Screwy's Recipe 65 - Screwy Witz Witbier

Over the past several months I've been slowly converting all of my favorite extract recipes over to all grain. I converted my Stouts, IPAs, Oktoberfest and over the past six months. I saved my wheat beer extract recipe for last. I was a little anxious about converting the wheat beer recipe to all grain because I would have to add flaked wheat and flaked oats to the mash. I've never used flaked wheat or flaked oats before and I was worried that if I didn't do it properly I could get a stuck mash. A stuck mash would mean wasting an entire brewday and ending up with no beer to show for it, not to mention throwing away all those ingredients.

Wheat, Oats, Barley, Hops And Secret Ingredients In Screwy Witz

Thankfully the morning I picked up my grains Joe Bair was helpful enough to explain which step I had to do differently in preparing the mash when using flaked ingredients. Thanks to Joe's advice I was able to brew two 5 gallon batches back to back without running into any problems or getting a stuck mash. Once the mash was completed brewing an all grain wheat beer was just the same as brewing any other all grain recipe as far as the lauter, boil and fermentation went.

Screwy Witz Witbier At Four Weeks

The last time I brewed a Belgian Witbier it was from an extract recipe had I ordered from Mr. Beer in 2010. I had spiced up the recipe back then by adding crushed coriander seeds and orange rinds to provide some citrus notes and some cardamom to add bit of spicy heat. Back then I hadn't really developed a taste for this style of beer yet but lot of people who tried it really liked it. Since then I'd been brewing wheat beers using DME and steeping grains and those recipes produced a nice drinkable wheat beer that was a hit with the people who drank them. So I set out to convert my basic wheat beer recipe from DME to all grain, with further plans in mind of using some adjuncts to create as many different wheat beer styles as I can.

I Love A Good Wheat Beer Any Time Of Year

Now with any fear of a stuck mash out of mind and far behind me I focused on creating the perfect Belgian Witbier recipe, one that I thought came the closest to what I wanted and others would expect in the final beer. My goal here was now two fold convert my DME recipe to all grain and then extend that conversion further out into the BJCP guidelines for a true Belgian Witbier which states 'Moderate sweetness (often with light notes of honey and/or vanilla) with light, grainy, spicy wheat aromatics, often with a bit of tartness. Moderate perfumy coriander, often with a complex herbal, spicy, or peppery note in the background. Moderate zesty, citrusy orangey fruitiness. A low spicy-herbal hop aroma is optional, but should never overpower the other characteristics.'

Flaked Oats, Flaked Wheat, Wheat Malt, Pilsener Malt And Rice Hulls

Within a week and only after having invested a lot of time doing online research I put together my final ingredient list. I emailed the list over to Princeton Homebrew and anxiously waited for the reply from Joe Bair confirming when he thought he could have my order ready and which of my preferred ingredients were in stock. I know whenever I email an order in to be filled it depends on how hectic it is in the store before I get a reply confirmation back. I always make it a point to send my list over well in advance of my planned pick up time and remember on the drive over that I may have some time to look around and ask questions while I wait to pay for my order.

Mixture Of Rice Hulls And Malted Grains Go In First

The day I picked up my ingredients Joe asked if I'd ever done an all grain wheat beer before and I said no this would be my first time. Joe suggested that I first add the malts, rice hulls and strike water to the mash tun and mix them all together until they hit my mash temperature, making sure there was enough room and strike water left on top of the tun so when I added the flaked oats and wheat they were submerged. 

Flaked Wheat And Oats Added To Top Of Mash

Loading the mash tun was easy to do even though l had never done it this way before. The idea was to  simply create a sort of filter bed made up of rice hulls and grains that would prevent the thick proteins from the flaked oats and wheat from sticking the mash. I just added a cup full of pilsener malt then a cup full of rice hulls and then a cup full of pilsener malt then a cup full of wheat malt until all the hulls and malts were in the mash tun. Then I added strike water until I reached my mash thickness, stirred all the grains together hitting my mash temperature and leaving enough room for the flaked grains and additional strike water.

Mash Tun Topped Off And Ready To Go

Into the mash tun went the rice halls along with the Belgian pilsener malt and German wheat malts. I filled the tun up to the 4 gallon mark when I hit my mash temperature of 152F after mixing all the rice hulls and grains together with the strike water. Next I poured the flaked wheat and flaked oats on top of the mash and then added enough strike water to fill the tun up to the 4.75 gallon mark and then screwed on the lid and began the 60 minute countdown. After doing this for the first time I realized that this whole process was easier to do than it was to explain and it made perfect sense. The rice hulls mixed in with the malts provided a deep enough grain bed that the mixture of flaked oats and wheat on top would never be able to clog up the filter and cause a stuck mash.

Single Infusion Mash And Fly Sparge

Since the flaked oats and wheat had to sit undisturbed during the entire mash process there was no need to open the tun or mess with it for the entire hour. I built this mash tun myself and have used it dozens of times so far and it always holds the mash temperature from start to finish. I start out by preheating the mash tun with about 2-3 gallons of 170F water for 20 minutes or so only dumping it out just before I'm ready to add in my grains and strike water.

Vorlauf The New Wort Until It Runs Really Clear

Right after I stir the mash and tweak my mash temperature I screw on the lid of the mash tun and immediately place two folded towels on top of the lid to help hold in the heat and keep it from escaping through the lid. Since the cooler itself was designed by the manufacturer to hold cold liquids the lid wasn't engineered to hold in heat but the folded towels placed on top of the lid provide the needed insulation.

Adding The Screwy Witz Special Ingredients To The Boil Pot

One of my favorite parts of the brewday were spent preparing the spices that went into the boilpot along with the hop additions and bitter orange peel. I put all the spices in a small plastic container for convenience and then just added them all to the boil at the same time. Belgian Witbier by style should use Noble hops that complement the citrusy coriander and spicy cardamom induced flavors and aromas that are unique to this style of beer.

Cooling Down The Wort To Pitching Temperature

If there's one step left in my brewing process that needs further improvement it's the wort cooling process. I learned a lesson in physics about the heat transfer in liquids the first time I used a water bath cool my wort down. Unlike hot air that rises up drawing in the cooler surrounding air to replace it as it's being heated water acts a whole lot different. With my sink filled with 55F water and a bunch of frozen water bottles I found that the water closest to the boil pot was really hot. But the further I moved my hand through the water away from the boil pot the colder the water temperature was. I ended up using my mash paddle to carefully stir the water bath to keep the colder water circulating against the side of the boil pot.

