Monday, March 5, 2012

Refractometer Calculation for Monitoring Fermentation




Refractometer Calculation for Monitoring Fermentation:
Initial °Brix (refractometer)
Current °Brix (refractometer)
Initial Gravity
Current Gravity (SG)
Current Gravity (°Brix hydrometer)
True °Brix
Residual Sugar (g/L)
Current alcohol (%v/v)
Details:  Monitor the progress of your fermentation using an ATC Refractometer.
Enter the initial °Brix reading (O.G) then enter the current reading, in °Brix.
The form will update, live.

Important:
This calculator involves many approximations and is fine for monitoring the progress of fermentation.
Note:
Refractometers are designed for reading the level of sugar in water.
Readings ought to be corrected for Wort.

Wort S.G = 1+(0.00385x°Brix) - for readings taken in °Brix
Wort S.G = 0.0375+0.9625xS.G(Refractometer) - for readings taken in Specific Gravity points
Wort °Brix = (Wort S.G-1)/0.0385



*** This calculator was originally sourced from Johnathan Musther's excellent page full of useful wine and beer calculators.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Batching some Bia Hoi

Well, here we go with a couple of Bia Hoi Trials. This recipe was given to me by a good Brewer friend of mine who runs a chain of craft/micro breweries of the Czech-style in Hanoi. The recipe I'm using here is a generic recipe which was the outcome of a discussion over the phone. [output from QBrew]

Bia Hơi Việt Nam

RecipeBia Hơi Việt NamStyleVietnamese Bia Hoi
BrewerTsc TempestBatch10.00 L
All Grain

Recipe Characteristics
Recipe Gravity1.035 OGEstimated FG1.009 FG
Recipe Bitterness21 IBUAlcohol by Volume3.4%
Recipe Color3° SRMAlcohol by Weight2.7%

Ingredients
QuantityGrainTypeUse
0.60 kgMilled RiceAdjunctMashed
1.20 kgLocaly malted Aust. Pale MaltGrainMashed
QuantityHopTypeTime
7.50 gSaazPellet120 minutes
15.00 gSaazPellet60 minutes
7.50 gSaazPellet15 minutes
QuantityMiscNotes
1.00 Unit
1.00 Unit
Saflager S-23 Lager Yeast
Saflager W-34/70 Lager Yeast
Yeast
Yeast


Recipe Notes
Force Carbonante to 2.2 volumes and serve.
BIAB Style Equipment
a) Mill rice and malt together
b) Dough in grain bill at ambient temp
c) Protein Rest at 55°C for 30 min.
d) Saccharification Rest at 68-72°C until Iodine Negative
e) Mash Out at 78-80°C
f) Two Hour Boil

Batch Notes
Brewhouse Efficiency estimated at 70% (Recipe Default)

Wort Split into two equal batches and pitched with different types of yeast

Refractometer Corrections:
1. Wort S.G = 1+(0.00385 x Brix)
2. Wort S.G = 0.0375 + 0.9625 x S.G
Where: Brix, S.G = the metered reading on ATC Refractometer

________________________________________________________

Now this was an interesting brewup. At Dough In
I took a refractometer reading (all measurements given as corrected) and got 1.004 S.G.  [In this pic you can see grains of rice floating on the water.]

At Mash Out
the reading was 1.043 S.G (Pre-Boil Wort Gravity) [its hard to get the camera focused properly whilst looking through the refractometer. Sorry about the quality of the image] and Post-Boil the Gravity was 1.063. After cooling, I added approx. 3L of water to bring the reading back down to 1.034 which, for this recipe is pretty well spot on. This addition reduced the bitterness of the wort which post-boil was very noticeable - I hope it mellows in fermentation as style wise this may be too bitter. (... may have to review the Style Specs., again...)

I split the cool wort into two equal sized batches and into one, pitched 6g of Saflager S-23 yeast that I'd emptied into half a glass of water the night before. I did the same thing with the other half batch but used Saflager W-34/70 yeast instead.
The fermenters were placed into a chest freezer, teperature managed via a Conrad UT200 Universal Thermostat set to 10.5°-12.5°C. You can see the sensor to the left. The fermenters are made of glass.

