Simcade Pale Ale Brew Day in pictures

Last weekend we brewed up a Pale ale with Simcoe in the boil, and cascade at flameout and in the hopback. The beer will also be dryhopped with cascade hops.

Mash in                                                                                          Mash out

Brewing Automation: Brewtroller DX1 Vs BCS 460

When deciding how to automate I had a choice to make between Open Source Control Systems Opentroller/Brewtroller DX1 and the BCS 460 from Embedded Control Concepts. I ended up going with the brewtroller for one main reason. The ability to measure volume. I was so geeked about that fact that I may have overlooked other pros and cons of both of these controllers.

I have now owned and used both of these controllers, and here are my thoughts.

Opentroller / Brewtroller DX1 I picked up the DX1 in late August 2012. We wired everything up, and used an old metal CD holder for the case. The DX1 is made up of a number of parts besides the main controller. Putting those parts together was no big deal. Getting outputs and temp sensors to work was more difficult. Accessing the code and setting up outputs is all done by hooking the DX1 to a computer and uploading them through software that can be found on the OSCS site. Getting everything functioning took a few trys and I had to seek out help online or from OSCS. Even then I had a number of things that just simply did not work. None were critical to actually brewing beer, but had these things worked I might still be using it. Con- The click wheel interface  It is at it's most annoying when you sit there inputting a recipe into the system using the click wheel when the temperature is very cold. It's just horrible. You get this awful lag in the LCD due to the freezing temps. Sure, it wouldn't be bad if I could upload a beer XML file, but I never got that to work. You still have the web interface, but I was never able to import from that interface either. Pro- Volume measurements I am marking this as a pro, but I never got to do it. Once I got the controller I had many other issues to deal with so I never got close to measuring volume. I had a number of issues that I cannot blame solely on the controller. Apparently the switch to the new controller and temperature sensors changed my system enough that I ruined a substantial amount of beer before I realized I had an overheating issue. I brewed over 50 gallons to fill a Bourbon barrel and all of that beer is most likely going to be dumped unless I can get rid of the tannin off flavor. I should have been more cautious but I just didn't think it would cause such a change in how the temperature was being read. I will say that after monitoring temps in a number of locations with multiple thermometers, I was able to get that issue resolved by moving the location for measuring mash temp. So not every batch I brewed with the DX1 was bad. The biggest gripe I had with the DX1 was access. I disliked the click wheel interface. There is the Brewtroller Live web interface but for me it only worked for basic monitoring, and even then temps refreshed really slowly. I was never able to get any of the commands to work or upload a recipe file using it. Lastly I had a random issue when brewing and trying to move to the next step in the brewing process where I would get an error "program failed to advance". After six months of brewing with the DX1, it was not living up to the picture of automation I had in my mind.

This January, six months after I bought the Brewtroller, I went back and checked out the BCS product again. I saw that Derrin over at Brewers Hardware had bought EBC, the company that was producing the BCS. I liked the investment, direction, and the focus that it seemed he was putting into it. Once again the only drawback I was seeing was the lack of volume measurement. But seeing where I was at with the Brewtroller after six months, I no longer cared. I wanted to make the switch. So I did.

EBC BCS 460 We purchased the controller, two temperature sensors, and some SSRs to replace our relays. We had everything wired up quickly. We immediately brewed 15 gallons of Black IPA. We payed extra close attention to temps because of our previous experience, but everything seemed to go really well. We started to play around with the process control functions, but ran everything in manual mode. Pro- Plug and Play When originally deciding which system to go with, I did not even really think about this as a deciding factor. I knew the BCS was simpler and the DX1 more complex. So it wasn't until after working with the DX1 and then the BCS that I can now say without a doubt that simple wins hands down. We could have had this thing up and running in an hour but we found our relay switches from the DX1 would not operate with the BCS. We had to wait a little longer as we ordered SSRs. We quickly finished the system set up as soon as they arrived. Pro- Interface It looks great, it works great, and the refresh rate is super fast. Therefore the BCS kills it in this area. I already mentioned that the default click wheel input on the DX1 was one of the things I disliked about it the most. With the BCS the default interface is from a browser. At first glance it might seem confusing, but it is pretty straight forward. You can assign all your inputs and outputs from it. No need to edit and upload config files to it. Yes, you need some other device to interface with the BCS. For me that meant putting an old mac mini and 23 inch LCD monitor into my garage. The nice thing was I already had this stuff lying around unused. The only thing I had to purchase was a swing arm style mount for the LCD. I put the computer in the garage for the BCS, but I now love having it out there. We are using it for a bunch of other things than just displaying the BCS control page. Pro- Use it how you like Want to just control HLT, MLT temps? You don't need to build processes to do that. Just pull up the manual control page, enter temps, and off you go. Ready for more complex events and automation? It can do that too. Just start creating processes to do multiple steps. With the DX1, you can define your system set-up. So number of vessels, capacity, that type of thing. However when it comes to the event of brewing, you have to go through every part in a linear step by step approach. But what if I don't do mash outs? You cannot remove it. When it gets to that step you can use click wheel, open the menu and step past it. But I shouldn't have to worry about doing that if I don't mash out. It is probably possible to change this in the software code itself, but that is something I would rather do from a simple interface. The BCS lets you build processes that match your brewing routine. So it is truly customized to you. Con- No volume measurement I need to put this down as a con since I originally saw this function as the deciding factor in a home brewery automation control system. I have heard around the inter-webs that EBC is working on adding volume measurements. If it happens that will be great and I will look to add it quickly. I only have two brew sessions with the BCS so far, but those brew days went smoothly. I am really looking forward to building some more complex processes. I am also already thinking about adding more automation, rather than trying to fix functionality that's not working correctly.

