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Chickens

I have nine chickens. One slightly older one lives in a coop in my back yard, and the other eight are still little and live in a watering trough in my laundry room. Raising chickens is hard work, but you get a lot out of it. So far, we’ve got about a cubic yard of awesome compost made of a combination of all our kitchen scraps with the wood chips and chicken poo we’ve cleaned out of the trough. It’s not composed yet, of course, but it’s on its way and I’m excited. I’ve been tweaking the compost pile I built, adding mesh around it so the stuff doesn’t fall out and reinforcing the structure some. It’s a beautiful compost pile. Truly.

Every day, someone has to make sure the chickens have enough food, grit, water. The big chicken outside has to be let out of her coop in the morning, and shooed back into it before dark. raccoons eat chickens, and hunt at dusk, so we have to have her protected by that time of day.

It’s been a while

Once again I’ve fallen down on posting. I’ve been working extra hard as a new Board year for the Growers’ Market kicks into gear, working on my garden (see my wife’s site, with whom I share space on the internet, for a garden journal), and watching my son grow up. He’s 20 months old, and is extremely pretentious. He’s learning his letters, wants to read poetry with me (Robert Frost, T.S. Elliot, Pablo Neruda, and Saul Williams are his favorites), and generally understands the world better than his mother and I do. I’m not sure what to do with him, and I worry that if he doesn’t slow down he’s going to miss some of the important details that toddlers at this stage learn. On the other hand, I’m trying my hardest to remember that he knows what’s best for himself, and that he’ll be just fine. Taylor was a very early reader, and I was a very early talker. He seems to have picked up both from us, and that’s the way it goes for him.

We’re deep in the swing of getting the garden ready, planting and tilling and pushing earth. I built Arthur a sandbox in the back yard (it needs sand, but otherwise it’s ready to go). We have nine chickens, one a full on pullet and the rest emerging from chickhood into a sort of creepy dinosaur looking transitional phase. We inherited a very nice coop from some friends who were no longer using it, and have fenced in a nice big corner of our yard to be a chicken run. Big Chicken is already living outdoors, and the littles are living in a big watering trough in our laundry room. I’m ready for them to grow up and head outside, but it’ll be a while yet.

My father in law and his wife will be in town for the whole summer, out from the East coast, and we’re getting ready for a great summer of Grandparent time, festivals (Country Fair is less than two months away!), and harvesting. I’m hoping to have a pig roast, something we did last summer, and to brew up a batch of Lambic (which won’t be ready to drink for two years. Awesome).

I did some (not much) volunteering for Oregon’s primary, which took place last week. Our commitments to the food co-op continue to keep us busy, and our country fair meeting and planning is kicking into gear.

In terms of brewing, I’ve done two batches since I last posted and I may at some point share the recipes/techniques used here. For now, I’m going to let it be and go back to work.

Yell Obama

Hello everyone. It’s been a while, but you should all run out and buy my wicked cool tee shirt from Cafe Press. Wearing this shirt will tell all your friends and total strangers that you are in favor of both the U of O, and Barack Obama. It will also show off your wicked fashion sense, and it will make your mother proud. Go buy one today.

Chamomile

Today, I tried my hand at all grain brewing for the first time. I screwed up good and proper, which is exactly what I was supposed to do. Here’s what happened.

I set out to make a chamomile honey wheat beer. In the end, the recipe I went with is not entirely unlike the one I posted a month ago, but it isn’t entirely like it either. Into my mashing/lautering tun I put;

4.75# Pale Wheat Malt
5# Two Row Pale Malt

Cracked and ready to go. To this, I added around 3 gallons of hot water. The temp of the water I added was around 160 degrees F. The mash ended up being 140 degrees F. This seemed too cool, so I shut it up for about half an hour while I researched how much more hot water to add to make the final temp closer to 160. Ooh. Here’s the problem; I misremembered the appropriate temp for mashing grains. It’s 145 - 155, not 165 - 175. Here’s a helpful chart that I will use next time.

So, what happened when I mashed at 160 degrees for an hour is; mostly nothing. I ended up with a much lower gravity wort than I had anticipated, because the enzyme that does the most, best work (beta amylase) I killed after half an hour of mashing. Instead of my target 1.050 Original Gravity I hit 1.029. Blech. But, not to worry. I was going to add 1.5# of honey at the end of the boil, which would bump the gravity up by about a point overall (to 1.04, give or take). I had some extra honey around, so I doubled it and added three pounds.

The place where I hope this beer really stands out is the chamomile included in place of hops. I used about two ounces of chamomile and a half ounce of saaz hops boiled for 60 minutes, and another two ounces of chamomile and half ounce of saaz boiled for ten minutes give or take. When I transfer to the secondary, I’m going to do a little taste test and maybe add some more chamomile for aroma at that time depending on how much the flavor comes through.

