Brews a plenty here in the Toguchi household lately.
Let me catch you up on what has been going on with the Imperial Stout. After I finished up the primary (see previous post on what happened with that), I transfered the stout to the carboy and let it clarify for another 10 days. That was pretty uneventful, but it was interesting to see the beer ferment a little more. I boiled up my priming sugar to prep for the bottling and cleaned up all the tools to get the job done, including all the darned bottles.
First things first though. I had to get the final gravity reading. Since I don't have a nice long test tube or anything narrow and cylindrical, I use the holding tube for the hydrometer to take my readings. I know, it's pretty ghetto, but it gets the job done. Siphon a bit of the brew into the tube, drop the hydrometer and take a reading. The final reading is exactly what was expected! (whew)
After transferring the goodness over to my bottling bucket, I found out that I lost over a gallon of liquid during the great beer blowout of 2011. Oh well, not much I can do about it now. I ended up bottling about a case and a half of beer total. I used the Oxygen resistant bottle caps this time. They say to use these caps if you want to have your beer last a little longer. Given that these suckers are 10% abv, I would expect them to last longer than the Scottish Ale that is completely gone. I would expect to be able to crack open one of these babies in about a week. I'm looking forward to it :)
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Friday, August 05, 2011
Beer Blowout!
I'm currently brewing my 3rd batch of beer. First being the IPA, the second was the Scottish Ale, and this one is an Imperial Stout. I'm not doing all grain yet, as I want to get a better feel of how things work and how the flavors meld before I jump to the more involved side of brewing.
This beer is a little more involved and contains more ingredients, but the concept is basically the same as the other brews. Boil, ferment, bottle. This Imperial Stout has a much higher alcohol content than other beers I have brewed. This sucker is supposed to come out at above 10% ABV, which is 2x more than your regular beer. It's very understandable that this beer has a bit more alcohol in it given the larger amount of sugars that are added to the brew. The grains that were steeped had some darker grains in it, including chocolate. It smelled glorious. I added a bit of sugar and molasses on top of that along with the dark malt.
After cooling down the wort, I transferred it to the fermentation pail. Once it reached 75 degrees, I pitched the yeast, covered it up, put it in my plastic tub, covered with T-shirts and added water to keep it nice and cool. Of course, I put the air lock on to be sure no air crept into the pail while fermenting.
The next morning, I checked the air lock and to my surprise the fermentation process was already starting! Less than 8 hours and it was already gassing up. I figured it would be a regular fermentation cycle where I would just watch until the fermentation stopped then transfer to the secondary carboy. Uh. It wasn't.
I checked on the beer when I got home from work, and the fermentation had really kicked it into another gear. So much so that it was bubbling and overflowing into the air lock. I did a bit of research and I learned that I should use a blow-off tube to better control the overflow. This is basically just a tube that is at the top of the fermentation pail that feeds into a bowl/bottle of water. So the air goes through the pipe and into the water, and the water prevents air from going back into the pail. All good? Nope. I rigged up the contraption and left it to continue its fermentation. BOOM! The lid popped off the pail. ugh. Not sure why that occurred, I cleaned everything up and hooked it up again. The air was feeding through the tube just fine and then after another hour, BOOM again. I figured that my tube was too long, resulting in the pressure from the escaping gas not being enough to move through the tube with the bubbles and foam being generated. After cutting the tube shorter, it looked like it was working better. BOOM! yet again. The fermentation just wasn't slowing down. It was going so fast, I decided just to take off any air lock of blow-off tube and let the beer go on its own. The rate in which the gas was being produced and the fact that tons of foam was releasing from the pail, there was a small chance of air getting back in.
I let it go like this for about 18 hours until it finally slowed down. Even after cleaning things up and putting the air lock back on, the beer is still fermenting at a solid rate (but not as fast as before). I'm hoping I was careful enough to keep things clean enough to prevent any bacteria from being introduced and ruining the beer. I guess I'll find out soon!
This beer is a little more involved and contains more ingredients, but the concept is basically the same as the other brews. Boil, ferment, bottle. This Imperial Stout has a much higher alcohol content than other beers I have brewed. This sucker is supposed to come out at above 10% ABV, which is 2x more than your regular beer. It's very understandable that this beer has a bit more alcohol in it given the larger amount of sugars that are added to the brew. The grains that were steeped had some darker grains in it, including chocolate. It smelled glorious. I added a bit of sugar and molasses on top of that along with the dark malt.
After cooling down the wort, I transferred it to the fermentation pail. Once it reached 75 degrees, I pitched the yeast, covered it up, put it in my plastic tub, covered with T-shirts and added water to keep it nice and cool. Of course, I put the air lock on to be sure no air crept into the pail while fermenting.
The next morning, I checked the air lock and to my surprise the fermentation process was already starting! Less than 8 hours and it was already gassing up. I figured it would be a regular fermentation cycle where I would just watch until the fermentation stopped then transfer to the secondary carboy. Uh. It wasn't.
I checked on the beer when I got home from work, and the fermentation had really kicked it into another gear. So much so that it was bubbling and overflowing into the air lock. I did a bit of research and I learned that I should use a blow-off tube to better control the overflow. This is basically just a tube that is at the top of the fermentation pail that feeds into a bowl/bottle of water. So the air goes through the pipe and into the water, and the water prevents air from going back into the pail. All good? Nope. I rigged up the contraption and left it to continue its fermentation. BOOM! The lid popped off the pail. ugh. Not sure why that occurred, I cleaned everything up and hooked it up again. The air was feeding through the tube just fine and then after another hour, BOOM again. I figured that my tube was too long, resulting in the pressure from the escaping gas not being enough to move through the tube with the bubbles and foam being generated. After cutting the tube shorter, it looked like it was working better. BOOM! yet again. The fermentation just wasn't slowing down. It was going so fast, I decided just to take off any air lock of blow-off tube and let the beer go on its own. The rate in which the gas was being produced and the fact that tons of foam was releasing from the pail, there was a small chance of air getting back in.
I let it go like this for about 18 hours until it finally slowed down. Even after cleaning things up and putting the air lock back on, the beer is still fermenting at a solid rate (but not as fast as before). I'm hoping I was careful enough to keep things clean enough to prevent any bacteria from being introduced and ruining the beer. I guess I'll find out soon!
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