Here is a quick glance at some of my thoughts on how these two compare

Final Thoughts

While it is obvious after reading this that the BCS is the right hardware for me, I have nothing but good things to say about the people over at Brewtroller. They were always there to help me when I was encountering issues. Some of which were undoubtedly created by myself.

I felt ready and willing to take on a system that I knew was way more DIY than plug and play. Looking back it seems that although I was able to work through issues and get the thing functioning, I was underwhelmed with what I had. To improve it, to make it work as expected, was probably over my head and too time consuming for me. So in the end I made the switch to something simpler in many ways, but also very powerful and complex if you want it to be.

*** Update *** 9/4/2013

I have now been using the BCS setup for 9 months and have brewed -ahem- a lot of beer with it. I can say without a doubt that I have made the right decision. I will note that we did have one issue that bugged me for a while. The temp would bounce or fluctuate quite a bit. This would take place during mashing. The jumps were completely illogical, and could not be real. Example: No heat source on, 38 pounds of grain, and 15 gallons of water recirculating in the mash tun and the temp would jump up or down up to 7 degrees at a time. Then it would jump back.

That issue seems to have resolved itself. We first looked at it as a electrical shielding issue. We reconfigured our set up by moving things into a much larger control box. Then we updated the firmware on the BCS. The last couple of brew sessions have been very stable and I feel the issue is now resolved.

I have also created processes for most of the brew day. I use these processes to maintain HTL temps, mashing, including multi-step mash profiles, as well as the boil with alarms for every hop addition.

Overall I am very happy with the controller.

SF Beer Week Opening Night 2013

On February 8th I had the chance to attend the opening celebration event of The San Francisco Beer Week. This is a beer tasting event with nearly 80 Northern California breweries pouring. All the big names like Sierra Nevada and Lagunitas are there along with a ton you most likely have never heard of. From up and comers, to smaller brew pubs, to the gypsy brewers such as Almanac and Pacific Brewing Laboratory that I am so fond of. In case you have never heard the term gypsy brewers, it means that they rely on the equipment/facilities of other breweries to produce their beers. They don't have to start out committing huge $$$ to build their own. They just need to find brewers that have the spare capacity to brew their beers. Some will end up moving into their own brew house at some point in their business plans, but not always.

We rode BART and walked to the event. We had to go 6 blocks north and 1 block east. As fate would have it, the one block east we took at random happened to be the home of City Beer. The selection for a Utah guy like me was totally mind blowing. I could have blown some big bucks here, but that just wouldn't have been practical given the situation. They also have a pretty great selection on tap, albeit a much smaller list.

I had a glass of Allagash Interlude which is a farmhouse ale with brett and aged in red wine barrels. This was quite tannic, and a little tart. I really enjoyed it as it warmed up.

After our stop at City Beer we continued onward to the event. 15 minutes before the doors opened and the line was quite long and trailed off around the corner and down the street. It took around 15 minutes to get into the hall once the doors opened. The venue was fairly large, but it was still full of people with many more coming in. Although it was full, it didn't feel to cramped or hot. Most lines were a few people at most. Some of the rarer beers were drawing lines with 5-10 minutes to get a sample.

