How To: Use a Counter Pressure Bottle Filler

Over the past few months since I went head over heels for kegging, one of the problems I've been facing is:

How do I get the carbonated beer out of the keg and into the bottle?

If you've ever tried to pour a beer directly from your tap into a bottle you're probably familiar with foam over flow that follows shortly after.  It's kind of like those 3rd grade volcano projects you did as a kid. This is usually followed by spilt beer, cursing, and tears of frustration (don't cry over spilt milk, but wasted beer is sinful).

On recent trip to MoreBeer! in Concord I invested in a Counter Pressure Bottle Filler. 

Counter Pressure Bottle Filler

This device is essentially a stainless steel tube with a 3-way valve at the top and a pressure relief valve on the side. 

I tested this gadget out this weekend on my Harvest Pumpkin Ale.  Through some trial and error this seems to be the least painful filling procedure:

1.  Clean and sanitize bottles and bottle fuller as your normally would. For me this includes PBW cleaner and Star San sanitizer. 

2. With the 3-way valve in the neutral position (perpendicular) and pressure relief valve closed, connect gas line and beverage lines to the top of the bottle filler. 

3.  Set the pressure on your regulator to 8-15 psi.  This was the pressure recommended by MoreBeer!, but I found that my typical serving pressure (5 psi) worked well too. 

4.  Insert the filler into your bottle so that the rubber stopper is snug inside the bottle. 

5.  Open the valve to the gas side and allow the bottle to fill with CO2. Once the bottle is full begin to open the pressure relief valve to allow air the escape. 

6.  Once you have air moving through the pressure relief valve you're ready to fill the bottle with beer. Move the 3-way valve to the beverage side. You can control the flow of beer into the bottle by adjusting the pressure relief valve. The more air you allow to escape, the faster the beer will flow into the bottle. 

Beer filling in progress...

This is what this process is supposed to avoid, head inside the bottle.  I need more practice.

7. When the bottle is full, move the 3-way valve back to the neutral position   Remove the bottle filler and cap the bottle immediately. 

A few things NOT to do:

- Do not try to stop the flow of beer using the pressure relief valve. This will only stop the flow of beer until you remove the filler. Once that happens the system is open, beer comes flowing out onto the floor of your garage, and you begin shouting. 

- Do not move the 3-way valve back to the gas position after the bottle has been filled.  Pushing gas into your beer is bad.

MoreBeer has a great video on their website detailing this process.  

Great American Beer Festival

Just wanted to share a few photos and happenings from my Great American Beer Festival experience.  First off this is an epic event that draws 50,000 people over 4 events in at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, CO.  With that many people you'd think that this would be overwhelming and you'd never have a chance to get a brew, but that is not the case at all.  Over 600 breweries attended the fest this year featuring 2000+ brews.  I have no idea how many I tried, but I know my glass was rarely empty.  Here are a few of my favorites from last weekend:

1.  Throwback Brewery - Spicy Bohemian (Jalapeno Pilsner) - North Hampton, NH

This one takes top the slot for me.  Personally, I'm not really into spicy foods and I've always held a little intimidation for chile beers.  This beer assuaged all fears and provided the inspiration for a jalapeno wheat beer this winter (hopefully I'll be brewing this in early November).

2.  Dock Street Brewpub - That's What She Said Chocolate Saison - Philadelphia, PA

The name is awesome, and the beer was delish.

3.  Elysian Brewing Company - Dark O' the Moon (Pumpkin Stout) - Seattle, WA

Great fall and winter spices to accompany the thick stout ale.

4.  Heretic Brewing Company - Chocolate Hazelnut Porter - Fairfield, CA

I once tried to brew this style (possibly the same recipe from Jamil's book, since Jamil owns this brewery) and failed miserably due to "over-hazelnutting".  This batch was blended and balanced perfectly between the porter flavors and hazelnut.

Other items of note from my 2 days and 9+ hours at this event:

Best T-Shirts go to the Ex-communicated Mormon Drinking Team (thank you to the woman in this photo for letting this photo happen!)

Weird photo.  There's a man licking someone with a horse head here.  It is what it is.  Don't judge me for taking time to capture this moment.

Silent Disco!!!

Lastly, if Southwest ever prints a security document for you just know you're in for a long day.  It basically means you're not getting on your flight.  I ended up flying home into San Francisco (instead of Oakland), took BART to Oakland, a cab to the Oakland Airport, and finally drove home.  Southwest that was LAME.

RYE-toberfest

It's my first post here in the last few weeks.  I didn't mean to go dark on everyone, but I've been experiencing the joys of home ownership.  Between renting chainsaws, building garden boxes, and brewing beer I didn't have too many opportunities to post.  Here's the latest recipe I brewed two weeks ago now.  This is a Roggenbier (German Rye Ale) that I've brewed in honor of Oktoberfest.  Naturally, the recipe follows Reinheitsgebot (the German Purity Law) which only allows water, barley, and hops as beer ingredients.  The recipe is from one of my favorite recipe books, Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer.  I'll be serving this beer at small neighborhood Oktoberfest celebration at the end of this month with my friend Justin in Sacramento.