Style-wise, on discussions with some Vietnamese brewers, Bia Hoi is fermented with a neutral tasting lager yeast, most likely of Belgian (original industry development carried out by the French), German (technology transfer), Czech (technology transfer), Danish (Carlsberg) or  Dutch (Heineken) origin. As such, Most of my yeast is ALE yeast however I do have five European Lager Yeast strains in my store. They are  Saflager S-23, Saflager S-189, Saflager W-34/70, Wyeast 2042 Danish Lager, and Wyeast 2124 Bohemian Lager Yeast.

I originally got these to explore making an Australian-style Bitter or Lager such as VB, Melbourne Bitter, and Carlton Draft, because I couldn't find a source for the elusive, mythical, Pride of Ringwood Yeast. I did get the POR Hops though.

Back to Bia Hoi... S-23 is described as a yeast with fruity, estery notes, whilst w-34/70 is apparently the most popular industrial lager yeast worldwide, so it was logical to first try these. It should be noted that S-23's characteristics don't match the style, but it was too good an opportunity to do something side by side and then compare the flavour differences - Exactly how does, "fruity, estery notes" manifest themselves in a light lager? I want to KNOW that flavour.

Be that as it may, some observations from the brewday:
Iodine Test -
I got this lovely Phoenix trail when I conducted my iodine test (10% Providon Iodine dropped into strained wort and left for 60 sec. before swirling.) The black spot in the center was a piece of black grit. I don't know where it came from.

Visual Inspection of the Wort -
The pre-boil wort is really quite pale showing that not much colour comes from the grains. Contrast this with the post-boil wort,
and it's much more golden colour. From this it's clear that a lot of the colour for this pale lager comes directly from the hops - Interesting!

Tasting Notes:
The pre-boiled wort was sweet in flavour, a nice malty tipple. The post-boiled wort however, Whoa! Bitter. Really Bitter. It had evaporated away enough liquid to end up at a gravity of 1.065 but the concentration of bitterness was like a bomb. With dilution, I'm really hoping this comes back closer to the style I'm aiming for. If not, I may have to completely revisit the hop schedule for this recipe and hop ratio for the style.

Ultimately, it is damn difficult to find a recipe and production instructions for Bia Hoi. There's a lot of misinformation abut, and those who do make Bia Hoi, generally tend not to share information or use the internet. As such piecing together such a recipe is like trying to read history, remember snippits of conversations with different persons with vested interests in Bia Hoi, and and filling the blanks with conjecture based on the current patterns visible in the puzzle.

This batch is really all about testing three things: the effect on available sugars by not cereal mashing the rice (requires comparison with a second brew where the same amount of rice is cereal mashed) ; testing the impact of the hop schedule on bitterness (requires tasting and side by side comparison with a local bia hoi variant); and assessing the impact of the strain of yeast used (fruity, estery, bready, yeasty, are flavour elements that are yeast attributes. So, which yeast is best to use?)

[Addendum - to be updated in 6 days.]

Well, it's a bit more than 6 days later. Actually, it's a bit over two months... After seven days, the S-23 batch showed almost no activity, S.G dropped slightly to 1.030. Compared with the W-34/70 batch which had dropped to 1.017. Both started out at 1.034 S.G. So I left them for a bit longer. Actually, more than a month longer, as I had to go to Australia for three weeks. 

Many brewers have reported leaving their primaries on the trub for a month with no problems, actually reporting good clean up of off flavours, etc. On return and a week's dallying about, I discovered I'd lost the S-23. It had spoiled badly, so I ditched it. The W-34/70 still looked ok though, so I left it "for a few days" before thinking about getting it bottled. Wouldn't you know it, my temperature controller on my freezer decided to go on the fritz!

It was out for perhaps 24 hrs or so... Diacetyl rest? Perhaps. So, I reset the temp controller and left the bastard where it was. Then, we've got to relocate our furniture to Germany, the shippers were coming in, and I had one day, in which to clear out all the fridges and freezers - Sieben Swerge! What am I gonna do with this beer?  

I quickly taste the green beer, it smells and tastes ok, a bit on the bitter side for bia hoi, but... prime some bottles with table sugar, get the beer into the bottles, 

cap them and then into a bucket of room temperature water. If they exploded I wanted the bucket to keep everything in the one place. S.G. at bottling was 1.013 so i didn't move much in the intervening months. Ok, around 4.1% v/v not bad, a bit higher than target but... I'll take it as it is.