Racking Cooled Wort To LBKs Using An Auto Siphon

 As the wort was cooling I gave it several good stirs to keep the hot wort in contact with the cooling coils and the side of the boil pot. This really sped up the cooling process a lot by preventing a thermal barrier from forming around the colder coils and pot surfaces. Another benefit of stirring the wort is it forces all the cold break to collect in a neat little pile on the bottom of the pot making racking only the clean wort into the fermentors much easier.

Screwy's Recipe 64 - Burstin' Out Pale Ale

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to have the house to myself long enough to brew two all grain IPA recipes back to back. I picked up the ingredients Friday afternoon at Princeton Homebrew and started preheating my mash tun by 11:00am on both Saturday and Sunday mornings. Having this much uninterrupted brewing time allowed me to focus on some of the finer details of my brewing process and to try out a few new ideas. I was even lucky enough to take home two 125ml bottles of East Coast Yeast's ECY-12 which really made my day.

2-Row /Crystal 10L Malt With Cascades, Centennial And Columbus Hops

My goal was to brew an American IPA style beer using mostly 2-Row as the base malt with just a bit of Crystal 10L to add some sweetness. The idea was to let the hops come through loud and clear so I used a hop schedule that added more than half of the IBUs in the form of flavor and aroma hopping. While I was at it why not include first wort hopping in the process too, and so I did. The ECY-12 would be the perfect yeast choice to ferment this beer too because it's such a clean fermenter at 58F, it's a lager like yeast but not really a true lager yeast.

The bittering levels for an American IPA are between 60-70 IBUs and this recipe calculated out to be 71 IBUs with an original gravity of 1.061. I started my hop schedule by lautering 5 gallons of wort onto an ounce of Columbus hops and then adding another ounce of Centennial at 20 minutes and the other 2 ounces of Cascades at 10 and 7 minutes before flameout. I also held a couple of ounces of Cascades in reserve to be used for dry hopping once the primary fermentation is done. With 15 minutes remaining to the boil I added a tablet of WhirlFloc to help coagulate some of the proteins and make them easier to keep out of the fermentor.

1.080 Start Of Lauter 1.030 End Of Lauter And 1.060 Original Gravity

I used a single infusion mash for 60 minutes at 155F to prepare the wort for lautering. after the wort was running clear I took my sweet time fly sparging and filled the 5 gallon boilpot in a little over 30 minutes. Since the ECY-12 yeast is a medium attenuator and this beer comes in at just under 6% ABV I chose a mash temperature of 155F, your mileage may vary if you use a lower or higher attenuating yeast or a higher ABV brew. For a lower attenuating yeast you may want to mash a few degrees lower and just the opposite for a higher attenuating yeast. Whichever yeast you use be sure it ferments cleanly without producing excessive ester, phenol or other overpowering flavors that will interfere with the up front hop character so important in an American IPA style beer. 

1 Ounce Of Columbus Hops Added As First Wort Hop Addition

The trick to getting this high IBU beer right is in getting all that great IPA hopping without turning the beer bitter. I've used First Wort Hopping several times in my IPAs and I'm a believer in any process that claims increased bittering without introducing any harsh resin or vegetable off flavors. So into the boilpot the Columbus hops went submerged in hot wort for the entire 30 minute lauter, another 30 minutes while the wort reached the boiling point followed by a good 60 minute boil. The other big challenge to making a good American IPA is loading up the wort with enough hop aroma and flavor so that it will remain hop forward after spending a month or two in the bottle or keg. I've heard from other brewers and experienced it myself where a nice hoppy beer at bottling kind of losses it's aroma after sitting in the bottle for a few months, this is what I'm trying to avoid by using the hop bursting technique.

Vorlauf Wort Until The Grain Bed Sets And The Wort Runs Clear

If you've done all grain brewing before and used a mash tun you know the first few quarts of wort to drain out during the lauter are pretty cloudy and loaded with bits of grains as shown in the picture on the left. After recirculating, or performing the vorlauf process, until the grain bed has been set the wort runs clear as shown in the picture on the right. I took the extra time to recirculate the wort before lautering so that only the clearest wort went into the boilpot. The lauter itself took a little over 30 minutes, I always set a timer at the start of the lauter and adjust the flow so I fill a quarter of the pot every 7-10 minutes until it's filled with 19 quarts of wort. I keep the lid on top of the boilpot the entire time to keep the heat in and any flying bugs out and it takes my stove 30 minutes to bring the wort up to a boil. As the water in the wort evaporates I replace it about halfway through the boil with boiling water I keep in a separate pot just for that purpose. At the end of the boil I remove the hops sacks and add enough of the boiling water so that the wort level is a half inch down from the top of the boilpot. That's just enough room so the wort doesn't spill out when I carry it over to the sink and put my wort cooler in it to cool the wort down quickly.

Screwy's Burstin Out Pale Ale

Size 5.00 gallons: Estimated IBU=74, SRM=5, OG=1.061, FG=1.015, ABV= 5.9%

Recipe:

Click to download this recipe file for qBrew

10.5 pounds US 2 Row

0.5 pound Crystal 20L

1 ounce Columbus (pellets)

1 ounce Centennial (pellets)

3 ounces Cascade (pellets)

East Coast Yeast ECY12 - Old Newark Beer™

..or...

White Labs WLP001 - American Ale Yeast™

Mash at 155° F for 60 minutes.

Boil for 60 minutes.

Ferment at WLP001 at 68° F (18.8 °C), ECY12 at 58° F (14.0 °C) until final gravity is reached.