I tried to keep track of everything I was tasting, but that only gets harder as you go. I did track a number of them. From that list, and my memory I can say some of my favorites were the NC Old Rasputin XV, Devil's Canyon Sunshine Rye IPA, Black Diamond Brandy Barrel Grand Cru, RR Sanctification, Mill Valley Beerworks Old Wisconsin Red, and Hanger 24's DIPA (Not Nor Cal, but 1 of 4 guest brewers).

Cheers from SF Beer Week!

BIAB Series- Micro-batch #1- The Embrouiller

I typically brew 15-20 gallon batches. Occasionally I will brew ten if I am doing something with really high gravity or experimental. My system really will not allow me to go much smaller than that. In addition, brewing on this system is a bit of an undertaking and commitment. Add to that if the outside temperatures are sub zero. Unfortunately where I live I am currently dealing with freezing temps. My last brew session was in 9 degree weather. That's 9 Fahrenheit.

So on this Holiday I was thinking about brewing, but the thought of pulling everything out in freezing cold was  killing my motivation. If I was going to brew I needed to do it inside and on a tiny scale!

To make it a little more interesting, I challenged myself to only use things I had on hand, including equipment.

I have a big box of remnant malts. It's full of 1-10 pound bags of various malts. I also have a freezer full of hops so no problem there. My choice of yeast was limited to exactly one kind... Wyeast 1581 Belgian Stout. Not a bad yeast to be stuck with if you ask me!

So I was obviously going to brew something Belgian but I mostly had base malts on hand. I thought about something super simple like a Patersbeir, but I was able to dig up a few things to make something a bit bigger.

The following are things I was able to pull together for the Embrouiller, a Belgian Dark Strong ale.

The Embrouiller

Belgian Dark Strong Ale

Type: All Grain	Date: 1/21/2013
Batch Size (fermenter): 3.00 gal	Brewer:
Boil Size: 4.5 gal	Asst Brewer:
Boil Time: 90 min	Equipment: 8 Gallon BIAB
Ingredients
Ingredients Amt Name Type # %/IBU 7 lbs 8.0 oz Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (3.5 SRM) Grain 1 75.5 % 2 lbs Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM) Grain 2 20.1 % 6.0 oz Golden Naked Oats (10.0 SRM) Grain 3 3.8 % 1.0 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 4 0.6 % 0.50 oz Aurora (Super Styrian) [10.30 %] - Boil 50.0 min Hop 5 23.4 IBUs 0.50 oz Aurora (Super Styrian)[10.30 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 6 12.2 IBUs 1.0 pkg Belgian Stout (Wyeast #1581) Yeast 7 -
Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.088 SG	Measured Original Gravity: 1.087 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.017 SG	Measured Final Gravity: ?
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 9.3 %	Actual Alcohol by Vol:
Bitterness: 35.5 IBUs	Calories: 297.0 kcal/12oz
Est Color: 9.3 SRM (I think it is slightly darker than this est)

Now I had my ingredients, but I still needed a way to mash my grains and boil. I have a round 5 gallon cooler which I could use to mash, but I did not want to hijack the cooler by adding a ball valve and braid to it. Then I found it... a beat to hell 8 gallon aluminium pot that my wife acquired someplace. Yeah, aluminium would not be my first choice, but it was my best and only option. It would be perfect for mashing and boiling if I could find a way to lauter in it.

Heating mash water

The obvious method to lauter seemed to be BIAB or Brew In A Bag. Essentially it is a no sparge, all grain, one pot brewing method. All I needed to accomplish this was a large mesh bag. So I did end up purchasing one item to complete the days brewing. I ran down to the home depot and bought a 2 pack of 5 gallon nylon paint strainer bags. The cost was under 3 dollars.

Any extract brewers take note. I just upgraded extract brewing equipment to all grain brewing equipment for $3.00. There is no reason not to do this!

My double crushed grain after doughing in.

The bag is made to fit in a five gallon bucket. It has elastic around the top. This fit very snugly on my kettle. I was a little worried it would fall down, but it never moved. The mash went very smooth and I maintained my mash temp much easier than I expected.

With the 8 gallon pot I targeted a full boil 3 gallon batch of beer. I don't even think I could recirculate 3 gallons of wort in my main system. If one were to do 5 gallon stove top BIAB, you would need a 10 gallon kettle, or you would have to top up with water after your boil (don't do that!).

I only ran into one issue today. I wasn't able to boil on my lame electric stove. Well maybe I could have but I ran out of patience. So in the end I did go outside to use a burner to boil the wort. For chilling I just left my pot out in the snow and sub zero temps. It took just over an hour to cool off to pitching temp.


