It's an IPA kind of Day!

I started brewing beer with my boyfriend, Toby, about a year ago. Since then we have brewed 4 beers just the two of us and 4 in collaboration with our friend Greg. I have always played the role of the helper or collaborator during these 8 brews, well that is all about to change. For the most resent beer that Toby and I have worked on I became the leader. I created the recipe and drove the ship to brew "3 Time Oscar Winning Daniel Day Lewis IPA" or "Day IPA" for short.

I chose to make an IPA because about 6 months ago I finally  found appreciation for IPA's and can now drink IPA's with IBU's about 100. For my first year or so in my beer journey I detested IPA's, I hated how "hoppy" they were and I didn't care too much for the "let's compete on how much hops we can handle" mentality of IPA's. My first IPA that I ordered and finished all by myself was indeed Dogfish Heads 120 minute IPA. This beer was so sweet and warmed my mouth in areas that I forgot existed. If it was not for a beer this delectable I would still be close-minded and standoffish towards IPAs. 

Now back to my beer, I could have gone the "let's clone 120 minute" route but we already did that with Greg. Instead, I did some research. My research started about a month ago in a pub when Toby and I were talking about beer. I decided then that I would brew an IPA and from there I drank mainly IPAs so that I could taste the varying flavors of an IPA. We also received The Brewing Bible from a friend as a going away gift and I used the recipes in there to help inspire mine. I found a particular one called Colonial IPA and then just started reading about hops and malts. 

Now I developed my recipe I knew I wanted it to have a reddish color with some grassy/pine notes to it, also I wanted to dry hop it. Here is my recipe:

8lb of DME (extra light)

8oz Crisp Caramalt 15

8oz Dingemans Biscuit Malt

2 oz Chinook hop pellets

2 oz Styrian Goldings ho pellets

1 oz gypsum

1 teaspoon Irish moss

Wyeast 1098

Another first for this beer was that I had to make my very first yeast starter. That was really fun actually because I enjoyed getting to shake around the jar of yeast and see how many more of my baby yeasties I could grow up. 

This beer is rather simple compared to our others. It was only a 45 minute boil, no continuous hopping and not very many additions to the boil. However we did have our first boil over ever. It was pretty crazy how it happened. We had the rolling boil with a layer of foam on top. Toby was holding the stock pot off of the heat but in the air above and asked me to stir some of the foam off. It happened so fast, the instant the wooden spoon hit the liquid the boil over began. We moved the pot far from the heat and luckily only lost a little bit of liquid. However, it was a bitch to clean up. It probably was not the brightest idea to try to stir the foam but we learned our lesson and now know how hard it is to clean wart off of our ceramic stove tops. 

The rest of the boil went smoothly. We have found the best way to chill our beer is to create an ice bath in the sink and place the stock pot in the water. We got it down to 98 degrees within 10 minutes and that's when I decided to start aerating/straining the beer. The first time through the strainer got the majority of the hops since there was only 3 oz it wasn't so bad. The next two times went smooth and by adding 3 more gallons of cold water we got the temp down to 68 degrees at 4.5 gallons. This is where we pitched out yeast. The OGR was 1.070 @ 68 degrees F.

Since we do not have any homebrew
to drink yet we had Dogfish heads'
Noble Rot instead.  

At first I didn't really think about how I was going to be able to keep the temp below 70 degrees for this beer. Living in Chicago I thought, "Oh I can just turn the heat to only be at 65" but that left the apartment at 72-74 degrees. Once the beer jumped about 70 I freaked and put it outside (where it was 35 degrees) for maybe 30 minutes. This was the perfect trick, it dropped to 64 degrees and from there Toby and I wet a towel and wrapped it around the bucket. It's been holding steady at 66-68 since. The next morning when we checked on it we had bubbling, this is was like the best feeling ever.
The transfer from primary to secondary was quite fun since it was the first time I ever got to use the glass carboy. It was a very simple transfer nothing crazy happened. We did take a gravity reading of 1.015 @ 68 degrees F. This puts my beer at 8.4% ABV with 80% attenuation. Normally we shoot for 75% attenuation so with this we actually went higher then we had needed to which is good because the ABV is higher then it was expected to be. One important step done in this process is the dry hopping. I added 10z of Sterling Goldings pellet hops to the beer with about 10 basil leaves to pair with the piney fresh flavors of the Chinook hops.

Dry hopping in the glass carboy. 

A week later we finally bottled "Three time Academy Award Winner Daniel Day Lewis" aka "Daniel Day the IPA". Since this was my first time using a glass carboy it was a little difficult getting as much of the beer out of it and into the bottling bucket without getting massive chunks of yeast. Although, the yeast cake at the bottom of this beer was much thicker then our previous beer (Deutschland Dunkelweizen) which I was not expecting. Since we did have the boil over and lost some wort we ended up with 37 bottles of this beer where we would normally have about 50. The lower amount of beer also made it hard for the hydrometer to take an accurate reading since it hit the bottom of the carboy and just hung out there.
Now that we have to wait 3 weeks to drink this beer I guess it's time to summarize my experience. Being a beer brewer really means being a Dish Master. There were so many dishes to clean and santatize but it is well worth it to have a delicious 9% ABV IPA to drink at the end of a long day. 