Rather than a weitzen yeast, which has a lot of character of its own that I didn’t want, I’m using the Wyeast American Ale, which is pretty good and neutral especially if I keep the fermentation temp cool, which I’m doing.

As always, updates to follow.

Lately I’m drinking the India Amber Ale. I’m very pleased with how it turned out, despite some small mishaps. It’s got a unique flavor for sure, but not a bad one. I’m not much of one for flavor reviews like they do on the beer sites; it seems haughty. I like drinking my beer. It tastes good. Come over and I’ll offer you one, and you can see for your own self.

The Country Fair Off Season

The images in this post were taking up too much bandwidth. You can see a gallery here.

All Grain Setup Diagram

And here is a diagram of the all grain brewing system that I’ve put together. I still haven’t taken it for its trial run yet, sometime mid March is my expectation. In other brewing news, I found a local nursery where I can buy brewing varieties of Hops near the end of March or early April. Very exciting. Click the picture for a PDF of the system with text and stuff. Or just look at the tiny picture there.

Another All Grain Wheat Recipe

My wife’s side of the family likes strange Germen terms. It is in their honor that I will attempt to brew a Bavarian Dunkelweizen. Here is a proposed recipe (generated using Beer Tools).

Eine Kleiner Mine Dunkelweizen
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General
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Category: German Wheat and Rye Beer
Subcategory: Dunkelweizen
Recipe Type: All Grain
Batch Size: 5 gal.
Volume Boiled: 6 gal.
Mash Efficiency: 72 %
Total Grain/Extract: 10.84 lbs.
Total Hops: 1.0 oz.
Calories (12 fl. oz.): 211.9
Cost to Brew: $23.76 (USD)
Cost per Bottle (12 fl. oz.): $0.45 (USD)

Ingredients
————————————————————————–
4.14 lbs. American 6-row Pale
5.09 lbs. Belgian Wheat Malt
0.68 lbs. Munich Malt
.68 lbs. German Vienna
.25 lbs. Belgian Chocolate Malt
0.5 oz. Hallertau Tradition (Whole, 6.00 %AA) boiled 60 minutes.
.5 oz. Hallertau Mittelfruh (Whole, 4.50 %AA) boiled 15 minutes.
Yeast: WYeast 3056 Bavarian Wheat

Vital Statistics
————————————————————————–
Original Gravity: 1.054
Terminal Gravity: 1.012
Color: 16.74 SRM
Bitterness: 14.2 IBU
Alcohol (%volume): 5.4 %

All Grain Brewing

First off, in my Beer Terms post several months ago, I made a technical error. I described ‘mashing’ and ‘malting’ as being the same thing. This is not the case. Malting is something that professionals do pretty much exclusively. I haven’t run across any information about people doing this themselves. Malting is when they just begin to sprout the grain, then pop it into a kiln really quickly. I’m not clear on the technical specifics of why this process works, but my understanding is that it generates the enzymes that will later be used to convert the starch to sugar, then freezes the process by kilning so that the brewer can start it again later.

Mashing, on the other hand, is what the All Grain home brewer does. In a mash, one submerses malted grains in hot water (155 degrees or so, depending on what you’re doing. Again, not clear on the specifics yet) for a period of time, allowing the enzymes to work their magic and create the sugars that will be converted to alcohol in the fermentation.

Today, with part of my tax return, I went to the Home Depot and began the work of piecing together the equipment for All Grain brewing in preparation for my next experiment, a Heffeweitzen flavored with chamomile and honey. A good spring afternoon nap time beer. Here’s what I got;

*A five gallon Igloo cooler. I did this today because the HD has these on clearance for $8.00. It’s small enough that it will be limiting in the long run, but the next size up was 10 gallons for $40. I think not.

*A 1/2 inch ball valve to replace the plastic thing on the cooler. The plastic thing is fine for water, but will not serve my purposes.

* The hardware needed to create a bulkhead fitting. I’m not going to go into this, and I’m not 100% pleased with it. It’s water tight. For now.

What I still need to complete this project is

* A false bottom. I’m working on several ideas for the best way to achieve this. I’m thinking about possibly using a sort of a tube made of screen, buying or otherwise getting a circle of perf plate to fit, or maybe even using a laundry bag type apparatus to hold the grain above the bottom of the tub.

Also, I bought 20′ of 1/2 inch copper tubing and several feet of vinyl tube, some hose clamps, and a deal that hooks to a garden hose on one end and the vinyl tube on the other. This will be a wort chiller, with which I will run cold water into my wort and get hot water out, thus chilling the wort. Awesome.

