Brewer's Friend Home Brewing Software

Hops Harvest Update

It is time again to pick home grown hops. What a fun experience. The smell is just heavenly. In fact, I’m sure they have a section in heaven devoted to hops…

So far, the only vine ready to pick was Nugget.  We got 2.35 dried ounces out it.  That seems like a small amount compared to some sources that say you can get pounds of hops per vine. I’m not dissapointed, but I do plan to make some adjustments next year and see if I can increase the yield.

I did not use fertilizer, besides a shovel of steer manure in the spring on top of each crown.  I know I could have done better on watering. The hops and the garden both suffered through a few dry spells, which I’m sure reduced the yield.  Next year I plan to run a soaker hose hooked up to a timer so they get watered every morning – thanks to my friend Brian for pointing that one out!

The Nugget vine grew heathily, and was about 11 feet tall. It actually tried to climb up the roof but couldn’t hang on to the flashing.

This metal window screen set on top of my brew wagon makes a great drying rack.

The two Hallertauer vines should yield 3-4 ounces combined.  This year I decided against pruning and let it go wild at the base.  Last year was a poor growing year and I wanted to give the hops a chance to really establish a strong healthy root system. These should be ready to pick in a couple days.

Sadly the Cascade vine was infected with Spider Mites. Spraying the leaves with a solution of water and isopropyl alcohol every 3 days for about two weeks seemed to get rid of them.  However, there are not many Cascade cones this year.  BrewersFriend will post more about Spider Mites next spring.

Make sure to check out other articles in the Hops Growing category!

Posted in Hops Growing | 1 Comment »

Wine Making Overview

If you are into making wine, and live in a northern climate, now is the time to start lining up your local grapes. Grapes all over Oregon and Washington will ripen in the next 4-6 weeks. Check local message boards, your local home brew store, or craig’s list. I have found my local wine maker’s club is the best source for group purchases.

Last year I made an Oregon Pinot Noir that turned out really good. This year I’m going to try for Oregon Pinot Noir again, and Tempranillo a red Spanish grape.

About Wine Grapes:

All wine grapes have clear juice. White wine is crushed and pressed before fermentation. Red wines however are crushed, but fermented on the skin. Breaking the skin releases the tannin’s and imparts the red color and more robust flavors.

How making red wine is different from making beer:

1. Wine grapes can’t be stored effectively like grain. Wine makers get essentially one shot per season. Kits are an alternative, but don’t provide the same aroma since they are pasteurized. Personally I skipped them and went straight to fresh local grapes. The key to a good wine is fresh high quality grapes.

2. The grapes need to be picked, crushed, and brought home. $1/pound is a good starting price. Last year, these two buckets were enough to hold 115 pounds of crushed grapes. This resulted in 41 bottles, about 8 gallons of finished wine.

3. Unlike brewing beer, with wine there is no boil. What goes into the fermenter is not sanitized. This includes an unavoidable bit of mold, dead spiders, the odd rotten grape, wild yeasts, etc. You do your best not to get those in there, but it happens. The next step takes care of this.

4. A sulfite solution is added to the crushed grapes (more properly called ‘must’) to kill off unwanted microbes. This sits for 24 hours, and then the yeast is pitched. Some wine makers do a cold soak for a number of days before pitching to try to extract more flavor.

5. Yeast selection is key, in researching Pinot Noir, I selected Assmanshauser and had great results.

6. Primary fermentation is done ‘open air’. A large bin makes a good fermentor. To keep bugs out I put a towel over the bin. The board keeps the towel in place.

7. Temperature control during fermentation is important. The fermentor is outfitted with a heating strip to keep it in range. I was shooting for 85F. I probably exceeded that, since fermentation generates a lot of heat. Ideally you want a temperature controller with the probe stuck in the middle of the fermenter. Every wine maker has a different practice. Some wine makers go for a slower fermentation to soak up more flavors.

