PNB continues

After re-aerating and repitching the PNB, moderate fermentation has resumed. 48 hours later, there is a thin layer of bubbles on the surface, and there 10 bubbles/min through the airlock. At this stage, the SG has dropped to 1024, so AA os 46% and ABV is 2.8%.

HLB rack to secondary

It is now 5 days after starting the HLB; bubbling seemed to have stopped a couple of days ago.

The fermentation started off very active, blowing yuck out of the airlock. I cleaned it up and put it back in. The fermentation was marked by the distinctive odour of rotten eggs (and other nastier things). This is unmistakably caused by the production of hydrogen sulphide. Aparently there are two possible causes: some yeast strains do this, and so will the addition of sugar to the wort. Both of these could be factors in my case. The good news is that hydrogen sulphide is extremely volatile, and will hopefully come out of solution in the secondary.

So it's time to rack to the secondary. I racked to the 1 gallon juice jar, with not much ado. I took a gravity reading, and was pleasantly surprised it had gone all the way down to 1010 (from 1050). This represents 80% AA and 5.6% ABV. Not bad! The taste was pretty light, as could be expected. The orange was perceptable, but none of the other flavour adjuncts were. However, there was no sweetness, which may be in part to bitterness imparted by these ingredients. The completeness of the fermentation probably also contributes to the lack of sweetness. During racking, the liquid was extremely cloudy. Hopefully this will settle out somewhat. However, it is worth remembering that wheat was used, so this is a good excuse for cloudyness! Colour is pale amber.

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Last Chance for PNB

I measured the SG of the PNB - it is still 1026 after 2 weeks. I have 3 choices.
1. Bottle now
2. Throw away
3. Repitch

I'm scared of bottling with this high of an SG - I think I'll produce some time bombs this way.
Tipping down the drain is rapidly becoming a realistic option. However, I figured I'll try repitching, just in csae. This has two possible benifits. First, there is the chance that fermentation might continue, and I get something drinkable. Second, this a good test to see if the baker's yeast is to blame for the H2S smell in the HLB. I know I'm supposed to repitch with the same strain of yeast, but since I don't have any right now, and I have the prospect of the above experiment, I'm going to anyway.

To give the yeast the best chance, I re-aerated by tipping the wort into a bucket, then funneling back into a carboy. I did this several times, and believe that I got pretty good aeration. I figured, just in case I do get vigorous fermentation, I should use the 6.5 gallon carboy. At this stage, I have to admit, I didn't spend much time or effort with sanitation. I pretty much eyeballed to make sure everything was clean, and rinsed under the hot tap. I figure any off tastes from bad sanitation will be offset by the general sourness of this beer anyway. Having said that, the sourness has mellowed perceptably over 2 weeks.

Hard Liquid Bread

Yesterday, I tested the SG of the PNB. It seems fairly stuck at 1026. However, in recent days, it has shown increased bubbling activity on the surface.

It still tastes pretty crappy - with a strong sour note. I think the can of extract may be to blame - the ends were pushed out by internal pressure before I opened it.

I used a turkey baster to collect a sample for SG measurement. This method is really good. All I have to do is sanitize the baster, and get a couple of samples. The airlock is off the carboy for less than 30s. Much easier than trying to syphon.

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So I decided to try out the homemade barley and wheat malt. This ties in with an ambition to brew beer with only ingredients and equipment that can be bought in regular grocery stores or hardware stores. Anything bought in homebrew specialist stores is banned!

With that in mind, I think the Reinheitsgebot is out of the window. I can't imagine any "regular" store that woud sell hops; only brewing stores. So I'm going to have to drastically improvise. I'll try substituting herbs and spices. You might remark that if it doesn't have hops, then it's not beer, and you'd be right by today's definitions. However, going back 500 or more years, you'll find that most "beer" was brewed this way. So I think we can describe this as "ale", but not "beer", and I guess the technically most correct term is "gruit", but I think this is an unattractive word, so I'll ignore that one.

As for the other ingredients:
Water - not a problem - I'll use tap water.

Malt - Well I've already made my malt. Here I'm stretching the rules a bit here, because the barley and wheat grain was purchased in Wholefoods Market, which is not really a "regular" supermarket. However, on its website, it does describe itself as a supermarket, and they are a nationwide chain, so I'm going to let this slide.