Finally, I invented a simple spreadsheet for developing a recipe. You tell it the target Original Specific Gravity, the proportions of the different grains you’re using (50% wheat, 40% pale 2 row, etc…) and the points/pound/gallon rating of each (I’ll explain later maybe, or just look it up) and the expected attenuation from the yeast you’re using and it’ll tell you how much of each ingredient you need in pounds for a 5.5 gallon batch (you can scale up or down easily), what the expected FG is, and the expected ABV. I ran a quick recipe plan for the Chamomile Honey Wheat beer, and here’s what I came up with;

For a 5.5 Gallon Batch I’ll use

5.8 lbs of Malted Wheat
4.6 lbs of Pale 2 Row malt
1 lb of Honey

With the Bavarian Wheat yeast I plan to use, I’m expecting 75% attenuation (high estimate, I think).
My target OG is 1.05 (I assumed a low efficiency for my brewing setup, since it’s the first time I’m using it and better too much gravity than too little I always say)
My expected final Sp. Gr is 1.013
My expected ABV is 5.06

I’m thrilled, as this is the first recipe I designed with no help from brewing software (except the formulas in my own spreadsheet). I’m beginning to understand some of the calculating that goes into recipe design, which is great.

For hops, I’m using 1/2 oz of Saaz or something similar for bittering and another 1/2 oz for flavor. I’m also using 4 oz of Chamomile, 2 oz boiled for 60 minutes and 2 oz added at the end of the boil and infused into the wort with the lid on to preserve the essential oils. I’ll check the flavor after primary fermentation, and if I still want more Chamomile character I’ll add more in the secondary like dry hops.

As always, reviews to follow.

Woah There Nelly!

I done screwed up! Don’t use my IAA recipe without some major modifications. I used crystal malt exclusively in the grain bill for the mini-mash because I like the way it tastes. Problem; crystal malt doesn’t have any enzymes and therefore can’t convert itself into sugar. It needs to be paired with something like a 2 row or similar normal malt in order to convert.

I learned this as I racked the IAA from the primary to the secondary today and took a hydrometer reading when I did it. Not one to waste perfectly good (albeit room temperature and flat) beer, I drank the sample. It had a strange, starchy flavor. Wondering what this was, I did some reading. Turns out, I screwed the pooch. It’s not undrinkable bad or anything, but it’s a pretty strange flavor.

Of course, we’ll have to see what the secondary and bottle conditioning bring about. I’m still hopeful, if abashed.

The problem with starting a new hobby, learning as I go, and sharing my mistakes here in this public forum, is that it can be embarrassing. I’m pretty much flying by the seat of my pants at this point (which is my favorite way to learn things) and hopefully every mistake is a learning experience.

The gravity reading I took today was 1.012. That means that the yeast did its job really fully despite my screwing up, and the beer is about 5.45% ABV. Very little fermentation will take place from this point forward.

Next up; something with chamomile infused in the wort. I’m thinking a chamomile honey hefe-weitzen, but I might try to clone the Rogue chamomellow if I can get my hands on a pint at the local Rogue alehouse. I haven’t had it for a while and want to taste it with more of a mind toward cloning. It’s a lager, if I remember right (could be wrong here), and I haven’t done one of those before. Next brew day isn’t until mid March, so we’ll have to wait and see what turns up.

Vital Stats on the IAA

So, the brewing finger boils and having cooled it takes a hydrometer reading (to coin a long, awkward phrase). I have vital stats on the IAA, and some information about last minute choices I made. First - in addition to the malts and extracts I discussed in the previous post, I also added a cup of Brown Sugar and a slosh of Molasses to round out the flavor. Despite the addition of these extra sugars, the actual OG was somewhat less than expected, weighing in at 1.052 (after a temperature conversion). I think that I had the mash rest at too low a temperature and got a bad conversion. Hard to tell, with my limited experience and no working thermometer (wish list item number 1). According to my hydrometer, this means a potential alcohol of 6.9%. This is not to say that the beer will be 6.9% alcohol (or even close, really). It depends on how well my yeasties attenuate the available sugar. The yeast I use is 75% attenuating, so if I get a really full ferment they’ll leave it at 1.013. That means that the highest alcohol content I would expect would probably be 5.4% or so by volume.

The yeast has started doing its thing. This Nottingham yeast is really cool high floctuating (clumping) top fermenting stuff. That means that it does that awesome lava lamp thing while its fermenting. It also means it leaves a lot of schmutz around the shoulders of my carboy to scrub out with a bottle brush later (a task which I am not relishing the thought of).

Reviews to follow, of course.