I hope this is the first of many small batches of beer from the labs of Revival Brewing. And so begins my BIAB micro-batch series.

My tiny 3 gal better bottle and The Embrouiller.

Look at that little guy! It just barley fit on the burner.

The first brew of 2013 - Water into Wheatwine

I usually do not post anything about upcoming brew sessions, but it is a slow day and I am pretty excited about what we will be attempting.

Once again we will be brewing a style that I have never had a chance to try. I would guess that many a beer lover have never tried this style either. It's sort of a hybrid and has no official BJCP category.

Sundays brew will be a wheatwine. It's closest relative is the barleywine, but it uses a large amount of malted wheat instead of being all barley. There are no official style guidelines, but in my mind you need at least 50% of the malt bill to come from wheat. There are less than 100 wheatwines listed on beerAdvocate (there are almost 600 barleywines). Wheatwine seems to be one of those styles created by the American craft brew movement. Rubicon Brewing Company claims to be the first brewer of the style back in 1998. They have won several awards with it including gold at GABF.

In building the recipe I did some research on other brewers attempts to create this beer. Some people seem to take a Weizenbock recipe and scale it up to get a high ABV. The big difference is that you want a more neutral yeast and American hops.

My take on it is slightly different. I definitely wanted to use German wheat, but I am forgoing some of the more traditional Weizenbock ingredients such as Pils, Munich, Vienna, and/or CaraMunich/Vienna.

Wheatwine

Batch Size: 15.00 gal	Style: American Barleywine (19C)
Boil Size: 19.64 gal	Style Guide: BJCP 2008
Color: 14.6 SRM	Equipment: Stainless Pots (26 Gallons) - All Grain
Bitterness: 76.9 IBUs	Boil Time: 60 min
Est OG: 1.105 (24.6° P)	Mash Profile: Single Infusion, Medium Body, Batch Sparge (155°)
Est FG: 1.021 SG (5.3° P)	Fermentation: 14 days @ 65
ABV: 11.2%	Taste Rating: ?

Ingredients

Amount	Name	Type	#
30 lbs	Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM)	Grain	1
20 lbs	Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)	Grain	2
2 lbs 8.0 oz	Honey Malt (25.0 SRM)	Grain	3
8.0 oz	Midnight Wheat (550.0 SRM)	Grain	4
3 lbs	Dememera Sugar (2.0 SRM)	Grain	5
4.0 oz	Apollo[17.0%] - Boil 60 min	Hops	6
2.0 oz	Willamette [5.5%] - Boil 30 min	Hops	7
4.0 oz	Willamette [5.5%] - Boil 15 min	Hops	8
8 pkgs	American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056)	Yeast	9

The idea was to use more traditional American malts because of the roots of this style are entirely American. As for the honey malt, a lot of people feel honey and munich malts are pretty similar, but I feel it gives a bit more complexity and of course sweetness. For color I have always been interested in a newer offering form Briess called midnight wheat. It was mainly created for use in Black IPAs where very dark color is desired, but little to no traditional dark malt characteristics are wanted. While I am not going for big color, I do want some, and it's wheat!

For the rest of the recipe I went all American hops and yeast.

Final brew of 2012 - Smoked Porter

Yesterday we capped off a 1 bbl weekend by brewing up 16 gallons of smoked porter. This is the second time we have brewed this beer. The first 15 gallons we made were probably one of my favorite beers of the year.

A few details were changed for this batch. I split up the chocolate malt % using two different chocolate malts. Half came from Crisp Chocolate malt with a 600-700° Lovibond, and the other half with a more standard chocolate malt of 300° Lovibond. Another change up was using US-04 dry English ale yeast rather than US-05 dry American ale yeast. Lastly the bittering hops changed, but the IBUs remained the same.

The recipe uses Briess cherry smoked pale malt as 20% of the grain bill. I really like this percentage on the final product. It is not super powerful, but it is there. It just balances well with the strong dark malts.

The resent issue we have had in the brew house with astringent and tannin flavors seems to be corrected. We brewed an IPA a few weeks back and were extremely cautious about over heating the mash. That beer seems to be fine. We switched back to using our brewtroller system this weekend. We replaced our mid mash thermowell with one that reaches the middle of the mash tun. We used three different temp probe placements (at one time) and found the best to be the one in the mash, followed by one on the mash return. The lest trust worthy was the one on the ball valve. That one has already been removed.

