08-08-08

So being in the restaurant buisness, I haven't had the luxury of the last 27 days off like everyone else here seems to have had. My holiday vacation consists of Tuesday (New Years Day) and Wednesday. My plan is to make as much beer on these two days as humanly possible. I have seen several posts here about making two beers from the single batch of grains we are using for the RIS. Can anyone expand on this a bit for me? Potential negatives or things to be worried about? Any input would be appreciated

olllllo said:

Due to some "circumstances," I am considering using a lager yeast for this.
BLASPHEMY?

or am I just making a roasty baltic porter?

Thoughts?

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The line between brewing and blasphemy is always a thim one. Brew boldly that beer may abound!

Brewsmith said:

Any suggestions for a Horizon hop substitution?

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I'm using Nugget in place of the Warrior.

I'm brewing today with a few changes based on availability. Pale chocolate for the chocolate, Millenium for the Warrior, and Willamette for the Fuggles. Can't wait to get this one started.

Is there a consensus on how this one is going to condition? How long were people thinking of bulk aging before bottling?

Is there going to be a starting time for all so we can post while brewing or are we just going to go by our own timelines??

Jamo99 said:

I'm brewing today with a few changes based on availability. Pale chocolate for the chocolate, Millenium for the Warrior, and Willamette for the Fuggles. Can't wait to get this one started.

Is there a consensus on how this one is going to condition? How long were people thinking of bulk aging before bottling?

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I'm not sure about a consensus but I will probably have mine in the fermenters for about 2 months. 4-weeks primary bucket, then 5-6 weeks in a glass secondary. It worked well for my last RIS.
Craig

Jamo99 said:

Is there a consensus on how this one is going to condition? How long were people thinking of bulk aging before bottling?

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I think we're kind of doing our own thing in this regard - that's part of what should make each of these so unique.
If I had to make a rough estimate, I'd say @ least 2 weeks primary, 2 weeks secondary if you use one..... otherwise, probably 3 weeks primary if you aren't using a secondary. I haven't decided my schedule yet. I'm wingin' it.

Brewiz said:

Is there going to be a starting time for all so we can post while brewing or are we just going to go by our own timelines??

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I think a handful of us have already cranked out our brew. You know how holidays get. Schedules go all funky, plans change 8,000 times....... I did mine last Thursday because I was dying to see how dark it was going to come out.

That being said, Poindexter has a Kitchen Notes thread out there (Linky!) - I think he would probably be OK with people adding their notes to it, even if it is in the Extract forum. That's where I stuck my notes. Otherwise, you could start a new thread too - "Who's brewing 08/08/08 RIS right now?".

TerapinChef said:

I have seen several posts here about making two beers from the single batch of grains we are using for the RIS. Can anyone expand on this a bit for me? Potential negatives or things to be worried about? Any input would be appreciated

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Low gravity is the big concern. Paul came in mid-1030's, mine barely came in at 1028. One thing I thought about doing, after the fact, was to have 1# 2-row already ground and bagged, so that once I drained my first sparge for the actual brew, I could dump that 1# in, then add my 2nd and 3rd sparges, and get just a little more sugars out. Otherwise, I think my advice would be to sparge extra and boil, boil, boil, boil, boil. You could add Candi sugar to the boil, too, if you wanted to boost your OG just a little. Or maybe a couple cups of molasses to the boil? Definitely see Paul's post somewhere above (about 8-9 posts ago?) re: his mild ale from his 2nd runnings, he posted his hop sched too.

You can read about my 2nd runnings nightmare here: (Linky!)

chriso said:

That being said, Poindexter has a Kitchen Notes thread out there (Linky!) - I think he would probably be OK with people adding their notes to it, even if it is in the Extract forum. That's where I stuck my notes.

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My thread in extract is specifically intended for the encouragement of new brewers. If you have a three tier sculpture I prolly can't help ya, but if "you" have mastered steep/extract pale ales, you can make this RIS - and it is really good.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?p=493656

Go hog wild, y'all! If you're brewing RIS, go post in the new Notes thread. If anyone is looking for it manually, it's in General Beer Discussion forum.

Picked up my ingredients yesterday, with some substitutions due to LHBS availability. I'm using Yakima Magnum for bittering and decided to split my hop schedule into 8 additions - just so I have more to do on Tuesday.

