AG #9 - Furious IPA - Fermentation & Conditioning

The brew day for Furious IPA went very well and in this post I just wanted to give you an outline of my fermentation and conditioning schedule. Here is the timeline:

Brew day: 4th June
Primary Fermentation: 4th - 18th June

On the 18th I kegged one corny (19 litres) and 9 x 500 ml bottles.

Keg
Keg Conditioning (room temperature): 18th - 25th June
Keg Conditioning (fridge temperature): 25th - 30th June
Force Carbonation: 1st July - 8th July

Bottle 
Bottles will condition for 2-3 months at room temperature and then get a week of cold conditioning before being ready. With a session beer, bottle conditioning can be done in 2-3 weeks, however with this beer being 6% ABV it will benefit from the extra time in the bottle*.

* to be honest so would the keg, but who is going to be able to leave a keg condition for a couple of months, especially when my keggerator is empty!

So a pretty straightforward fermentation and conditioning process. Keg is typically one week conditioning, one week cold conditioning and one week force carbonating. For bottles a minimum of two weeks conditioning and then the longer you can hold off the better the beer will taste, most bottled beers will probably be at their peak between two and four months old. The above can be used as a rule of thumb but obviously adjust based on your set-up and the beer you are brewing.

Really looking forward to trying this beer next weekend. I'll report back on how it turned out.

Troubleshooting - Homebrew Haze

I have been drinking the results of my most recent homebrew, Lady Liberty Ale, and while the taste profile was exactly what I was looking for, a light sessionable pale ale, the one problem with the beer is that it is quite hazy. While this is an aesthetic thing it is quite annoying and so I set about investigating the different causes of haze to see if I could make sure that I could address any problem in my process that could have led to this. Haze in beer can be one of two types, it can be permanent or temporary.

Lady Liberty Ale; tasty,
but hazy.

Permanent haze in beer is typically caused by two different kinds of process, biological or non-biological. Biological basically means that your beer has been infected. In this instance I do not think that the beer in infected, it has no off-flavours or smells and so I believe that the issue that caused the haze in this case is non-biological. If it was a biological infection the most likely cause would be poor sanitation, as sanitation is something I am very fastidious with when brewing I do not think this is the issue. Permanent non-biological haze is more than likely caused by an excess of starch built up due to an issue in the brewing process. This is a rare occurrence and so the focus of my investigation will be in relation to possible temporary haze, temporary haze can be caused by a number of issues.

Chill haze in beer is caused by proteins bonding with polyphenols and becoming insoluble, this occurs when the beer is cold and so as the beer warms they should dissolve once again. Chill haze in beer needs to be fixed through a process change, it is important to get your wort boiling quickly at the start of your boil to enable a good hot break, similarly it is important to chill your wort quickly post-boil in order to get a good cold break. Achieving these two breaks quickly should reduce the risk of chill haze in your beers. Another thing that will help solve this issue is to use a fining agent, Irish Moss or Whirlfloc can be added to the kettle 10-15 minutes from the end of the boil (personally I use Irish Moss).

Brewers don't make beer, yeast
does and healthy yeast = tasty beer.

The second possible cause of temporary haze could be from the presence of residual yeast in the beer, this is caused when yeast calls do not settle to the bottom of the fermentation vessel once fermentation is complete. You can solve this issue through a little patience, the typical conditioning period of 2 weeks can be extended and more time conditioning should encourage the yeast to settle out. If you are really concerned you can use another fining agent called Isinglass which can be added to the beer after fermentation.

Conclusion:

In my case I believe the haziness is due to two problems; chill haze and residual yeast. To test whether this was purely chill haze I poured a glass from the keg and left it for a few hours to warm up, although there was some improvement in clarity the beer still appeared hazy. Secondly I read back through my notes and noted some issues with the yeast, 1) it was right at the outer edge of its use by date and 2) it did not completely ferment out as I would have expected it to and finished a couple of gravity points too high.

In order to address these issues I will make two changes to my brewing process for future batches. To address the chill haze problem I will make sure to have a good rolling boil throughout the 60 minute boil (at times in the past I have had the tendency to switch off one of my elements and just maintain a weak boil). Secondly to address the issue of residual yeast I have decided to invest in a wort aeration system that will allow my to oxygenate the cooled wort prior to pitching the yeast. This should create a very healthy environment for the yeast to do its work in.

Further Reading/Reference:

Brew Your Own Magazine, Hazy Homebrew by Betsy Parks, May-June 2011, p. 11
The Home Brewers Answer Book, Ashton Lewis, p. 312-314
How To Brew, John Palmer, Appendix C - Beer Clarity, p. 277-281

Force Carbonation

When you first start kegging your beer the one thing you need to decide is what method you are going to use to force carbonate your beer. Below I have set out the steps for force carbonating your beer using two different techniques. The first few steps are the same regardless of the method you are going to follow, then the techniques diverge, I will lay out the steps to follow for each technique and then I will give the reasons I follow one of the techniques.

My set up, a 6kg Co2 tank sits outside
the fridge and a gas line is fitted through
a hole drilled in the kegerator door.