Batch Size: 6 gallons

Grains:
6.25 lbs Rye Malt
3.50 lbs Munich Malt
3.00 lbs German Pilsners Malt
1.00 lbs Caramunich Malt
2.00 ozs Carafa II


Hops:
1.00 oz Tetnang - 60 minutes remaining in the boil
0.30 oz Czech Saaz - 15 minutes remaining in the boil

Yeast:
Hefeweizen Ale - White Labs WLP 300

Hefeweizen Ale Yeast Starter

Mash, Sparge, and Boil:

Bring 4.6 gallons of water to a strike temperature of 171 degrees F.  I use a water to grain ratio of 1.33 qts per pound of grain.  Mash at 154 degrees F for 60 minutes.  

Mashing time....its so hot right now!

This recipe recommended increasing the pre-boil volume to allow for a 90 minutes boil to help reduce the DMS.  

Side note:  DMS is dimethyl sulfide and is produced during the boil.  This will usually be boiled off, but sometimes it may dissolve back into the beer and will give a cooked vegetable off flavor.

I sparged 5.2 gallons of water at 170 degrees F.  Once the wort was collected I boiled for 90 minutes, added hops per the recipe, cooled, and pitched my yeast starter.

Wort collection

Fermentation:  

The recipe recommends a fermentation temperature of 62 degrees F.  If you have the ability to control your fermentation that low, then try it out.  I fermented in my closet at room temperature and the fermentation went great.

OG = 1.054 (actual 1.056)
FG = 1..014 (actual 1.016)
ABV = 5.2%

Opening Up to Sour Beers

I remember the first time I tried a sour beer.  I made a face that looked like this:

Yes, I was 8 years old with a bowl haircut when I had my first sour!!

When I was living in San Francisco, I received a number of sours in my beer of the month club from Plumpjack in Noe Valley.  I was always terrified of these beers and they ended up aging in my refrigerator for months until I worked up the courage to open one.  Since that time I've tried a number of sours and my, "OMG, that's gross" face has steadily declined but I had never reach the point of actually enjoying a sour until last week.

Last week I attended a home brew club meeting for the first time with The Mad Zymurgists in Livermore.  The topic of the night was sours and of course as any good home brew club would do there was a beer tasting.  According to the BJCP, the following styles are recognized as sours:

BJCP Category 17

17A. Berliner Weisse
17B. Flanders Red Ale
17C. Flanders Brown Ale/Oud Bruin
17D. Straight (Unblended) Lambic
17E. Gueuze
17F. Fruit Lambic

Now, two of these styles are beers that I've enjoyed in the past.  I've found Berliner Weisse and Gueuze to very enjoyable beers and would recommend that any beer drinker explore these style as an "entry drug" into sours.  I didn't even realize these were sour styles until last Thursday.

Similarly, a lambic may be a great way to convince some of your wine snob friends to begin enjoying the delightful-ness of beer.  A lambic will usually come in a fancy, corked bottle and can be sweet & sour.  Also, the color is usually not amber or golden like most beers.  Most of the lambics I've been exposed to are some variation of red in color.  Don't tell your friends its beer and they'll drink it straight down!

Finally, we come to the two styles that surprised me the most, the flanders red ale and the flanders brown ale (or oud bruin).  I did not expect to enjoy either one of these, but these really opened my eyes last week to how enjoyable sour ales can be.  The flanders red ale was a beer called Oude Tart from The Bruery (side note we also tasted an ale aged in bourdon barrels with wild yeast call Tart of Darkness also from the The Bruery).  I regret not being able to recall what the flanders brown ale was, but if it returns to my memory I will update this posting.

So in summary, if you're looking to start you're journey into sour beers perhaps begin with a nice Berliner Weisse or Gueuze, save the lambics for your wine snob friends, and then ease yourself into the flanders red.  I enjoyed the tasting so much that it got me thinking about brewing my own sours.  Perhaps I'll jump into those style someday when I'm ready to commit to aging one for about a year!

Pumpkin Spice Saison

EastbayBrewing.blogspot.com made it possible for me to brew my first Pumpkin Spice Saison!  Happy upcoming Holidays everyone!

Cheers,

Justin

How To: Calculate Efficiency

If you've read my recent Harvest Pumpkin Ale post, you probably noticed that my OG was lower than that of the original author.

My OG = 1.060
Original Author OG = 1.070

This result was al little puzzling to me since I'm usually within a few points of the OG for the recipe I'm following.  I'm sure that my batch of beer will still be delicious and enjoyable, but this got me thinking about what could have caused the lower OG reading.  I had started with the author's original 10 gallon recipe and scaled it down to 6 gallons.  I later realized the original author had noted an expected efficiency of 85%.  When I planned my batch, the author's efficiency was something I ignored.  I've typically tried to avoid too many calculations in my brewing history, but I know that my efficiency is usually in the 70-80% range (I use a brewing app called iBrewMaster which calculates efficiency on its own).  To this point in my homebrewing career, efficiency has been a fun to follow stat (kind of like on base percentage in baseball), but hasn't really changed my brewing approach.

Here's my hypothesis and what I'm hoping to learn from this post:

The lower OG reading was a result of a lower efficiency than that of the original author and that I should have increased my grain bill to account for this.

