Homebrew Beer Blog

It finished baking sooner than the recipe said. I was to bake for 20 then turn and check in 20. I probably could have checked in 15 or even gone 15/15. Internal temp read around 200 +/5 in both loaves, so it was a bit dry. I was also not a fan of all the nuts. Next time I'd reduce the nuts by 1/4 or maybe 1/2. If it was a bit more moist, the nuts might not be as noticeable.

I bumped the Cinnamon up 50%. After baking I buttered the top of the loaf and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar for a nice crust. Next time it might be interesting to put some cinnamon sugar on the inside of the loaf before rolling.

I used more flour than the recipe called for. I would say about 1/2 cup was added. It was pretty sticky coming out of the mixer. I'll have to read the intro part of the book to see if that's typical. Ideally I'd like a consistent dough out of the mixer going just by flour weight. If I can get that, I would save time tinkering with the dough.

I covered the loaves with a towel overnight to cool, then bagged them in ziplock. I put one in the freezer. I plan to foodsaver that to see how it holds up.

Brewing is on indefinite hold, but recently I've thought exploring bread. I'm going to try working through the Bread Makers Apprentice. We'll see how long I stick with it, but it should be fun and interesting experience. I want to record my results, so figured I'd use this blog.

Some basics... I'm using SAF Instant yeast. I picked up a bread stone from King Arthur Flour. I use a Thermapen thermo. I plan to mostly mix and kneed in a stand mixer. I'd like to get a new one since mine is pretty small. I like to finish kneading slightly wet dough on the counter. I plan to use mostly Unbleached White KAF Flour.

Just for the fly spargers out there...

I've tried slowing down my sparge to meet 1 pint/minute. It occurred to me that if I bother figuring this out, I could probably stop watching the kettle for when to end the sparge. This actually seems to work. If I want 7.5 gallons for pre-boil, at 1 pt per minute, I'm done in 60 minutes.

My tried and true way was I had a wooden dowel (the other half from the '07 Flanders Red batch) and hashed out per gallons. This works well, except when I use a false bottom. That kind of messing things up, but still, the false bottom is at about the two gallon mark. Also, as the wort heats up, it expands and that can put a little hitch in readings. Probably the biggest though, is there's a degree of babysitting. Every sparge was different.

The way before that, I did total gravity (gravity * volume) to get to my desired gravity, and either kept sparging or added water to get to my pre-boil. This is an excellent system, but for some reason once in a while I'd mess this up. Really though, I lost interest in this when I finally stopped messing with my system and became reasonably predictable on the efficiency.

For a while I was calculating how much water I'd need, minus grain absorption and kettle/system loss. Then I'd just fill my hot liquor tank with that much water. When the HLT went try, I was done. This works well, but every once in a while for some reason I'll need more water. Kind of a pain when I have to choose between using straight tap water or filtering and treating a fresh bunch of water. Plus, I'm not too sure about draining the mash-tun dry. Kind of seems like I might be pulling more undesirable crud from the mash this way.

Yet another idea was sort of "pulse sparging" where it's sort of a hybrid between batch and fly sparging. I'd drain the mash-tun down a good ways, then refill with sparge water and keep going until I get what I need. This isn't a measuring technique like the last few. This is handy and seemed to offer up time savings without hurting efficiency. Similar as the pulse sparge though I'm not too thrilled with the idea of draining the MLT.

So, how do you fly sparge? My stop watch method seems to work well for me. Basically set it and forget it with really no room for instrument errors.

It's been about three months since I put an extract batch into the fermenter. Since August since I fired up the brewery. I think it's time...

While watching some basketball I cleaned up a bunch of stuff. Cleaned up some fermenters, got some gear cleaned up. Even racked a forgotten batch of beer. I was all set to bust up a pile of kegs but couldn't find my socket wrench. Isn't that just the way?

So I'm thinking of running to Harbor Freight tomorrow and buy a new wrench. The brew store is on that side of town... I might get some yeast for Sunday.

Wow... long time no post around here. Been busy with the first born.

Two thoughts on these cherry beers. First, not nearly enough cherry! It has a faint aroma and some background flavor. People generally not familiar with cherry beers seem to say they can't pick up any cherry. I would maybe double if not triple the cherries next time.

The second issue, is I pick up a little metallic flavor. I think it's stronger in the American wheat. At first I thought something might have gone weird with that one, but I later I could pick it up in the Belgian too. First guess might be the cherry cans.

The beer did turn out a little tart from the cherries, and also has a sort of pink lemon aid look to it.

So, next time I might go for frozen cherries, or at least canned cherries from someone else.