Brew Hauler

Have you ever finished a wonderful batch of your favorite beer, gotten every last drop into that large 6.5 gallon carboy and sat back to admire your handiwork before realizing “That’s going to be f-ing hard to move without dropping.” Well, that’s the exact feeling, and words, that I got the other day upon realizing that I needed to move a full carboy of fermented Pumpkin Ale into the kitchen where it would go into a smaller secondary carboy and finally to the cooler in the basement for some cold filtering.


This situation is where the nylon Brew Hauler comes into play. I don’t know who invented this but they were geniuses for sure. The Brew Hauler is basically a bunch of nylon straps that form a mesh cradle for the carboy and allow you to carry it easily without fear or dropping it or disrupting the layer of yeast at the bottom.

I had one already that I ordered online but it was on the carboy in the cooler with my other batch of ale. So, I decided to go to the trusty home brew store and get another one. You can never have too many Brew Haulers as you never know when you will need to move some beer. : )

One of the many things that I like about the Brew Hauler is that it is fully adjustable so that it easily fits the large 6.5 gallon carboy and goes all the way down to the 5 gallon one with no problem at all. I’m sure it will do the 3 gallon half-batch carboys that I have been seeing too but I have not purchased on of those small ones yet.

Another great feature of the Brew Hauler is the sturdy plastic backpack style clip that holds the hauler together around the carboy. This clip has catches in two places that allow for an extra secure clip that does not even attempt to come free while carrying the beer. So long as you hear the “click” you are in business. I have been using the first one I bought for almost a year now and have not had the clip fail on me yet.

Did I mention that the Brew Hauler is washable in the laundry?!? Oh yes, just throw it in with the wash and it comes out good as new. I don’t suggest using bleach on it as it may discolor the beautiful black finish and don’t put it in the dryer as it may melt. My first Brew Hauler somehow got some mold on it and needed to be cleaned. So, after a trip through the wash, no more mold!

The Verdict:

I know I sound obsessed with the Brew Hauler but it really is that great. Going back to holding on to glass carboys full of beer and hoping to not drop them as I stumble through the house is something that I never want to do again. I fully recommend buying at least one of these if not one for each carboy that you have. The security and ease of transportation are fully worth the minimal cost.  Did I mention that you look cool using it? ===>

Cheers!!

Best Birthday Ever!

Last weekend I went on an excellent trip with my wife to Denver Colorado. We had planned the trip for a while as it was my thirtieth birthday and I wanted to do something special/memorable for it. My awesome wife Jill found out that they were having the Great American Beer Fest on the weekend of my birthday and set it all up. I’m lucky that she planned it out early as the festival sold out this year as I hear it usually does.

We flew in on Thursday the 16th in the evening. I had a MGD on the plane and had forgotten that it is actually ok beer. Jill told me that we had a shuttle waiting for us to go to the hotel but we had to hurry because it was about to leave and we would have to wait for the next one. I was taking my time getting there because I didn’t mind waiting for the next shuttle when we got outside and I see a truck that looks a lot like my friend Mike’s. It was Mike! I guess Jill had called Mike and coordinated with him to meet us in Denver and hang out for the weekend as he was coming back to Michigan from Washington state where he works as a mountain guide. Mike was in the process of getting a parking ticket from the police when we walked up to the truck as he had stopped in the traffic lane and the police were not happy.

We ended up going to our hotel, Hotel Teatro, in downtown Denver and dropped our stuff off before we went out for the night. We decided to go out to a bar to get a drink and hang out when we came across a brew pub that was having a party. We walked up to the gate and received a sweet 6oz glass beer cup along with some poker chips for some unknown reason to us. Well, later we find out that this was an invite only party for brewers and their staff from the Beer Fest! It was completely awesome that we ended up getting free craft beer and food all night. I met a bunch of really cool brewers from different breweries around the country too. They had a raffle for things like $100 of yeast and malt but sadly we did not win any of the prizes. That’s what the poker chips were for. We ended up shutting the place down at 2am their time which ended up being 4am Michigan time. Super past my bed-time. : )

