Screwy's Recipe 71 - Screwer In The Rye Lager

 For the past several weeks I had been thinking about brewing a Rye beer so I did quite a bit of research online reading everything I could find related to brewing beer using Rye malts. The styles of beer that I've been brewing lately have all tasted good and now that I successfully converted my extract recipes to all grain I was ready to brew something new. But before a I could create a new recipe I had to actually drink a Rye beer to get a sense of what a Rye beer tastes like. So one afternoon Mike brought over some Sierra Nevada 'Ruthless Rye' beers for us to try out and later that day a new beer recipe was born.

Chocolate, Crystal, Pale Malts And Flaked Rye Grains

We've been drinking Sierra Nevada Pale Ale for quite a few years by now and they were one of my favorite beers so I was happy to learn they just released a new style called Ruthless Rye made with rye malt. To us the new beer had mostly the same SNPA taste and flavor except at the very end when you could clearly taste the clean spiciness of the rye. The spicy character of the rye malt became less and less noticeable with every new sip of beer and when we had to switch back to drinking their Pale Ale we immediately knew we were drinking a different beer.

Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye In Glass While Racking My Clone

The color of my Screwer In The Rye matched perfectly with the color of the Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye we'd been drinking while transferring the cooled wort to the fermentor. Brewing a new experimental beer was very exciting for me and I took extra steps to make sure it would come out tasting as close as possible to the beer I was cloning. I spent a few hours over the course of the next week calibrating my brewing thermometer, which I found after a year of use had drifted 3-4F. I used qBrew to create the ingredient list of grains and hops I would be using and then put together the rest of my brewing plan and entered them into the batch notes and saved them.

Washing The Rice Hulls Prior To Adding To Mash

I found from my research that flaked rye is an adjunct and it should be used in a recipe in a similar way as flaked oats or flaked wheat to avoid stuck sparges. I also read in several threads where some brewers rinse their rice hulls under running tap water before putting them in the mash tun, while other brewers claimed there was no need to and they just poured them right into the mash tun. I've used rice hulls many times before when brewing my wheat beers and never rinsed them but for my first attempt at brewing the perfect Rye beer I decided to rinse them thoroughly before mashing them. It was clear to see that the rinse water used to clean the rice hulls did contain a whole lot of rice related debris and it took about three good rinses before it started to look clearer.

After Recirculating The Wort Sample Was 1.074

At the start of the lauter I recirculated the wort for about 30 minutes to setup the grain bed and get the wort running clear before adding it to the boil pot. I used a 60 minute single step infusion mash at 154F to prepare the wort and a fly sparge at 168F for 45 minutes to fill the boil pot. I always take a hydrometer sample at the very start and very end of filling the boil pot with wort. The temperature corrected readings for this rye beer were 1.074 and 1.032 respectively, which confirmed the conversion rate was good and there was no chance of extracting tannins caused by running off too much wort.

60 Minute Boil With Hop Additions

I'm a firm believer in first wort hopping now because I find myself using this method of increasing hop utilization in all of my beers now. It's pretty easy to do and the way I decided on is to take the bittering addition, which in this case called for a 60 minute boil, and just put it in the boil pot and let the wort flow through the hops until the pot is full. Since brewing this way I have never noticed any astringency or vegetable matter off flavors in any of the styles I've brewed using FWH additions not even in the really hoppy IPA styles. I put all the pellet hops I use in hop sacks and then remove them all just prior to cooling the wort down adding boiling water to the wort as needed to keep the pot full.

1/2 Tablet Of WhirlFloc Keeps The Cold Break Out Of The Fermentor

By using hops sacks to remove the hops after the boil and the addition of some WhirlFloc 10-15 minutes before flameout helps a lot in keeping the cold break inside the boil pot and out of the fermentor when racking the wort. I've found that reducing chill haze and producing a clear, clean tasting beer requires care during the lauter when recirculating the wort as well as using a fining agent to help settle the trub and using an autosiphon when transferring to the primary fermentor and bottling bucket.

