Homebrew Beer Blog

An annual tradition in my club is a fire brew, where in the summer/fall we brew a big batch of beer over an open fire. This year, they decided to do a winter brew. So, in the middle of February, the pulled out the brew equipment and brew up a big barley wine. The beer is going into a Bourbon barrel after fermentation for aging.

I skipped out, mostly because I've got all the beer I can handle. That and it was the middle of February! I stopped by though for a couple hours to BS and took some pics.

This is basically the club brewery, a mix of odd stuff we gathered over the years. There's a 200+ gallon kettle, a big dairy chiller that we use for the mash-tun. We also recently got use of a big plate chiller and big pump.

I was pretty surprised at the mash-tun. I thought it would have problems in the sub-freezing temps, but apparently it has like a double hull, so there's space between the inner wall and outer. That and of course a massive amount of grain tends to hold temps pretty well! The batch size was about 300 lbs of grain w/ 12 lbs of sugar for a 1.100 OG on 75 gallon batch. Again, it's destined for the barrel, so I think they're figuring a little extra for transfer loss and to top up as the year goes on.

So some pics...

Sparging w/ the mash-tun. The plastic barrels to the right are the fermenters. They just tossed a bag over them during fermentation to keep it sanitary.

The chiller

And the kettle over an open fire

Once a year I force myself to pull the brewery apart and clean it. I try to normally keep things clean, but still like to do a deep clean every once in a while. This is a good chance to kill anything that might have found a home somewhere, and also to go through all the equipment and replace anything that needs replacing. It's also good to check the regular cleaning regiments. I usually do this around now when it's too cold to brew and cabin fever sets in.

So, in this fun process, I take off all the fittings and connectors, basically everything except the kettles. The MLT needs a good work over, but I'll save that for a brew day. I also pull the pump apart, take off all the barbs on the hoses, remove all the teflon tap. I also grab the aeration stone and stainless racking cane in the fermenter area. I put the racking cane and my copper wort chiller return in the oven at 350 for an hour. Everything else got the works. I soaked everything in hot caustic for 30 minutes, rinse, then give a quick scrub. That takes care of the organics. Then I soak in hot phosphoric-nitric acid for 30 minutes. From there, it goes right into a bucket of brewery cleaner (like PBW). Then I scrub again and rinse. That takes care of the beer stone.

I had the pressure canner out to sterilize some yeast and starter containers, and I wanted to sterilize my hoses too. I use silicone hoses, and they get stained after a while. No matter what I do, I can't get them white again, so I'm guessing they're just stained and not beer stone. Still, I want to hit it with heat to kill anything that might be in there. So, since I had the pressure canner out, I tossed everything in there too. Needless to say, everything is really clean!

This is one of the great things about stainless, is you can be aggressive in cleaning.

Not too many surprises. My pump head was the biggest. A couple hop leaves were in there, and a good coating of beer stone. Some left over wort too. I'll have to think about how I'm cleaning this thing. Usually I flush it with a Star-San recirc as I clean up for 15-20 minutes. I'd think that would flush it well, but I guess not. I may have to start doing cleaner, which would be a bit of a pain. I should also do an acid clean and/or pull it apart a little more often. I'm not too worried about sanitation though... I recirc the mash for 60+ minutes, then run the sparge water through it for 30 or so, then I recirc boiling wort for 15. I think it's pretty sanitary by chilling time, but still, it's nice to have stuff clean.

I also took the time to rewire the pump. The plug was coming apart a little, and I think the plugs were getting corroded or something since it took a little effort to get it to plug/unplug. So, I wired up a new plug and it's good to go again. Also, I'm going to order a bunch of hex nipples to replace all my regular nipples. The hex ones are really nice and much easier to tighten/pull apart. Also, I've got some more tri-clovers coming in from Martin/Swagman. I think I'm going to put clamps on the pump end of the lines, which might make cleaning and storage a little easier. A little too frequently I've been getting pinhole leaks at the hose barb because of storage. Here, I'll be able to quickly take the hoses apart and let them hang dry. I'm also going to get a clamp for my water filter, and fill directly into my kettles, rather than dumping buckets. I really dread filling and lugging buckets, so this should make setup a little easier. Anyway.. the annual big brewery cleaning is history for '08.

Dirty Pump Head:

Caustic Soup!

All Clean!