Deutschland Dunkelweizen Act Four

Act Four: Experiment 

Yet another act taking place in a Chicagoland apartment.

A week and a half after the yeast cake discovery during the transfer from primary to secondary fermentation it was time for Toby and Casey to bottle their beer. The first step once again is to santatize everything used.
However, before bottling can happen you have to acquire bottles. Let's brainstorm some ways in which you can acquire bottles:

• drinking bottled beer=recycle your bottles
• asking friends to save the bottles they drink=more recycling
• buy bottles $12 for 24=no recycling and wasting money
• digging through trash cans to find bottles=gross but recycling
• asking random strangers at the local pub for their empty bottles=recycling and Toby and Caseys' favorite way to acquire bottles
• asking local pub to just save their unused bottles and make a commitment to pick them up on certain days at certain times=recycling however pubs like to say 'no' to this request

Once you have acquired the bottles you might want to wash and de-label them. The best way to do that is to purchase some oxyclean and soak the bottles in a warm bath of it. The oxyclean can last for several of batches of bottles so don't be afraid to reuse it. After de-labeling you can do one of two things 1) you can rinse them in a bath of warm water again 2) you can run them through a hot rinse cycle in your dish washer just make sure there is no dish soap added (that can really mess up your beer). 

Now that your bottles (anywhere between 50-55 for a 5 gallon batch) are de-labeled and rinsed it's time to bottle. This process begins just like when you transfer from primary to secondary. Using your siphoning tools you will siphon the beer into the bottling bucket (once again make sure your bottling nozzle is attached). Be careful not to touch the bottom because there could be a cake of yeast and you wouldn't want that ending up in your bottles. Before the siphoning begins make sure to add your starter sugars. The best process for this is to add the 1 part sugar to 2 part water and heat in the microwave until you see boiling. This will sterilize the sugar and make it a liquid so that it is better dispersed throughout the beer. Now siphon the beer into the bucket with the starter sugar solution on the bottom. Last time Toby noticed the way the yeast coalesced was rather lumpy verses a flat cake at the bottom of the bucket. This time the couple kept payed close attention to the yeast to see if any changes occurred. They found that instead of a yeast cake they had almost no yeast grown at the bottom of the bucket. The reasoning for this is most likely due to the lack of aeration (which was intentional for this specific beer). 

Now that the beer is in the bottling bucket they could detach the siphon and attach one end of the siphoning tube to the bottling wand and the other to the bottling nozzle. This part goes quickest with two people. One person (Casey) will fill the bottles the other person (Toby) will cap the bottles. This process is normally very monotonous but once you get through it you're basically done. For Toby and Casey this process got frustrating quickly. They found that they had a funky bottling wand that liked to stick so beer  sprayed everywhere. The floors got really sticky really fast and they lost a couple bottles worth of beer due to the wand. They had to buy a new wand for next time which was only a couple of bucks fortunately. 

The last step is always to clean up. This was quite the clean up due to the spraying of beer everywhere. The floors were sticky making the bottoms of the bottles sticky so clean up took a bit longer than normal. All the equipment was clean and the bottles were filled and now it was time to hide them in a dark corner for 10 days. Unfortunately, this is the hardest part of the process. Having the will power to allow the bottles to just sit. Toby always ends up opening them to taste days in advanced and Casey enjoys drinking them when they are young so this makes for a good team. 

This concludes the bottling adventure. Stay tuned for 10-15 days from now when the final taste test has been taken.  

Deutschland Dunkelweizen Act Three

Act Three: Hypothesis

This act takes place once again in a Chicagoland apartment. 

8oz of chocolate malt gives the beer this color.

After a week of delicious smells coming out of the 5 gallon bucket Toby and Casey had been keeping their beer in, it was time to transfer the beer into secondary fermentation. This process is normally very easy. Since this beer was not dry hopped the straining process has been removed but since the experiment calls for as little aeration as possible that will make it slightly trickier. The first step, like in every brew day, is to santatize (sanitize) everything. This makes sure that absolutely no bacteria starts partying with the yeast. To minimize aeration the two siphon the beer from their fermentation bucket to their bottling bucket. Make sure that the bottling nozzle is attached or beer will end up on the ground. The goal is to make sure that when the beer is hitting the bottom of the second bucket that it is not foaming at all. In the first transfer this was rather difficult and there happened to be some foam but not enough to be detrimental to the beer. Also, by adding the bottling nozzle the transfer back into the fermentation bucket is easier since you won't have to siphon it. Just attach the bottling tube directly to the nozzle and let gravity do its job.

Yeast coagulation (coalesce). 

At this stage the beer is not carbonated, its' flavors will be minimal, barely any undertones, yet it is still very drinkable. This was the first time the two had ever used this yeast before and they found that the yeast coalesce in a rather fascinating way. Normally, the yeast creates a flat surface caking the bottom of the bucket but with this it was lumpy and very textured. The hypothesis is that the lack of oxygen getting to the yeast is affecting the way in which it coagulates with itself. However, it could be very likely that it's just the strain of yeast being used, none the less it is very interesting. Over the next week, the couple hopes that the clove and banana esters start to stick out more rounding out the full bodied flavor given off by the malt-hop combinations. Until then, their the lovely Chicago apartment shall be filled with sweet smells of beer.

