Following the fail – a big win!

Although I was feeling down about the failed batch and not having 3 beers on tap for the guests, we had some people over a weekend ago for beer and bbq.  The two beers on tap, the Vienna lager and the oatmeal stout were really big hits.  Comments like "”one of my favorite stouts” and “I love you Pat” were common and making me feel very good.  The barbeque was also awesome so a very successful night all the way around. 

A new crew headed to the house this weekend so hopefully I get the same response!

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“An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools” – Ernest Hemmingway

First epic failure

Well not everyone is perfect, and I have demonstrated that in spades.  In my attempt to please my wife and make a batch of beer specifically for her the yeast did not want to cooperate.  I used liquid yeast for the first time in a “smack pack” and was struggling from the beginning.  I hit the pack up and down and it took about 6 days to expand to the usable size.  The actual fermentation went well, and while the OG was a little lower that what was expected, it was not a problem.  I added the yeast and let that baby go. 

The transfer to the carboy and the secondary fermentation also went off without a hitch and everything was looking good.  After a couple of weeks I took a gravity reading and had to do a double take.  I let is go a week or so more, took another reading and was still confused.  The “beer” was about 1.4% alcohol…I put it into a keg hoping that something good might happen, but this is just a wasted batch. 

A couple days ago I brewed another witbeer hoping for redemption.  This morning I checked it and am somewhat concerned as the bubbles are few and far between.  I am hoping a few more days will get that yeast going and I can add another batch to the kegerator!

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“The government will fall that raises the price of beer” – Czech Saying

Tap #3 of 4

Time for the next beer to go on tap!!  About 3 weeks ago I moved the Belgian Wit into the secondary fermenter and am now ready to move to the keg.  My plan is to add about half of the priming sugar and force carbonate with about half the pressure that is shown on all the carbonation charts.  This was also my first pure extract brew, and I have to say, the wort production part of the process went very well.  I did not have any problems and would recommend extract brewing going forward. 

Using the kegs is still a work in process, but the two that are on tap are still coming through and tasting fine, so I am a happy man!  Should have an update and pictures in about a week of all 3 beer that will be on tap.  Until then, happy drinking!

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“I drink to make other people interesting” – George Jean Nathan

ITS ALIVE!!!

After many trips to Lowes and Home Depot, boxes upon boxes being delivered, returned, and redelivered to the house, and actually brewing the beer, the kegerator is finally complete!  Par for the course however, turning on the freezer would not go as smoothly as it probably should have….

I finally received my refurbished kegs in the mail and with a batch hanging out in a keg already and another in the carboy I was ready to get rolling.  I took a good amount of time cleaning the “new” kegs to remove whatever the hell had been in there before, sanitized a few times, and then ran the solution through all the kegerator tubing to make sure everything was good and clean.  I moved my lager from the older keg it was sitting in to a freshly sanitized one, pressurized, and threw it into the freezer.  Next up was the oatmeal stout which followed the same process but from the carboy.  At this point things are looking good and it’s time to turn on the freezer and get me some cold beer!  I plugged in the freezer and temperature monitor, grabbed a celebratory beer from the fridge, and went to bed. 

The next day after getting home from work I went to check on my baby and was hit with a blast of cold air that felt a lot colder than 40 F.  After a quick analysis of the situation I could see the light bulb appear above my head as I realized that just because the freezer and the temperature controller are plugged in, they will not work together if they are not plugged into EACHOTHER!  So now with lines frozen full of beer/sanitization liquid, and two kegs of frozen beer I started to get concerned.  I turned off the freezer, took the kegs out to them them come back up to temp and had a beer to help me wallow in my many mistakes.

Over the next few days everything came back to normal and the kreezer is working perfectly.  The only problem is that I am having a lot of trouble carbonating the beer.  Weeks prior I had put the priming sugar into the keg with the lager and was under the impression that should take care of the carbonation.  I think because it was not kept cold during this time the priming sugar could not really do its job.  With the stout I had a small mishap with the priming sugar and was only able to add about 1/4 of the bag.  Knowing this I used the following chart http://www.kegerators.com/carbonation-table.php to determine what PSI I should set these two beer at, continued to move them around so the beer was fully saturated with CO2, and set them to sit for a few days. 

Yesterday I grew impatient of waiting and poured a sample of each beer.  They were both carbonated and free flowing from the kegs!!  The lager was surprisingly good with a little more hoppiness than I expected.  The stout was a little sweeter than I typically like with some hits of chocolate, but overall a good beer.  To fill up the rest of the spots we have a Belgian Wit and an Octoberfest in the works.  More on those to come, but for how its time to celebrate the completed project!!

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“Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.” – Dave Barry

Saturday Brewing

With a free weekend and nothing more I can do on the kegerator until more packages arrive next week I decided to bottle up the lager that I have in secondary fermentation and brew up an oatmeal stout.  I went with the bottling first to which end I sanitized everything in site, cleaned out the keg a couple of times and put in the beer.  As this was my first time using a keg I read later that I probably should of done some more extensive sanitizing including sending some of the solution through all the tubes and valves, but I plan on remedying that by cleaning all of that equipment on another keg before attaching to the one with the beer.  We will see how it works!