Yeast - I have two options here.
1. Try to culture yeast from a bottle (OK if bought in a supermarket).
2. Use bakers yeast. I've read that bakers yeast will impart a "bready" flavour if used for beer. Well duh... Anyway, since this is much easier and I'm already brewing something that is not beer, then I'll use this.

In fact, since I'm using wheat and various herbs, I'll call this next brew Hard Liquid Bread (HLB).

So here's the recipe:

13 Oz malted barley
13 Oz malted wheat
5 Oz brown sugar
1 sachet Fleischmans "Active Dry" yeast
0.5 tsp whole black peppercorns
0.5 tsp whole cloves
2 tsp dried oregano
2 cardamon pods (seeds only)
2 tea bags
zest from one orange

The aim is to make 8-10 pints.

I chose most of the herbs/spices/tea for their bittering, anti-bacterial and anti-oxidative properties. I would have prefered lemon to orange, but that's what I had.

I loosely interpreted all-grain instructions at http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter18-2.html

Grain Milling.
I put the malt in the blender, until all grain was at least split in two. This created a lot of flour, which is not ideal.

Mashing.
I did a simple infusion mash. I put 5 pints of 165 degF water in my 1 gall glass juice jar, and mixed in the malt. The combined temperature is 152 degF - apparently what we want. The juice jar was covered with a towel in attempt to keep the temperature steady. I stirred every 15mins for 1 hour. The temperature fell by more than 5 degF during this period, so I attempted to keep it stable by adding near-boiling water.

Lautering.
I had about 10 pints of 180 degF lautering water ready. I was hoping to lauter through the tap at the bottom of the juice jar, but this was continuously clogged, so I improvised a plan B. I got the vegetable steamer that fits inside my big stock pot, and lined it with a towel. I dumped the whole mess on top of the towel and slowly lautered onto the mashed grain. I poured the water onto a slotted spoon to disperse it to prevent it channelling through the grain. The lauting probably took about 20 mins to complete. I gently squeezed some of the remaining liquid out of the towel. The resulting wort was a little cloudy, amber colour, and quite sweet. 1.3 galls had a SG of 1023, so apparently I got a mash efficiency of 29.9, which is supposedly quite good.

Wort Boil.
Since the fermenter I'll use is only 1.3 gall, I want to reduce the wort to about 1 gallon, which should have an SG of 1030. I added sugar to boost this. I found a nice website with tables to look up how much sugar to use to boost SG, but I can't find it now. Anyway, I calcuated 5 oz would give a 20 point boost, and come in at just under 20% of the grain bill weight. So I expect a OG of 1050. Since I want to lose a lot of volume, this will be a fairly long, hard, open boil. I put the peppercorns, cloves, oregano and cardamon in at the beginning of the boil. Hot break occured about 5-10 minutes into the boil. After an hour, it was down to about 1.1 gallons. I put the orange zest in for the last 10 minutes and tea for the last 5 minutes.

Wort Cool.
I used my lauder bucket with ice to cool the wort. 30 minutes and 3 fresh baths did the trick. Meanwhile I rehydrated the yeast in 1/3 cup water for 10 minutes and proofed it with 1 tsp sugar for 10 minutes. The yeast obliged and produced plenty of froth.
Once the wort was down to 70 degF, I measured SG, and it was 1050.
I'll use the 1.3 gallon mini-keg for the primary. I poured the wort in, taking care to leave as much sediment (and spices and bits) behind. I shook for 3 minutes, then pitched the yeast, then shook for another 3 minutes. Yeast was pitched at about 8pm (on Sunday). Activity seemed to take off nicely - by 11pm, we had 15bubbles/min.

This morning, I found a little bit of mess. Some wort was blown through the airlock. I cleaned it up and put the airlock back. Activity was at 30bubbles/min.

By this afternoon, activity was down to 20bubbles/min. The airlock smells very beery!

Since this is a small batch, and pitching rate was relatively high, the primary may well be done in a couple more days...

PNB Rack to secondary

After 9 days in the primary, the PNB fermentation has slowed to < 1 bubble/minute. Almost all bubbling activity on the surface has ceased, so I decided to finish the primary, and rack to the secondary.

