Southern Star Brewing Contest

For those of you in the Houston and surrounding areas, Southern Star Brewing is arguably one of the hottest craft breweries to have sprung up in the last few years. They're celebrating their 2 year anniversary this year, and in addition they're going to have their Pro-Am Homebrew Contest again (similar to how St. Arnold's does their Divine contest). Here's a link to their newsletter.

Of interest is also how they are celebrating National Homebrew Day on May 8th May 1st. Allow me to quote:

Dave invites all home-brewers to come join him in brewing a special batch on the big system. After we are finished, we will split the wort up into home brewer's individual carboys to take home and tweak/ferment as they see fit. NO yeast will be provided at the brewery, so get with your local home brew supply shop and order some yeast. We want everyone to keep records of what they did, and then join us on a Sunday in mid to late August (date to be determined later) to share the fruits of our labor. To guarantee wort for yourself at this event, signup is encouraged (brewery@southernstarbrewing.com). 16 Barrels makes about 100 5-gallon batches. The wort made will be Brown, 1.060 and 30 IBU’s with a fairly neutral hop (probably Saphir or Goldings). Bring your pre-sanitized carboys.

That's pretty freaking sweet!

I'll be brewing a blackberry wheat birthday bier this weekend for yours truly, will be sure to post some pictures.

-- J

Day 9: Oops, not as punctual as Brandon. My 5 gallons of "I'm not a" Brown Ale has a gravity of 1.006 (ABV: 6.9%), which is awfully low compared to Brandon's (1.011). To be fair I don't have much faith in my hydrometer, and for the sake of beer science what I should have done was rack and measure at Brandon's house. Oh well, next time for sure. Like Brandon I also sampled the wort; definitely had hints of biscuit...

Day 7: Racked beer over to secondary. The Cracker-Brown American Ale has a gravity of 1.011 (ABV: 6.34%) and didn't taste too bad. Maybe this will be a good beer after all.

This photo was taken 4 days into fermentation. They're both blowing and going...and producing a funky smell in my pantry!

This picture was taken 12 hours after yeast was pitched. I was completely shocked to see the difference between the two yeasts. The front fermenter used Wyeast American Ale and the back fermenter has White Labs California Ale. I guess the Wyeast Smack Pack really works!

No comment needed...

The Inaugural Wicked Hops Brew Session

The inaugural Wicked Hops brew session was a success. We all had a great time and many different beers were sampled. Both Jeff and Brandon combined their efforts to brew a 10 gallon batch for the first time and Fred knocked out his first batch of beer!


For the inaugural 10 gallon, Brandon and Jeff attempted a clone of St. Arnold's Brown Ale that would be split into two 5-gallon primaries with different yeasts. Here's the original recipe.. more on that in a bit:

• 18# Domestic 2-Row
• 3# Munich
• 3# Belgian Cara-Munich
• 0.5# Belgian Special B
• 0.125# (2 oz) Chocolate
• 2 oz Perle @ 60m
• 2 oz Cascade @ 15m
• 1 oz Liberty @ 0m
• Wyeast 1056 / White Labs WLP001
• 1.060 OG / 1.016 FG for est. ABV of ~5.8%
  

We used approxmately 7.5 gallons of strike water to mash in a 156*F for one hour. Everything was going well until mashout. Take a look:


I don't know about you - but that's about the most non-brown brown ale I've seen! Something was amiss. Both ProMash and BeerCalculator pegged a decent SRM value.. we definitely should have been darker. Our suspicions were that perhaps BOTH the chocolate and special B were missing, but what to do? Our primary concern wasn't that this wasn't a perfect 10 gallon brew, but that we might make the PERFECT beer and not know what the hell was actually in it!

Alas - we plodded forward. Our target sparge volume was in the neighborhood of 5 gallons at 170*F, and we had to fly-sparge (as best we could) given the volume of saturated grains in the mash tun (approx 7#). We had about 13 gallons of wort collected before boil, and Brandon played bad cop and was serious one (ok the least drunk one) while the rest of us watched him work. :) Good thing though, since we hit target gravity (actual OG of 1.059).

Gracías, Señor Brewmaster:


Racked the wort into two primaries, almost done:


All in all, everyone had a great time. This will be the first of what will be many more 10 gallon brews!

PEACE OUT!

Behold The Kegerator

Hey folks - thought I would create a post here about my kegerator and the steps and materials used to build it. Here's a look at the almost finished product:


Making your own kegerator is fun, and believe it or not, relatively inexpensive. For those of you (including yours truly) that tire of the incessant cleaning and scrubbing of bottling, kegging your own homebrew is an absolute Godsend.

