My Summer Time Brew Days

A typical brew day lasts around 4 hours which breaks down something like this:

• Heat mash water and crush grain- 20 minutes-ish
• Mash 1 hour
• 30 minutes left in mash start heating sparge water
• Mash out - 10 minutes.
• Vorlauf and sparge - about 15 minutes
• Heat to boil and boil + clean mash tun - 75 minutes
• Chill 20-30 minutes
• Transfer, pitch and cleanup - 15 minutes

Watch a lot of old BrewingTV episodes and many other homebrewing video podcasts during this entire process and drink anything on tap.

That's pretty typical for early spring, winter and late fall in N.Y. I spend a lot of time waiting for things to happen as many homebrewers do. I usually drink too much, listen to music, or watch TV.

The late spring, summer and early fall are a different story. I manage my brew days much more efficiently when the weather is good. Because while we all love brewing, it shouldn't be a reason to neglect our other responsibilities. This is a typical summertime brew day.

• Heat mash water and crush grain - 20 minutes
• Mash 1 hour

Now while the grains are mashing I do one of several things.

• Weed wack and mow my lawn
• Small home repairs ( I patched the roof of my barn last time, cleaned my lawn furniture the time before that)
• Care for my hops
• Exercise
• Clean my motorcycle/cars
• etc....

You get the idea. Mashing is no longer a time for twiddling my thumbs, watching football or getting drunk. It's time I can use to make sure I'm getting things done.

The same goes for the boil. I set my timers for hop additions on my phone and I do chores until that timer goes off, make my hop drop, then set my next timer and continue my chores. I'm still around in case something were to happen but I'm not wasting time.

 My homebrew club members have often asked how I find time to brew as often as I do, well this is part of the trick. If my wife has plans for us on Sunday I don't skip brewing on Saturday to get my chores done, I weave brewing and chores together.

While this does make for somewhat of an exhausting day it hasn't killed me yet and I feel like I accomplished something at the end of the day. Plus I have 5-10 gallons of beer to show for it.

New Mash Tun = Better Efficiency

I'm not sure what about my new mash tun is responsible for delivering better efficiency but I expect it just holds temp much better than my cooler mash tun did, especially since the cooler was so warped.

When I ran into some extra cash in March this year I used a small portion to buy a Chapman 15 gallon stainless insulated mash tun.

Since then I've had to adjust all my recipes for improved efficiency. I went from 70% to 76% efficiency and this is the only piece in my setup that has changed. I even get that with 11 gallon batches.

I have noticed that as long as the temperature outside is above freezing I don't lose even 1 degree with this tun. If it's quite cold out (25F and less) I'll lose about 2 degrees in an hour, pretty damn good.

The features I absolutely love:

1. This tun has a hanger for the lid that doubles as fixed position holder for the lid. I can't tell you how many times I knocked my old tun lid on the floor or had to go looking for it.
2. Thermometer - I did not have a thermometer on my old tun so I had to open it up to check temps. This small addition is very convenient and I love it.
3. Recalculation Port - Even with 11 gallon batches I was still picking up the hot liquor kettle and dumping it into the mash tun because holding the hose in place with a clamp always seemed to make a mess. Now I  use my pump with quick disconnects and I have one less risk point during my brew days. My back is also thanking me.
4. Cleanup - It may seem silly but this tun is super easy to clean and doesn't stain like my old tun did. It has a lip on the bottom that's a nice grip for pouring soap and water out, just another small but nice feature.
5. No leaks! I was constantly dealing with small valve port leaks on my cooler tun. Not once with this baby.
6. It's stainless so it should be my last mash tun purchase. I have built 2 other mash tuns up to this point and I don't think I'll ever need another new tun.

The things I don't love:

1. Price - While this was the most inexpensive insulated stainless tun I could find it was still $370. I could build 4-5 cooler tuns for that price.

Sorry, that's it. There are really no other negatives to this mash tun.

If you have some expendable cash and are in need of a new mash tun i would definately recommend this tun. I love mine.

Real Ale

Intro

Lately I've been on another low abv kick. I like to drink multiple beers, I'm not a 1 or 2 and done sort of guy. This causes a couple problems of course. One is inebriation, the other is weight gain. My average homebrew runs around 6-6.5% abv which can land around 250-300 calories a bottle. That's significant when you're drinking 4,5,6789 of them.

My experience with English Ales

The above has lead me to researching English ales, more specifically real ales. I've made plenty of porters, stouts and even English Barleywine but only one ESB in the past that turned out far too malty. So I made another attempt but this time an Ordinary Bitter. This was a pretty well balanced beer but it lacked the firm bitterness of the style. I think I did three things wrong.

1. I used an even ratio of calcium chloride to sulfate with RO water. I should have used 3:1 sulfate to calcium chloride like I would for an American IPA
2. I used an intentionally low BU:GU ratio because I'm not a huge fan of super bitter beers. I used .63 instead of .83. I'll adjust for this next time
3. I used too much crystal malt. 7% c15 and 7% c55. I should have kept the total of both to less than 10%. In the future I plan to use 1 crystal malt, a darker variety, and keep it to 7% of the grist. I think that will help lean the balance toward bitterness.

The new recipe: Trimmed Down Bitter

Batch Size 5.5gal

OG = 1.032

ABV 3.3%

IBUs 27.6

SRM 9.8

BU:GU .864

Water

• 8.5 gal total RO water
• 3/4 tsp gypsum (about 8g)
• 1/4 tsp calcium chloride (about 3g)
• 1/8 tsp epsom (about 1.5g)

Malts

• 92% Thomas Fawcett floor malted maris otter
• 7% Bairds British 135/165 crystal

Hops

• 13.3 IBUs Challenger @ 60min
• 10.3 IBUs EKG @ 25min
• 3.9 IBUs EKG @ 5min
• 2oz EKG @ flameout (in place of  cask hopping)

Yeast

• 1 pkg London Ale III

1. Mash grains with 3 gallons of RO water and salt additions for 60 minutes
2. Batch sparge / mash out with remaining water @ 170 for 10 minutes 
3. vorlauf
4. Slowly sparge into kettle. Should take about another 10 minutes to collect full volume. The 10 minute mash out and slow sparge improved efficiency for batch sparging.
5. Boil for 60 mins, cool and transfer to fermenter, aerate, then pitch yeast.

The final method I'm going to use to improve and make my english ales more authentic is to cask them when I have an event I can share them and get rid of it quickly enough . So I spent way too much money on my homebrewing hobby and bought a pin cask.

Since I've never casked a beer, I brewed a porter to practice with before using it for my homebrew club's next meeting. Tonight I move the still fermenting porter into the cask. I checked it last night and it was about 75% through fermentation so it will go into the cask with finings and a fresh 200ml of wort to naturally carbonate it in the cask.

I'm also stealing this idea and building a cask jockey box this weekend.