Kegging day!

Dual regulator

CO2 tank and Keg

Finally picked up my CO2 today and commenced moving the Belgian into the pop keg.  The keg was rinsed with very hot water and then sanitized.  I pushed the sanitizer through the tap line by hooking up the CO2 and giving about an 8 PSI push through the system.  I found the keg to be a little finicky, the lid needs set and locked just right, or it leaks quite a bit.  Hopefully, this is not going to be a problem down the road.  I also noticed a leak out of the connector at the top without the CO2 and party tap attached.  Made a bit of a mess because of this.  It seems to be just fine with the connections on though.

Siphon running full steam

Filling up with liquid gold!

 I had a bit of trouble getting my siphon going due to a leak, but aside from that the beer moved fairly easily and quickly from carboy to keg.  Bathroom may not be the ideal kegging location, but the drop was good and mess was easy to clean up.  Once kegged, I hooked up the CO2 and started force carbonating at 30 PSI. I will check out the carbonation level tomorrow and then back it down to about 10 PSI for normal operation.  Overall, even though this was the first time, this was far less time consuming then bottling.  The whole operation took about 30 minutes even screwing around with the seal.  Thank you very much Santa!

Keg in the fridge

The beer dropped another point during the 3 week secondary ferment.  My finishing gravity clocked in at 1.018.  That puts this beer at just about 7% ABV (thanks Rooftop Brew!)  Took a swig of the sample and there was a little more bite than I expected.  I did not expect that much hop taste, but the nice Belgian ester character was there as well.  Nice alcohol warm to it as well.  Can't wait to taste it cold and carbonated!   Color is a nice yellow brown and it is much clearer than my pale.  Secondary ferment gets all the credit here as I used no finings during the boil.  Stay tuned for the taste test tomorrow!

Santa delivers

I have received my very own keg kit from Santa!  The Belgian will be going into a keg instead of bottles as soon as I get my CO2 tank filled.  Look for posts on this prior to the new year.  Hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas!

Still a bubbling

The Belgian is still actively fermenting!  I had read that Belgian yeast strains can take their time, but this is a little surprising.  The beer has now been bubbling for 9 days with no signs of stopping.  We are now 11 days post pitch and still showing signs of active fermentation.  It has slowed a bit, but in the carboy you can really see the action happen - pretty cool stuff!  The color is a nice orange-gold, really can't wait for this to finish up!  On another note, the pale is aging well. It is now very drinkable with a nice hop bite.  There is no discernible hop fragrance or flavor unfortunately, I must have added the last hops too early.  Still, turned out better than it started out so all in all I am happy with my first batch after a long layoff.

Belgian racked to secondary

Active fermentation appears to be coming to an end, so I moved my Belgian to a secondary fermentor today.  This move gets the beer off of any residual yeast, hops and other sediment while allowing the fermentation to continue.  Beer sitting on dead yeast is not good after a couple of weeks.  They dead cells will begin to break down and affect the flavor.  It is also a better practice to let the beer age in glass rather than my plastic primary.  This will extend the life of my primary fermentor as the plastic will break down over time. Racking is a pretty simple operation really.

Sanitizing

First, as always, wash and sanitize.  The secondary is a little harder to deal with than my bucket primary.  I really need to invest in a carboy carrier, too many more of these operations and I will break my glass carboy.   Then you just set the primary up higher than the secondary so gravity will feed the beer down tube into the secondary.  Remove the airlock and then take a quick hydrometer reading before transferring the beer.  My reading today was 1.028, so we had a fairly good drop during the first week.  The beer will probably drop a few more points during the secondary ferment, but we are just about there.  I took a quick sample of the beer and was pleasantly surprised.  It is still not too complex, but the alcohol warmth hits you quick, followed by a nice banana follow.  There was a little hop flavor there, but as I would expect the sweet malt and yeast esters take center stage.  Not sure I noted the maple syrup, but I only took a little sip of the sample.  The fragrance is sweet and fruity as well.  Pretty much what I had expected at this point.