8. As the must ferments, it forms a crown that must be punched down twice a day. Oxygen is beneficial at this stage.

9. For red wine, after primary fermentation is done, the grapes are pressed, and the young wine is transferred to the secondary. Some wine makers go for an extended maturation, which allows more of the tannins to soak into the wine before pressing. For Pinot Noir, without an extended maturation, the wine will be fruity and light, but not as robust.

10. It takes a long time, minimum 6 months, maximum 2-3 years before your wine will be ready. Full bodied reds take the longest. My wine was drinkable in 7 months, but I should have let it sit another couple of months in the carboy.

11. Control of acid levels and sulfites is critical to good wine making. Test kits are expensive. The ability to interpret the test results and adjust the wine is what true mastery in wine making is all about. Many books have been written on this subject and it can take many years to get good. Wine makers are also a bit like cats and have their own way of doing things. Since I am new to it, I take a hands off approach and let the process happen naturally. Perhaps I was just lucky on the first try, but I think I had excellent grapes and made a good yeast selection.

12. An inoculation of Malolatic yeast is recommended for some wines to smooth out the flavor. Nature may take care of this for you too, perhaps after the wine has been bottled! Malo releases CO2, as you can see in this image:

13. The wine is racked several times. The carboys need to be topped off with a similar wine, since head space is very bad for aging wine. As the wine ages, the sulfite level drops. To protect the wine from spoiling, a sulfite level around 60 ppm is recommended, and needs to be maintained. Be careful though, over sulfited wine will be terrible.

14. Barrels can be used instead of carboys. I see this as an advanced practice. Barrels are expensive. You have to really know what you are doing for a barrel to add value to the wine. To me, over oaked wine tastes terrible.

There are important differences when it comes to making white wine, but I have not tried that.

For more information:
https://www.brewersfriend.com/2010/10/16/a-beer-brewer-tries-making-wine/
https://www.brewersfriend.com/2011/07/09/basket-press-for-fruit-based-brews/

Posted in Wine | No Comments »

Growler – The Perfect Gift

My friend got me a growler of Deschutes beer for my birthday. What a great gift! It came full of cold, delicious beer. The best part is, the growler is mine too. After we drank our way through several home brews, we finished off the growler among three of us.

I have had my eye on this particular growler for awhile. The design really stands out from the rest. It appears to be made in Germany too. They are not cheap. As of September, 2011, at the Portland Deschutes location, it is $26 for growler, and $14 to fill it. I hear it used to be a lot cheaper to fill them.

Be careful if you want to bring in your own growler. My research indicates some breweries will only fill growlers with their name on them. It sounds like Oregon is more lax than California on this issue.

This growler holds 2 liters, which comes out to a little over 67 ounces. Most growlers are 64 ounces. It is a very high quality growler with a nice decorative handle.

I really like the porcelain lid, it seals down nice and tight. I’ll be choosing this growler first when I show up at parties with home brew.

Posted in Equipment | 4 Comments »

Brew Shed Complete and Brewing

The brew shed is looking good in time for the rains to return. It is a relief to have it done (at least on the outside). All it needs is interior trim. Slowly but surely all the equipment is migrating out there.

The best part is the brewery is now operational. The first brew was an American Hefeweizen and it went great! The beer was drinkable in a week. It is already on draft and quenching my thirst. It’s true – a cool glass of hefe comes in real handy after painting all afternoon.

My brew rig is presently a gravity fed electric setup. The main reason I made the push to go electric is the hazard of using propane indoors. It wasn’t cheap to go electric, nor was it without a few minor headaches. However, the team at HighGravityBrew.com is just awesome. They have all the parts you need worked out in advance. I highly recommend their products.

In the next few posts I will cover how to ‘go eletric’ and what it involved. I have to say I love it. Electric brewing is so quiet. It heats up fast (+4 degrees Farenheight per minute with about 8 gallons). Scorching is a myth – at least with the low density stainless steel element I got.  That light batch of Hefe was done in part to test for scroching – there was none whatsoever. I did have to modify my immersion chiller so it didn’t crush the element.