Pouring East Coast Yeast's ECY12 Into Aerated Wort

Of course using good fresh yeast that provides the right attenuation and flocculation characteristics for the style of beer you're brewing is important to produce a great tasting beer that's both clear and clean tasting. After a good long boil any oxygen that was in the wort has been depleted and it has to be put back into the wort in sufficient quantities so that the yeast can load up their food reserves and multiply, keeping the lag and growth phases as short as possible. Once all the oxygen in the wort is used up by the yeast a healthy fermentation will begin with a vengeance and soon after the yeast will drop out of suspension further clearing the beer. Cold crashing the fermentor for a day before transferring the beer to a bottling bucket will also make the beer clearer and cleaner as more yeast will drop out of suspension before going into your kegs or bottles.

East Coast Yeast ECY12 - Old Newark Beer™ Fermented At 59F

The fermentor spent the next 3 weeks inside my fermentation chamber with the temperature of the fermentor held between 57-59F, a few days before bottling I let the temperature rise to 62F for a couple of days before transferring to my bottling bucket. The last five days in the primary fermentor is when I added my finishing hops and let them soak in the beer for five days, this last hop addition really brought this beer to life because the samples I drank during bottling had all the up front aroma that was missing at the end of the boil.

The Rye's Final Gravity Finished At 1.014

My latest Rye beer recipe is now been in the bottles and keg naturally carbonating since last Saturday and it will be ready for sampling in about another week and a half. Based on my initial impression of this recipe I have very high expectations since the rye flavors were noticeable but not cloying and the mouthfeel seemed as if it would be spot on once the carbonation levels were reached and the beer chilled to serving temperature. All in all my latest creation left me with a good feeling of accomplishment considering all the things that went into brewing this nice new beer and what could have gone wrong as in any new recipe but didn't. Now it's just a waiting game waiting for the yeast to add that nice soft natural carbonation to what already tastes like a remarkable beer.

Screwer In The Rye!

Today I got to drink my very first Screwer In The Rye Lager! It's been naturally carbonating for eight days and I put a few bottles in the refrigerator around 6AM this morning. I'm so excited, it's my first attempt at brewing a Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye and I can't wait to try it cold and carbonated.

Screwer In The Rye Lager

 This beer is nicely carbonated, somewhere between an ale and a wheat beer, loaded with spicy aromas and clean tasting, absolutely delicious. The first thing I noticed when lifting the glass to take a sip was the nice rye aroma that gives you a hint of what's in store, followed by the unmistakably complex hop presence. It has a rich dark color with good mouthfeel, long lasting head retention and the blend of rye, malt and hop flavors and aromas are not at all cloying in any way.

Great Mouthfeel, Head Retention And Lacing

 Somewhat darker in color than a Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye this very tasty rye beer has already become one of my favorites. I imagine paring this beer with any type of barbequed meats, steaks, ribs, burgers or chicken and it will stand up to and enhance their flavors perfectly without over powering them. If you're tired of brewing the same old pale ales and are looking to try a rye beer style go for it you won't be disappointed.

After making a few very minor tweaks in the grain bill I was able to brew this beer with just about the right color I wanted, this tweak is really more about aesthetics than anything else. The other change in my process involved pitching a 2 liter starter of East Coast Yeast ECY-12 that I had washed and propagated from my brew's original fermentation.

Screwer In The Rye Lager II

 This is a great tasting beer with a nice spicy rye aroma combined with just the right balance of rye and hop flavor to give the beer a clean satisfying finish. It's a nice variation of an IPA although there really is nothing pale about it but it is very hop forward with just the right amount of spice. The addition of the Crystal malt lends just the slightest hint of caramel sweetness and adds enough body, lacing and head retention to last from first sip to last.

I brewed this recipe again in June 2012 about four months after posting this original story and made several adjustments to the recipe. I switched out Crystal 10L for the Crystal 20L in the first recipe to get the color a little lighter and after removing the rice hulls completely the sparge still didn't stick. The next time I brew this recipe I have a couple of new tricks to try to get the color just a shade or two lighter yet.

Screwy In The Rye Version III

 

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.

Screwys Recipe #59 - Screwy Pale Ale (All Grain)

I'd been undecided on what to brew all week long, up until Saturday morning. Saturday mornings are when I quit changing my mind and makeup a real ingredient list to brew later in the day. So I fired up the coffee pot, qBrew and starting entering what would soon be my new recipe's ingredient list. After about 30 minutes my recipe was done, it would be my take on a classic American IPA style using 2 Row malt, some Crystal 20L and White Labs WLP001 - California Ale Yeast™. Well that's what I thought anyway.