Racked in secondary

Beer in motion

After measuring the gravity and taking a quick sip, I hooked up the transfer tube, opened the valve and let the beer flow out.  The secondary was quickly air locked and moved back into my bathroom shower.  I will let it sit there for about 30 days when it will be ready to bottle.  I am planning on closing off the heating vent and letting the temp lower to normal home temp - for me that is about 65 F.

Sediment in primary

 Then clean up the primary and I am done with my beer chores for the day.  Now the hard part, waiting for the beer to finish up!  In the mean time, I scout for my next recipe.  I have an open primary, so I may opt for a lower gravity beer I can bottle a week after brewing.  I already have my Belgian starter waiting so half the work is done.

Belgian brew session

Kicked off this session while watching the early NFL game.  This was a bit easier than my last batch as it was all extract.  No grain mashing which saves a couple of hours on the brew day.  I was not really confident in my yeast pack (and rightfully so based on the late take off of the batch) but I had waited as long as I could.
For this batch I ended up using a Wyeast smack pack of Belgian Abbey (1762) Ale yeast.  A smack pack is liquid yeast in a foil type bag.  Inside the bag is a separate container of yeast nutrient that you "smack" to activate.  This basically breaks the inner bag releasing food for the inactive cells.  They then begin to grow, letting off CO2 which swells the bag.  When it swells, you are good to go.  It is usually pretty obvious, but this bag barely swelled at all.

Syrup and hard candy used for this recipe

I did not want to wait any longer to brew so I hoped for the best and started cooking.  This process is basically the same as the last beer I brewed, and I neglected to take any photos while cooking this time - my apologies.  This recipe called for a couple of unique ingredients, one typical for the style and the other not so much.  Belgians are often supplemented with sugar candy, I chose dark for this recipe to provide a little extra color and perhaps some deeper flavor.  This recipe also called for maple syrup, which I have never used in beer.  Not much was added, so we shall see if it is noted in the flavor.  I would assume it will mostly ferment off, but we shall see.

The cook itself went off without incident.  I had purchased a new floating thermometer when I picked up the ingredients and decided to use it to measure my cool down of the wort.  I wanted to drop it in right after turning the heat off and then move the wort to the ice batch.  That was a mistake.  The thermometer bobbed under, touched the bottom of the pan which was still scorching hot, and you could hear it crack.  I yanked it out quick and opted for plan B.  I hung a meat probe down into the wort to monitor the cool down.  when it registered under 80, I poured it off through a filter.  I forgot the filter last time, which I assume is why my pale has way too much bite.  You don't want all the hop remnants in your fermentor.  I just needed a bit of water to top off to 5 gallons so added my cold water, pitched the yeast and moved the fermentor downstairs into a bathroom.  My house is a little to cool for ideal temp for the Belgian, so I put it in a small interior bathroom, closed the door and opened up the heat vent full.  Our heater is running pretty steady this week, so I figured it would raise the temp in there at least 5 degrees which is what I needed to get in my 70-75 range.

Next morning, no activity in the fermentor.  Worse yet, it looked like some of the water in my lock had been pulled down into the fermentor.  I was sure my temp reading was off (the fermentor did feel warm to the touch when I moved it) and the wort was too hot when I pitched.  It cooled and sucked the water in from the lock.  I was pretty sure I killed the yeast which led to the antics in my prior posts.  Obviously I was wrong.  The yeast just needed a little more time - perhaps it was a temp shock, but not enough to kill it.  May end up better anyway.  I have read that it is better for a Belgian to take it's time fermenting to invoke the proper esters from the yeasts into the beer.  We will find out, but not for a while.  This beer will transfer to a  secondary a week after starting and then sit for 30 days before bottling.  Hate to wait that long, but it will be worth it!

It's a Christmas miracle!

So I went downstairs to re pitch my new yeast tonight, and miraculously the fermenter is bubbling away with a big thick krausen showing through the bucket!  Guess those yeast cells were scared into action by the competition!  Now, what to do with that second batch of yeast.... Guess I need to plan my next batch,  maybe time to explore the pale with Belgian yeast to try and get that Raging Bitch style.  The opportunities are endless.  Just realized I never posted on the brew session itself.  Update on that coming right up.

