Category: General

Many people think that once you have a keg, that you will never use bottles again. But, if you have a keg, you probably already know that you will want or need to bottle from your keg at times. There a a number of different reasons to bottle from your keg, here are just a couple.

Reason #1 is to bottle your beer for competition. If you want to enter your beer into a competition at your local home brew club, you need to submit your beer in bottles.

Reason #2 to bottle is when you need to free up a keg for your next batch of beer. When you keg a new batch of beer, you will usually have to wait at least 3 days or more for the beer to carbonate. So, you may want to bottle the last of the current keg. After all, what will you drink while waiting for your keg to carbonate. You don’t want to do the unthinkable and run to the store for a 6-pack of Bud.

Reason #3 to bottle is to share. Sure, you can fill a growler to take to your friends house, but a growler is only good for a couple of days if you don’t open it. What if you want to have 2 or 3 different types of beer in your house when friends show up or when you go to a friends house? You can buy a couple more kegs, or you can fill a couple of bottles and stock your fridge.

Simple and Cheap

The easiest method for bottling is to use a picnic tap with a 10″ to 12″ growler filling hose slid over the end of the picnic tap. If you have a keg, you probably already have a picnic tap and or beer faucet. While this is very easy, inexpensive and it gets the job done, it can introduce some oxygen to your beer. If you don’t plan to have to bottles around long, then a little oxygen won’t hurt.

Draft Bottle Filler

A better, but more expensive option is to buy a draft bottle filler. These usually run around $90, but they also have a lot of benefits. First, they have 2 beer lines and 2 buttons, one line connects to the keg and the other line connects to your CO2 tank. This allows you to purge the bottle with CO2 with 1 button and then to fill the bottle with the second bottle.

Chill Your Bottles

Regardless of the method you choose, make sure to follow your normal cleaning procedures and chill your bottles. This is important. Your bottles should be at the same temperature as your beer. If you are bottling with room temperature bottles, you will have foaming problems and your experience will be misserable and you will likely end up with flat beer. You don’t have to put your bottles in the fridge, as they will likely take up a lot of space. But instead you can use cold water when sanatizing your bottles. Let the bottles chill in the sanitizer and enjoy.

If your an all-grain brewer, you may want to read this. I always wondered how to determine the efficiency of my mash. While this article won’t help to calculate your efficiency, it will give you some basic steps to help make your process more efficient.

Milling your Grains

How well your grain is crushed will affect your mash and sparge. You can have your grain crushed at the brewing supply store or you can purchase your own grain mill for more control as you may want to make adjustments for different grain sizes. For example, wheat has a smaller kernel size than barley. You should aim for a well crushed grist with a mix of large and small particles and unshredded husks. The husks are an important part of the mashing process. The husks allow water to flow through the grain bed, extracting the sugar and preventing a stuck mash.

Mash out and Sparging

Raising the mash temperature to 168^o F (mash out) and then rinsing the grain (sparging) with hot water (168^o F) helps to flush out as much sugar from the sticky mash as possible. Sparge water temperature should not be above 170^o F as husk tannins become more soluable above that. At the same time, the temperature should not be much lower either as the flow won’t be as good.

Sparge Slowly

Start to drain the mash from the mash tun at just a trickle. Start adding the sparge water slowly to the exposed grain bed. It should take 30 minutes or more to drain 6 gallons of wort from your mash tun. Continuous sparging will usually result in the highest yield. Continuous sparging is the process of adding small amounts of sparge water to the mash tun slowly. Homebrewers typically will add a fairly large amount of water periodically, which is a little less efficient.

Minimize Deadspace

Deadspace is the amount of liquid in your mash tun that is under the false bottom. The problem here is that this liquid is good wort and you want this extracted to your boil kettle. This can be accomplished with a dip tub under the false bottom, whish can help you drain the mash tun almost completely. However, the larger the deadspace, the more wort that is left behind. Also, the amount of deadspace will affect your mash thickness calculations, which is a completely separate topic.

Choose the Right Mash Tun

Your mash tun and false bottom can greatly affect your mash efficiency. A tall brew kettle shaped mash tun reduces the deadspace. The false bottom should cover the entire bottom of the vessel and have minimal deadspace under it. This will provide an even flow across the entire grain bed giving you getter efficiency.

Here are the steps I use when brewing all grain beer. Anyone do the same or see any areas for improvement?

1) Pre-Heat the mash tun for 20-30 minutes. This is important because if it’s cool, your mash temp will drop too much. Fill it with 3 gallons of 130ish water (that is the temp of my tap water).

2) Start the mash. Target temp for the first 50 minutes is 152-155 degrees (after adding the grain). It may drop a few degrees during the first 50 minutes. Drain the mash tun (of pre-heat water) and fill with 3 gallons of 172ish water. There is a formula that you can use to determine how much the water temp will drop when you add your grain. But, add the water first (about 15-20 degrees above your target temp).

3) Stir in all of your grains. Then start the 60 minute count down.

4) Boil 2 gallons of water. Adding 2 gallons of boilng water to 3 gallons of 152 degree mash will raise the temp to 172ish. You don’t want the temperature above 180 degrees because the starch conversion won’t work at 180 or above.