ECY12 'Old Newark Beer' Yeast Takes Center Stage

After firing off my ingredient list in an email to Joe Bair I headed over to Princeton Homebrew around lunchtime to pick it up. While I was there Joe and I got to talking about yeast and I mentioned how a fellow forum member Ed Vazquez had just recently sent me a book to read. And how the book 'Yeast The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation' written by Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff was not an easy read, but was jam packed with all kinds of great information.

I Split The Bottle Of ECY12 Into Three Empty Yeast Tubes

Joe was explaining to me how East Coast Yeast had made available the same yeast strain used by the Ballentine Beer company back when they were located in Newark NJ. How awesome is that! Ballentine's Ale was the first television sponsor for the New York Yankees and was brewed just a few miles from where I was born. As a kid I remember seeing their cans of beer and ale in my father's refrigerator and I might have even had a sip or two of it when he left the room...but I can't swear to it.

1954 Yankees Champ Ballantine Beer Display

A few minutes later in walks Al Buck owner and founder of East Coast Yeast, he was at Princeton Homebrew dropping off some fresh yeast. After a short introduction by Joe Al asked what I was brewing and he recommended I try his ECY12 yeast for my American Pale Ale. I had been wanting to give ECY a try for some time, Joe is the only distributor for Al's yeast products on the east coast and he always has a fresh supply of it on hand.

So I put back the tube of WLP001 and put the ECY12 in my bag instead, this brew day was starting to get interesting. Maybe it's the nostalgia, or the rave reviews that Al's yeast has been getting in the New Jersey brewing community but I had some and was soon going to use it to make beer. If the ECY12 was good enough for Mel Allen, Red Barber and the Yankees it was certainly good for my latest beer.

Brewdays Start With Coffee And qBrew

Back at the brewhaus it was time to get things started, there was strike water to be heated and a small ice bath to prepare for keeping the yeast at 60F during the boil. I used some 170F water to preheat my mash tun while the two pots of 170F strike water were heating up. Once the strike water was at temperature I dumped the preheat water and filled the tun half way with strike water, poured in the 68F grain and stirred in the remaining strike water.

11 Pounds Of Grain In Preheated 5 Gallon Mash Tun

The mash temperature was 159F initially and after a bit a stirring to make sure the mash was free of clumps and hot spots it settled in at 158F. I make sure I hit my target mash temperature within a minute or two of pouring in the grain to avoid denaturing the mash.

159F Initial Mash Temperature

After mashing for 60 minutes I began the lauter, the idea was to fill up my 20 quart pot with 4.5 gallons of wort over a 30 minute period. The initial gravity reading of 1.080 at 80F corrected to 1.084 at 60F. This was the strength of the wort at the beginning of the lauter once it had started running clear into the boil pot. Since my hydrometer is calibrated to read at 60F I used qBrew to get the compensated reading which was actually 1.084.

Initial Gravity 1.084 Corrected At 60F

The boil pot took a little over 30 minutes to fill with wort. The lauter went well and once it had completed I took another gravity reading of 1.030 at 80F which correct out to be 1.032. This assured me that there was still plenty of sugars left in the mash at the end of my lauter and there shouldn't be any issues with astringency due to extracting tannins.

Boil Pot With 4.5 Gallons Of Wort

Size 5.00 gallons: Estimated IBU=66, SRM=8, OG=1.061, FG=1.015, ABV= 5.9%

I pitched ECY12 - Old Newark Beer™ directly into the 60F wort right after aerating it really well. I soaked the bottles and tubes in One-Step™ as an extra precaution against infection.

Recipe:

Click to download this recipe file for qBrew

10.0 pounds US 2 Row

1.0 pound Crystal 20L

1 ounce Yakima Magnum (pellets)

2 ounces Kent Golding (UK) (pellets)

2 ounces Cascade (pellets)

125 ml East Coast Yeast ECY12 - Old Newark Beer™ at 53-68° F

Aerate, pitch at 60° F and ferment at 64-66° F until final gravity is reached

Raise to 68° F over 2 days then rack to secondary fermenter

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

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

Mash at 158° F for 60 minutes.

Boil for 60 minutes.

Ferment at 64-66° F.

Since I use the Mr. Beer fermenters and they hold around 2.5 gallons of wort I can use half of the yeast that's packaged for 5 gallon brews and still get a high cell count. I see this as another low risk way to save money on ingredients while maintaining quality.