I hope this inspires you to do your shed too. Total cost $8200.

Plans for the future:

• RELAX!!!!
• Finish up brew stand, add trim to front.
• Fermentation chamber. I can build one of these for about $225. Next year…
• Hops trellis on the front. Next year…

My advice to fellow brewers:

1. Make at least two batches of thirst quenching beer BEFORE you start a shed. That way you have something to enjoy after working all day.
2. Take the time to make the brewery functional and look cool. A brew shed is a once in a lifetime project for most people. The galvanized panels in my shed were hard to work with but the results were well worth it. I love the reflective look. It should last a long time. I wish I would have thought ahead about the wiring layout though. I had to work around where the electrician put one of the switches. It worked out fine but it would have made life easier had I drawn out everything.
3. Invest in ventilation. Commercial vent hoods are really expensive ($600+). You will need a good one in order to vent all the steam out of the brewery during the boil. A kitchen hood is not powerful enough. Thankfully, my loft doubles as a vent hood. The intake is a dust collector attachment from a wood working catalog. The fan I went with is the Can Max Fan Mixed Flow Inline Fan (6-Inch 334 Cubic Feet Per Minute). It is quiter than the poplar 6″ Vortex fan, and has a built in 3 speed switch.
4. Go electric for indoor brewing. Don’t even think about it, just do it. Yes it is a luxury, but it is night and day over propane. It is more energy efficient and safer (if wired correctly). HighGravityBrew.com is the place to go for parts. Porpane + indoors = recipe for Darwin award. I used to do it in my garage with the bay door open. Reading up about propane accidents scared the crap out of me and my wife (this helped justify the purchase too).

Posted in Equipment, Fun | 12 Comments »

Stone Brewing Tour in Escondido

We had a chance to visit Stone Brewing in southern California last month. It is a blast, I highly recommend it. After the brewery tour, they give you a predetermined ‘flight’ of their four main beers. Tours are every two hours most days. We went on a Tuesday and it was full but not too busy. Their main website: https://www.stonebrew.com/

The exterior is very nondescript. There is no signage. When you see ‘growler fill parking only’, you know you are in the right place.

I do think their beer quality has slipped some. I noticed some harshness in the Arrogant Bastard, not as smooth as I remember – but still a flavorful bitter beer. Their IPA is very good as people often say. I think the batch we were sampling from in the tap room was a little green. The pale ale was over mineralized and tasted chalky. Still, tastier than many batches of home brew I have made.

Their location also features an upscale bar and bistro.

It is not a typical burger and a beer joint. If you come with an appetite be prepared to pay. There are a few exotic things on the menu, like Duck Tacos, which we avoided. You can get a Buffalo burger for $16.50. The food was good, prepared with care, and the service was excellent.

The garden area out back is great for relaxing while waiting for the tour to start. I took a short nap back there after drinking an Arrogant Bastard and having the sausage and potato dish. Yes!

The Brewery Tour:

They do approximately 10,000 pound grain bills for their batches. That is about 1000 times a typical home brew recipe, so they must be doing 5000 gallon batches.

The tour guide said a typical fermentor holds enough beer for a single person to drink a six pack everyday for the next 60 years. I think he said it was a 500 barrel fermentor. A single beer barrel in the US is 31 gallons. That means there are 128 x 31 = 3698 ounces in a barrel. Checking the math: 60 years * 365 (days / year) * 72 ounces / day = 1,576,800 ounces. Divide that by 128 and we get 12,319 gallons. Divide that by 31, and we get 397 barrels, so yeah it is about right. So by that logic each man needs about 1.5M ounces of beer in his lifetime. Honestly, drinking a six pack per day would probably be enough to kill me in a few months. I’ll stick to moderation thank you very much, Stone Brewing tour guide.