Friday turned out to be even better. I woke-up with a mild hangover and proceeded to eat some awesome vittles at Sam’s No. 3 in Denver. Their breakfast burritos are perfect for curing a hangover and they are tasty too. After some Motrin and a Vitamin Water I was ready to go to a Sensory Analysis Training course that was put on by the Seibel Institute. It was a lot of fun as I learned about a whole assortment of ways that beer can be affected by the brewing process, fermentation process and its life in the package. The speaker worked for several years in breweries in South Africa and was a professional analyst. She really knew her stuff! I am so happy that Jill got me tickets!! I spent about 4 hours tasting Budweiser and Budweiser that had been altered to give different faults before the ‘final exam’. I ended up getting one of the five samples correct but before you judge, it is a lot harder to judge beer quality when you are looking for faults. Trust me on that. : ) We spend the rest of the day going to breweries and playing some pool at one of the local bars before heading in for an early night around 10pm as we had a big day planned for Saturday.

Early the next morning, we met up with Mike and he took us to a state park sized city park in Boulder where we hiked up a mountain and did a little climbing too. It was my first time on real rock and I had the crap scared out of me. It was crazy high up!

We went to downtown Boulder to look for a “Tex Mex” restaurant that ended up being another surprise, my friend Jerome who I had not seen in years! Jill told me that Mike set up that surprise visit and it was great. We got some lunch in a local farmer’s market and said audios to Jerome so we could head back to Denver. After being on the freeway for too long I realized that something else was up and asked where we were going. I was told that we were going to a brewery in the airport. I had a feeling that we may be picking up someone and was correct when another of my friends Jamie flew in! Super awesome! We picked up Jamie and headed back to the hotel to get a last minute ticket for Jamie off of Twitter, the best service ever, and headed off to the Beer Fest just in time to get to the 10 mile long line. Exaggerated but close to reality. They let people in the door at 5:30 and we did not get in until about 6pm but the wait was worth it.

The festival was crazy.  There were hundreds of breweries on site and way more beers.  I gave it my best attempt to try them all but did not quite make it to the end.  There was a Sam Adams beer that was 28% and tasted like brandy.  It was supposidly $350 per 40 ounce bottle and only brewed once a year.  I got two samples of that!  I also signed up for a new beer magazine called Beer Conisour.  It seemed like a good magazine at the time, though I had been drinking.  Ill read through and tell you how it is.  Anyway, thanks to my wonderful wife, it was the best birthday ever!!

Cheers!

Pumpkin Ale Recipe

I found a great looking Pumpkin Ale recipe online the other day at BYO (http://www.byo.com/component/resource/article/1289-pumpkin-beer). I was thinking about brewing a holiday (Halloween) themed beer for a while now and wanted my second batch of all-grain to be something special as well as a little more difficult than the average brew. The recipe is not all that crazy but it caught my eye when I saw that it required 5-6 pounds of pumpkin! That, along with the pumpkin pie spices, should make this a pretty tasty beer.

As I mentioned earlier, this is my second all-grain batch of beer. Before this I mostly brewed extract or partial mash but mostly extract. The first batch of all-grain that I brewed was a recipe that I attempted to modify and ended up forgetting to perform the modifications… So, in about two weeks, ill sample it and hopefully it will have turned out ok anyway. It was just a regular Blonde Ale recipe but it was the first time that I brewed all-grain and it ended up taking me about 7 hours straight to finish the beer. That was a long night as I finished at 1am. Yuck!

Moving onto all-grain, I figured that I would take the extra time to make a starter for my wort now that I was taking the time to eliminate the extract. I started making the starter tonight around 8 pm and finished at about 8:50pm. Not too bad considering I made frozen pizza too. Who says I can’t multitask??  : )

To start my starter, I first sanitized all of the equipment that I figured I would need to use and that would not be boiled. Boiled equipment just needs to be cleaned off. My equipment list consisted of a two piece air-lock, the flask for the starter, a bung, the vial of yeast, a quart sized measuring container and a funnel.

While the equipment was sanitizing, I started boiling a quart of water in a 2 quart pot. Once that reached a gentle boil, I added the half cup of dry light malt extract. The yeast need to have something to eat and mashing such a small amount of grain would not be worth it. Maybe later if I ever get crazy enough to do it.