  Click to download Screwy's latest qBrew database   

Directions:   

Infusion Mash: (Soak mash tun in 8 quarts of 170° F water for 20 minutes to pre heat it)

Heat 21 quarts of filtered water to 170° F

Pour 14 quarts of 170° F water into mash tun

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

Pour the remaining 170° F water to fill mash tun to 4.50 gallon mark

Stir water and grain mixture and adjust to 158° 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 18.5 quarts of sweet wort to 20 quart pot

Full Wort Boil:

Add 1 ounce Magnum hops with 60 minutes remaining to boil

Add 2 ounces Kent Goldings (U.K.) hops with 20 minutes minutes remaining to boil

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

Add 1 ounce Cascade hops with 7 minutes remaining to boil

(Optional) 1 ounce Cascade hops dry hop 1 week in secondary before bottling

Use wort chiller to cool wort to 60° 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 45 ml of East Coast Yeast ECY12 - Old Newark Beer™ at 60° F

Ferment to final gravity, raise to 68° F over 2 days

Secondary Fermentation:

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

Keg/Bottle:

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

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

Wort Aerated And Pitched At 60F

After getting the wort and yeast to an even 60F I aerated the wort really good using a long handled spoon until it was nice and frothy. I pitched the liquid yeast in and whipped it up really good again before screwing on the top of the fermenter, wiping down the outside and putting it in my fermentation chamber where I could better control the temperature once fermentation took off.

OG Reading 1.059 A Point Lower Than qBrew Calculated

The original gravity reading, taken after adding some filtered make up water to bring the volume up to 2.25 gallons, was 1.059 or just about a point short of the qBrew calculation. It's important to get your brewing process and equipment dialed in and then keep good records of volumes, timings and temperatures. I've done it from the start and now I can hit my target gravities everytime based on mash thickness, time and temperature.

A Peek Inside After 12 Hours At 62F

After 12 hours of fermentation I took a peak to see what was going on inside the fermentation chamber. There was a nice layer of trub at the bottom of each fermenter and just the slightest amount of krausen had begun to form. I knew from reading that during this inception phase of the fermentation the yeast cells were busy multiplying like little Viagra crazed bunnies and in a short while the primary fermentation would be in full swing.

A Peak Inside After 24 Hours At 62F

Another peek inside my chamber 12 hours later proved my initial observations were correct, the fermentation had clearly taken off now. I'll gradually let the temperature rise up to the 64-66F range over the next several days. I hadn't planned on brewing a lager beer this weekend but as luck would have it I had everything needed to do just that. Some great new yeast, some American 2 Row malt to try out for the first time and my trusty fermentation chamber.

Screwy's SPA Recipe #57b

I guess I'll just sit back, relax and have a home brew......

After 3 weeks of fermentation, which was the same day I returned home from my trip to Alaska, I racked the pale ale to sanitized secondaries and added in some Cascade hops to enhance the aroma. This coming weekend I plan on adding some priming sugar solution to the corny kegs when I fill them to allow the beer to naturally carbonate. I did this the last time and after 2 weeks at 68-70F all that was needed was to hook up the corny kegs to enough Co2 to to serve up a perfect pour.

Sample Taken Before Racking To Secondary

The 2 Row malt hand the ECY12 fermented the pale ale down 2 points lower than my initial qBrew calculations, this is a very good thing. The initial samples I drank tasted very clean and the beer fermented out to a clear golden and very appealing golden color. I decided to add some Cascade hops to the secondary so after a week I'll be bottling and kegging this batch up and thinking about how good they're going to taste.

Final Gravity Hit 2 Points Lower Than Expected

I added a priming sugar solution of 5 tablespoons pure cane sugar and boiled water to my 2.5 gallon corny kegs and racked the finished beer into them. I then sealed and purged the kegs with 15psi of Co2 and set them off in a corner of the basement to naturally carbonate. After 12-14 days I moved one of the kegs into my refrigerator and the next day I tapped the keg to give it a taste.

Screwy Pale Ale - SPA

I really liked what I tasted too. The natural carbonation was soft and pleasing allowing the finishing hops to come through, this is definitely a winner in my book. I've forced carbonated several beers and I'm absolutely sure there is a huge difference between those beers and the beers I've taken the time to let naturally carbonate.