They are using American and New Zealand hops from the boxes in the hop storage area – damn that smells good in there! The water supply is via Rincon, which is essentially from San Diego County which is fed from a combination of the Colorado and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. That is a long way to move that water. They carbon filter it several times then re-add brewing salts.

I love this see through pipe that shows the color of the brew being made:

The place is huge, all under one warehouse style roof. Sort of like being in heaven:

Their main website:
https://www.stonebrew.com/

The Bistro:
https://www.stoneworldbistro.com

Posted in Fun | No Comments »

Aeration Practices Simplified

In the interests of simplifying the brewing process I no longer aerate with an oxygen tank and stone! This saves the trouble of sanitizing the tube and stone each brew day. There is no worry of running out of oxygen, or keeping a second tank on hand. My tube is impossible to clean thoroughly because the stone is fused to the tube and water will not run through it.

(O2 tank is no longer needed!)

(Hose and regulator are no longer needed!)

The way I aerate is so simple it seems lazy. Just splash around the wort as it drains into the fermenter. The procedure is to occasionally shake the bucket or carboy as it is draining to build up a nice frothy head. It reminds me of early extract brewing days. Some people sanitize a large spoon and stir up the wort. Some people rock the carboy back and forth, I find that takes extra effort though.

In the future I plan to rig up a splash manifold at the end of the drain hose. It would be suspended above the wort level in the fermenter and cause the wort pouring in to go all over the place. Stay tuned for a future article on that. It should be a pretty cool looking gadget and cost next to nothing.

I am an all grain brewer, so aeration is especially important because of the full wort boil (which drives off oxygen). The last four batches I brewed have been aerated with the new lazy approach. I have noticed zero problems with fermentation time, attenuation, and flavor. Aeration in home brewing is over emphasized by some sources. There is at least one experiment showing it is okay to be “lazy” about it. The following test indicated little if any improvement with using an aeration system, vs shaking:

Link: Aeration Experiment Including Time Lapse Video of the Sample Fermentations

For a commercial brewery, monitoring exact levels of oxygen in the wort is important for quality control. Personally, I am not going to loose sleep over O2 levels in my brewing. This information will hopefully save some readers the $50 it costs for a basic aeration system, if not more in time and hassles.

Posted in Brewing | 10 Comments »

Basket Press for Fruit Based Brews

Fermenting crushed berries, grapes, and fruits can be a fun diversion from making beer. Home brewers who make beer already have all the equipment, except for a basket press. I tasted an amazing pear, blueberry, raspberry cider at a home brew club meeting last year. This inspired me to get more into fruity meads and wine. I tired making wine last fall. It is now in the bottle and going fast. It was totally worth it! Apples, Cherries, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, apricots, peaches… the list goes on, could all be experimented with.

The Basket Press:

Once again, you will need a new piece of equipment to make this work. I looked into the Do-It-Yourself solutions. A good basket press would take a lot of time to build, more time than I wanted to spend. Personally, I decided to buy a professionally made press. The pressure from the screw, alignment, and reliability were reasons I decided not to build my own. A small size is perfect for the small amounts I am working with.

(Action shot of the wine press.)

When shopping for a basket press, check out the Yakima Press Company.

Yakima Press Company sells high quality basket presses. If you are interested in pressing more than a few gallons, you will probably want a bigger press. All their products are 100% made in the USA.

Outline of the process to make Fruit Wine, Hard Cider, Sweet Mead:

1. Pick and wash your fruit. Get good quality fruit, it will shine through in the end result! Wine grapes are normally not washed, as it is too time consuming, and not necessary due to addition of sulfites later on. You’ll need a lot of fruit to get 1 gallon of juice. For example, with apples one bushel is about 42 pounds, and gives 2-3 gallons of juice. You can top this off with water and add sugar or honey to compensate. You don’t have to go with 100% juice to get a good result.