Before I begin, the first thing I bought was a basic keg kit from KegConnection.com. Here is a short and non-comprehensive list of items that I got from their 2 Keg Basic Keg Kit:

• Two (2) Cornelius kegs (soda kegs)
• Two-port manifold with check valves
• 5/16" ID hose for gas line
• 1/4" ID hose for beer lines
• 5# CO2 tank
  
• regulator

And in addition I purchased their most excellent 3-faucet drip tray.

Next came the fridge. I really lucked out when a neighbor of mine had a buddy who looking to get rid of his old top-down. Here's a picture of the victim:


Next, I purchased a litany of items from Austin Homebrew Supply:

• 1 x MFL Bulkhead (4")
• 2 x Stainless Steel Shank (4 1/8") with 1/4" Fitting Kit
• 1 x Stainless Steel Nipple (1/2" NPT to 3/8" Barbed)
• 2 x Chrome Faucet with Low Profile Faucet Handle
• 2 x FFL Fitting (5/16")
• 1 x FFL Fitting (1/4")
• 1 x Air Line Hose 5/16" - Length: 2'
• 2 x Beer Line Hose 3/16"- Length: 3'
• 2 x MFL Liquid Disconnect (Ball Lock Keg)
• 8 x Stainless Steel Hose Clamp
  

The idea here is that I wanted to store the CO2 tank outside of the fridge (hence the MFL bulkhead), leaving more space for the kegs inside the fridge. Regular-sized bar taps are fun, but the low-pro faucet handles were needed so that I could open the freezer up without hitting the taps and spilling my oh-so-precious beer. And yes, that is a hand-drawn plan of how it all was put together. I'll try and recreate it for you guys.

Here's the tools I used:

• 1" hole saw (I think $11 at Lowes) for faucet shanks
• 3/8" bit for MFL bulkhead (crap maybe it was bigger?)
• safety googles
  
• teflon tape
  
• drill
• wrenches :)
• cold beer

Last but not least, and certainly the most important part of this whole project plan: The Foreman (aka My Lovely Assistant aka My Wife). Hey, she's an engineer from Texas A&M University, and who am I to question that kind of authority?


Let's begin with the MFL bulkhead. I wanted this in the bottom-right corner of the fridge door, on the hinge side (duh). KEEP IN MIND that all drills were done on the DOOR of the fridge and ONLY THE DOOR. The cooling lines run through the sides of the fridge, and if you get stupid and drill blindly through them, well... kiss your fridge bye bye.

Also - do me a favor - unplug your fridge. Better safe than sorry!


I want to say that I used a 3/16" bit for a pilot hole and then moved up to a larger 3/8" bit for the final drill, but I can't remember. :(


And here's the finished product.


Next came the cutting out the holes for the faucet shanks. Because there was a rib down the middle of the interior door, the faucets had to be offset slightly to the right. This actually worked out ok because that meant there was less need for really long beer lines when the door opened, since the faucets were now on the hinge side.

Here's The Foreman checking my measurements:


1" hole saw about to get busy:


Jeffro making the cuts:


Assistant Foreman (aka My Daughter) checking on progress:


Voila - shanks inserted, drip tray mounted. The shanks are tightened by the nuts on the inside of the door. Remember not to tighten too much or else you'll warp the inside plastic.




Next, onto taping - we're almost done! Standard teflon tape used here to ensure water-tight seal with the 1/4" fittings.


Here's an interior shot of the final product (at the time):


Ready to drink! Let's pour!


LOL - don't forget to adjust your pressures! Should have bled a bit more pressure out of the keg and lowered the output psi of the CO2 to the neighborhood of 7-8 pounds.


So that's pretty much it! Really wasn't TOO hard, and I am one dumb animal when it comes to mechanical doings. If I can do it, trust me you can too!

Since then I've finally gotten around to adding the third tap, but can't use it until I get a three-valve manifold. :( Maybe for my birthday, are you reading this, Lovely Assistant????

All for now - please feel free to e-mail me at jeff@wickedhops.com for any questions!

Prost,
Jeffro

Welcome, fiends. I mean, friends.

Welcome to what we hope will be the first of many many many blogs about what we love the most: beer. And of the circular energy that we will most definitely subscribe to, expect this blog to parlez beaucoup on both making AND drinking beer... responsibly, of course.

More to come, time to get back to setting this up.

Peace and chicken grease,
TheBenDic