There is a distinct layer of yeast on top of the trub layer. Both layers are about 1cm.

I filled my syphon tube and racking cane with sanitizer, by connecting the tube to the tap on the sanitizer bucket. Once the whole thing was full, I stopped flow with a bulldog clip over the folded tubing.

I put the racking cane end of the syphon assembly in the primary, and let the beer displace all the sanitizer into a waste jug. I then filled a test tube for a gravity reading. The measurement was 1025 at 70 deg F, so temperature corrected is 1026, which corresponds to "potential alcohol" of 3.6%. Since the OG was 1044 (6% potential alc.), we have only 2.4% alcohol. AA is 1-(26/44) = 41%. This is not really as far along as I'd hoped, so hopefully we'l lget more attenuation in the secondary.

I'm hoping for an FG in the 1010-1015 range. This will equate to 4-4.6% alc. and 66-77% AA, so I guess we're about 2/3 of the way along.

I tasted it. It has an interesting sweet and sour quality. There is still lots of sugar in here, which I hope can still be fermented, and I guess the sour taste comes from yeast. Probably good that there's still plenty of yeast in suspension. There is enough hoppiness, which I was concerned about, from the 12 year old hopped ME.

I think this one needs at least 2 more weeks before I bottle, maybe more.

Even if this doesn't turn out to be drinkable, it has still been worth making it. I feel a lot happier with my technique, from preparing an boiling wort, to racking and syphoning, to general sanitation.

At this stage, I believe there are 3 factors contributing to the slow/sluggish fermentation.

1. Slow chilling of wort. At first, I just put the pot in the sink with cold water; the pot was only 1/2 submerged, so immediately I had <50% of potential cooling efficiency. Only when I put it in a bucket with ice (fully submerged) did the temperature start to drop off at a useful rate. I'll use the ice-bucket again next time (and make sure I have plenty of ice).

2. Poor aeration. I tried aerating the 2.5 gallons of water first, then the whole wort, by shaking. I must have got some aeration, but could do much better. I've been thinking a lot about this, and when I was cleaning the primary with a bottle brush today, after racking, it struck me that swishing the bottle brush around in liquid produces a lot of bubbles and general frothiness. I figured that a bottle brush connected to a power drill could be just the trick. I used various fittings to connect a bottle brush (not carboy brush) to my power drill, and put ~5 gall. of water in the 6.5 gall. carboy. This system really agitated the water. I couldn't find any literature about this method. I think the only downside is potential sanitation problems. The bottle brush is probably a haven for all sorts of nasties, and I think is galvanised, not stainless steel. If I use this method, I'd like to start with a nice new clean brush. Perhaps I can build some kind of whisk-type thing that'l do the same job.

3. Old malt extract. Nothing I can do about this now for this batch, but will be instantly remedied next time. If I ever come across old malt again, I'll use it in less than 50% proportion with new malt.

So for next time round, I think the biggest hurdle is getting good aeration.

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I went to a party last night and took home a 3L wine bottle that was there. The wine was pretty crap (what can you expect for $9 for 4 regular bottles worth), but the bottle will make a near perfect yeast starter bottle. The neck is even the right size for one of my stopper/airlocks.

PNB Slow Fermentation

It's now six days since I started the primary fermentation of the PNB. I was expecting to rack to the secondary around about now, but I'm not going to yet.

This seems to be a fairly slow fermentation. It took off quickly enough - the yeast starter must have done its work. About 48 hours in, the bubble rate was at about its peak - about 3s per bubble. It has gradually tailed off and is now at 16s per bubble. I think this is still somewhat active, and I think this is backed up by the fact that there is still quite active small-bubbling activity on the surface.

The krausen probably never exceeded 1cm, and has now almost completely subsided, apart from a fine covering of perhaps 1mm dia. bubbles.

Why the slow fermentation? Well, at one point I thought it might have stuck, but I don't think this is the case. The temperature has been a little up and down, between about 62 and 68 degF. I just fully opened the air vent in the bathromm, which will hopefully boost the temp by a few degrees. Other reasons for slow fermentation are probably poor aeration, and attributes of the wort. The wort was made entirely from 12-year old extract, which I guess has undergone some maillard reaction. The yeast probably have to work harder on it. I think the yeast are healthy enough though.