So, here we are, a week after bottling. I pop the cap on one bottle to see if it's gassed at all? 

Yea! Nice little sizzle, rising bubbles and a misty vapour above the liquid. Good stuff, Now, I think I'll clean up the bottles, rest them another day or two and then get them into a fridge to chill down for a sampling.

So, Watch this Space!

Until next time,

It's Your shout, Mate!

Vietnamese Bia Hoi Style Guide

A while back I wrote about how to make Bia Hoi. At the time it was the best information I could lay my hands on. Since then I've expanded my research and looked high and low for a style guide only to be frustrated by the amount of Urban Myth that surrounds the making of this style of beer.

Finally, after much deliberation, research and sampling I've pulled together all the disparate, threads of thought, on this beer style and I offer my summary of it here, for your perusal.


Style Guide: Vietnamese Bia Hoi

Preamble: Bia Hoi is the name for a Vietnamese style lager beer. It is often referred to as: Steam Beer, Fresh Beer, Draft Beer, or Cask Beer. It is predominantly packaged in stainless steel barrels and dispensed by roadside vendors, thus lending to it the appellation, Street Beer or Common Beer. It is described as an unpasteurised beer that may or may not be filtered prior to packaging and distribution. Bia Hoi is manufactured by large breweries, small breweries, small scale brewpub type operations, and village or 'backyard' entrepreneurs. Bia Hoi is best stored below 6°C and the optimal serving temperature is 2° - 4°C. Bia Hoi will rapidly sour if left open to the air at temperatures above 6°C.

Aroma: Little to no malt aroma. Little to no hop aroma. 
Appearance: Very pale straw to light golden colour. A fine bubbled white head that rapidly collapses leaving noticable lacing. Clarity is usually good to excellent. 
Flavour: Low levels of sweetness. Low to medium levels of bitterness. Hop - Malt balance is predominantly mild favoring hoppiness. If served warmish, there may be noticeable bready notes on first tasting. 
Mouthfeel: Thin, watery body. Low to medium carbonation. Mildly astringent, bitter finnish.
Overall Impressions: Light, refreshing and thirst quenching beer and is easily and comfortably consumed.

Ingredients: Typically includes imported pale malt barley with 20-50% grain bill comprising of polished domestic rice. Hop varieties are usually imported, low alpha acid variants. Fermentation utilises domestic sources of live brewery yeast, or imported European strains with a neutral flavour profile such as: WPL-815, W-34/70, W-195 (S-189).

Comments: Rice may be crushed and added directly to the crushed malt at dough in OR cereal mashed and added to the malt after the protein rest. Protein Rest at 50°-55°C for 30 min. Saccharification Rest at 68°-72°C until conversion completed. 2 hr boil. 1/4 hops at boil, 1/2 hops at 1 hr, and remaining 1/4 hops at 15 min. prior to flame out. Lager fermentation at 10°-12°C for 5-6 days. Beer may then be filtered and force carbonated to around 2.2V OR primed with sugar and tank conditioned for an additional 10-15 days (25 days max.) prior to packaging and distribution.

Vital Statistics:
OG: 1.025-1.045
FG: 1.005-1.015
IBUs: 15-30
SRM: 2-4
ABV: 2.5-4.5%

Until next time,

It's Your Shout, Mate!

Friday, January 13, 2012

Automated Brewing Systems for Home Brewers, some thoughts

Brewing beer is an expensive hobby, if you look at it:
:- one way - upfront capital outlay for gorgeous equipment; or
:- another - endless tinkering with pots and stands and burners, and valves and pipes and bottles, and kegs, and, and...

But, when compared with other hobbies and pasttimes, like:
:- motocross, speedway, gocarting, sailing, gliding, flying - too ambitious?
:- mountain bike riding, trekking, mountaineering, skiing, hunting - too left field?
:- re-enactment pastimes (SCA), theatre, opera, ballet - going out each week/month to watch?
:- semi-professional sports, photography, chess, scat, paintball, skermish, etc.

its not hard to chalk up 10-20 grand on good quality, specialist equipment as you progress and find you need this bit of equipment, and then that bit, enter thnis competition, or go to that location, so on and so forth. Thus, in comparrison, brewing as a hobby is pretty much on par with many of the other pasttimes listed above, comparative cost wise. However, brewing is one of those pasttimes where, very often, our "Other Half," doesn't understand or see the rational for the progressive, ongoing  increase in production scale and spiralling expenditure.

