BrewBattle: Wheat Edition
5Brewing occurred on Sunday March 15th, 2015. Photo journal below.
And so it begins. Good thing it was a nice day!
BrewDog isn’t going to be very far today. She knows that when I’m all done, the wife will make BrewDog Biscuits with the spent grain.
Mashing in! It smells sooo good.
And now we wait.
Time to vorlauf, then sparge! No, I did not pee all over the ground. Sicko. 
Oh, no, stuck mash! Why didn’t I get the rice hulls! 
Whew, all unstuck. It only took a few minutes and a nice blow upstream through the tube, but they were a really pissed off few minutes.
And now we’re boiling. First addition is 1oz Hallertau at 60min. 
Then, the second addition. 1oz Saaz at the 5 minute mark. . Notice the late-boil sanitation of my wort chiller as well.
Cooled, now it’s time to measure. 1.064OG, but only 3 gallons! My Beersmith was apparently not set for the right equipment and I shorted myself in water. After some new math, I will end up making a four gallon batch at the proper gravity rather than the full five gallons at a lesser OG. I don’t want to send @jont and @moose an inferior product, this is for all the marbles! Or.. no marbles whatsoever.
Pitched, aerated and ready to go! (pay no attention to the trashed house. We were building Ikea furniture at the same time as brewing. It was a disaster.)
This is where the beer will live for the next week or so. Anyone want a bottle of Irish Red Ale?
And, 24 hours later, look at it go!
I likely won’t post when (if) I transfer into secondary or bottling. So, this is it. @kevin, you’re move!
-ML
- 17 comments, 29 replies
- Comment
Looks awesome. I'm planning to start homebrewing once I move out of my current place, which is not ideal for much of anything besides basic living.
Rule #1 of all grain wheat beer = Rice Hulls make lautering go smoothly. Rule #2 watch for vigorous fermentation and potential blow-out of your fermenter-Looks like you have enough head space.
Nice setup!
Thanks! @bluebeatpete yep. i know this, and yet I torture myself without hulls. It is pretty vigorous- I wish the vine was a little longer. The red upside down bucket that you see a part of is what i set my bucket filled with sanitizer on in the event of need for blowoff tube. As you saw, I likely won't need it due to the shorting of my batch by 1gal.
Beats the pants off my set up and makes me want to go home and brew tonight.
@patthetuck Then my work here is done.
@marklog If only your work also encompassed sanitizing all my stuff...
@patthetuck Oxiclean Free and Clear overnight, and a little starsan. 90% of brewing is cleaning! :)
@marklog Yep, that will probably be tonight. I think I have a tub of starsan waiting to be cracked open.
@patthetuck i'm going to brew again this weekend! The wife told me I had to. The India Dark ale will be forthcoming. That puts my kegged list at:
Chocolate Milk Stout, Coffee Brown, Belgian Session IPA, 13% tripel, Hippo Stank Water, Hopsplat Honey IPA (Hopslam clone). I need more kegs.
@marklog mind sharing the Hopsplat recipe if you thougt it worked out ok?
@zdunklee I pulled mine off of homebrewtalk.com. I think this is the more 'official' recipe.
http://www.homebrewing.org/assets/images/AIH%202013%20Recipes/AIH%20Hopslam%20Clone1.pdf
@zdunklee are you sure you dont want the Hippo Stank Water? Hmm.. must be my marketing.
@marklog Awesome, love homebrewtalk. Thanks for the link, I think I know what my next brew will be. ( Is it wrong to brew a hopslam clone while enjoying a KBS?)
@zdunklee Nope! I brewed an Oberon clone while drinking a Dragon's Milk.
@marklog mmm Dragon's Milk. I can't wait for the New Holland location to open near me.
Additionally, in the glass is my Belgian Session IPA, Jean Claude Van Damme in a Skirt.
Hallertau is my staple hop. Works in everything for me as I keep my IBU down. Funny everyone I know was doing a red.
@erlarson85 The bottles of red next to the fermenter were from my very first brew ever, last spring. They were horrid. I think it's about time to give them another shot and use them for ribs if they suck. Staple hops for me are the American "C"s: Centennial, Cascade, Chinook, etc.
Oh hey Mark, what's the vitamix for? Catch bucket or grain mill.
@erlarson85 Nice eye! I was wondering when the easter eggs were going to come in. wort recycling pitcher. I have a cereal killer.
I used to think I wanted to homebrew. My experience with a Mr. Beer kit I got from Woot a few years ago didn't dissuade me, but seeing all the effort you put in might have. Still, the prospect of making gallons of my own Moosiskaner...
