved it to my new apartment in Rock Springs, Wyoming, elevation 6200 feet, I had beer gushing like a college kid having his first lap dance. It is a possibility I also had a small infection, like the college kid a week after his first lap dance. We had no air conditioning and the apartment was hotter than a hot wing poop.

I had the beer packed away in some 12 pack boxes next to the washing machine. Which was a location of constant vibration and agitation. So this is not a perfect beer storage solution.

One night, shortly after we had settled into bed, there was a sound like a gunshot right outside the bedroom. My first thought was, "I wonder if the neighbor has committed suicide?  Poor guy, maybe I should stop stealing his parking space."

I ran out of the bedroom and turned the light on. There was foam coming out of my stack of homebrew boxes like a science-fair volcano. The box had been partially shredded and glass was everywhere.

As luck would have it, the bottle in the middle of the half-rack had reached a terminal pressure level and exploded, which caused the bottles around it to explode.

Glass had embedded in the wall next to the boxes and we found a neck and cap across the living room, about 30 feet away.

I didn't screw around with this shit. I, gently, placed the remaining beers in the dumpster. This actually kind of spooked me. If one of those bottles had blown while I was holding it I could have had my damn arm torn off.

My advice to those brewing places without good storage: drink faster. As long as your beer is brewed well you can still get a few months out of it. Big temperature fluctuations will shorten the shelf life of your beer and can cause over carbonation problems if you have to much priming sugar or a little infection.

Do what you can. A basement or cellar works best but even an interior closet is better than nothing. A dedicated fridge is nice and I have heard of some brewers hacking an AC unit to make a walk in cooler but I would make sure you know something about wiring before you attempt the project.

A seriously over carbonated beer is a big danger and not something to screw around with. If your homebrew tastes funny it will make you hungover but there is no real danger, a bottle bomb can cause major damage.

The first and last comment on me whoring myself out

Regular readers of Screw Up Beer will notice a few advertisements popping up in the last few weeks.  Like all beer bloggers, I am hoping this blog becomes an avenue for wealth, power and an eventual takeover of the world's beer brewing superstructure.  Watch your ass, InBev!

In the meantime, the ads are a way for me to keep brewing, and subsequently, to keep making mistakes so you don't have to.  I have toyed with a couple of different ad options but I have arrived on a policy where I maintain control of the links, so don't worry about clicking on something which will give you a damn virus. 

There is an Amazon button.  If you are going to order from Amazon anyway, just link through this button and it will help me out.  I will also sometimes put up a book or item, with an Amazon link, which I think is, or could be, useful. 

I also have a link to MoreBeer, a company I use and a good place to get brewing supply.  There may be more sponsors later but if my readers have a bad experience with a sponsor let me know and I will reevaluate the relationship.

Random crap and links to shit are not going to show up on my site; or at least will not stay very long.  Everything you see here is something I personally endorse.

This will be the last word on the ads.  Clicking on them helps me out, not my blog provider, so check them out.

Thanks,

Justin

Boiling water = Fail, Not Burning House Down = Win

Several years ago I was working for a certain famous Idaho ski resort and living in company housing, where the drinking of alcohol was strictly prohibited.  So of course, I was brewing in secret.

 

I was boiling my wort on the electric stove with an old copper pot I had bought at a yard sale and drinking beer. I was just to the point i had made my first hop addition when I turned around to get a beer.  When I turned back around smoke was spewing out the bottom of the pot like someone had opened the doors to Morodor.  The heat had melted a small hole in the bottom of my kettle.

 

I try to set my beer down on the table but knock it over, so it is draining on the floor, and grab the handle of the pot; pulling it off of the burner.  Now, instead of smoke coming out from beneath the pot, there is wort pouring out from the pot and flowing on the burner, where it starts to smoke.

 

So I move the pot to the sink, while trying not to spill boiling wort on myself, but succeed in spraying hot wort all over the kitchen counter and cabinets.

 

As my precious wort drained away I am using the mop to try to clean the top of the stove off before it catches on fire.  To make matters worse, the fire alarm was going off.  Luckily I was the only one home but some of the buildings at this particular resort were hardwired into the central fire alert system.  It turned out they had never bothered to hook my building up to it so that avoided some awkward questions.

 

Stupid yard sale pots anyway.