5) When there are 10 minutes left in the 60 minute mash, add the boiling water and stir. Leave it alone for 10 more minutes.

6) Heat 3 additional gallons of water to 170 degrees. This will be your sparge water. 

7) When the mash is complete (60 minutes is over). Slowly fill a small sauce pan with mash liquid and pour it back into the mash tun. Do this 3 times. This will clarify your mash and set your grain bed.

8) Start to slowly drain the mash tun into your boil kettle. Do this slowly over 20-30 minutes so that you don’t get channels in the grain bed.

9) When the mash liquid drains low enough that you can see the grain bed, start to slowly add sparge water to keep the grain bed covered. 

10) When your out of sparge water, wait for the brew kettle level to reach your target level (about 6.5 gallons). 6.25 or 6.75 is ok also. 

11) Start your 60 minute boil and add the hops add the designated times.

12) When the boil is complete start your chilling process. The rest is the same as you would do with extract kits.

It’s Cheap

After the initial cost of equipment, the ingredients for a 5 gallon batch of beer start at just $35. That’s only about 70 cents per beer. Drive to the super market and craft beer is $10 a six pack or $12 for a 4 pack. When you home brew, you make exactly the beer you want to drink. With a little practice, you’ll even be able to create amazing beer right in your kitchen that rivals many craft breweries and you will do it with your own touch of love.

It’s Easy

The brewing process is surprisingly simple. If you can boil water, you can make beer. By far, the most difficult part of making beer is waiting for the fermentation and carbonation to finish. Probably the worst 4-6 weeks of your life. After that first batch, you will get a rythm and you will never run out of beer again.

It’s Fun

Making beer can be a great way to spend time with friends or just relaxing in the garage with a cold one keeping an eye on your boil kettle.

It’s Educational

When you see a brew go from raw ingredients to finished beer, your better able to appreciate all that goes into making beer and how each ingredient impacts the final outcome. This will help you understand what beers are your favorites and why.

It’s Legal

Homebrewing is officially legal in all 50 US states. Check the law in your state to see what restrictions may be in effect regarding quantity and transportation of your homebrew.

Yeast is very sensitive to temperature. Different strains of yeast have different ideal working temperatures for fermenting beer. You want to follow instructions for your yeast to make conditions optimal to produce a great beer.

Fermenting ale’s generally require a temperature between 68 and 72 degrees Fahrenheit. On the other hand, lager requires a temperature between 45 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

Not maintaining the proper temperature for your wort during fermentation can result in off flavors. Many of the off flavors will be produced in the first 3 days of fermentation as that is when the yeast is most active. Not to mention that the process of fermentation will produce heat and will raise the temperate of your wort above the room temperature.

For me, I’m considering making a fermentation chamber. The keezer build went very well and it maintains a chilly 36°F. Way too low for fermentation, but great for serving. The best thing is that I didn’t have to wire anything to make it work. I just bought a chest freezer, made a wood collar to make it taller for kegs, provide a medium for installing the taps, and added a temperature controller that turns the freezer on and off to maintain the temp just 3 degrees above freezing.

This time, I can’t spend $180 of a chest freezer, but would love to convert my old mini fridge into fermentation chamber. Still need to get a temperature controller, but the price on those has come down significantly since I purchased the one for my keezer.

Are you ready? The deadline is almost here.

Entry Fee: $6
Entry Deadline: 05/15/2018
Competition Date: 06/02/2018
ohiostatefairhomebrew.com

I might be a little late for this one. But I will enter a competition this year. Dang, I need to be on top of these things. I wonder what other deadlines I’m missing.

Actually, after reading a little more on their website, I need to register by May 15th. I have until May 29th to get my beer to them. Hmmmm, this might be possible. Too bad I just finished off a keg of my best beer “Dead Ringer”. It was very clear and tasted great. I have an English Pale Ale on tap now, but it’s cloudy and probably wouldn’t score well. I have 2 batches Fermenting right now:

1. Rocky Racoon Honey Lager. I never made this before, I brewed it on April 14th.
2. Rogue Chocolate Stout which is also a new recipe for me and was brewed on April 19th. The chocolate nibs need to be removed on May 11th and I should be able to keg it then.

I usually like to condition the beer. While I don’t have a hard and fast rule, I think they taste best 6-8 weeks after brewing. I guess, if it’s in the bottle by May 15th and the Event isn’t until June 2nd, that would fall right into the sweet spot.

Wow, with 10 days left to register, 279 entries have already been received.

Well, I got it from a couple of sources now that beer (wheat beer in particular) reduces muscle inflammation. The articles I’ve read so far, mention specifically studies done on marathon runners. The phenols in the beer are being given the credit and the runners were drinking non-alcholic beer because the alcohol could cause dehydration. My question is, if I’m not an athlete, will beer reduce my back pain which is caused by inflammation?

I’m brewing a Chocolate Stout today. I don’t drink a lot of stouts, but I had a couple of really good stouts recently and wanted to try it out. My friend Erik just made this same recipe and it turned out really good. Unfortunately, he drank it all and I only got 1 pint of it:(

When Erik made his, he used the chocolate extract that is called for in the recipe. I bought the chocolate nibs to add in secondary.