  Click to download Screwy's latest qBrew database   

Directions:   

Infusion Mash: (Soak mash tun in 8 quarts of 170° F water for 20 minutes, preheat and dump it)

Heat 21 quarts of filtered water to 165° F

Pour 14 quarts of 165° F water into mash tun

Mix in 11.0 pounds of crushed grain mix at 68° F

Pour the remaining 165° F water to fill mash tun to 4.50 gallon mark

Stir water and grain mixture and adjust to 155° F and mash for 60 minutes

Fly sparge with 168° F strike water to set mash bed to 168° F

Lauter for 30 minutes adding 19 quarts of sweet wort to 20 quart pot

Full Wort Boil:

Add 1.0 ounce Columbus hops as the FWH added to boil pot during lauter

Add 1.0 ounce Centennial hops with 20 minutes remaining to boil

Add 1/2 tablet WhirlFloc with 15 minutes remaining to boil

Add 1.0 ounce Cascade hops with 10 minutes remaining to boil

Add 1.0 ounce Cascade hops with 7 minutes remaining to boil

(Dry hop 1.0 ounce Cascade hops after primary fermentation for 5 days)

Primary Fermentation:

Use autosiphon to prevent excess hop and grain debris from getting into fermenter

Fill two Mr. Beer fermenters equally with wort and top off with filtered water to just above the 8.5 quart mark

Aerate wort and pitch WLP001 at 70° F or ECY12 at 60° F

Ferment to final gravity, raise to 3-5° F over 2 days, dry hop and hold for 5 days

Secondary Fermentation:

n/a

Keg/Bottle:

Keg and force carbonate at 30 psi for 2-3 days at 34°F

..or..

Keg with priming sugar, purge with Co2 and naturally carbonate for 7-14 days at 68°F

..or..

Bottle prime and carbonate at 68° for 14 to 21 days

Adding Mr. Beer Yeast As Nutrient

Once the wort got up to a good hard boil I started my countdown timer. The wort boiled pretty much unattended for the next 40 minutes before I had anything more to do to so I started getting my next hop additions, wort cooler and racking cane ready. During this time I gently rolled the ECY12 yeast every once in while to mix the cells up into solution in the bottle so they all poured out easily into the fermentor when pitched. The East Coast Yeast bottles contain a huge amount of yeast cells packed into a large 125ml jar. I have no problem splitting a single jar into two separate jars for pitching into each of my two 2.4 gallon fermentors since each 125ml jar of yeast is capable of fermenting 5 gallons of beer.

Each ECY Bottle Contains Massive Cell Counts

The ECY12 is priced the same as Wyeast or White Labs liquid yeast and each ECY jar contains at least twice the amount of yeast in a typical smack pack or tube, making using this exceptional yeast a no brainer. Not to mention that the yeast is grown locally by Al Buck, hand delivered in a cooler to Princeton Homebrew my LHBS and is awesome for fermenting just about any type and style of beer. Princeton Homebrew is the exclusive distributor of East Coast Yeast and currently ships up to 7 vials anywhere in the United States for $16.00 including ice pack and bubble wrap. Orders are now available to be placed online using PayPal and you can subscribe to the ECY Google Group by visiting the Princeton Homebrew website and getting the latest East Coast Yeast inventory information. You should act fast though the last shipment was sold out in just 21 minutes.

Sanitize 2 Bottles, Split And Pitch Into 2 Fermentors

With 5 minutes remaining in the boil the brewhaus aromas coming off of the wort were by now unmistakable and pure heaven to breathe. Even with the continuous movement of fresh air being blown in one window and hot boil vapors being exhausted out another window at a fast rate it was very obvious to anyone in the room we were making beer. As the count down timer rang out signaling the end of the boil I used a pair of sanitized stainless steel tongs to begin removing all four hop sacks from the boil pot. I placed them inside a strainer placed on top of a small aluminum pot to allow any remaining wort to drip out before emptying the spent hops into the garbage. I learned the hard way that spent hops and grains need to be drained, bagged and taken outside to be disposed of as soon as possible on brewday. The first and last time I didn't do that the brewhaus got infested with fruit flies, it seems they really like breeding in spent hops for some reason.

Giving The Boiling Wort Some Final Stirs Before Flameout

To help cool the boiling hot wort down quickly I filled one side of my double sink up halfway with cold water and about a dozen frozen water bottles to get the temperature of the water even lower, basically making a huge ice bath to place the boil pot in. After removing all the hop sacks and pouring in enough boiling make up water to raise the level of the wort up to a half inch below the top of the boil pot I carried the boil pot over to the sink and placed it in the ice bath. I quickly put my wort cooler into the boil pot and connected it to the sink after routing a vinyl tubing from the discharge end of the cooler to the drain of the other double sink. As the boil pot sat in the ice bath I opened the valve on my filtered water faucet letting the water flow into the ice bath raising the level up to an inch below the top of the boil pot, to totally submerse the wort in cold water. Using the ice bath with the wort cooler to cool down the hot wort dropped the wort temperature very quickly from 212F to 90F in about 10 minutes or so. I was able to get the wort down to it's 65F pitching temperature in about another 20 minutes, stirring the wort once or twice to keep the hot wort in contact with the cold sides of the boil pot and cooler coils helped it along.

Large Double Sink Makes For A Huge Functional Ice Bath

With the wort cooled down to pitching temperature, the hop sacks removed and the fermentors and racking cane sanitized it was now time to transfer the wort to the LBKs. Stirring the wort while it was cooling off helped form a nice pile of trub in the center of the boil pot which worked perfectly with the racking cane and clip I use to transfer the wort. Since the thickest part of the trub pile is near the center of the pot and the racking cane hangs close to the wall of the boil pot the wort is easily transferred clean to the fermentors. Once again having a double sided sink comes in handy because by simply putting a temporary shelf across the top of one side, placing the boil pot on it and the fermentors in the bottom of the other side allows the wort to transfer by gravity. I found the top of an old unused cooler that fits perfectly across the top of my sink without sliding and therefore eliminating any chance of accidentally spilling hot wort. The top is made of plastic which is easy to clean and sanitize as needed, it was a very lucky find for me and I use it all the time.

Happiness Is Racking Clear Trub Free Wort Easily

As all the racking and cooling was going on I managed to keep turning and gently shaking the two bottles of East Coast Yeast I was going to pitch. I do this to get as many cells into suspension as possible by keeping them stirred up and preventing the cells from sticking to the bottles walls. I do this with all brands and types of liquid yeast because I want to end up with as many cells as possible in my fermentor and not inside the bottles to be thrown away. Another interesting fact I found out is that fruit flies are also attracted to yeast solutions whether it be rehydrated dry yeast or liquid yeast. I mention this because it took me nearly a week to eliminate the infestation of fruit flies from my brewhaus and until I did I got a first hand look at what they were attracted to. If you've ever had a similar experience you know what a nuisance they can be especially when your transferring cooled wort and pitching yeast, they seem to be everywhere and shooing them away gets to be a real pain.

