Black IPA

posted by Jon

I woke up on Tuesday morning to find a healthy bubbling in the yeast starter, so brewing day was moved up 24 hours. The brewers of batch #1: Jon, Ryan and Steve.

Time line for beer geeks:

7:06  2 gal water started

7:31  Water at 155, started steeping grains (1 lb American Munich, 1/2 lb De-bittered Black, 1/2 lb CaraMunich, 1/2 lb CaraPils)

8:07  Grains sparged with 1/2 gal hot water

8:13  10 lbs light LME added

8:47  Rolling boil, hops added (1/2 oz Summit, 2 oz Willamette)

9:02  1/2 oz Simcoe added

9:17  1/2 oz Simcoe added

9:32  1/2 oz Amarillo, 1 tsp irish moss and 1/2 tsp yeast nutrient added

9:37  Servomyces (yeast nutrient) added

9:47  Flameout. 1/2 oz Summit, 1/2 oz Amarillo and 1/2 oz Simcoe added

10:05  Chilling wort

11:08  Yeast pitched @ 75

The gravity reading after pitching yeast was 1.072. We were hoping for an OG of 1.082. This means that if we achieve the intended FG, we will be right around 7% ABV. Not too bad. Also, the IBU will be close to 100, maybe just a bit under. This is going to be one hoppy beer. We will be dry-hopping the secondary with 1 oz Amarillo and 1/2 oz Simcoe.

Those of you who missed this occasion missed out on some tasty beverages.

You also missed out on Steve having some major battery/wiring issues on his preferred method of transportation.

It took Steve about 15 minutes to get from the driveway to the end of the block. As far as we know, he still hasn't arrived home. If any of you see him between Zeeland and Jenison, please give him a ride home.

Beer was bubbling in the fermenter quite well on Wednesday morning. The bubbling was loud and rapid enough that Kendra was afraid to go into the fermenting room (the rest of the family calls it the bathroom) by herself. Look for this one to be drinkable around the end of October.

Preparations

posted by Jon

The ingredients for batch #1 arrived on Friday:

Clockwise from top right we have liquid malt extract (plastic jugs), hop pellets, grains for steeping and dry malt extract (plastic bag hiding under grains).

The plan is to brew our IPA this coming Wednesday. One of the most helpful steps in brewing a tasty beer is using a yeast starter. I will run you all through the process of why and how this is done.

First, the "why".

The step in the brewing process that is probably the most important is the step that hardly anything is done to the beer. It is the period of time between when the beer is taken off the stove and when the yeast is "pitched". When this cooling process starts, the wort (beer before the yeast is added) is usually over 150 degrees. Yeast is a picky little guy that works best about 70 degrees and will be killed if the temperature gets too high. Yeast is usually pitched in a beer at 75 to 80 degrees. While the wort is cooling it is quite susceptible to other things (bacteria and such) floating around in the air that are looking for a nice warm spot to land where they can eat and reproduce. The longer a wort takes to cool, the more time these bad guys have to jump into the wort and start reproducing. Because of this you want to cool the wort as quickly as possible.

The yeast starter brings the big guns. By the time you pitch your yeast, some stuff has already more than likely landed in the wort. If you've got 5 gallons of wort, that's enough food for bad strains to coexist with the good yeast for a while. The longer the bad stuff has, the worse your beer is going to taste. Enter: Yeast Starter. A yeast starter is essentially a small batch of beer, between 1 pint and 2 quarts. When the yeast is added to the starter it has a chance to reproduce like crazy without competition. After 48 hours or so, the amount of yeast in your starter has increased exponentially. Once the wort is cooled and a few of our bad strains of junk has had a chance to get in there, instead of adding a little bit of yeast, we have a whole army of yeast, ready to devour any sugars and reproduce even more. Our bad little beasties never had a chance.

Now, the "how".

The first thing we do is make our little batch of beer. I'm using 1 quart of water and 1 cup of dry malt extract (DME). The DME is the fermentable sugar that the yeast is going to eat and turn into alcohol.

We let the starter boil for 10 minutes and then let it cool. I put the sauce pan in an ice water bath to cool it off as quickly as possible. Once it has cooled to 70/80 degrees I pour it into a growler and shake it vigorously (yeast likes oxygen).

The yeast we are using is yeast that was harvested from another batch of beer. It has been in a canning jar sitting in my fridge for a couple of months. I took it out earlier to get it to room temperature. The yeast is poured into the growler and our starter is done.

By Wednesday the airlock on top of the growler will be bubbling like crazy as the yeast starts to eat the sugars and release carbon dioxide.

Hope you enjoyed your lesson on yeast starters. Look for a new post on Thursday with a play by play of the brewing of our IPA.

The First Beer is Ordered

posted by Jon

An order was placed last night for the ingredients to make our first batch of club beer.

Originally the first batch was going to be an imperial pumpkin ale. After extensive research, we have decided to push the pumpkin off for a month. We want to use fresh pumpkin for our beer (rather than canned) and it is recommended that ripe or almost overripe pumpkin be used when brewing with it. These should be a bit easier to find a month or so from now, so look for the imperial pumpkin to be our October batch.

We then decided that a stout was the way to go. With our recent success of a Founder's Breakfast Stout clone, we thought we could just do that recipe again. At the last minute, we shifted gears again.

Our first beer will be a Black IPA. We tried a Mad Hatter clone last winter that turned out quite tasty. We will be doing a variation of the same recipe with two changes. First, we will use Simcoe, Summit and Amarillo hops instead of the Centennial and Columbus that we used for the Hatter. These three varieties are the same that Founder's Double Trouble is brewed with. Secondly we will be using a half pound of de-bittered black malt. This beer will taste like an IPA but look like a stout. Why? Because we can.

The next exciting announcement is that there will be a field trip some time in September for all Beer Club members. We will head to Siciliano's to pick up a new 6.5 gallon plastic fermenter tub. We will probably end up leaving with a few extra purchases as well, including this. After leaving Siciliano's we will sup at Buffalo Wild Wings before parting ways. Any Beer Club members are invited to come along. More details as they become available.

Finally, some reading for you all. Enjoy.