Looks like I've finally found the secret to making starters so I feel really good about my yeast pitch for this monster beer. All I had to do was take a gravity reading of my starter wort (gasp!) and add it one pint at a time. When I pitched the smack pack into the first pint last night it started bubbling immediately, and I had more airlock activity an hour after adding the second pint this morning. Gonna boil another couple pints this afternoon and add them tonight and sometime tomorrow to bring it up to a half gallon.

Hopefully this will help it ferment out quickly enough for me to brew another batch really soon...

Brewpastor said:

The line between brewing and blasphemy is always a thim one. Brew boldly that beer may abound!

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Thank you, I shall.

I shall be brewing on the 1st. I will begin about 6:30 AM MST. All of this is conditional on my ability to get my garage door up! The stupid thing is out of sorts again, but I will not let it get in my way! Beer must be brewed and I know just the guy to do it - ME!

Brewpastor said:

I shall be brewing on the 1st. I will begin about 6:30 AM MST. All of this is conditional on my ability to get my garage door up! The stupid thing is out of sorts again, but I will not let it get in my way! Beer must be brewed and I know just the guy to do it - ME!

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My parents' door used to f*** up all the time. Thank goodness for the little manual override thing. Pull the cord, heave the door up as hard as possible, then shove a ladder underneath to keep it up.

My problem is the main spring has snapped and the whole pulley system is screwed. I can get i up but it REALLY sucks to do so!

So, this is going to be my first time using a liquid yeast smack pack. Anything I should know or is it just smack and let it swell? My house is usually at 62F, is that too cold? How should I remedy this?

FYI, my plan is to brew on the first.



Also, am I supposed to boil all the LME for the extract brew or is it a late addition?

Poppy360 said:

So, this is going to be my first time using a liquid yeast smack pack. Anything I should know or is it just smack and let it swell? My house is usually at 62F, is that too cold? How should I remedy this?

FYI, my plan is to brew on the first.



Also, am I supposed to boil all the LME for the extract brew or is it a late addition?

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You need to pop the inner bubble, then let it swell. It should begin to swell in a few hours. Then you WILL need to make a starter. 2 Quarts of water and 1 cup of DME is probably a good place to start for this brew. If you plan of brewing on the 1st you should pop the pack tomorrow morning (monday), and then pitch it in your starter tomorrow afternoon or earlier. You should have a very active starter to pitch in your beer by the new year.
62 is a little cool which may slow things down. If you have someplace a little warmer but not hot it will start faster. For fermenting that is a good temp as the fermentation will increase the temps of the beer.

Craig

Chriso, thanks for the hop substitutions. I knew they were posted somewhere, but I'm lazy! I ended up using all of the Galena that I had and a quarter ounce of Magnum to make up the difference.

Brewsmith said:

Chriso, thanks for the hop substitutions. I knew they were posted somewhere, but I'm lazy! I ended up using all of the Galena that I had and a quarter ounce of Magnum to make up the difference.

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Had I not panicked after the boilover and hopped with whatever was nearest to my hand (Hersbrucker), I would've thought to use my spare ounce of galena in the freezer. D'oh.

I bought the ingredients today. Probably make the starter tomorrow. With the exception of my youngest, everyone will be back to work and school on Wed so I'll pretty much have the whole place to myself to brew this beast.

Here's mine, going strong.



PTN

Noob (to the forums) chiming in here! This sounded like so much fun, I decided to jump for a brew on the 1st. This is the most expensive ($65 at my LHBS for PM ingredients, based on chriso's PM conversion) beer I've made, so here's hoping it goes well.

I'm looking for a quick check on a couple of substitutions I made, based on LHBS availability. Anybody care to check in on the following?

• Substitution of Columbus for Warrior for the bittering hop. I know others have recommended avoiding the C's, but my LHBS had no Warrior.
• White Labs WLP051 in place of the Wyeast 1056. I figure WLP051 should give a fuller-bodied beer, since the attenuation is marginally lower. Given that, I'm pitching a 1 qt starter, unless somebody recommends more. There's still space in my growler.
• Substitution of 3 oz of 120L Crystal in place of the recommended 6 oz of 60L.

Any other Denver-area brewers working on this recipe?

jds, check out the pitch rate calculator at http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html. For my 2-week old smack pack and the 5.5 gallons I'm hoping to get into primary it recommends almost a half gallon starter.

Thanks, Trencher. Looks like I should bump up my starter again tonight. Another pint and a half of starter should get me to the 1.7l the calculator recommends (assuming month-old yeast culture. I didn't check the date).