 

One constant in brewing, no matter what kind of beer you brew, is the boil.  Beer should be boiled vigorously for at least an hour.  This doesn't have to be so hot it is jumping out of the kettle or so light the surface is just barely moving; just a nice rolling boil with the lid off.

 

There is a lot going on during the boil, which is why it is not something you should ignore or take for granted.  The big things is your wort is becoming sterile. 

 

Despite what you may wish there is yeast and bacteria living in your tap water, just not in quantities if can hurt the human body.  Also, in order for a bacteria to make you sick it has to survive the stomach acid and white blood cells fighting it.  If you add the same bacteria cell to your wort it will be an environment with nearly unlimited food and perfect conditions for growth.  If you don't have a pot big enough for  a full volume boil, boil some water ahead of time and then set it aside covered.  One of the first things a notice brewer can do to greatly improve their beer is making a full volume boil.

           

Besides sanitation there is other, science, stuff going on; proteins are forming, hop oils are isomerising, sugars are caramelizing and water is evaporating. 

 

Many malts, especially pils malt, contain high levels of dimethyl sulfides, or DMS, which will contribute a vegetative or creamed corn flavor to your beer, which you probably don't want.  The DMS will mostly boil out if you leave the lid off during the boil. 

 

Boiling over

 

If you have brewed at least one batch of beer you have had a boilover.  You will meticulously watch your boiling wort for 20 minutes and then blink and your beer will gleefully leap from the pot onto the stove.  When you add hops your wort will boil over.  If you are brewing on a windy day the wind will eddy a little and your beer will boil over.

 

There are a couple of ways to keep from getting a boilover.  The simplest is just buying a bigger pot.  John Palmer, in How to Brew, suggests putting some stainless steal nuts in your pot.

 

I just try to keep a close eye on my pot, which results in me boiling over about every 3rd brew day.

 

Saying a brewer needs to master the boiling of water seems redundant, and not very sexy, but getting a nice boil is critical to producing good beer.

 

Lubing a keg turns out to be not what the Internet said it was

Oh kegs, how you vex me.

This will be an ongoing subject because, for some reason, I keep screwing up my kegging.  This may be because it should be really simple.  Take your fermented beer and put it in a keg.  Put the CO2 to it at the PSI which will result in a perfect level of carbonation.  Drink until keg is empty.

This is what I normally do.  Put fermented beer in keg.  Yell and bitch because keg fails to seal.  Put keg in fridge and then yell and bitch while I try to figure out why my connector is leaking gas.  Once I hook up my gas line I realize I overfilled my keg and the drop of pressure pulls beer up the gas tube into my gas line.  Take all my gas lines apart and clean them so I don't get crap growing in it.  Drink beer for a couple of weeks.  Pull keg out of the fridge because I need the fridge as a fermentation chamber.  Let keg warm up to room temp. CO2 won't stay dissolved in warm beer so now every pour is a foamy mess.  Try to save beer by bottling warm beer off of overpreasurized keg.  Spray ceiling with beer.  Put keg back in fridge and try for a couple of weeks to get the carbonation back where it belongs.  When I lose patience I just bottle the rest of the beer off of the keg and start the whole process again.

Why kegging is awesome

It is very cool to have your own beer on tap in your house.  You can pull a pint, or half a pint if you feel like it (or a liter!)  You feel like a professional.

Your carbonation is perfect.  No more wondering what will happen when you put in the priming sugar.  It turns out just how you want it. 

You can really dial in dry hops, cacao nibs, or oak chips.  Do your after fermentation additions and taste the beer every couple of days.  When it is exactly how you want it then transfer kegs or bottle.

It is faster to get a beer carbonated.  If you crank the pressure up your beer can be carbonated overnight.

Your beer will age better.  You don't have to worry about light skunking and if you purge the keg with CO2 before you put the beer in you won't have any trouble with oxygenation.

 It is way easier to clean one keg verses 50 bottles.  Where bottling used to take a couple of hours putting beer in a keg only takes 15 minutes. 

You can blend beers, make awesome cider and even pasteurize then carbonate a beer.  By controlling how the CO2 is applied you finally gain total control over your beer.

Why kegs bite

Kegs require a special setup to keep cold, either a dedicated fridge or cool room.  A bottle of beer you can store in the cellar and then put a couple of bottles in the kitchen fridge without annoying the wife.  I only have room at my house for one extra fridge, so it has to serve as a kegerator and a fermentation chamber. 