Pitching Half A Bottle Of ECY12 Directly Into Fermentor

With the wort transferred to the fermentors, the yeast stirred up into solution and both my hands hurting form aerating the wort for several minutes it was time to unscrew the top of the bottles and pitch the ECY12 yeast. Once the yeast was pitched it was back to aerating the wort all over again for several more minutes so that I could get as much oxygen as I could back into the wort before screwing on the fermentor lids. After boiling the wort mostly all of the oxygen that was present in it before the boil was now gone. Since yeast need oxygen, during their initial lag and growth phases in order to multiply and build up energy for the upcoming fermentation, aerating the wort is the only way to put the oxygen back in it. Sore hands are the price I pay for manually aerating the wort instead of investing in an O2 tank, gauges and diffuser stone which would make aeration much easier and actually increase the levels of oxygen to higher levels than when using a spoon.

Cleaning Up The Mash Tun After The Lauter Was Done

A typical all grain brew day takes me 5-6 hours from start to finish including cleaning up all my brewing gear and storing it away until my next brew day. I brew 5 gallon batches now all the time and rack the wort that's made into two 2.4 gallon Mr. Beer fermentors. I started out doing it this way because I bought 6 of the smaller fermentors when I first got started brewing beer and since then I have found them to be pretty versatile. They are easier to carry around when full and to clean when empty. Their smaller capacity let's me fill up two of them from a single 5 gallon batch and allows my to ferment or dry hop one of them a little differently than the other and judge the results to see which one is the best. It also allows me to mix the two together to take the experimentation a bit further if needed. The LBKs work well as secondary fermentors and double as bottling buckets too and it's not too rare that I have all 6 of them in use at the same time.

Final Gravity Reading 1.012 At Bottling

The Burstin' Out Pale Ale was ready to bottle in about 10 days after pitching the ECY12 yeast into it and fermenting it at 58-60F until I got the final gravity reading of 1.012, which actually finished about 2-3 points lower than qBrew had calculated. I always naturally carbonate my kegged beer so I added to each 2.5 gallon corny keg 5 tablespoons of pure cane sugar boiled for 5 minutes in half a cup of filtered water then cooled down to 68F. This comes out to roughly a half a teaspoon full of pure cane sugar per 12 ounce bottle and adds between 2.5 - 2.75 volumes of Co2 which is just perfect for this style of beer.

First Pour From Bottle At 12 Days

 Bingo! What more can I say, at only 12 days old this beer is already perfect. I'm not sure how to describe it but I'll try. The first thing you notice when opening the bottle is that familiar 'ppfftt' immediately followed by an aroma that is undoubtedly what you'd expect from an awesome IPA. Not bitter at all but full of hop aroma and flavor with great lacing and head retention. The ECY12 cleanly fermented this beer letting all the hop aroma and flavors through with absolutely no traces of astringency or resinous off flavors. I only had two bottles to sample but they were both delicious so I just racked a corny keg in the refrigerator for drinking this weekend. I feel like I've died and gone to hop heaven.

Naturally Carbonated And Delicious

 After sharing this beer with a few of my favorite hop loving friends, and some family members that don't care for hoppy beers at, I am now convinced that this recipe is destined to be real favorite of mine. Full of American hop aroma that hits you square in the face as you lift the glass to take your very first sip. Next thing that takes you by surprise is the soft smooth mouth feel and the amount of pure hop flavor in each sip.

Perfectly Balanced, Not Bitter And Naturally Carbonated

 Nothing stands in the way of the beer when delivering the most favorable hop flavor and aromas directly to you with each and every taste. Its soft golden color reminds me of fields of grain waving in the wind on a midsummer afternoon. Burstin' Out Pale Ale's unsurpassed long lasting foam, superior lacing and 'session' beer-like qualities are deceptive of it's nearly 6.0% ABV alcohol content. I'd suggest this beer with a pepperoni pizza while sitting down watching a good movie.

What Every Brewer Should Know About Yeast

As a new brewer it took me quite a while before I was able to understand what was going on inside the LBKs during 'the fermentation'. I see posts here all the time from new and conditioned brewers alike about off flavors in their beer and how or why they have them. So this morning I decided to sit down with my morning coffee, since I couldn't sleep anyway, and try to set the record straight and try to explain the 4 things every brewer should know about yeast.

Here's how I view the relationship between yeast, off flavors and fermentation temperatures throughout the typical beer fermentation. While I'm writing this with brewing an Ale in mind the same principals apply equally to Lager fermentations too.

Phase 1 begins as soon as you pitch your yeast and is referred to as the lag phase, which we brewers want to keep as short as possible. The yeast are using up the sugars and oxygen in the wort to load up their food reserves, they won't ferment anything until they've been well fed. Stressing the yeast out with too high temperatures or too low numbers of viable cells will prolong the lag phase and the fermentation will take longer to complete while increasing the amounts and types of off flavors like diacetyl that may or may not ever condition out.

Phase 2 starts as soon as the lag phase ends because now the yeast have enough energy stored up to start multiplying, this is referred to as the growth phase. This is where you begin to see a bit of foam floating at the surface the wort from the production of Co2 and the pH and oxygen levels of the wort will start dropping. If you've pitched enough healthy yeast at the right temperatures into well aerated wort the lag time should have been 6-12 hours and the yeast are now full of energy and off to a very healthy start.

Phase 3 begins as soon as the growth phase is done and is triggered by a lack of oxygen in the wort, this is known as the fermentation phase. This is the phase where the production of Co2, alcohol and your beer's flavor is at it's peak and the wort temperature rises 3-5F higher than the ambient air outside the fermentor. The yeast will stay in suspension, so they come in contact with as many sugars as possible, over the next 3-7 days before they run out of sugars to eat and flocculate out to the bottom of the fermentor. Higher temperatures during this phase will produce more esters or fruity flavors and aromas, like the banana flavors in a hefeweizen. It's interesting to note that another cause of ester production is wort that hasn't been aerated enough.

