Recap 2012: The good, the bad, the bubbles

Yep - I stir when I chill now, another good lesson learned on this forum. Manual agitation, and of course adding a healthy yeast starter, have provided good attenuation in subsequent batches, active within 6 hours and usually going for up to a week, and always hitting desired FG. Agree a stone is good next step nonetheless, especially for plans on higher OG beers. It's on my list.

 

Sucesses: Started homebrewing! Now 3 batches in and loving the new obsession. Did a lot of reading first and it paid off, I pretty much feel comfortable with my timing, prep, cleanup, etc. My second batch (dry hopped saison) was particularly nice and got good comments (hopefully Vinnie from RR can give me some feedback in a few days if I get lucky!) And finally did a starter on my most recent batch, which seems to be paying off already.

Lessons: Killed a pack of yeast making my first starter. Learned to pay attention to weather before brewday. Wor on temp control. Always let it bottle condition for longer than you think. And of course, RDWHAHB!

 

Started all grain. All beers were great, except the first one(Brown) which was still good; just a bit estery. I built a tun with zinc washers and realized my mistake afterward.

Won Silver in Cat 23 with a Rye IPA in August

I realized I need to get a double crush now at LHBS or have them calibrate it when I go in. I got ~66% eff like 3 times. Everything else has been spot on, due to me already having a year behind me.

Started water/mash chem for the first time in late August. Beer quality went way up.

Love me some paint strainer bags now. Super clear beer all day, low trub out of primary. And my keezer fermentation chamber is a priceless investment. Fucking nailed the 2 Belgians I made. People have been raving about my White IPA.

 

I'm 2 years into this incredibly awesome, rewarding, and obsessive (expensive, time consuming, and a lot of damn work) hobby and I have aquired some great knowledge over the past year, and continue to have a blast brewing and learning. These are some things i've learned over the past year or so...

1. Proper pitching rate is crucial to good beer and mr. malty as well as other yeast calculators make the science to it very simple.

2. Fermentation Temperature control, pure 02 thru a stone, and #1 can produce an absolutely fantastic beer.

3. Practicing brewing with #1 and #2 provides a much healthier and somewhat angrier fermentation and figuring out how to fashion a rudimentary blow off hose with a 3 piece airlock and siphon hose is absolutely monumental. Thank you BA'S OUT THERE!!!!!

4. After 11 batches I have had enough of bottling and bottle conditioning as the work and effort along with the time one must wait to consume their beer is just too much to handle. ( I will continue to bottle condition beers that benefit from some waiting/patience)

5. If you get a package of liquid yeast and "smack" the pack so agressively that you get chunks of english yeast in your eye and nose... for god's sake drive a half hour and get some different yeast to propogate, as that package is not safe to sit on the counter for 3 hours while you hope it puffs up prior to making your starter.... its no wonder my wife calls me dumb.

6. Homebrewing is like no other hobby out there, and requires more work and dedication than anything i've ever done, but is also more rewarding than anything I've ever done. I'd like to send out a cheers to everyone on this forum that has helped me become a better brewer, and for helping out so many brewers on this forum tackle common brewing obstacles. If your reading this, take a moment to enjoy a homebrew, and be proud that your part of the tradition of brewing. As I think we all know this hobby can be very testing at times, but those who endure, are the truly obsessed, and blessed.

Cheers to all and have a splendid holiday!!

 

Mostly what I've learned is that I still have a lot to learn. For every batch I brew (up to about 40 AG in a little less than 2 years) I still learn new things and figure better ways of doing things. Thanks to all of you that have helped. Looking forward to more of the same next year.

 

A slow trickle.

 

I'm 2.5 years in now. Highlights from 2012:

-- Getting my first beneficial infection took a pretty boring hoppy pale ale and made it into a delicious super-dried out brett saison (2013's first task: harvesting that culture!)
-- Dramatically expanding my knowledge of hop profiles and yeast strains; my happily fermenting hoppy tripel that's making the whole house smell like pineapple and mango is a testament to that
-- First public beer release at a friend's art show; they all drank the session Falconer's IPA that my brew buddy and I made so quickly that I only got one bottle!
-- The devastation of watching an extremely promising vanilla porter turn into an infected, exploding nightmare as it aged. Much improved bottling is an aim for 2013 also.

That's pretty much 2012. Next year will be about moving to all grain and entering competitions.

 

1. Got my Dad into homebrewing
2. DRASTICALLY improved the quality of my own homebrew
3. Successfully brewed about 180 bottles for a wedding, not only in the feedback I received but in the fact that I saw numerous people walking around drinking the bottles throughout the night that I had not talked to about myself brewing the beers
4. No failed beers this year, closest call was a DIPA that I was shooting for 8% abv but wound up with 12% abv due to a higher than expected efficiency, undershooting volume, and yeast that attenuated far above my expectations
5. Began kegging and other than sours I will never turn back
6. Successfully brewed a Brett beer - the sours are still fermenting

 

This year marks 10 years behind the kettle for me.