What's prompted this particular missive was a recent cruize through a few online brewshops and thier 'automated brewery' options. The majority of these, technically are only automated or semi-automated brewhouses, some are fermentation to font kits, very very few appear to be complete, turnkey, grain to glass brewing systems.

Lets have a look at a few examples...
Single Pot Brewhouses - Prices vary from low cost to mid-range 'expensive'
Gambrinus 1
Bruaeurle

Twin Pot Brewhouses - these tend to be at the hig end of, 'expensive'
Picobier (love to test one, but I recon I've got Buckley's Chance* of testing one of these)

Multi-pot Brewhouses - Vary in cost depending on self-assembly or built in place to order
Brew Sculptures
Brutus 10

Extract to Glass - There's only one of these as far as I know, and its at the high end of expensive
WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery(love to test one of these in series with a Picobier, but I recon I've also got Buckley's Chance of testing one of these)

Then of course (Price On Application, third mortgage on your house systems), there are the pilot brewery systems designed for prototyping in large brewery research facilities, university courses etc. alongside micro malting equipment, pilot scale bottling/packaging lines  and so forth and onwards and upwards from there.

As you can see the upfront cost of such equipment, especially the automated and beautifully systematised equipment, is well outside the weekly/monthly family budget of the average hombrewer, and the cost per glass of beer produced on such systems, especially if you have a 200L/yr brewing limitation, takes it well over $10.00 per serve**. So, why target homebrewers with these beautful systems resplendent in their engineering simplicity and frugal arrangement of space? They offer us, the average home brewer a tantalising glimpse of what is possiblle, a hint of what, Brewery Equipment Perfection might look like.

Brewing Equipment Perfection... ahhh! Such bitter-sweet seduction!

Home brewers, apart from having an undescribable deep need and desire for making great beer, are also backyard inventors, tinkerers of the nth degree that have a consuming passion to cobble together found bits and pieces, experimenting with this and that, trying to improve their beer making process by trying to improve, fine tune, and streamline their production process; and to do this with as minimal, traceable, cost as possible - after all we have to keep our CCBW*** or KPS**** happy enough to continue to indulge us in this hobby.

It is in this context then that such systems have their true value. They offer most homebrewers who can't afford them a bright, shiny goal to aim for. For those of us with an open, all expenses paid, pocket book... prestige. And for those of us who have realised the futility of the Timkerer's Pursuit as a never diminishing financial black hole, this equipment offers us a chance at Hobby Brewer's Redemption - Buy once and spend little more for the next 25 years to Life on maintenace and upkeep, and swear before God and Country, with our better halves as witness, never to indulge in another 'expensive' hobby again.

Until next time,

Its Your Shout, Mate!

____________________
* Buckley's & None - when one wishes for something virtually unattainable, we usually have to very good chances of succeeding these are, Buckly's Chance, and None, i.e. no chance, no way, no how.

**Unless you amortise the cost over a 25 year period, which brings the cost back to something close to $2.00/L, based on a $10,000.00 system - not including cost of ingredients, oncosts, maintenance and operating costs.

*** CCBW - Chief Cook & Bottle Wash(er)

**** KPS - Keeper of the Purse Strings

Sunday, January 1, 2012

A True, Viking-Sytle Mead (Mjöð)

Mead. The Sacred Drink of Warriors, Vikings and the Gods. This honey wine that has been with us for millenia and is yet, out of favour, and anchronism, misrepresented and fast becoming more and more misunderstood.

It's Honey! Its made from Honey! - 13th Warrior

Mead is sweet to semi-sweet. It is made from honey water that is fermented and aged. It can contain, fruits, blossoms, herbs and/or spices wich change the balance of sweet against bitter and/or acidic.

We know how the Romans made it. We know it's been made in China, Mesopotamia, and even Australia!?! from ancient times. But our ongoing knowledge of it seems to come from the sagas, those great stories of heroism and battle, of monstors and Vikings.