Phase 4 is the final phase of the fermentation process and it's referred to as the sedimentation phase where the yeast begin consuming and converting any remaining flavor precursors in the wort like diacetyl that will produce off flavors in your beer. During this phase the yeast cells are preparing themselves to go dormant and storing up energy reserves for their deep sleep, even though this is where most of us flush them down the drain. I'd like to point out that the amount of cleanup work left for the yeast to do is dependent on how well we treated, or mistreated, our yeast during the first 3 fermentation phases.

During the sedimentation phase I raise the temperature of my fermentors 3-5F and hold it there for at least 3 days before bottling or kegging my beer. I do this because the yeast will only convert the flavor precursors it created earlier if it's warmer than it was when they created them. There is a limit to this rule though since the yeast can only do so much cleanup before they go dormant. Once the yeast go dormant any remaining flavor precursors will be left in your beer to produce off flavors.

The moral of this post is to always use fresh healthy yeast in sufficient quantity pitched into well aerated wort at the recommended temperature and you will produce some great tasting beer.

Screwy's Recipe 63 - Snowy Daze Barley Stout (all grain)

Another brewday was here and I still had a couple of hours to decide what style of beer I would be brewing and to finalize an ingredient list. With the cooler weather here now in the Northeast, and the fact that my pipeline was pretty well stocked with wheat beers and assorted pale ales, I decided to go with one of my perennial favorites a nice Chocolate Barley Stout. I've spent a lot of time brewing this style of beer using DME and steeping grains and have gotten the recipe down to where I can consistently brew a great tasting stout that's ready to drink in 4-6 weeks. Now I was ready to try my hand at designing and brewing an all grain version of the same Chocolate Barley Stout extract recipe, a very flavorful and easy drinking brew coming in at 5.3% ABV.

Screwy's Snowy Daze Stout

A very long time ago, maybe as early as 1720s according to some accounts, the term stout was given to represent a strong beer. Although the meaning of stout has changed over the years that followed because it was often used to describe many different styles of beer. At one point in history you could even order a Stout Pale Ale, as back then the word stout meant strong so if any style beer of the day had what it takes (6.6% ABV or higher) it could also be called a stout. By most accounts the most popular beer of that period was a known as a Stout Porter which really described a dark Porter beer that had a high alcohol content.

Victorian Era Ad For Ale

It wasn't until the 1840s when Guinness decided to rename their 'Extra Superior Porter' to 'Extra Stout' that the name became synonymous with a strong dark beer style. When researching history of Stout beer you'll see that it originated from another dark beer style called a Porter. There were different strength porters too, with the stronger brews being called Stout Porter, and they were served to English dock workers who were also known as porters. The ales houses of the day, or Porter Houses, provided some much needed food and drink to all those hard working dock workers so it comes as no surprise that they served Porter House Steaks too. So there you have it, hungry and thirsty Englishmen known as porters going off at the end of their work day to porter houses to eat porter house steaks and washing them down with stout porter ale.

I drink Guinness now and have for a good number of years and while I like it's dark color and creamy barley taste I wouldn't call it a very strong beer. But a lot of people to this day are under the impression that a stout beer means a very strong beer and in fact there are many stouts brewed today that really do have a high ABV but they don't have to. I think it's because of the history of the word stout itself that people today still think of stout beer as a very strong beer.

East Kent Goldings, 2 Row, Roasted Barley, Chocolate and Crystal Malt Mix

I was pretty excited about brewing this recipe because it was my first try at building an all grain stout ale recipe. I had stumbled across a really informative post on the HomeBrewTalk forum a couple of years ago about building the perfect stout recipes. The poster seemed to know what he was talking about and after reading what he had to say I was able to find other information online that seemed to support his recipe.

In this stout recipe I decided that the only hop influence needed would be for bittering because I wanted to make sure that the full aromas and flavors of the roasted barley would shine through. I chose East Kent Goldings because of their earthy and spicy character and mild aroma and I added half as first wort hops and then added the other half to the boil with 30 minutes remaining. 

Mashing Stout Recipe Grains For 60 Minutes

I preheated my 5 gallon mash tun with 2 gallons of 170F water for about 20 minutes before dumping the water out and replacing it with grains and strike water. The grains were at 68F so I added 14 quarts of 165F strike water to the tun and then stirred in the 11 pounds of grains needed for the recipe. I then topped off the tun with enough 165F water to fill it up to the 4.5 gallon mark. I then adjusted the temperature by adding a little hot or cold water as needed and gave the grains a really good stir to break up any clumps and eliminate any chance of channeling.

First Wort Hopping 3 Ounces Of East Kent Goldings

Big clumps of grain mean less grains are going to come into contact with the mash water, you can actually still have dry grains inside the clumps when mashing. Channeling means the sparge water doesn't come in contact evenly with all the grains to rinse all the converted sugars off of them and into the boil pot. Instead during the lauter water flows from the top of the mash tun straight down to the spigot via the channels and out into your boil pot leaving precious sugars behind and giving you lower conversion rates and weaker wort. These two things in themselves are the easiest things to correct and a brewer's failure to correct them are probably the single biggest reason for all grain batches lower conversion rates, but they are easy to avoid just by stirring the mash really well.

Fly Sparging Stout Wort After A 60 Minute Mash

So far this recipe was just a theory and it really came to life for me when I first unscrewed the cover of the mash tun and got a whiff of the earthy, chocolate and coffee aromas that were quite powerful. The recipe's grain bill uses only 12% dark malts, 9% Crystal malt and the remaining 79% uses 2 Row as the base malt. I was almost a little skeptical on just how much of the roasted grain aromas would come through but after brewing my extract Stouts I was sure this ratio of dark grains to 2 Row wouldn't be a problem.

By this time the entire brew area took on the aroma and smells familiar to anyone who has ever been to a Starbucks or worked in a coffee plant were they roasted imported green coffee beans to a deep dark color. When lautering the hot wort I got a nice warm comforting feeling from the aromas coming off of the mash and wort as the boil pot filled that was perfect on the first cold day of Fall.