Last stop on the Detroit trip was Atwater Block BC in downtown Detroit. The brewery/restaurant/bar on the outside resembles industrial Detroit, I believe it's across the street from the old Stroh's brewery. Inside, it's a nice fusion of old painted brick walls with modern lighting and stainless. Very spacious. You could tell it's an old building by the cold weather drafts, and the server wore a winter hat. The back wall has big picture windows through the sizable brewing space.

I ordered the sampler again, had the D Light, Pilners, Hell, Rost, Salvation IPA, Vanilla Java Porter, Voodoo Vador, and Winter Bock. I think that's all of them.

The D Light is a Kolsch style, and isn't anything real special. The beer wasn't well carbonated and was getting warm, I assume because of the service, but more on that later. It was a bit flabby and lifeless, but clean. Had it been carbonated and chilled, it probably would have been more crisp and refreshing.

The Pils is a German Pilsner and was basically the same story as the Kolsch. Flabby and nothing exception. Again seemed clean, but could benefit from more carbonation and chilled.

The Hell is a Munich Helles style, and once again it was a little flabby. It did have a nice sweet and malty nose of a wonderful helles.

The Roast is listed as an amber ale. I don't really remember this well enough. I thought there was something off about it, but I don't think it was exceptional either way.

The Salvation IPA was pretty good. It was my third favorite beer, but not what I would reach for when looking for an IPA. A little tame by modern standards, but a well made, nice beer.

The Vanilla Java Porter wasn't for me. Way too much vanilla. In my book a little goes a very long way, and vanilla dominated the beer.

The Winter Bock was a very nice beer. This was my second favorite beer. A nice dark, rich bock, perfect for a cold February night.

And last was the Voodoo Vader. This is what I think of as their flagship beer. Voodoo is a doppelbock coming in at 9.5%. It's a very drinkable dopplebock, again great for a cold February night. I'm always impressed with the drinkability of this beer. It can be dangerous!

We just ordered some appetizers since I think none of us were really hungry for a meal. So, no real comments on the food. I gotta say though, the service was appalling. I don't say that lightly. They were supposedly expecting us, and other than our group, it wasn't particularly busy, so not sure what the deal was. The word from others is this isn't all that unusual, so in the future I'll be enjoying their beer at my favorite watering hole, or just in the bottle at home, rather than visiting again.

We did though get let loose in the brewery and I got some photos.

I keep one keg dedicated to root beer. Kellie has special requests for root beer, and I made up a batch tonight.

My favorite mix is Sprecher root beer out of Wisconsin. Actually, when I go to Iron Mountain to visit my parents I can find it in the stores. This stuff is pretty good and really easy to make. It comes in a one gallon pre-mix jug, and you just add it to a keg with four gallons of water. The only downside is it's pretty expensive and I need to ship it in.

This time, I'm trying the Gnome brand mix. It's cheaper, but it's only four ounces. The standard recipe is to use 2-4 ounces per 5 gallon batch, and add 10 cups sugar. I made this once before and it didn't blow me away, so I thought I'd change it up a little. I used the entire pack for the full 4 ounces. I then made it with 5 cups of brown sugar, four cups of cane sugar, and 3/4 cup honey. Looking it up, I thought that should get me about the same sweetness as required 10 cups of sugar.

I heated the whole thing up to 160 or so and then dumped it into a sanitized keg. The thought was just to try and sanitize the whole works. My only screw up is I forgot to filter the water. Hopefully that won't make too much of a difference.

The homebrew shop got a bunch of corny kegs in, and I picked up seven more. I was actually only going to get 3-4, but these were in pretty great shape, and I had a good selection to choose from. Most of them had good posts, and they all held pressure. They were very clean, so where ever they came from did a good job getting the gunk out. With no scrubbing involved, they should be pretty easy to recondition for beer. I’ll post a little guide on how I do that later.

This brings me up to 21 beer kegs, and one soda keg. With the recent used freezer, I’ll be able to keep 20 kegs cold, so if I managed to fill them all, I’ll have a floater. I’m thinking the freezer in the garage will be good for long-term storage, so I’d guess 8 of those kegs will be left alone for 6-12+ months. It will be fun to start building up some barley wines, RIS, big Belgians, and even lagers. Last year’s BW is turning pretty good after a year, and the RIS from last summer is too turning out pretty nice. Add my adventures with sour beers, I could fill that auxiliary freezer pretty quickly. :D