A keg is not very portable.  If you show up to a dinner with a couple bottles of homebrew you are a hero, if you show up with a keg you have a problem.  Or you will be a hero to your friends who have a problem.

With bottles you always have a pretty good idea how many beers you have left.  With a keg there is a tendency to just drink and then suddenly it is gone.

A keg setup is kind of expensive.  You are looking at about $30 a keg, then $75 for a regulator, $75 for a tank, $8 a piece for connectors, and whatever you want to spend on fridges, shanks and faucets.  A well put together keg system can cost as much as an all grain system.

Screw ups ensue

About a year ago I picked up about 8 pin-lock kegs cheap.  This is way more than I have room for but one day I dream of being able to have 10 beers on tap at my house.  The first thing I did was take them all apart and clean them, mixing all of the parts together in a bucket of cleaner.  As I tried to put them all back together I realized they are not all the same.  It took me a couple of hours to figure out which pieces went to which keg, and I don't think I got them all right.  There are still a couple of kegs where the nuts don't fit quite right on the post.

Keg lube is great stuff.  Smear a little bit on all the rubber seals and your keg will seal much better than using dry seals.

However, under NO circumstance should you Google "How to use keg lube?" with your safe search off.  You will see a couple of guys who take the concept of "beer drinking buddy" to the next level.  Not for the faint of heart.

Keeping beer out of the gas lines

The best way to seal a keg is to put your PSI at about 30, which will pop the lid into place.  However, when you carbonate it you will only want the PSI to be between 8 to 11.  This drop in pressure will pull beer into your gas lines, if the bottom of the gas tube is below the surface of the beer.

Probably the simplest way to keep from getting back pull is to not fill the keg so full but this seems morally wrong to me.  I want those last couple of beers, damn it!

What I have done is take my gas tubes and cut them down to about a half an inch.  I am not totally sure this is the right thing to do, but so far I haven't had any problems.  Also, make sure and hook up the gas while the keg is sitting on a flat surface.  Don't tip it so the beer level would be below the gas tube.  (Learned this one the hard way last weekend!)

Fundamentally, kegs rock, with the caveat that they would be a good deal less of a pain in the ass if I had room for a dedicated keg fridge.  If I ever figure out how to use the damn things.

Thigh-high stockings and a trub bukkake

I have, many times, failed to fully think out a plan before I set the plan into motion. I would make a perfect super villain.

A couple of years ago I was facing a dilemma. I wanted to brew a fresh hop beer but I wanted my hops to be loose in my kettle so they would roll around and get better utilization. The kettle I was using was smaller, like a 4 gallon, and didn't have a spout so I needed something to provide a filter between the kettle to the carboy.

I had heard somewhere about using pantyhose as a cheap hop bag. This seemed like a reasonable thing to do and I figured it would work as a filter. So, I went down to Walmart and bought thigh-high stockings in the most masculine way possible.

"They are for beer."

"Yeah, sure buddy," the clerk says.

"They make me feel pretty," I whisper.

The brew day went great. It was an extract steam beer and the fresh Cascade hops, picked right off the bine in my backyard smelled awesome. After the wort had been chilled it was time for the filter/transfer so I stuck about four of five inches of the stockings into the carboy, wrapped a rubber band around it, rested a funnel in the carboy spout and began to just pour the wort into the funnel. What could possibly go wrong?

In my defense, I have never worn pantyhose before.  Not even recreationally.

I had not anticipated the pantyhose's ability to stretch. As the wort flowed down the funnel into the filter it caught all of the hop cones and trub. This caused it to expand at roughly the same rate as the anger-caused aneurysm growing in my brain.

In about three seconds I had a sack of shit the size of a volleyball inside of my glass carboy. The pantyhose did act as a filter, but was so effective it was clogged with small particles and hop flowers and wouldn't let the liquid flow through at more than a trickle.

About the time I set the kettle down the rubber band started to slip and I was able to grab it before the whole mess dropped into the carboy. But now I was stuck, because I couldn't pack the whole carboy around, so I yell for my wife, who up to this point, has been very supporting of my brewing.

"Hey baby, could you come in here for a second?"

Of course, the first thing she said was, "What in the hell are you doing?"

"I'm having a disaster. Can you help me?"