Recirculating A Half Gallon Of Freshly Made Wort

Once the wort was running free of bits of grains I drew off my SG sample and put it in the refrigerator to cool down and then spent the next 30 minutes fly sparging and lautering the hot aromatic wort into my 20 quart boil pot. The wort's OG reading came out to 1.056 which was about 3 points lower than qBrew had calculated which to me wasn't too far off the recipe's calculated 1.059.

Original Gravity Reading Of 1.056

I remember being really excited about brewing my first all grain stout recipe, it was something new and challenging and I knew it would come out awesome. The mash had gone well and I took my time with the lauter and fly sparge making sure the strike water temperatures were good and the grain bed kept covered with no less than an inch of strike water the entire time. Now it was on to the next phase which would ultimately take me closer to brewing the perfect stout, the boil. It took my stove about 20 minutes to bring the 160F wort up to a boil. I left the hop sack in the boil pot the entire time and boiled the wort for 30 minutes.

Stout Wort With First Wort Hops And 30 Minute Boil

With my 20 quart boil pot filled to the brim with both wort and hop additions added a nice rolling boil for 30 minutes things started to get interesting. I had been warming and shaking up my two yeast viles and had already sanitized the 2 LBKs I'd be using to ferment this batch. I also had my wort cooler soaking in sanitizer so I was all set for the coldside brewing that was soon to follow. I think of my beer brewing processes in terms hotside and coldside brewing. The hotside includes everything from openning the grainbags to cooling down the wort before pitching yeast. The coldside includes everything after that including the fermentation, conditioning and bottling or kegging of the beer.

Adjusting Yeast Temperature And Consistency Before Pitching

At the start of my brewing session just as I was preparing the mash tun I took the tubes of WLP004 yeast out of the refrigerator and set them in a bowl of OneStep to so they could gradually warm up to pitching temperature. Both tubes had been refrigerated and kept cold at the LHBS and I did the same when I got them home. Over the next several hours as the grains mashed and the wort was lautered and boiled I would give both tubes a shake or two to mix up the yeast cells with the beer inside the tubes. I wanted the yeast to have a nice creamy consistency when I eventually pitched them into my wort. This is a good way to make sure there are no clumps of cells lumped together and that as many yeast cells as possible get emptied from the tubes when pitched.

White Labs WLP004 - Irish Ale Yeast™ Pitched At 70F

I use a wort cooler connected to my sink to cool my wort down to the yeast's pitching temperature. On average the 8 coils of 3/8 inch copper tubing with cold tap water flowing through it can cool the 5 gallons of 210F wort down to 65-70F in as little 20 minutes. The summer months are more challenging than the winter months are for cooling wort because the tap water in summer may only be as cool as 75F. That's when I fill one side of the utility sink with cold water and frozen water bottles and run a vinyl tubing from the cooler's return line directly down the drain of the other sink. That's just one of the many advantages there are when installing a double sink, the extra capacity is easily reconfigurable to meet the needs of many brewing processes.

Size 5.00 gallons: Estimated IBU=37, SRM=37, OG=1.059, FG=1.015, ABV= 5.7%

Recipe:

Click to download this recipe file for qBrew
8.5 pounds US 2 Row

1.0 pound Crystal 20L

0.5 pound Chocolate Malt (British)

1.0 pound Roasted Barley

3 ounces Kent Goldings (U.K.) (pellets)

11g Danstar Windsor Dry Ale Yeast Rehydrate and pitch at 70° F

..or...

White Labs WLP004 - Irish Ale Yeast™

Mash at 155° F for 60 minutes.

Boil for 30 minutes.

Aerate, pitch at 70° F and ferment at 68-72° F until final gravity is reached

Raise to 72° F over 2 days then hold for 5 days

Cold condition secondary fermenter for 3-4 weeks at 36° F

Keg at 30 psi for 2-3 days and serve at 36° F

I use Mr. Beer fermentors and they hold around 2.4 gallons of wort but I used all 11g of yeast that's typically packaged for 5 gallon brews.

  Click to download Screwy's latest qBrew database   

Directions:   

Infusion Mash: (Soak mash tun in 8 quarts of 170° F water for 20 minutes, preheat and dump it)

Heat 21 quarts of filtered water to 165° F

Pour 14 quarts of 165° F water into mash tun

Mix in 11.0 pounds of crushed grain mix at 68° F

Pour the remaining 165° F water to fill mash tun to 4.50 gallon mark

Stir water and grain mixture and adjust to 155° F and mash for 60 minutes

Fly sparge with 168° F strike water to set mash bed to 168° F

Lauter for 30 minutes adding 19 quarts of sweet wort to 20 quart pot

Full Wort Boil:

Add 1.5 ounces Kent Goldings (U.K.) hops to boil pot when lautering as first wort hops

Add 1.5 ounces Kent Goldings (U.K.) hops with 30 minutes remaining to boil

Add 1/4 tablet WhirlFloc with 9 minutes remaining to boil

Use wort chiller to cool wort to 70° F

Primary Fermentation:

Use autosiphon to prevent excess hop and grain debris from getting into fermenter

Fill the Mr. Beer fermenter with wort to just above the 8.5 quart mark

Aerate wort and pitch rehydrated yeast at 70° F

Ferment to final gravity, raise to 72° F over 2 days and hold for 5 days

Secondary Fermentation:

n/a

Keg/Bottle:

Keg and force carbonate at 30 psi for 2-3 days at 34°F

..or..

Keg with priming sugar, purge with Co2 and naturally carbonate for 7-14 days at 68°F

..or..

Bottle or batch prime and carbonate at 68° for 7 to 14 days

After the first 12 hours the fermentation had taken off vigorously. When I looked in on the progress the next morning I was happy to see that a thick healthy layer of krausen had already formed at the top of both fermentors. With minimal lag time this was a good sign that the fermentation was off to a great start. By the next day the fermentation had completely filled the headspace of both fermentors and one of them was beginning to overflow into the the drip tray. Over the course of the fermentation I had to remove and clean the fermentors a couple of times but overall less than a cup or so of beer was actually lost.

12 Hours Later A Thick Healthy Krausen Had Already Formed

With the final gravity reading holding at 1.016 I figured it was time to bottle this stout up, even though the qBrew calculation said the final gravity should finish at 1.015 this reading was close enough for me.The results were in and I liked them. According to my measurements this stout came in at 5.3% ABV with 190 calories per and 22 carbs per 12 ounce bottle. The other good news was the apparent attenuation was also around 70% which for me is just perfect for this style of beer.