The oatmeal stout was next.  As I have said, I am not an incredibly experienced brewer, and have only used the ingredient kits up to this point.  This is the first one where I had to do a little more extensive mashing and actually steep the grains for about 45/50 minutes to convert some of the starches to sugars.  Because temperature was more important than other batches I made I took some wood shims and a small clamp and attached my thermometer to the side of the brew pot without it touching the sides.  This allowed me to keep a very good eye on the temp for the 45 minutes with an attempt to keep it between 160 and 162 F.   I think this went pretty well and I ended up with a very nice looking wort.  After that the steps are pretty straight forward and I added the malt, then hops, and with only one over boil got through the hour boil.  

Cooling the wort continues to be my biggest challenge as I do not own a wort cooler and it seems to take FOREVER to reduce a boiling liquid down to 70 F.  I think part of the problem is my brew pot being too think and really holding the heat in more than some other pots.  My attempt this time was to first cool the pot in a sink full of ice water, then put it down in the lager fridge so continue to cool.  This worked pretty well and after a while I was at the right temp so I moved the wort to the fermenter, added the yeast and threw the top on. 

On Tuesday I checked my progress and things are going okay.  I noticed that there were not many bubbles coming out of the air lock, and unfortunately the seal is not fully on.  I had to go to work, but plan on replacing the lid when I get home.  Hopefully the oxygen that will get into the beer during the switch will not harm the beer, but I think that a one time exposure will be better than continuous exposure through this seal gap.  Always an adventure!!

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“I fear the man who drinks water and so remembers this morning what the rest of us said last night” – Ancient Greek proverb

Kegerator Days 4 – A Tuesday

The rest of my goodies arrived in the mail on Tuesday and when I got home from work I went directly into the basement to put together what I could.  In my handful of packages was the 4 way CO2 distributor which I attached to the inside of the collar above where the CO2 canister will sit and attached all of the CO2 lines.  I also used larger conduit clamps to keep all of the lines in place along the sides of the freezer. 

At this point I believe I am pretty much ready to start using this bad boy.  All I need to do is procure some corny kegs and turn the freezer on.  Along those lines I also received and “installed” (hung on the outside of the freezer) the temperature controller which will hang on the inside of the freezer when it is on and keep us in the correct temp range.  I am waiting for final installation of this until after I have all of the kegs in place so I can be sure the placement will not be touching any of them.  I am also waiting on the kegs to cut the beer and CO2 lines to the proper size so I can eliminate extra tubing and keep everything as clean as possible. 

So until I find the cheapest place to get some kegs, and finish some beer to put in them I am in a holding pattern waiting on the tap handle thread insert and kegs so I can finish everything up and get to drinking!!

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“The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind”  - Humphrey Bogart

Kegerator Day 4 – A Monday

After taking the weekend off to visit family and friends at "the cabin" we got back Sunday night to 2 of the 3 boxes I was expecting.  With almost everything in place I figured I could at least finish off the taps, put the lid on, and organize all the lines.  After a quick stop at Home Depot on my way home to pick up some conduit clamps to hold the tubing in place along the sides of the freezer, and a rubber mat ($20 for black rather than terra cotta) for the bottom.   When I got home I started in on the taps by first installing the newly arrived faucets and shanks.  Even though it was an easy way to start my confidence was high as I moved on to putting together the tap handles.  I found the correct size drill bit and in the center of each chalkboard made myself a nice little pilot hole.  Each chalkboard went onto the handle straight and look great!  I am pumped and ready to put these guys on. 

If you remember from the previous post, Jackie and I ran into a few issues when we had to glue some nuts together in order to screw the tap handles into the faucets.  These were put to the test and utterly failed…The nuts in the two that were glued on with gorilla glue simply would not screw on, and the ones without gorilla glue came completely out of the handle.  While disappointed I was not surprised and already had another solution in mind.  When looking through a Williams brewing catalog that came with my drip tray I found the piece that I actually should of bought from the very start.  A tap handle thread insert, which according to the site, will allow me to “Turn almost anything made out of wood into a tap handle!”  This is of course what I am trying to do, so later that night I made my purchase, along with some beer ingredients, and will pick this project up later in the week. 

Thankfully there was still more to do so day 4 was not a complete failure.  I managed to successfully attach the freezer lid with very little trouble and then moved on to gluing the conduit clamps to the sides so I can run my lines in a nice orderly way.  This also went very well and now that Jackie was home we took on the final project, gluing small but surprisingly powerful magnets to the back of the drip tray.  With only a few broken magnets from them flying at one another we managed to get almost all 50 glued on.  They, along with the conduit clamps are drying and we will pick this up tomorrow. 

Pictures of the magnets glued onto the drip tray, the installed taps minus the handles, and a complete handle waiting for a thread insert.

  

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“When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to heaven. Sooooo, let's all get drunk and go to heaven!” – Brian O’Rourke