So, How did the Vikings make mead?

Short answer? We don't know. There is little in the archealogical record that indicated how food or drink was made, recipes etc. by the Vikings. We can only infer from eyewitness reports,  from findings from similar cultures from around the times of the vikings, and, by drawing a long (a very long) bow from surving nordic traditions.

What we do know is that honey was scarce and valuable. We also know that mead was considered a sacred/ceremonial drink, and not used as a regular quaffer.  We know that honey was managed by specialist bee keepers and that  the must used for making mead was most likely a byproduct of honey extraction rather than a deliberate mix in fixed ratio of honey and water, e.g. Roman mead was made with an approx. 80% honey water solution. There is some suggestion that with stronger, spiced meads that the must may have been additionally fortified with raw honey to increase the overal strength, but this is not known for sure. However, it doesn't make logical sense that efforts would be restricted to making approx. 1 litre of mead per harvested colony unless beekeepers were managing at least 20 or more active, harvestable colonies at a time.

Viking beekeepers would build hives, skeps, populate them with bees, and then terminate the hive population, the brood, in order to extract the honey. The Housewife would then take the entire hive, or extract the combs and place them into cloth to be hung to drip the honey free. The remaining comb and dross would be squeezed to extract second grade honey, and the remains then soaked in water to extract any last remaining honey into a watery syrup (must). The wax would the be separated from the dross and stored. The concentration of the must would vary depending on temperature of the water, time of year, and efficiency of draining and squeezing the comb. The total yield from a typical skep colony was somewhere in the vacinity of 4-6 kg with the honey water msut accounting for, possibly, 10-15% of the total yield.

We also know that the equipment typicaally used in Viking times for cooking, according to burial findings and compared with later written accounts of equipment recomended for the 'English' household, hadn't changed in style or nature for the better part of 500 years. Basically, wooden utensils for measureing, stiring, ladeling; wooden, ceramic or soapstone pots for cooking, boiling and or storage; iron cauldrons and lifting forks for bulk processing of meat; wooden, ceramic, glass or metal beakers from drinking, and ceremonial decorated horns for secial occasions. Heating was accomplished by direct heating pots on a fire trench, and by plunging hot rocks into liquids.

From surviving Nordic brewing traditions we know that fermentation could be effectively carried out in covered wooden buckets, and that filtration, at least for brewing beer, was carried out using a wooden trough lined with branches and straw. Often these branches were of junper, and the straw could have been from grain, marsh reeds, or other tall, stiff grasses. Dedicated wooden fermentation buckets would naturally accumulate their own yeast colonies, to some extent somewhat like a totem stick, but perhaps less reliably so.

Finnish Bakers Yeast is a special yeast that seems as though it may be directly tracable back to Viking times. It's differentiated from normal brewers yeasts in that it tends to be multi-colony rather than a monoculture. To assist with determining when the mead was ready, raisins would be added to the ferment, which possibly may have introduced an additional source for wild yeasts. The raisins would float to the top when the mead was ready. Various additive may have also been used to modify balance the sweetness of the resulting mead and to promote fermentation. A lot has been made of the use of herbs such as juniper, hops, bog myrtle and the like. some of these may have been used because it was expedient to filtration, others may have been used more deliberately, like the use of flowers, and juices.

We know know that mead fermentation is greatly enhanced by the use of additives such as urea or potassium yet these would not have been available as we know them to Viking mead makers. However, boiled animal urine, a source of urea, and perhaps used as a medicinalmight have found it's way into the fermentation bucket, if but a splash or two. Similarly, the leachings of ash with water, pottash, was a source of potassium and it is not unfeasable to consider that a splash or two of ash water also might have made it into the fermenter. Today, we might use the pure forms of such additives in a tightly controlled and regulated manner.

From all this, we can might surmise that the following process could be one that the Vikings may, very likely, have used to make their Mead: allowing for modern minor variation.