Step 1 - Transfer your beer to the keg, connect the Co2, turn on,  and purge the keg with a few lifts of the pressure release valve. Doing this will help seal the lid properly and also expel any oxygen present in the deadspace at the top of your keg.
Step 2 - Turn off the gas and let your keg refrigerate for 24-48 hours. This will allow the temperature of the beer to drop which will result in easier absorption of the Co2 once you start to force carbonate.

Method 1: Rock and Roll
Step 3 - Turn the gas on and raise to a PSI of about 45, you will now hear the Co2 entering the keg, now gently place the keg across your knee making sure the 'gas in' post is at the top of the keg*. Now gently rock the keg back and forth across your knee for about one minute. As you do this you will hear the Co2 entering the keg constantly. It is now being absorbed into the liquid and the tank is refilling the dead space with more Co2.
Step 4 - After a minute turn off the gas at the regulator and continue to rock the keg back and forth. The gauge on your regulator should now start to drop. You are looking for it to stop at between 20-23 PSI, if it falls below this it is under gassed and you may need to repeat steps 3 and 4. If it finishes above this the beer may be over gassed and so you will need to vent the excess gas.
Step 5 - Leave the keg to sit for one hour and then turn the gas back on to 15 PSI. Your beer should now be carbonated to the right level.

*this is done to try and alleviate the risk of liquid entering the gas line, if liquid gets sucked up the gas line to your regulator it will ruin it.

Method 2: Set and Leave
Step 3 - Turn the regulator to the desired PSI based on the table below. In order to determine the liquid temperature of your beer, place a spirit thermometer in a glass of water in your kegerator while the beer is left to cool for 24-48 hours, this should give you an accurate enough reading for the liquid temperature inside your kegerator.

					PSI
Temp	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17
7	2	2.1	2.2	2.3	2.4	2.5	2.6	2.7	2.8
8	1.9	2	2.1	2.2	2.3	2.4	2.5	2.6	2.7
9	1.85	1.9	2	2.1	2.2	2.3	2.4	2.5	2.6
10	1.8	1.8	1.9	2	2.1	2.2	2.3	2.4	2.5

Temperature is listed down the left hand side and PSI across the top, so for example if the liquid temperature is 8c and you are looking for a carbonation level of 2.1**, then you need to set your regulator to 11.

Step 4 - Be patient, following this method your beer should be carbonated to the desired level in 4 days, however if you can leave it for a week then all the better.

** The level of carbonation you aim for really depends on the style of beer you are brewing and also your personal preferences, here is a rough guide of what you should be aiming for with the most typical styles:

My current APA carbonating
at a PSI of 10.

British Style Ales: 1.5 - 2
Stouts/Porters: 1.7-2.3
American Ales/Lagers: 2.2 - 2.7
German Wheat Beers: 3.3 - 4.5

My Technique
Personally I use the set and leave method. I find this to be very consistent, and extremely straight forward. You determine the PSI based on the table above, set your regulator and then leave it alone. Moreover when you come to serving your beer you can leave the regulator as is and leave your gas turned on all the time (although do make sure you have no leaks). Due to the fact that equilibrium will have been achieved between the keg and Co2 tank the only gas that will be used is as you dispense the beer and so it is an easy, no hassle way of carbonating and dispensing your beer.

To Dry Hop or Not

Dry hopping in brewing is the technique of introducing hops to the beer later in the process than is usual. Typically hops are introduced to the beer during the boil, during the boil early hops impart bitterness, those added in the middle to late boil impart flavour and hops added late or at flame-out impart aroma. The aroma and flavour of hops can be quite delicate and dry hopping is used to boost the hop flavour and aroma of a beer. Typically dry hopping can occur in two ways. The most usual way is to dry hop the beer in secondary after the vigorous primary fermentation has completed, the second way is to dry hop beer while it is in its serving keg. The latter is something that I have done with some success in the past by adding a bag of hops to a keg and leaving the hops in the keg during dispensing.

With my latest beer I wanted to do a comparison between a beer that was dry hopped and one that was not. So yesterday I bottled eight beers from my Lady Liberty Pale Ale (straight from Primary) and then transferred the remaining 19 litres to a carboy and dry hopped this with 25g of cascade hops. The carboy will be left for a week before being transferred to a keg and carbonated. I then should be able to do a taste test between the bottled beer and the dry hopped keg beer.

I will report back with my findings in 2-3 weeks.

Brew day schedule

I do not brew as often as I would like, maybe once every 6-8 weeks. Due to this I find that the day before a planned brew day I need to sit down and work out my brewing schedule. I am sure for most experienced brewers this becomes second nature, however due to my sparsity of brewing it is something I need a refresher on every now and again. Due to this, yesterday, ahead of today's brew day, I decided to put together a step by step guide or checklist that I could use on the day so that nothing got overlooked.

Below is my checklist, this of course is based on my brewing set up, however the vast majority of it should be part of any all grain brewers brew day. I would be interested in hearing any variations of this that you may use, or even if you have any comments or suggestions on my process:

Today I will be brewing this recipe, rechristened Red Hopper, due to the heavy hop schedule.