Final Gravity Reading Of 1.016

I had cleaned, rinsed and sanitized fifty 12 ounce bottles and my bottling bucket, bottling wand and racking tubing so now I prepared my priming solution. I used StarSan as my sanitizer for the first time, up until now I had only been using OneStep and I have had good results using it all this time. I decided to try StarSan mainly because it was cheaper to buy and faster acting than OneStep which requires a 10 minute soak to be effective. I poured the StarSan solution into my bottle rinser and then gave each bottle 2 or 3 good squirts just to make sure the entire inside surface was coated with sanitizer. Before placing the bottles on the bottle tree to drain I dipped the neck of each bottle into the StarSan solution about an inch to make sure the cap area was covered too.

StarSan, Bottle Rinse And Bottle Tree

I boiled about 5 tablespoons of pure can sugar in a cup of water and stirred it until the sugar was dissolved to prevent scorching or burning the sugar. After cooling the priming solution down to pitching temperature I added it to the bottling bucket along with 2 tablespoons of pure vanilla extract and then racked the fermented beer on top so it all mixed together as the bucket filled. Once the bucket was filled I used a large sanitized plastic spoon to gently swirl the beer and sugar solution together to make the mixture more consistent, which in turn would make the carbonation levels between bottles more consistent too. Interestingly enough I found that adding pure vanilla extract to the beer at bottling actually enhances the chocolaty flavors of the Chocolate Malt in the recipe, who would have guessed.

Adding Vanilla Extract At Bottling Enhances Chocolate Flavors

When bottling I first put 50 bottle caps in a small bowl filled with StarSan and then using a bottling wand attached to my bottling bucket I filled each bottle to the very top. After removing the bottling wand the level of beer in each bottle fell about an inch leaving just enough headroom for the carbonating beer inside. When each bottle was filled I placed a bottle cap on them and using my finger to prevent spilling any beer I inverted the bottles 2 times before setting them on the table to be capped after they were all filled. Using a bench capper made capping the bottles quick and easy and in no time at all I had 2 cases of bottles capped and ready for carbonation.

The bottles have been carbonating at 68F for almost two weeks now and this weekend end I plan to put a couple of bottles in the refrigerator for a day or two and them sample them. By this coming weekend the beer will have been brewed 4 weeks ago and should be ready to drink. I like to start sampling my home brewed beer after waiting at least 2 weeks for them to finish naturally carbonating and if they taste great then they'll be gone all the sooner.

Snowy Daze Stout Naturally Carbonated And Delicious

 This stout is definitely one of my favorites of all times, the flavors of the Roasted Barley and Chocolate Malts just come through amazingly clear. Ready to drink in only 4 weeks the mouthfeel is medium bodied with 2.5 volumes of Co2 for carbonation and actually makes drinking a few in a row easy to do. The most striking thing when you lift the glass is the roasted barley malt followed immediately by a definite but not too overpowering hint of chocolate. I can only explain the clarity of these flavors as being so clear because of the amount and type of yeast I pitched and the all grain ingredients used in the recipe. All in all this is now my most prized house beer recipe, a well balanced and not overly sweet or bitter Stout style that continues to get great reviews from everyone who's tried it.

Screwy's Recipe 62 - Screwy's Noble Wheat

This 5 gallon recipe is designed using the Weizen/Wiessbier wheat beer style guidelines for gravity, bitterness and color. It includes Muntons Wheat Dry Malt Extract as the backbone of the recipe with some steeped Crystal 10L for improved head retention and body. I'm targeting the Paulaner Hefe Weizen wheat beer style I and some friends have been drinking lately.

I included two pounds of Pure Clover Honey to boost the alcohol content and enhance the aroma of cloves imparted by the Safbrew WB-06 wheat beer yeast strain. I would like to have used German Hallertauer hop additions for bitterness, flavor and aroma but I had to substitute Crystal hops instead because the German Hallertauer hops weren't available.

Honey, Wheat DME, Crystal Hops, WB-06 And Crystal 10L (Not Shown)

This recipe is geared toward a 5 gallon batch but and I've also included the recipe in qBrew download format so it won't be hard for others to tailor it to different size batches if needed. It's an extract with steeping grains recipe so it doesn't require more than 4-5 hours to brew depending on your brewing pace. I like the wheat beers because they're ready to drink in about 3-4 weeks and they taste great.

Screwy's Noble Wheat SRM 7

I loaded qBrew with my Recipe #58 and made a few slight changes to my previous wheat beer recipe substituting Crystal 10L for the CaraPils I used the last time. I also had to use Crystal hops in this recipe since my favorite Halleteur hops were not available on brewday. The Crystal pellet hops I used had a lower percentage of alpha acid so I had to adjust the boil times in order to get the correct IBU range, something that qBrew does very easily. Once the new recipe was tweaked I saved it as Recipe 62 - Noble Wheat.qbrew and emailed the list to Princeton Homebrew for pickup later that day.

Estimated IBU=9, SRM=7, OG=1.062, FG=1.016, ABV=6.0%

 Click to download Screwy's latest qBrew database   

Recipe:

Click to download this recipe file for qBrew
Recipe: Size 5.00 gallons: Estimated IBU=9, SRU=7, OG=1.062, FG=1.016, ABV=6.0%
2 pounds honey

1 pound Crystal 10L

5 pounds Muntons Wheat DME - 55% Wheat/45% Barley

1/2 ounce Crystal pellet hops boiled for 60 minutes

2 pounds of Honey for 30 minutes

1/2 ounce Crystal pellet hops boiled for 20 minutes

1 ounce Crystal pellet hops boiled for 7 minutes

11.5 gram Safbrew WB-06 dry yeast

Pitched at 70F and fermented at 70F until final gravity is steady for 2 days

Directions:
** Steep grains in 3 gallons of 153F filtered water for 30 minutes **

Remove grain bag from 20 quart boil pot

Stir in DME top off with filtered water and bring to a hard boil

Add hops at 60 minutes

Stir in clover honey and boil for 35 minutes

Add hops and boil for 20 minutes

Add Whirlfloc and boil for 9 minutes

Add hops and boil for 7 minutes

Place in ice bath, or use wort chiller until wort temperature cools to 70F

Aerate and pitch yeast at 65-70F
Ferment at 68F temperature until final gravity is steady for 2 days
Add 1/2 ounce Cascade hops for finishing and let soak for 5 days

The Grains Steeped For 30 Minutes Before Adding DME

I filled up a 20 quart boil pot with about three gallons of filtered water and set it on the burner, this would be my steeping pot. When the water hit about 160F I put the steeping grains in and checked the temperature to make sure it stayed at 153F-155F for the entire 30 minutes of the steep. During this time I rounded up all the bowls, spoons and thermometers I'd need for rehydrating the Safbrew wb-06 dry yeast.