Didn't brew as much as I'd like, but I was really happy with what I made. For me, this year was about two things: working the kinks out of a few styles, and reminding myself about those things (certain malts, hop varietals, etc.) that really make me happy.

To that end, I finally worked the kinks out of a nice Wee Heavy, made a knockout tribute to Avec Les Bons Voeux, experimented with new hop schedules, and made a much needed upgrade to the old brewing rig -- new kettles, a new mash tun, the works. I even got myself some fresh grape juice and made wine for the first time. Who says an old dog can't learn new tricks?

All in all, it's been a great run. Here's hoping my next batch is even better than the one before, into perpetuity.

 

- I learned (or solidified what I already thought I knew) that water chemistry really is important to make the best possible beer. The old saying that "If your water tastes good, it's good for brewing" should be revised to say "If your water tastes good, you can make beer with it." Subtle difference, I know.

- In several different 2012 threads, I learned that some homebrewers have serious difficulty discerning the difference between right and wrong, legally and/or ethically. Which is disturbing.

- I think I have finally settled on a formula (# of seconds by OG by ale/lager type) for hardware store cylinder pure O2 aeration through a 0.5 micron stone. So i got that goin' for me, which is nice.

- I learned that short of sacrificing goats, BOS Round 1sts are statistically hard to come by. Counter-intuitively, 2nds and 3rds are practically lying around to be tripped over. My white whale is still out there, and 2013 will be the year. You betcha. OTOH, and more seriously, objective feedback is still the main reason for entering contests.

- Drink up. There are two days left.

 

Like you, I use a this setup for aeration, but I have never gotten too systematic about it. I open the valve until I begin to see some vigorous bubbles and do about 45-90 sec, loosely based on gravity. What is your formula?

 

O2 Seconds, in excel format...

=IF(I41="y",(60+((D32*1000)-48))*1.75,60+((D32*1000)-48))

...where cell I41 is the lager indicator and cell D32 is the OG minus 1.
Note this is dialed in for my normal 5.1 gallon batches, so the formula itself does not include a term for batch size.

 

So in English... 75% more O2 (by time) for lagers than ales and you use a minute as a starting point and add / subtract based on OG from there (add a second for every point above 1.048, take away one for each below is what it appears to me).

How did you settle on this?

 

Thanks. I understand the excel mechanics and I get the generality of the underlying theory (lager yeast needs more than ales, bigger beers need more than smaller), but how did you zero in on the specifics, e.g., base rate, lager multiplier, and gravity requirement?
I would think batch size would scale in direct proportion.

 

kjyost beat me to my question!

 

Your understanding is keen.

A combination of...
- liking the results from one minute in a 1.048 wort
- wanting to adjust up/down based on gravity (and thus higher/lower cell counts)
- looking at high/low time recommendations others have used (as a sanity check)
- getting what seems to be pretty consistent fermentations with this version of the formula, and no apparent over-oxygenation problems

I would assume so.

 

2012: The year of the Wild Ale. (Plus IPA and Extra Hoppy Pales)

I started my sour/wild program back in the start of 2012.
1st: Flemish Red with Roeselare and Dregs.
2nd: GI Sofie clone with Belgian Saison and Brett B + Brett Dregs.
3rd: Lambic.
4th: re-pitchch of the Saison and Brett Dregs on to a similar wort with fresh peaches added.
5th: RR Consecration wort inoculated with the 2nd generation Roeselare Cake + Dregs.

The only beer kegged so far is the 1st Sofie Clone( Turned out well bit more acidic than expected). I am going to remake a Flemish Red every six months and the Lambic once a year until the end of time...

2013: More of the same!

 

After a couple of less than stellar beers in 2011 I got back to basics and just worked on technique. I had gotten sloppy about measuring(still am but less so), water volume, etc. Teaching a couple of friends to brew(10 gallon all grain batches from Day 1) forced me to take a closer look at everything I did in the brewhouse. I've brewed about 180 gallons this year and not a single batch I wasn't proud of.
I also brewed a lot more of styles I never got into-IPA's and rye beers in particular. My IPA's could use a little tweaking, but my last rye IPA was a real success, according to my IPA/DIPA swilling daughter.
Next year I hope to focus on German styles, everything from roggenbier(order more rye) to rauchbiers(the malt smoking season is here and I have about 500 pounds of pecan wood).

 

As the initiator of one of those posts, I learned asking about kegs is more polarizing than what is going on up in D.C. regarding the fiscal cliff.

Vikeman, I thought you would be happy to know you (and others) convinced me not to steal a keg that I rented. You can chalk that up to learning people can be taught.