Casey/Toby-isms:
santatizer-means to sanitize the beer
on the ground- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAYL5H46QnQ

Deutschland Dunkelweizen in Chicagoland

Deutschland Dunkelweizen 

by Casey R. Welsch

Characters (in order of their appearance): 

Toby Danger Bates.......................Creator/Brewer

Casey Welsch................................Brew assistant/Brewer

Props:

Hops- 1 oz Styrian Goldings; 1oz Hallertau; 0.5 oz Cascade; .25oz Willamette 

Malt- 6.6 lb Bavarian Wheat LME; 2 lb Plain Wheat DME; 1 lb Chateau Cara Gold; 0.5 lb Munich; 0.5lb Chocolate; 0.5 lb Maltodextrin 

Wyeast3068-Weihenstephan Weizen 

 Act One: Research

This act takes place in a lovely Chicago apartment near the North Loop. 

Fellow Brewers, Toby and Casey (that's me!) just moved to Chicago from Tempe Arizona. The adventuresome couple had spent several months home-brewing and learning the craft of beer before they made the life choice to move to The Windy City. In their last weeks in Tempe they had the opportunity to give their beer kit to dear friends of their, Ashley and Danno. Now that Toby and Casey have moved into an apartment they wanted to begin brewing again. Toby took the time to acquire a kit off of craiglist. The couple gathered their belongings and journeyed out into the cold to pick up their brew kit. The kit was in wonderful condition, it had a little something extra that the two did not expect. Low and behold was the start of a dunkelweizen. Toby's curiosity got the best of him and he began doing research on dunkelweizens and especially the materials that came in the kit. One in particular he looked for a clone recipe of was New Belgians Dunkelweiss 30-degree. However, he was unlucky with his search and realised that this beer was a one time batch made in November of 2008. He moved forward in his search by looking at other Dunkelweizen recipes and created his own off of the information. About 50% of materials actually used in  the brew was from this original starter. As per usual they added their own little twist on things. 

Act Two: The Procedure 

This act takes place in the kitchen of the lovely Chicago apartment as well as Chicago shopping areas. 

The morning of the brew day Toby and Casey had a few more things to pick up. After not one, but two trips to Target the couple finally acquired a stock pot, cheese cloth (this will become an issue in the future), a thermometer, beer, water, and ice. It was time to start brewing. Of course, this had to happen after the second trip to the store where Casey forgot to buy a thermometer.

The mash went very smooth, the color of the wort was very dark almost like a brown ale. This was due to the 8 oz of chocolate malt (yum). Now that the mash was removed it was time to add our LME and our DME this went fine. The wort was heating up and it was almost time to add hops. This is always the scariest part of the brew because there is a high risk for boil overs. In the past the couple has been good about not having boil overs, so this didn't seem too hard for them.

The couple patiently waited until the wort started boiling. Now it was time to add the the bittering hops,Styrian Goldings. This was successful, as per all the beers they brewed before it. Toby had an idea to continuously add the hops. Once the initial boil began, the hops added, the timer was set, and Toby was ready to continuously add hops Casey went down to check on the laundry. 

Seconds after she left, Toby added more hops and then it happened. The first boil over the couple had ever had. Luckily, Toby knew how to handle it. He got the beer off the heat over the sink so the majority of the mess happened into the sink (some on the cabinets but that was easily cleaned). Casey came back with clean clothes and idea what had happened (Toby was really good about cleaning up the mess). Toby told her about the boil over so they both agreed to keep a closer watch on the beer. The two continuously hopped the beer adding the flavoring and aroma hops as they went on and very little funky business happened for the rest of the boil.

Now it was time to chill without oxygenating the beer too much. The cool down was successful, until it was time to strain out the hops. This is where the cheese cloth comes into the story. Since the couple already had a noodle strainer and Target didn't see a strainer good enough for hops, Casey thought they could just use cheese cloth over the strainer they have. This worked for about five seconds. The cheese cloth caught the hops but it also got clogged up and would not allow the beer to filter through. It was time to think fast. Toby started laughing when he realized they could just use the muslin bag the had for the grain. After spending all that time on cleaning it out Casey was happy they had this option and quickly just threw away the cheese cloth, still angry at it for not working. The muslin bag worked wonders! Although, after all the ice melted the beer was at 45 degrees (way too cold for yeast to grow). They were still 1.5 gallons short so it was time to heat some water up on the stove and add it. Finally, after about 15 minutes of heating and adding water the temp was at 68 degrees with an original gravity reading of 1.070. Time to add the lid and air lock. 

The next morning Toby and Casey woke up to bubbling coming from the air lock. SUCCESS!!! 

In case you were wondering this is the 5 Act play. In the next weeks you will journey with Toby and Casey as they put the beer into secondary fermentation, bottle the beer, and drink the beer.