Brewing Update

While Meg was staying at her grandparents house in Hannibal, Brooke and I took it upon ourselves to brew not one, but two, beers in a single day.  From start to finish, the entire process took almost 10 hours, but most of that time was spent cooling down the “wort” (i.e. unfermented beer).  I think we’ll need to invest in a wort chiller, as my chosen method of cooling the pots from boiling down to ~70 F, involving placing the pot outside in the snow, didn’t really speed things up in the least.

Another change this time around involved brewing the beer in glass carboys, borrowed from my Dad who used to use them for brewing wine.  There are advantages and disadvantages to using these things.  One advantage is that they’re glass, so you can see through them to view how your brewing process is going.  Also, being glass, it is less likely that after years of use, you’ll have residual flavors being imparted by your fermentation vessel, as plastic can do (but really won’t for quite a long time).

One disadvantage, however, is that they’re kinda a pain to clean.  We’ve got a brush that is designed for scrubbing carboys, but due to the small opening at the top of the fermentation vessel, it’s just hard to sterilize the carboy properly.  I think I did a good enough job, but we’ll see.  It’s also very difficult to fill the thing up, due to the aforementioned small opening at the top.  Brooke had to hold a funnel in order for me to take the pot pictured above and pour into the carboy.  It becomes a two-person process, whereas one person could probably do alright using the 5 gal bucket. Finally, it is difficult to know what volume you actually have in these things.  I needed 5 gal in total, and in trying to cool the beer down faster, I poured spring water into the bottom of the carboy before adding the Hefeweizen wort.  As you can see in the picture above, on the right, the beer is pretty close to the top, largely because I had too much volume in there.  This also affected the initial Specific Gravity reading of the wort, which could affect my alcohol calculations toward the end of fermentation.

Another concern with these beers is that the temperature in our basement has dropped since the last time we brewed.  The thermometer is reading consistently around 50 F, if not slightly below, making me wonder how long fermentation will take.

However, after 24 hours downstairs, the yeast had taken off.  [Note: That was another change.  Instead of using liquid yeast, we used the dry yeast the kits normally come with.  I’d never done it this way, but Brooke makes bread regularly, so she’s familiar with what needs to be done.  They worked!]  I may take another picture later this week, but the foam at the top (croizen) is increasing steadily to the point where I had to remove the CO2 trap at the top of the carboy and put a tube in its place.  The tube is running down into a jar that Brooke grabbed, semi-sealed with aluminum foil.  It isn’t the most ideal situation, but it’s the only reasonable option in order to let some of that foam out of the fermentation vessel.  Otherwise, the foam actually pushes out of the carboy and into the CO2 trap at the top.  After a few days of letting the croizen bubble out, I’ll replace the trap, as bubbling will have slowed to some degree.

Regardless, despite all the various changes this time around, it appears that fermentation has begun!  In theory, the Hefeweizen should be ready for bottling in about 2 weeks and the IPA should be ready for bottling in about 6 weeks.  I’ll be transferring the IPA from its primary vessel into a secondary vessel at some point, either the 5 gal plastic bucket from last time, or I’ll put it in the glass carboy that the Hefeweizen is currently inhabiting.  Probably a few weeks down the road.