Phriendly Phil’s Velociraptor Pharm n’ Pettin’ Zoo

This brew gets its name because almost 1/3 of the grain bill, and half the hops, were ingredients that I’d had in my fridge or other storage since sometime around 2004. All smelled and tasted fresh (with the exception of one ounce of the Magnum hops, which had an aroma that I could only describe as “silage” and which made me regret not opening the hops beforehand for a sniff. The odor dissipated rather quickly as the wort heated up.)

This is my first all-grain batch since 2004.

The tale of the tape, courtesy of Beersmith:

Brewed 4/20/2008

10.75 gallons

21.00 lb Brewers Malt 2-Row (Briess)
1.00 lb Caramel Malt - 10L (Briess)
1.00 oz Magnum (US) (old 2) [12.24 %] (60 min) (First Wort Hop)
1.00 oz Magnum (US) (old) [11.66 %] (60 min) (First Wort Hop)
2.00 oz Cascade (old) [1.81 %] (15 min)
2.00 oz Amarillo [8.30 %] (2 min)
2.00 oz Cascade (new NB 2) [6.90 %] (2 min)

Fermentis US-05 yeast

Measured Original Gravity: 1.054 SG
Bitterness: 44.8 IBU
Est Color: 4.2 SRM

Odd observation — I pitched the same strain of yeast into both fermenters, but from two different lots and vendors. The yeast I bought from Northern Brewer, lot number 11 2008 OQBC, had a much longer lag than the yeast I bought from MoreBeer, with lot number 05 2009 VWBC. Has anybody else noticed this?

Two of my favorite software bloggers, Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky, have joined forces at stackoverflow.com.

This ought to be good.

Pursuant to a discussion on the Northern Brewer forums, here’s a spreadsheet comparing various hop varieties. Data comes from Brew Your Own.

I drank a couple of pints of the oiled ale last night.

There is a good hop aroma in the nose, and a nice dark copper color. Head formation is pretty good — the oil definitely doesn’t appear to have hurt in this respect.

Tasting, the first impression is of powerful hop bitterness. It is almost too much for this beer, as it’s fairly light-bodied, but it is an acceptable level of bitterness. It’s fairly intensely fruity, which is not surprising given that it was seriously underpitched, and there is a nice spiciness from the Mount Hood finishing hops.

Next time I will probably dial back the bittering hops a bit, and pitch more yeast.

Vital statistics from Beersmith:

Measured Original Gravity: 1.039 SG
Measured Final Gravity: 1.006 SG
Actual Alcohol by Vol: 4.29 %
Bitterness: 37.7 IBU
Est Color: 10.6 SRM

Brewed 2/18/2008
Kegged 3/29/2008

EDIT: Tasting again tonight, I am thinking that I am getting a whiff of diacetyl. Again, not surprising given the underpitching, but I don’t think it ruins the beer.

I have to keep reminding myself of that.

It’s not clear from the previous post how I will get one chest freezer to keep things at two different temperatures. That’s because it’s impossible to do that with just a chest freezer.

What I plan to do is to keep the chest freezer cold enough to maintain the lowest temperature I need held. Anything that needs to be warmer will be heated to the proper temperature, probably with a heating pad.

One of the features planned for this temperature controller is a “master cool” mode, where the master cooling device will not run as long as everything is already cool enough. In my case, this would be the freezer, and the idea is that if the freezer does not run constantly, energy will be saved.

I got a nice bonus at work last month, and decided to get a new toy. After toying with the idea of setting up a ventilation system so I could brew in the basement, I decided to set up a temperature controller so I can keep better control of the fermentation temperature of my beers.

Now, there are some nice controllers available on the market, but they run around $50 for analog or $80 for digital, and only control one device. This would be good for fermentation, but it would be nice to also be able to use the same cooler for serving beers, which would be too cold for ale fermentations.

I had heard a lot about the Arduino and a quick question to Professor Google brought me to an article on uC Hobby describing a project by Sean Coates that did just what I was thinking of.

I decided to run with the Arduino, and at first an LED display, but I quickly decided that I wanted a serial LCD display so as to take up fewer output lines. A brief deliberation led me to stick with the thermistors of Coates’ original design, rather than LM-35 or 1-Wire sensors (Coates has since gone to LM-35s.) I decided on a 4-channel controller, although I may change my mind on that.

I ordered the Bare Bones Board by Modern Device, and also a low-cost serial LCD driver kit and LCD display which they sell. Since the BBB does not have a USB driver as the official Arduino boards do (why have one just for programming the thing) I also bought a USB cable from them for programming.

I bought ten thermistors on eBay for around 60 cents each, shipped. For around 45 dollars, I bought six Opto22 solid state relays (these are $22 new from the manufacturer.) Total costs, including the cable, are $110 so far, and I have extra thermistors and SSRs for another project.

Next post — clipping leads and heading to Radio Shack, or: re-learning soldering.

The refractometer arrived today, so I played with it a bit, checking the specific gravity of my oil experiment. I also checked them with a hydrometer as a cross-check.

Both halves of the batch were the same gravity: 4.8 Plato apparent, 1.006 measured SG, 1.007 calculated SG.

Both were copper colored, and very cloudy. Both had a really nice hop aroma.

Both tasted very similar — aggressively bitter, with a little sweetness from the caramel malt, but otherwise very dry. A sort of fruity-hoppy flavor comes next. The major difference betwen the two is that A8B (the oiled one) may have a faint phenolic taste in the beginning.

Overall, the flavor is excellent to my palate. I might try lowering the bittering alpha acids about 25% next time.

Not I just need to wait for it to clear, keg it, and try to find a victim to taste this thing.

Oh, and the cyser-pyment-melomel is at 8.8 apparent Plato, with a calculated SG of 0.993. It is thin, slightly tart, and alcoholically very hot.

The kräusen has fallen in the oil-dosed batch. I haven’t checked the SG yet — I figure I’ll wait for my refractometer to arrive. The aerated batch still has a head of kräusen and braune hefe, but I imagine that will fall by the weekend. This represents the first unequivocal difference between the two batches.

A week after pitching, both halves of the batch appear to have settled down quite a bit. Both have a thick head of kräusen with braune Hefe on top. Both are still fermenting slowly (4 bubbles / min) and both are hovering at around 56 degrees F as measured by the stick-on liquid crystal thermometers.

So far, they are indistinguishable.

In an effort to test the efficacy of vegetable oils for replacing aeration of beer wort, I brewed eleven gallons to the following recipe:

• 6.6 pounds Briess Pilsen malt syrup
• 4 pounds clover honey
• 2 pounds Briess 80L crystal
• 1 ounce Yakima Magnum pellets, α = 12.5, 60 minutes
• 2 oz Mount Hood pellets, α = 5.2, 15 minutes
• 2 oz Mount Hood pellets, α = 5.2, 2 minutes

The batch was split 5/5.5 gallons (I didn’t try to make them completely equal.) A 3-quart starter of White Labs WLP-001 was decanted to 1 quart, and split into two sanitized pint containers. One pint was dosed with 0.5 ml of flax oil and pitched into the 5-gallon batch, and the other was pitched into the 5.5-gallon batch, which was aerated by 1 minute of vigorous shaking (this is a departure from plan, as I could not find the hose that goes from my oxygen cylinder to my diffusion stone.)

Five hours after pitching, here’s what it looks like (the foam on the right is not kräusen; it is left over from the agitation of aeration):

So far, so meh, as I have been saying.

Update 2/19/2008 22:00

It looks like there is a little airlock pressure in the aerated batch. No such from the oiled batch, but it is showing signs of yeast activity. Photos after the break…

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