@Moose I have the Woot version of Mr. Beer too and feel the same way. I pass three convenience stores on my way home every night so I don't have to figure out what I'll be in the mood to drink in two months. But if (like @marklog says) cleaning wasn't 90% of brewing, I'd do it more.
@Moose, I love homebrewing for a few reasons. One, I sort of like Left Hand Milk Stout... except for this ONE THING. I fixed the one thing, and now I feel like I make a better beer than LHMS. This has been corroborated by others- it's not like the American Idol contestant who thinks she's the best but no one has told her otherwise. Two, it takes FOREVER. An all grain day is no less than four hours. An extract day, two. Given that the first step is 'open a homebrew', I know I've got a couple hours of downtime. Three, this is one of those things that take a minute to learn but a lifetime to master. It can be as easy as macaroni and cheese out of a box on your kitchen stove, and as complicated as you want it to be. Extract quality has come up in the past years, and I would challenge anyone to be able to guess whether the beer that they are tasting out of my tap is extract or all grain. They will be 50/50 at best. Finally (I forgot what number I was on and I'm typing in a single line field...), if you want a recipe for Moosikaner, I will post one presently.
@marklog Just to follow up, I realize that the all grain set up that was posted looks daunting. I started with a stockpot, some extract, and a bucket. It came out shitty! But it was beer. The next one was awesome.
TL;DR You got your dog drunk.
Awesome post, @marklog! I always love reading about hobbies that people are passionate about and the "inside baseball" is always the most interesting. I don't know a damn thing about homebrewing and it was still a fascinating read.
@JonT thanks! After posting I read @kevin's post from a year ago over at mediocre. I was shocked how similar our process is.
@JonT Agreed...and I don't drink beer or know anything about it. @Marklog made it easy(ish) to understand what I was seeing
@kevin, where are the pics? Is this going to be a one-horse race?!
@marklog I haven't gotten my ingredients yet. I should get them this week. Might brew on Sunday.
@kevin, i think I just saw you on reddit! The internet is small.
@marklog hah! Was it a question asking how to put fruit in a beer? :)
@Kevin yes! I smelled you a mile away.
To those interested, I'm bottled! My pressure valve bottle filler was leaking so I went straight from the tap, so to speak. Bottles will be headed to TX in a day or ten. Pictures to follow.
@marklog Great, good luck!
@Kevin Thanks. 'straight from the tap' means that i filled from my bottling bucket but i'm very interested to see if there is oxidation due to not using a bottom-to-top pressure filler. We shall see...
Bottles are bubblewrapped, taped, boxed, dunnaged (?), boxed again, taped again, and shipped via our friends in the Blue and Red. I will be shocked if these little babies make it to their home safe.
@jont, @moose, be on the lookout. It's a northern brewer box with the company name an address and that's it. No attn:, no c/o, etc. The FedEx guy was rushing me. I'll send the tracking number to halp@meh.com.
Two more things:
1) I have yet to taste this beer. I shipped it completely blind to the end result. Look at the big balls on @marklog.
2) I expect a livestream tasting event.
3) The beer is still carbonating. You might want to give it a few more days after you receive it.
4) I don't count so good.
@marklog yesss, excellent! The plan is definitely a livestream tasting/judging once we receive all of the entries. Shout out to @bluebeatpete who also brought some of his homebrews to the office, he didn't make a hef so it might not be fair to compare but we'll definitely taste it on stream.
@JonT I recommend chilling the beer for at least three days. Don't drink warm beer!
@JonT cool. give us a few days notice so i can get my mom to watch please.
BTW, shipping isn't cheap! Too bad VMP doesn't work both ways. Work on that.
@jont, @moose, it's arrived!!! PLEASE tell me we are intact.
@marklog @jont C Tucker has a brother at Meh?
@marklog, your box came. And since you asked so persistently, here's the unboxing.
Image 1: A box.
Image 2: A box, opened.
Image 3: A letter, read.
Image 4: A sleeve of protection...
Image 5: ...broken and reborn for the same role
Image 6: Another layer of safety
Image 7: An offering
Image 8: To keep environment out, or contents in?
Image 9: A second box
Image 10: A second box, opened
Image 11: A pair, offered as contestants
Image 12: "Drink Meh," "No." A threat? Or warning?
@Moose whoo hoo! The competition is real!
@moose thanks. I will rest easier now that the offering has completed the journey unscathed.