I'll probably leave it until the small bubbles on the surface have cleared, and we have more than 60s between bubbles. At which point I'll measure the SG, and probably rack to the secondary.

PNB Brew Day

Ingredients:
4 Lbs Muntons Hopped Nut Brown Ale Malt Extract
3.3 Lbs Light Malt Extract
4.5 galls carbon-filtered, boiled tap warer (OWASA)
Nottingham ale yeast (started in a 1 quart wort of above LME).

I started off boiling 2.5 gallons of water in my stock pot. It took about 30 mins to come to the boil at HI heat. I maintained a boil (covered) for 15 minutes, on MED-HI heat.

While the water cooled, I sanitized the 6.5 gall carboy. (1 gall water + 1 scoop oxiclean). I let it sit about 10 minutes, swirling every couple of minutes. I drained the sanitizer into a plastic bucket, which became my sanitizer bucket. I discovered that a plastic laundry cup provides a perfect cap for this carboy. I sanitized the cap, and a funnel, then rinsed in boiled water from the tea-kettle. With the funnel, I poured boiled water into the carboy to rinse, drained, then poured in the 2.5 gallons of water. This water was still pretty hot, so I put the carboy in a cold-bath (kitchen sink + cold water).

Wort boil:
I put 0.5 gall water in the stock pot, over HI heat, then opened the can of nut brown extract, and emptied it into the pot. Very sticky stuff. I rinsed out the can with another .5 gall, and stired to ensure it disolved. Next I added the LME. This had already been opened (for the yeast started) and stored in the fridge for a couple of days. I added 1 more gallon of water, for a total of 2 galls water, plus the extract, which must have been about 0.5 gallons. I covered the wort but watched it CLOSELY. Once it started to show signs of boiling, I reduced the heat to MED-HI. While I was changing the carboy's water bath, the pot boiled over a bit. I reduced the heat to MED, and still maintained a boil. I cleaned up the boil-over stickiness. After about 10 minutes of boiling, the hot break was complete, as evidenced by clearing of the fluffy head. I boiled for about 30 mins in total.

Note about the extract:
Both extracts have BBE dates in '95, so are probably 12 years old! Probably not optimal. Anyway, both were almost black, which they probably weren't 12 years ago. I guess this due to slow oxidization, which may approximate to roasting of the malt, so I'll probably end up with something resembling a stout.

Once the boil was over, I transfered the pot to the other sink for a water-bath. This wasn't doing a great job of cooling, because only the bottom half of the pot was submerged, so I put the pot in my laundry bucket, which is the same height as the pot. I put ice in the bucket, and an ice pack on top of the pot. Two baths like this brought the temperature down much better.

Before combining the cooled wort with the water in the carboy, I gave the water in the carboy a good shake for aeration. Its much easier to effectively shake 2.5 galls than 5 galls. I then resanitized my funel, and poured the wort into the carboy. The thermo read 72 degF - perfect. I got my yeast starter, and dumped the whole thing in. I tried as best as I could to give the carboy another good shake.

I had a sanitized syphon and racking cane, and drew of a cup or two of the wort, and measured the OG. The OG reading was 1043 at 73 degF, so correcting according to http://www.honeycreek.us/SpecficGravityTables.htm we get about 1044 at 59 degF. 1044 equates on my hydrometer to 6% "potential alcohol"

I capped off the carboy with a bung and airlock and put it in the downstairs bath. I put cheap vodka in the airlock. I think this carboy is a bit big to be left next to the sink, like I did with the 5 gall carboy, and yeast starter. I'll try to keep the cat out, because he likes to get into the bath and sniff around!

Now its time for cleanup, and the long wait...

Successful yeast starter

When I got home at 11pm last night, the yeast starter was already active. This morning, the activity has already decreased, so I think that I'll add more starter wort late tonight, so it's still awake tomorrow for PNB.

Yeast Starter for PNB take 2

So the first yeast started I tried never showed any signs of activity. The yeast must have been dead. I guess this is no surprise, considering it was 11 years old.

So today I took the opportunity to find the Brewmaster Store in Durham. I bought some Nottingham dry yeast, and a couple of self-adhesive thermometers.

I used the same procedure/ingredients for the starter, but because I started earlier, I has able to pitch the yeast by 8:45pm, without letting the starter work sit overnight.