Fail again?

Wow, this beer is just crushing me.  Had no fermentation again.  Only thing I can figure is I pitched too hot.  Did a starter last night with some new yeast, checked the started today and no signs of fermentation.  No idea what may have gone wrong.  I am crossing my fingers for some evidence by the time I get home, but I will have to pitch anyway.  Perhaps it fermented while I wasn't looking, but there is no sign of a robust yeast cake.  If this doesn't work, I need to give up on this batch.  I have already flushed way more on this batch than if I just went out and bought the beer!  Moral of the story - Temperature control is not to be guessed at.  I will need to upgrade my process and tools for monitoring temps.

Little Mountain Brew session

We have a group of folks at work who like to get together a couple of times a year and brew at The Brew Kettle.  This place is great - good food, great beers on tap, and a large menu of beers to choose to brew.  They have really nice brew set up with 8 kettles (I think) and multiple bottling stations.  Trouble is, this place is far from home for me and is also busy as hell.  The wait to brew even a couple of kettles is up to 6 months.  Well, we missed scheduling at our last session so a few of us were looking for an alternative.   Little Mountain Brewing opened up near me about a year ago.  I had stopped in to check it out and met Bob who runs the place.  Nice guy and he has a nice operation.  It is much smaller than the Brew Kettle with no real food options, but he has plenty of availability and looks like the perfect set up for the 4 of us.  

We scheduled a session and completed our brewing last week.  Bob was on hand as well as his bartender (sorry, can't remember his name - too many beers!) to help us out.  We opted to brew a Scotch ale and a Christmas ale.  The session went well aside from a rookie mistake on the Christmas ale - yours truly and partner allowed a boil over.  Both beers have a stiff OG of over .070, so these should warm us up nicely on the cold days ahead.  I have never brewed a spiced Christmas ale before, the ingredient list was the longest I have encountered by far.  From memory, we had at least 3 different grains as well as Oatmeal, molasses, 20 lbs of malt extract, honey, cinnamon, cranberries, orange peel, nutmeg, cardamon.  I am missing a few here, but you get the picture.  

After the session which took about 31/2 hours, a couple of us stopped next door for some wings.  The establishment was a little rough, but the wings were fantastic and cheap.  I will definitely stop in there again.   

Will post again on the results - we hope to bottle on the 22nd so stay tuned. 

Second attempt at the Belgian

I am now restocked with yeast and am skipping the starter.  This is a little risky as this is a high OG beer, but I want to get this brew session completed quickly today.  I picked up a smack pack of Wyeast Abbey Ale yeast while brewing a Little Mountain Brewing on Thursday (Much thanks Bob, had a great time!).  Smacked the pack about an hour ago, I should be brewing while watching the early NFL game today.  Pics and progress to follow.  

Starter - FAIL

I have seen no evidence of fermentation in my starter.  This was the first experience I have had with White Labs tube yeast packs and I am pretty sure I tossed most of the yeast instead of pitching it.  Unbelievably dumb move!  I pulled the yeast out of the fridge and tried to pitch it direct into the starter mix. The cake on the bottom would not come into suspension and I assumed incorrectly that whatever I could not mix in was probably dead and not usable.  Uh, no - completely the opposite.  All the good cells ended up in my garbage.  I will head to Brew Mentor today with my head hung low for a new tube.  I spent some time researching after my collosal fail and it seemed like I did everything else about right, but I think I may invest in an erlenmeyer flask to start these in.  While I will probably just go with a stock starter size for this batch, it is important to note that most serious brewers tailor their starter size to create the number of yeast cells they believe they need for the beer they are creating.  I am certainly not that exacting at this point in my brewing career. Guess I will just chalk this up to a failed trial run.  In a couple of days I will try it onece again with a target of brewing Thanksgiving weekend.