80 Acre Hoppy Wheat Clone

About a week ago I came across Boulevard Brewing's 80 Acre Wheat beer. I immediately fell in love with it. I am not a big fan of wheat beers, but this one just tasted great to me. With a heat wave in full effect, the desire to brew something similar was high. I checked out some different threads as well as Boulevards website to come up with a clone recipe. It helps that Boulevard is pretty open about the beers ingredients.

It is a pretty simple recipe. There is only one small bittering addition. I used CTZ, but it really doesn't matter what is used as long as you get something like 12-16 IBUs (Boulevard lists this as a 20 IBU beer). All of the rest of the hops, and there are a ton, come at flame out or later.

The calculations below come from Beersmith. In my opinion that program doesn't handle flame-out hop additions well. I guarantee that you are going to pick up some IBUs from a large flame-out addition like the one below.

At flame out we added close to 14 oz of Cascade hops and let things stand for 15 minutes. When we started chilling the temp was 190.

The finishing touch to this beer will be a half pound more of Cascade and a half pound of Nelson Sauvin as dry hops. It will give this beer the aroma of a fine IPA, but will come off more or less like a slightly hoppy and quite citrusy wheat beer.

80 Acre Clone (Hoppy Wheat)

American Wheat or Rye Beer

Type: All Grain	Date: 6/30/2013
Batch Size (fermenter): 20.00 gal	Brewer: Michael & Tim
Boil Size: 23.59 gal	Asst Brewer:
Boil Time: 70 min	Equipment: Stainless Pots (26 gallons) -BCS 460
End of Boil Volume 21.00 gal	Brewhouse Efficiency: 72.00 %
Final Bottling Volume: 20 gal	Est Mash Efficiency 75.6 %
Fermentation: Ale, Single Stage	Taste Rating(out of 50):
Taste Notes:
Ingredients
Ingredients Amt Name Type # %/IBU 24 lbs 10.4 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 62.2 % 8 lbs Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 2 20.2 % 7 lbs Wheat, Flaked (1.6 SRM) Grain 3 17.7 % 1.25 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 4 16.3 IBUs 13.80 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Aroma Steep 15.0 min Hop 5 0.0 IBUs 4.0 pkg SafAle English Ale (DCL/Fermentis #S-04) [23.66 ml] Yeast 6 - 8.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days Hop 7 0.0 IBUs 8.00 oz Nelson Sauvin [12.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days

Mash Profile
Mash Steps Name Description Step Temperature Step Time Saccharification Add 13.39 gal of water at 163.9 F 153.0 F 60 min
Sparge Step: Batch sparge with 2 steps (Drain mash tun, , 15.96gal) of 168.0 F water
UPDATE 7/10 -This beer has been in the fermenter for 10 days at a constant temp of 67. I did not check the gravity, but I am sure that fermentation is complete. I added a whole pound of hops to the fermenter today. 8 oz of Cascade and 8 Nelson Sauvin. I plan on letting it go 4-5 days before kegging. 7/14 - Kegged this one today. Tasted and looked a lot like grapefruit juice. I will give it a week of keg conditionaing before tasting again.

Operation: EZmash - Brewing with a tankless water heater

Have you ever wished you could just fill up your mash tun with water and mash in? Me too...

Well today we hooked up our newest completely non-essential piece of brewing equipment. A compact LPG tank-less water heater. With this thing we will be able to cut both time and propane out of normal brewing sessions. In our process I figure we will save about 60 minutes a session. I am not sure what the propane savings will be, but it should be pretty great too.

Mounted to the side of the brewing stand

The hook up should have been easy, but of course we had a small hick-up. It turned out our propane pressure was too great for this thing. After 30 minutes of messing with the thing and being unable to get it to light, we turned down the gas and poof... it lit up just like it should.

The stand still fits in it's storage spot

The results were beyond my expectations. According to the documentation, this unit can do a 77 degree rise at 1.8 GPM. I didn't test the temp of my ground water, but I know it is under 70 at this time. And it will only get warmer until about early fall. At the documented rate I should get a max of 144 (less if my ground water is < 70). In our first test we filled the mash tun with 9 gallons of 160 degree water in less than 10 minutes! EZ-mash!!!

To install we tee'ed off our existing gas plumbing. So now we have a single tank that services 3 burners and a tank-less water heater! We have a few changes to make. For example we will hard plumb the filters to the water inlet. However the initial test is very promising! More scientific tests to come!

7/22 Update: 

I have brewed a ton of beer using the water heater including two big group brews with 40 gallons brewed each time. All the mash water came out of the water heater. 

A couple of brew sessions ago I took the temp of my ground water. It came in at 62 degrees and we were filling the HLT with 165 degree water! So we were getting just over a 100 degree temperature rise! That is with an unmodified EZ-202. There is a check/safety valve that can be bypassed, but I see no need.   

We are very careful with both the flow of water and gas. It will shut off if the water GPM is too low. It will not light if the gas pressure is too high. It will also shut off if the water hits ~176. Even then we are still careful. It seems you can melt this thing if you get too aggressive with it. But pumping out 160-165 strike and sparge water at 1.5 GPM is no problem at all!

So far I would have to say this is probably the best brewing equipment investment I have made. Saving an hour on each brew day for a mere $200 investment is a big win in my book.

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.