A True, Viking-Stule Mead

(For extra authenticity, these steps should be supervised and/or conducted by, 'The Lady of the House.')
1. Start with 40kg of good full, dripping, honey comb
2. Wrap in muslin cloth and set aside to drain for 12-24 hr
3. Tranfer the raw honey into a jar and set aside
4. Crush the honey comb in the cloth and squeeze well, place a heavy stone on top to press the cloth
5. In a wooden, soapstone or clay pot, heat an equal amount of fresh spring water, by weight/volume as compared with the squeezed honeycomb and cloth (approx. 5L of water,) to the temperature of a hot drink, by placing fire heated hot rocks into the water to heat the water above the wax melting point (60-65 deg. C)
6. Remove the rock(s) and suspend the cloth with squeezed honeycomb into the water. Wrap the stone or clay pot to keep warm
7. Remove the muslin cloth and spent honeycomb from the must and squeeze dry, set aside to cool then strain through cloth and straw/juniper branches to remove the hard wax
8. Innoculate the strained must must with Finnish Bakers (Sahti yeast) and cover, add a pinch of powdered urea and/or handful of hearth ash
9. When yeast cake has collapsed - 10-40 days, carefully tranfer the must to a clean, wooden,  soapstone or clay pot, add a handful of raisins, and cover
10. Taste the mead to check the flavour balance. This can be adjusted to taste using a strong infusion of juniper, hops, and/or common guit herbs. Flowers and/or juices may also be added ath this time.
11. Store in a moderately warm, dark place until the raisins flaot to the surface.
12. Line a clean pot with cloth and carefuly pour, without splashing the mead into the cloth. Raise the cloth out of the pot to strain the mead and remove any last floaty bits.

The mead is now ready to bottle and age.

References

Kitchen & Food
http://viking.no/e/life/food/e-redska.html
http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/food.shtml
http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/vikfood.html
http://www.sffarkiv.no/sffbasar/default.asp?p=result&db=dbatlas_leks&art_id=108103&spraak_id=2&ptype=single
http://www.beaconlearningcenter.com/weblessons/beascientist/default.htm

Alcoholic Beverages
http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/drink.shtml
http://www.hame.fi/default.asp?docId=23064
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mead
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~msbain/elbka/Making%20Magic.htm

Brewing
http://www.brewingtechniques.com/library/styles/6_4style.html
http://www.posbeer.org/oppaat/sahti/history.php

Food Additives
http://www.inchem.org/documents/jecfa/jecmono/v32je16.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potash

Beekeeping
http://outdoorplace.org/beekeeping/history1.htm
http://homepage.mac.com/mreddygbr/skepFAQ/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_beekeeping
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeswax

Until next time,

It's Your Shout, Mate!

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Christmas Cheer

It's that time of year again. Christmas is rapidly closing in on us all, and new Year not far behind (if you live in Asia, Tet/Spring Festival is also just around the corner.) It's Winter time in the Northern hemisphere, so time to brew some malty, higher gravity goodness, if you haven't already done so.

We're off to Germany this year for Christmas/New Year/Tet so, I'll be laying down a couple of beers in the next week or so, to be ready y the time we return. In the meantime, I've just put the finishing caps on a batch of Gluwein. The missus nocked these up last night, and I've spent the morning hot bottling them in lovely stone bottles with grolsch/flensburg-style fliptops. These are reclaimed bottles from some Belgian St.Paul Beers. Best thing about these, is that we can take them to a party, and heat them up in a pot of boiling water and be good to go.


So, all the best for the cominig season, hope your brews go well.


That's all from The Herald of Change,


Get that int' ya!



Friday, August 5, 2011

Kegerator Build

It's been a while since I last chimed in.I dallied with selling my brewery and get out of it altogether, but that nasty patch has passed.

Recently, I've been occupying myself with a Kegerator Build. Standard deal, chest freezer, collar and components mounted in the collar. But I also want to double up and use it as a controlled fermentation chamber, so I added a Brewmate Temperature controller.

Here're a few pics:

Wiring & Plumbing

External View

Wiring and Probe Detail

There are still a few issues to sort out, such as the switching of the freezer on and off, apparently I've got some dodgy terminals on the plug, but at least it's ready enough to serve cold beer.

Some feedback on the cider - general consensus was that it was too dry. Force carbonating it also left a slightly bad taste in the mouth due to the poor quality of the CO2 supply, here in Hanoi. Might have to get some kind of CO2 filter system put in place, and that's about it.

Until next time,

It's Your Shout, Mate!