Boiled Filtered Water Cooled To 95F And Dry Yeast

Of course I kept the bowls covered the entire time, except when stirring the yeast slurry, so that no bugs or other things like mold spores and wild yeast can get in. The bowls were soaked in One-Step for 10-15 minutes and I boiled filtered water for 15 minutes and then cooled it down to 95F before sprinkling in the dry yeast. I also soak the yeast packets and scissors in One-Step for at least 10 minutes before cutting open the packets.

Safbrew wb-06 Rehydrated In 95F Water Before Pitching

 Since reading Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff's newest book 'Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation' I've learned a new respect for the yeast I use in my homebrewing. On page 124 of the book they wrote how important it is to rehydrate dry yeast before pitching it into wort, in fact they included the following line 'Failure to rehydrate dry yeast properly will result in the death of approximately half the cells'. It's so easy to do and such a standard part of my brewing process now I always rehydrate any dry yeast before pitching it.

Adding 5 Pounds Of Dry Wheat/Barley Extract Mix

Once the steeping was done I added the 5 pounds of wheat DME to the boil pot and stirred it in really good before the wort began to boil. I found that doing it this way reduced the chances of having a hotbreak boil over while making the DME clumps easier to dissolve into the wort.

20 Quart Pot With Wort, DME, WhirlFloc And Hop Additions

As the wort boiled for 60 minutes I added in my hop additions. During this time I also rehydrated the dry yeast and sanitized the LBKs and cooling coils. I also kept another 16 quart pot of filtered water boiling on a back burner. As the water level dropped in my main boil pot I would use the extra boiling water to replace the water that had evaporated from the wort.

Cooling Wort Down To Pitching Temperature

My hotside brewing had gone as planned so it was time to start cooling down the wort and getting it ready for pitching the rehydrated yeast. I had topped off the boilpot with boiling water about 10 minutes before flameout to make sure I had enough wort in the boilpot before cooling it down. My racking cane, tubing, LBKs, spoon and yeast were all ready, waiting for the wort temperature to get down low enough to begin racking to the fermentors.

Transferring The Cooled Wort To The 2 Mr. Beer Fermentors

 I also put a couple of frozen water bottles into my fermentation chamber to cool it off before putting the filled LBKs inside it. Right after pitching the yeast I move the LBKs into the fermentation chamber to help prevent the temperature inside the fermentors from getting too high. I found that doing this, in combination with rehydrating the dry yeast and providing plenty of aeration reduces the lag time and gets the primary fermentation off to a vigorous start.

Original Gravity Came Out 1.054

The interesting thing about the OG of this batch is that it came out 8 points lower than qBrew had calculated. I'm thinking that possibly the 1.045 rating on the wheat DME and the 1.035 rating for the honey may have been too high. Even with the lower gravity reading this beer should still develop alcohol levels in the 5% range which is pretty respectable for a nice wheat beer.

According to the experts yeast do best when the oxygen levels in the wort are between 8-10 parts per million. In reality most homebrewers introduce between 4-6 parts per million of dissolved oxygen into their wort by either shaking or whisking the fermentor and wort causing it to foam up. With a lot of effort the dissolved oxygen levels can get as high as 6-8 parts per million or when using an aquarium pump and air stone.To hit levels of 10 parts per million you really need to have a bottle of oxygen handy.

Plenty Of Aeration To Assure A Vigorous Fermentation

I peeked in on the LBKs after 12 hours of fermentation and was happy to see that both fermentors had taken off as expected. The combination of the right amount of fresh yeast, proper rehydration and a well aerated 70F wort had all worked together nicely to keep the yeast healthy and the fermentation strong.

Short Lag Time And A Strong Primary Fermentation In 12 Hours

For the next few days I'll keep an eye on the temperature inside the fermentors. I now that during peak primary fermentation the yeast can cause the temperature of inside the LBKs to go up and the increased heat if left unchecked will mean higher levels of esters which in turn will introduce stronger banana flavors in this wheat beer. This is like the fifth or sixth time I've brewed this beer so I pretty much know already how it will taste once it's ready to drink. I figure at 70F the fermentation should be done in about 8-10 days and adding in another 2-3 days for the yeast to do their cleanup and another 10-14 days to naturally carbonate the beer to 3.5 volumes of Co2. By next month I'll be drinking a really nice wheat beer just as the fall weather takes hold here in the northeast.

Final Gravity Held At 1.014 For 3 Days

The final gravity reading came out about 2 points lower than qBrew had estimated finishing at 1.014 instead of 1.016. To me this beer finishing off at 5.3% ABV is just about perfect because I usually like to drink a couple of them at a time without worrying about getting too hammered.

Transferring The Beer To The Bottling Bucket

I cooled down the boiling water and sugar solution to 70F and and then racked the wheat beer on top of it, I also sanitized my Teflon spoon and gently swirled the beer and sugar solution together to mix them up really good. From there I used the bottling bucket and bottling want to fill the 12 ounce bottles. I rinsed the bottles out with hot water and then gave them 3 quick squirts of StarSan before placing them on the bottle tree to drain until filling.

Bottles Sanitized With StarSan

I filled the corny keg directly from the fermentor adding a priming solution of 9 tablespoons of pure cane sugar boiled in a half cup of water to the keg first. The bottling solution was at 70F when I added it to the keg and the beer from the fermentor mixed in with it as the keg filled. Once the keg was filled I hit it with 20 psi of Co2 to set the seal and then vented it a couple of times to purge out any oxygen.

9 Tablespoons Of Pure Cane Sugar For 2.5 Gallons