Burning Barrel Brewery

One of the things that I have been asked a few times is ‘How do you dry hop your beer in your kegs?’.

I am the kind of brewer that likes to use odds and ends that are around me for brewing gadgets. As I tend to procrastinate, this works well for me most times.

Dry Hopping in a Keg started when I wanted to dry hop an ordinary bitter about a year and a half ago. I could have used a hop bag, but I really wanted the hops to just float around in the keg and really ‘touch’ the beer. I could have used a stainless pot scrubber, but I use those to get the wort out of my kettle. So, I looked around and saw that I had extra stainless steel braided hose left over from my second mash tun that I had just built.

I finally posted some basic photos on how to do this on the Members of Barleyment website. You can go to Dry Hopping in a Keg and check out the idea. It works great and you don’t get much in the way of hop bits in your beer, the little bits you do get don’t bother me.

The Beer Geek has another trip to tell up about.

http://www.thebeergeek.com/TV/10/01.html

Last Saturday I was fortunate to get together with my friends JasonS and KevinP to brew some Ale.

I had been thinking of Jason and Kevin quite a bit and was really missing the ‘bonding’. Kevin, Jason and I have been through a lot over the past (gasp) 20ish years. Almost the first 10 of those years were spent in the theatre industry. They have also been there with me since the beginning of the Burning Barrel Brewery.

These two men stood up with me at my wedding..’nuff said.

Our Saturday brew all started the previous Monday with an email from Kevin that simply stated ‘WE should get together for drinks.’. That simple email then grew into us deciding to get together at Jason’s to brew.

I had 5 days to decide on what to brew and I was expecting some Fermentis S-04 Ale yeast from George Leet. This arrived on Wednesday, so I decided to use up the rest of my Crisp Maris Otter and make an Ordinary Bitter. I pretty much stuck to my standard OB recipe with a few variations.

When Saturday morning arrived, I looked outside and thought to myself ‘What a beautiful day it’s going to be.”. I was looking forward to the brew day. As I walked outside to get my gear out of the shed, I realized that looks can be deceiving. It was cold outside, but it was even worse when I walked into the wind. But it didn’t matter, I was going to brew today with friends.

With all the gear in the van, my son and I headed into town as he had hockey before the brew day was to begin.

Jason’s place is very close to the rink so that was an added bonus. When we were done with hockey, my son and I headed for a bagel and a coffee for me and an apple juice for my son then off to Jason’s. My wife, who had my other son at basketball, came and picked up the hockey player.

Then Jason and I started to setup for our brew day. We realized then that Kevin would probably not be brewing, but he did show up with some beer. In his hands on arrival were…Big Rock Grasshopper and Trad - we finished these off first and saved the best for last as he also brought Pumphouse Red and St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout.

The great thing about when the three of us get together…it’s like we haven’t been apart. The brewing almost is secondary as we spend the day discussing what has been going on in our lives since the three of us gathered last (which should be more often…but we get older, heh heh).

As we brew we forget about some things in the brewing process…but it will be beer in the end.

At the end of the brew day and the cold…cold day, Jason, the saint that he is, had some amazing chicken chili ready. And of course we washed that down with some of the beer that Kevin arrived with. The chili was just was we needed to end the cold brew day. Nice thick, hot, spicy chili. Oh and the hockey game was on the television.

Cheers to my friends Kevin and Jason (who have become brewers).

Tim

Well, remember I stated that I was taking a break from brewing over the summer? I missed the update to version 1.4 of Beersmith.

The updates include a calendar, notes, pricing (which I am happy about), mash adjustment tool, and a few others.

I really think this software is great and highly recommend it to anyone to try out.

Cheers,

Tim

Here is Michael Jackson last known interview. This was 23 days before he passed away.

Michael Jackson’s last interview

Are we running out of Hops and what is up with our malts? Well you can read about it all at beertown.org. I don’t see much to panic about at this point on a homebrewers stand. However, I had talked with Picaroons about this and they are having a hard time with the hops.

With Christmas fast approaching and my kegs being rather empty, yesterday I brewed a luscious Helles.

I typically try and start my brew days in the morning, however this brew day didn’t start until around 3 in the afternoon. Luckily, I had all the grain and hops weighed out from the night before.

I had been reading up on Denny Conn’s brewing process and thought that I would give it a try. The biggest difference from my previous way to brew is the time it takes to collect the sweet wort. Before, this process took me over an hour. But with the new method, I had my kettle ready to go in 40 minutes. I was worried that my efficiency would take a nose dive. But, what I have read stated that it should go up.

By the time I was mashed in, it was 4pm. I mashed for 75 minutes, then did a mash out for another 10 minutes. I started my run off and started slowly in order to get the filtering working. Once the wort was clear, I recirculated the first runnings and opened the mash tun valve to almost full into my kettle with my first wort hops*. Once the runnings stopped, I then added my sparge water, stirred, let sit for a couple minutes and stirred again. I waited a couple more minutes and started my second running. 40 minutes in total (first and second runnings) and my kettle was ready to go.

I managed to get my wort cooled and in it’s primary fermenters in time to watch the Leafs play the Sens with my son. Oh and my efficiency went from 72.5% to 77%. It was a good day…I can’t wait to taste it.

*First Wort Hops - Hops added to the boiler as the wort is first being sparged. These hops effectively get steeped and then boiled with the main boil. First wort hopping results in a better blending of hops flavor with the wort though it generally reduces hop utilization slightly when compared to traditional boiled hops.

Cheers,

Tim

I add two new recipes on the brewing recipes page. Added were a Dunkel and an Oktoberfest.

These are the first two brews of the fall brewing season. The summer here was very dry and I use my well water to brew. I opted to conserve water.

Over the last couple of weeks we have had our water level go up, so I felt good about brewing again and not draining the well.