After boiling and sturring the wort for about 10 minutes, I took it off the burner and put it in a bath of cold tap water and sturred it with a boil sanitized spoon until it was about 75 degrees. This took about 10 minutes or so from what I remember and was a pain in the butt. One drop of sink water in there would have ruined the whole batch for sure.  I also got some help from the brew pups.

Once the wort was at the correct temperature, I added it to the flask and proceeded to add the yeast to it as well. One thing to note is that rubber bungs don’t need to be dry to stick to glass properly but foam-rubber ones do. If they are not dry, they will slide all over the place and be a pain in the ass until they finally are dry enough to stick. Again, lame. I made sure to put a towel under the flask so that the bookshelf it was on would not draw heat away from the brewing beer starter. This was a tip from my local home brew store.

So, now that the starter is created, I will be able to finish the batch on this Sunday. See you then…

 
 

Stainless Steel Wort Chiller

Stainless Steel Wort Chiller


I got this wort chiller as a Christmas gift the other year and have been using it in all of my brewing since then. My alternative would have been to use an ice bath and that takes almost forever to cool the wort. My Stainless Wort Chiller came from Midwest Supplies and cost about $50 plus tax and shipping. I know this as I put it on my Christmas List.

The description on the website mentions that it has about 25 feet of tubing and that it should cool a batch of beer down below 80 degrees Fahrenheit in about 12 to 15 minutes. The 25 feet of coiled stainless steel tubing puts the chiller at about a 10 inch diameter, just large enough for a 5 gallon brew pot but a little small for a 10 gallon.

Using the chiller is fairly straightforward. All you have to do is hook it up to your tap, make sure the exit hose it pointed into the drain so water does not spray everywhere, and turn on the cold water. It is advisable to put the chiller in the boiling wort for a few minutes to sanitize it before you cool the wort down. You should always at least rinse it off when you are done so that it does not get sticky and have dust/debris all over it when you go to use it next. But, you will still need to sanitize it before you use it on non-boiling wort. So, it is best to just boil it with the wort for a couple minutes at the end of the boil.

The first few times I used this chiller I noticed it was taking way more than the 12-15 minutes that they say in the description to chill the wort down. After some fiddling around I figured out that if you gently move the chiller in the wort in an elliptical motion, being careful not to splash it around, it decreases the cooling time significantly. If you work the chiller right, you can get the wort down to about 70-75 in about 10-12 minutes! Stirring it around like that also eliminates the hot spots that you may miss with your thermometer and end up shocking your yeast with later on. Never a good thing.

My chiller has a garden hose sized attachment for a faucet on its intake. I had to go to Home Depot to get a converter for my kitchen faucet to make it into a garden hose thread faucet but it is removable so I only have it on when I am brewing. Also, there are small stainless steel clamps on the hoses where they connect to the chiller. These don’t seem to be able to tighten enough to stop the hoses from dripping slightly at the point they meet the chiller and if you are not careful, this water could run into your cooled wort and contaminate it. Also not a good thing. I usually wrap a wash cloth around this area of the chiller and it keeps the drippings from going anywhere. Its not super pretty but it works and keeps the water out of my wort.

Using this works great on an extract or a partial mash recipe but it takes too long in my opinion when using it on an all grain recipe. They make larger sized chillers that would be better for chilling a full sized batch and I would recommend them for doing all grain brewing.







Final Thoughts:

I would recommend purchasing a stainless steel wort chiller for brewers who would like to chill their wort down quickly, to avoid contamination, and want to save money. These are significantly less expensive than some of the pass-through chillers that I have seen and they are very easy to clean/maintain. I have been using mine for over a year and have had no issues with it beyond the slight dripping that I fixed with a washcloth. The only drawback is that it only has 6 feet of hose on it and I have to pump my wort to the sink in order to use the chiller. I could extend the hose if my stove was closer to the sink but I am fine with the setup the way it is. Overall, it beats an ice bath but is no match for a pass through chiller in terms of ease of use but you can’t beat it for the price.