2. Crush the fruit to release the juices. Wine grapes are done with a de-stemmer / crusher. Raspberries and blueberries can be done easily by hand. Fruits like apples and pears can be chopped and then put through a food processor.

3. Run fruit through basket press. The harder you press, the more tannins and other harsh flavors will come through. I sampled for flavor as the crush went just to tell where I was at. When it gets hard to turn the press, that’s probably a good sign it is time to stop. Beware, this step is sticky and messy but tastes good.

Note: Red wine is an exception. With red wine pressing comes after fermentation, as the skins are what give red wine its color.

4. Add 1 campden tablet per gallon of juice. Let sit for 24 hours. This step kills off all the wild yeasts and other bad guys and creates a stable environment for the brewing yeast to take off.

Campden is the same thing as  potassium or sodium metabisulfite. An equivalent solution can be created on your own (1 campden table in 1 gallon of water gives 67 ppm sulfur dioxide). Be careful not to over sulfite the batch!

Note: Again with wine from grapes the story is a little different. Sulfites are added right after the crush, targeting 60 ppm.

5. Measure gravity and volume. At this point, adjust with water and sugar or honey as desired so your target volume and alcohol level will be reached. This is going to vary widely depending on the recipe.

6. Transfer to carboy and pitch yeast. Yeast nutrient is a good idea. Dry mead yeast is very dry and will strip out all the sweetness. I’d recommend a sweet mead yeast on the first go.

7. Rack after primary fermentation is complete – could take up to a month. Expect to get a lot of trub, aka lees on the bottom of the carboy. Top off secondary with water or last year’s product. You may want to add more sulfites at this point to protect your new brew. The sulfites that were originally added are pretty much eliminated during primary fermentation.

8. Rack again and repeat every week or so until desired clarity is reached.

9. Bottle and age as desired.

10. Enjoy!

Posted in Equipment, Wine | No Comments »

Brew Shed Update

The shed is taking its final shape. The roof is on, skylight is in, and gutters installed. The electrical is in and the inspection passed!

The paint job is just primer right now. It was all done by hand with rollers or by brush so it soaked in good. I was told by a friend who is a home inspector that spraying paint on T-111 will cause problems later. I plan to paint the trim brown for an exposed timber look. Painting T-111 is hard work, especially in the grooves. It took 4 gallons to get two coats of primer on the entire shed.

The entire shed is insulated. Before I insulated, I air sealed all the seams with caulk. For larger gaps I used expanding foam. I am working on getting the metal panels in place for the brewery section under the loft. I’m not that happy with how the corrugated panels line up at the seams. I might go with tile, or even metal tile, but that gets expensive fast.

The loft is good for storage and also forms a natural vent hood. The opening for the intake on the exhaust fan is visible on the left.  I looked into the expensive stainless steel kitchen hoods. Damn those things are spendy (minimum $600). This is an experiment on my part but I think it will work out fine.

The electrical panel has some spare circuit breakers and plenty of juice. I went with a 50 amp service installed by a professional signing electrician. To save money, I dug the trench and crawled under the house to run the wire. With 50 amps there is room for electric brewing in the future. To make it even easier when that time comes, I ran a wire inside the wall of the shed. If I ever want to switch to electric, all I need to do is buy a breaker and outlet.  My kettle and HLT will need adjustments too. That project will likely take 12 trips to the hardware store. I’m waiting on that adventure for now.

Next steps:

• Sheet rock.
• Exhaust fan.
• Finish metal section for brewery.
• Brew!
• Then deal with all the little cosmetic details like interior paint and a nice trellis for the hops.

I’ll warn you, this project may look cool, but it has been a lot of work. It gets complex and expensive. So far I am in about $7,000. There is a lot of over head work up on ladders. I have skinned my knuckles many times, and cussed out loud many more. My beer supply is dwindling as I have not had time to brew. My wife has been just great about the whole thing and has helped on many sections. Without her I could not have done this.

I will be glad when this is completed and I can brew again!