Here is the brew day in pictures.

44# of grains to mill

Filling the tub with grain

Clean water going into the hot liquor tank

Heating and recirculating the HLT water

Mash tun with a temporary temperature probe on the sparge arm return line

Boil kettle

Brewtroller screen. Nice equalized temperature in the return and middle of the mash and only 3 minutes into the sacch rest!

New sparge arm in action. (I love this thing!)

Popped the arm up and out of the wort to show the spray action. Nice and clear wort!

Sacch rest = break time

Up-cycled case for the brewtroller

Boil under way

Mash tun clean out

Smoked Porter "DEC 30"

Robust Porter

Type: All Grain	Date: 07/28/2012
Batch Size (fermenter): 16.00 gal	Brewer:
Boil Size: 19.68 gal	Asst Brewer:
Boil Time: 60 min	Equipment: Stainless Pots (26 gallons) - All Grain
End of Boil Volume 17.68 gal	Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Final Bottling Volume: 15.25 gal	Est Mash Efficiency 74.4 %
Fermentation: Ale, Single Stage	Taste Rating(out of 50): 30.0
Taste Notes:
Ingredients
Ingredients Amt Name Type # %/IBU 16.00 gal Salt Lake City, UT Water 1 - 20 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 2 44.4 % 12 lbs Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 3 26.7 % 9 lbs Smoked Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 4 20.0 % 1 lbs 8.0 oz Chocolate Malt (600.0 SRM) Grain 5 3.3 % 1 lbs 8.0 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 6 3.3 % 1 lbs Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM) Grain 7 2.2 % 2.00 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [15.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 8 30.4 IBUs 4.00 oz Willamette [5.50 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 9 8.1 IBUs 3.0 pkg SafAle English Ale (DCL/Fermentis #S-04) [23.66 ml] Yeast 10 -
Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.070 SG	Measured Original Gravity: 1.068 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.020 SG	Measured Final Gravity: ?
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 6.6 %	Actual Alcohol by Vol: ?
Bitterness: 38.5 IBUs
Est Color: 41.5 SRM
Mash Profile
Mash Name: Single Infusion, Full Body, Batch Sparge	Total Grain Weight: 45 lbs
Sparge Water: 11.02 gal	Grain Temperature: 72.0 F
Sparge Temperature: 168.0 F	Tun Temperature: 72.0 F
Adjust Temp for Equipment: FALSE	Mash PH: 5.20
Mash Steps Name Description Step Temperature Step Time Mash In Add 15.56 gal of water at 167.1 F 156.0 F 45 min
Sparge Step: Batch sparge with 2 steps (0.43gal, 10.59gal) of 168.0 F water

MacGyvered IPA brewday

We had no business brewing today. We had it all planned, but we over thought the whole brew day and it should have cost us.

In a all hands on deck approach to recent issues in the brew house we pulled all the hardware off the pots for deep cleaning. We also popped open our pump for an inspection and cleaning. Putting it back together I made a clean cut through the o-ring. No bueno.

Attempts to place the broken o-ring in the pump to seal it back up failed. A Sunday search of hardware stores failed. The last option to salvage our brew day would have made MacGyver proud. We took a tiny section of heat shrinking tubing and used it to reconnect the o-oring. It worked immediately and never leaked once.

The reason for pulling everything apart is that our recent brews have all suffered from similar off flavors. This flavor is tannin and gives a wine like character to the beers. The problem also happens to coincide with the setup of our brewtroller system.

We settled on temperature as the most likely cause. For whatever reason the temp was reading lower than what it really was, and the result was overheated water pulling tannins from the grain.

For today's brew session we kept a couple of calibrated digital thermometers around the mash. We also went back to using our old temperature control system. We also skipped mash out. I am pretty confident we did not overheat today.

In addition to all that, we also used our newest entirely unnecessary but totally cool and overbuilt brew toy. The "Ultimate" sparge arm from Morebeer. This thing was super easy to use compared to our previous sparge apparatus. That one require a balancing act and sometimes resulted in falls from the mash tun. The arm adjusts up, down, left, right, and the output can be placed just below the liquid level, but above the grain bed. The results were really nice too. We always recirculate our mash and get nice clear wort, but this time it seemed even cleaner and clearer.

I sure hope this beer turns out great and we can put this past bullshit behind us. The batch we brewed is a clone of Cigar City's Jai Alai IPA. I can honestly say it is one of the greatest beers I have ever had. It is impossible for me to get in my area, so I hope this is a close match!