Think Before You Dump!

Been a while since I've posted. Sort of a lot has happened since the last post and at the same time nothing new has really happened.

1) Hops
Not much to report. I expected to take zero harvest this year. The Mt Hood is the only one that showed real promise. However, looks like nothing is going to happen. Going to chalk this year up to root growth and hope for something next year. All the bines are still alive so it gives me hope!

2) First HomeBrew Competition Entry
Entered my first 2 beers into a local hombrew competition. I entered a Cream Ale and Amber Ale (more on that below) into the Dayton DRAFT BrewFest 2011. I honestly don't expected to win anything, though I'd really love too, but I'm most looking forward to feedback. I'm a little nervous with it being my first one and very excited at the same time.

3) Think Before You Dump!
From the first pull of the Amber Ale, there was something about it that just wasn't right. There was some sort of off flavor that I just couldn't pick out. It had an after finish bite. Not bitter like hop bitter, just something. It always wasn't getting clearer either like there was something making the beer stay hazy. I considered it very early on to dump the whole batch. Even after a month in the keg I still wasn't happy with how it was turning out.

However, around 2 months in or so, something changed. This beer took a shape of its own and that afterbite was gone and it was left with a nice hop profile. I'm very glad I didn't dump this batch. I brought it to an NFL Fantasy Draft party and people loved it. This is also what gave me the idea to enter it into a competition.

When I cleaned out the keg this weekend, there was A TON of sediment at the bottom. It didn't look like yeast but I'm assuming it was whatever gave the beer the bite and the hazy. Maybe extra proteins or grain particles, who knows, but two batches since then have not had the same issue.

So the moral of the story, give your beer time. Unless you know something is horribly wrong with it like infection, give it time to mature and come into its own.

To All Aspiring Commercial Brewers

A really great blog post by Jamil Zainasheff about starting his own brewery. I thought it was a very humbling read. 

http://byo.com/blogs/harder-than-it-looks.html

I think anyone that aspires to be a commercial brewer should read this.

First Repitch of Slurry - BOOM!

I did my first pitch from slurry this past weekend. I had just shy of 200 ml of yeast in mason jars and using Mr. Malty I figured I'd need to use around all of it based on age and yeast concentration, etc. I made a starter just a few hours before to kick start it but didn't want it to fully ferment out, just wake them up a little. First off, that starter took off very quickly. I did it around 12 hours before pitching into my wort, next time i may only do it around 6 hours before.

So I pitched it into my wort on Saturday night. On Sunday night, around 24 hours later, I go down to check on it before going to bed. I had it in a controlled chest freezer to control the temps. I open the freezer and I have a mess! I had around 5.5 gals of wort when I pitched and I know I was a little high for the bucket. So the krausen apparently back filled into the airlock which then stopped all C02 release. I have a 9.5 stopper in my lid so I can look in, take measurements, etc. The pressure build up blew the stopper out like a cork. I cleaned up the mess, not too bad. Next morning, same thing! When I got home from work later that day the airlock was filled and there was krausen leaking from the stopper but didn't blow it off.

A few lessons learned:
1) Repitching slurry works
2) Don't overfill a fermenter
3) Make a starter later in the day if at all.

I definitely plan to try repitching again in the future. We'll see how it goes next time.