Let's begin exploring this possibility.

First, let's learn how to calculate efficiency.  Referencing John Palmer's How To Brew, 2nd Edition, p. 151 (this link is for the 3rd edition):

"In mashing, you are collecting "x" number of gallons of wort that has a gravity of "1.0yy" that was produced from "z" pounds of malt.  To calculate your extraction in terms of PPG (points per pound per gallon), you need to multiply the number of gallons of wort you collected by its gravity and divide that by the amount of malt that was used."

x = gallons of wort

yy = maximum PPG (reference this table, max PPG is the last two digits of the potential SG)

z = pounds of malt

PPG = yy*z/x

I'm going to begin by calculating efficiency for a very simple batch of beer, Be-Otch IPA.  Here is the grain bill with the efficiency calculation (I collected 6 gallons of wort)

14 lbs US 2 row pale malt          (36 x 14) / 6 = 84 max PPG
0.6 lbs Caramel/Crystal 20L      (35 x 0.6) / 6 = 3.5 max PPG

14.6 lbs total                               87.6 max PPG

Max PPG would be the specific gravity (1.087) if you were able to achieve 100% efficiency.  In this case I know that my gravity reading was 1.063

Efficiency = 63/87 = 72%

Now let's try this with my Harvest Pumpkin Ale.  Note, I'm ignoring the rice hulls since they do not contribute any sugars to the mash.

11.4 lbs 6-Row Pale Malt         (35 x 11.4) / 6 = 66.5
0.75 lbs Melanoiden Malt         (37 x 0.75) / 6 = 4.6
0.6 lbs Crystal 60                      (34 x 0.6) / 6 = 3.4
0.6 lbs Victory Malt                  (36 x 0.6) / 6 = 3.6

13.35 lbs total                            78.1 max PPG

OG reading = 1.060

Efficiency = 60/78 = 77%

As expected, my efficiency was lower than the 85% recommended by the original author.  If I was to do this batch again, I would probably assume an efficiency of 75% and increase my grain bill by enough to compensate for my less efficient operation.  To calculate my grain increase I'm going to take the original max PPG (78.1) and multiply that by the recommended 85% efficiency to get my target PPG.

78.1 x 85% = 66.3 target PPG

Next, I'll take the target PPG and divide that by my assumed efficiency of 75% to get my new max PPG.

66.3 / 75% = 88.5 new max PPG

Finally, I'll divide my new max PPG by the original max PPG to determine the percent increase for each of the grains and multiply that increase percentage by each grain in the recipe.

88.5 / 78.1 = 113%

Revised grain bill:

12.9 lbs 6-Row Pale Malt         (35 x 12.9) / 6 = 75.3
0.85 lbs Melanoiden Malt         (37 x 0.85) / 6 = 5.2
0.7 lbs Crystal 60                      (34 x 0.7) / 6 = 4.0
0.7 lbs Victory Malt                  (36 x 0.7) / 6 = 4.2

15.15 lbs total                            88.7 max PPG

After doing this exercise, efficiency is not just another stat to be ignored.  You can see that this makes a significant difference in the grain bill (1.8 lbs!!).  If I were brewing this recipe on a large scale, efficiency would be a huge deal and could cost thousands of dollars.  On the homebrewing scale its only a few extra dollars out of my pocket.  If you're planning recipes in the future, whether its from a magazine or book try to find out what the assumed efficiency is and if it is similar to your system.  The exercise above only take a few minutes and could make a difference in the final product of your batch.

But if you hate math and just enjoy brewing for fun, ignore this post, relax, and have a homebrew!!

Upcoming Home Brew Competitions

So normally I try to keep things like this to Bay Area event only, but home brew competitions tend to be less frequent than other types of beer events, so I've expanded this list to emcompass homebrew competitions throughout the state of California.  Bay area (or close to) events are in bold.  If you enter and win I want to know about!!!

September 21 - OC Fest of Ales Home Brew Challenge - Anaheim (Registration closes tomorrow 9/11 so get your entries submitted!!)

September 22 - Fresno Fair Homebrew Competition - Fresno (Registration closes 9/15)

October 5 - Mother Earth Rhythm and Brews Home Brew Competition - Vista (Registration closes 9/28)

October 5 - University City Home Brew Contest - San Diego (Entries accepted day of the event on 10/5!!)

October 5 - Oaktoberfest - Oakland (Registration closes on 9/15)

October 5 - Figueroa Mountain Brewing Co. and Valley Brewers Pro-Am - Buellton (Registration closes on 9/27)

On a side note I was at Figueroa Mountain Brewing Company a couple weeks ago.  They have delicious tri tip BBQ on the weekends as well as excellent beer!  If you're ever in the Santa Ynez area north of Santa Barbara, I recommend stopping by.  I particularly enjoyed the Hoppy Poppy IPA!

October 12 - Queen of Beers - Placerville (Registration closes on 10/1)

October 19 - National Organic Home Brew Challenge - Santa Cruz (Registration closes 10/15)

November 2 - California State Home Brew Competition - San Francisco (Registration closes 10/12)