She held the carboy down while I tried to slowly tried to pull the shit ball out of the top. After a couple of tugs the pantyhose began to bulge obscenely on the bottom, but I was making a small amount of progress on the top end.

"Are you sure this is going to work?" my wife asks in a tone which suggested it was not going to work.

"Just hold it," I growl and give another mighty pull.

At this point, several things happened. The pantyhose finally give way by exploding and sending most of the soggy hop cones into my fermenter. I fell backwards, pulling the broken stockings out of the carboy with such force that my wife received a trub bukkake across her shirt, glasses and hair.

"Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh," she yells.

I wish I could say this is the only time my wife has caught it in the face because of brewing, but I don't think it is true. It may not have helped matters that I was laughing really hard.

I gave up and pitched the yeast. Some of the cones floated and some sank during the ferment. It was a giant pain in the ass to rack off because the hops kept clogging my wracking cane.

The final beer really didn't turn out too bad. Not great, because it was pretty vegetative, but I ended up drinking it all.

So with one screw up I learned several lessons. I have not used pantyhose while brewing since. I now have a brew kettle with a spout. If I am using loose hops I use a hop bag. I don't try to filter inside of a carboy. I also do my best to think ahead, but am only somewhat successful with that one.

My wife also learned a lesson. She may be married to an idiot.

Oh my! You caught me learning to use my brew pot!

As any 15-year-old guy can tell you, intimate knowledge of your equipment is very important to discovering how it works.

 

The same applies to brewing.  All it takes is a little bit of prep and it makes life a whole lot easier.  The whole object of brewing is to have fun and if you are stressing about not making enough beer to fill your carboy, you are not having fun.

 

It's all pretty basic.  For instance, you should know the capacity of all of your vessels.  My mash tun will hold 8 gallons, my hot liquor tank 4.5 gallons and my brew kettle will hold 9 gallons.  This impacts how I do things.  If I am making something which would normally call for a 5.5 gallon sparge I have to put the extra gallon into my strike water.  I actually forgot to do this on my brew this last weekend and had to run another gallon through my hot liquor tank towards the end of my sparge.  It didn't effect my numbers, but did make me feel like an idiot.

 

Know where you need to fill your brew kettle in order to get enough finished volume to fill your fermenters.  Otherwise, and I have done this, you will end up with only 4.5 gallons in a 6 gallon fermenter.  I have even put painters tape on my carboys to indicate the volume levels.  It makes it easier for me to know exactly where the 5 gallon mark is, so I can add my yeast starter without getting the fermenter too full.

 

Know how much volume there is in your kettle below the spout.  If there is 3/4 of a gallon below the spout and you have exactly 5 gallons in your kettle transferring to your fermenter, you are going to be short a good fill level.  Here is something I just did recently, I took my brewing spoon and used permanent marker to mark what the volume of my kettle is at 1/2 gallon increments.  Before doing this, I would fill a gallon jug and pour it in my pot, making just more work for myself. 

 

I wish I would have thought of marking my spoon years ago.  If I get another brew pot I will just use a different colored marker to mark the measurements on the spoon.

 

Do all these measurements with water, not wort.  Basically, just set up your brew system and run water through it.  Something else to measure is how much volume you are going to lose because of evaporation.  Depending on the shape of your pot, it can range from one to two gallons, which is a huge range when we are doing 5 gallon batches.

 

During brew day take good notes.  I try to write everything down.  Stuff like the weather on brew day impacts how the beer heats, how well it boils and the time it takes to get to ferment temps.  If I have some sort of problem, I jot it down.  Not just so I have more info to tell you jokers, but also hopefully I won't make the same mistake again.

 

Part of taking notes is knowing what you are working with.  I used to just brew, not bothering to take any readings, and just figured the beer would be what it was.  Granted, this is a pretty low key approach and if you don't hit your numbers you don't care because you don't know.  The trouble with doing this is, if you are trying to brew a 1.070 beer with 40 IBUs and you end up with a 1.050 beer, then your IBUs will be about 60.  It may not turn out to be a bad beer, but it will not be the beer you intended to brew.

 

Homebrewers just starting out can be easily intimidated by the chemistry of brewing, the thousands of possible ingredients and the huge variety of styles.  The volume of a gallon of water is a constant and by taking the simple step of finding out how to measure a gallon on your system you will save a surprising amount of headache.