Posted in Equipment, Fun | 6 Comments »

Alcohol By Volume Calculator Updated

The Brewer’s Friend ABV Calculator was just updated to include not one, but now two formulas for calculating ABV.  There are two popular formulas out there for calculating ABV.  You can pick the one you prefer for use in your brewing notes.   If you don’t like math, or don’t care that much, just stick with the basic formula. If you are super into math, and want to use the advanced formula (which is supposedly more accurate for high gravity beers), then the alternate equation is now there for you.

Standard Formula:

Most brewing sites use this basic formula:

ABV = (og – fg) * 131.25

This equation was created before the computer age.  It is easy to do by hand, and over time became the accepted formula for home brewers!

Variations on this equation which report within tenths of each other come from The Joy of Homebrewing Method by Charlie Papazian, Bee Lee’s Method, Beer Advocate Method. Some variations use 131 instead of 131.25. The resulting difference is pretty minor.

Alternate Formula:

A more complex equation which attempts to provide greater accuracy at higher gravities is:

ABV =(76.08 * (og-fg) / (1.775-og)) * (fg / 0.794)

The alternate equation reports a higher ABV for higher gravity beers. This equation is just a different take on it. Scientists rarely agree when it comes to equations. There will probably be another equation for ABV down the road.

The complex formula, and variations on it come from Ritchie Products Ltd, (Zymurgy, Summer 1995, vol. 18, no. 2) -Michael L. Hall’s article Brew by the Numbers: Add Up What’s in Your Beer, and Designing Great Beers by Daniels.

Why don’t calculators all agree?

1. The relationship between the change in gravity, and the change in ABV is not linear. All these equations are approximations.
2. Some calculators round internally as they go. The Brewer’s Friend calculator rounds only at the very end, which means significant digits are kept along the way (making it more true to the equation).
3. Other online calculators should be close to one of the two equations reported by the Brewer’s Friend ABV Calculator. If not, they are doing their own thing which warrants inquiry.

What equation should I use?

Your home brewing friends probably use the basic equation. If you don’t like math, go with the basic equation.

If you are a really tech heavy brewer, and want to brew a lot of high gravity beers, or prefer Daniels over Papazian, use the advanced equation.

Either way, they are close for beers below 6% ABV.   The difference does get larger as the gravity increases.   For a brew with OG 1.092, and an FG of 1.021, the standard equation reports an ABV of 9.32%, while the alternate equation reports 10.17%, that’s a difference of 0.85%.  At that alcohol level, after a few beers, maybe it doesn’t matter so much… hehe ;)

Prost!

Legal Disclaimer: The Brewer’s Friend ABV calculator is for entertainment purposes and should not be used for professional brewing. No warranty or guarantee of accuracy is provided on the information provided by this calculator.

Posted in Brewing | 12 Comments »

Beer Wagon Deployed

The latest do it yourself (DIY) home brew project is complete! This is nowhere near as cool as my shed, but it does help save the back when it comes to brewing.

While my brew shed is underway I brew in the garage and ferment in the spare bedroom. This means I have to lug a full carboy up and down the hall. Carrying a full carboy sucks. I use carboy straps to help make it easier but it is a pretty long way. I built this beer wagon to make life easier.

The wagon measures 16.5” x 16.5”, 11.5” tall. That is plenty of room for a 6.5 gallon carboy. I used a 16”x16” 3/4” plywood base and some scrap wood I had left over for the rails. The white wood is aspen, 1/4” thick. The vertical supports are 1.25” wide. The horizontal rails are 2.25” wide. The trim is walnut and mahogany same dimensions. Any hard wood will do.

For mobility and load capacity it has 3” casters. Wheels are fixed in the back, and swiveled in the front for steering. A gallon of water weighs 8.35 pounds, so figure if you want to move seven gallons plus the carboy you need to be able to support 65 pounds. Most 3” casters support over 100 pounds easily.

Posted in Equipment | 2 Comments »