Today is the day...
My starter is at about 3 quarts (been bumped twice). My grains are ready, I warmed up the equipment yesterday with a Bass clone (thanks Biermuncher) and I have a new brewer on the way over to help me out. Hopefully I will be able to sneak in a batch of Bee Cave Kolsch when it's over with, but I'm dedicating this day to the RIS. Oh yeah, I need to pick up another 6.5G carboy. Oh well, thought I was ready to go. I'll be starting in about an hour then. Wish me luck!

Alright, this puppy is in the bucket now. I'm not certain if my efficiency is a little off on my PM or if my topoff mixing wasn't thorough, but I hit 1.080 for an OG. Good enough for me.

I do have to say, this was some serious motor oil. I tried a sip out of my test sample and it was super sweet then immediately followed up with something reminiscent of a torched barley field.

yeah, my sample tasted awesome. this is going to be a great fargin beer!

Blow-off tube is STILL going nuts. :cross:



EDIT: Good thing I got the bigger tube!

Mine took off with in 4 hours on the 30th, I didn't mix enough and probably over watered my mix and should have/could have gotten away with one of my smaller carboys (i think) but i used a 6.5 gallon. Boiled 3 gallons of water, Didn't loose much in the grains (let that bag drip for 10-15 minutes and added all 11lb of LME to the boil. i had boiled 2.5 gallons ahead of time to cool and top off with. Reading time, i sloshed the carboy around a lot but only measured 1.059 . I did use a yeast starter and i stepped it up a couple times

Any who, my blow off was pop'n nice and fierce till yesterday (and the krausen was starting to fall), so i switched to an airlock, and it pegged the bubbler to the top till today.

Tonight, i noticed the bubbler was sitting on top of the catch tube, and not raising at all, so I took a sample and got 1.029

How low is the expected final gravity? I put the recipe into beersmith and it guesses 1.018.

Curious if it can still drop those extra points, or if i should disturb the cake, or if i got a stuck fermentation on me hands...

The sample tastes great! a bit sweet for other RIS's I have had which since it's still at 1.029, that makes sense.

Dycokac said:

How low is the expected final gravity? I put the recipe into beersmith and it guesses 1.018.

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I am curious abotu expected FG as well...

I pitched WPL001 (California Ale) onto 1.081 OG. I left it in primary for 3 weeks, max recorded temp was 78dF, temp was dropping less than 24 hours after original pitch.

Gravity was 1.081 on pitching Day, 1.030 on day D +20, 1.028 on D +35, and 1.028 on D +39. I calc this as 63% attenuation and "only" 6.5% ABV, very low end for White labs #1.

Should I consider racking this on to a yeast cake or repitching?

TIA,
P

Don't have too much time to give you a full update, but here's the quick news...
Brew day went well, no big hitches. Ended up with way more wort than BeerSmith predicted (1.5G more) so the boil off was much longer than expected. New immersion chiller worked great (this was it's second batch). Pitched 3Q of starter (California V) and no activity for almost 36 hours. I think this was partially due to the fact that I overchilled and my basement was down to about 62 degrees. Now that the yeast is working I have a huge thick foamy krausen, that looks like chocolate whipped cream! I can't wait to taste this beer!

I noticed my airlock does have some pressure, and is doing the suck back thing I guess mine isn't done fermenting yet at all, i remember the apfelwine doing that. I plan on certainly leaving it in primary for another week before i rack it off the trub, i didn't filter the hops or anything.

Now that it's brewing, I do have a question in regards to the secondary conditioning.

I understand that it's going to take several months to develop the flavors. How long do you all plan on keeping in the secondary before bottling? Is there any difference really between bottling after a shorter time and allowing to bottle condition vice leaving it in the larger container for a longer period of time?

Also if dry-hopping in secondary, should I put the hops in at the beginning and leave in for several months, or wait until later on in the process? Just seems like having hops sit in the secondary for 4-5 months might not be a good idea.

Am I making any sense?

McKBrew said:

Now that it's brewing, I do have a question in regards to the secondary conditioning.

I understand that it's going to take several months to develop the flavors. How long do you all plan on keeping in the secondary before bottling? Is there any difference really between bottling after a shorter time and allowing to bottle condition vice leaving it in the larger container for a longer period of time?

Also if dry-hopping in secondary, should I put the hops in at the beginning and leave in for several months, or wait until later on in the process? Just seems like having hops sit in the secondary for 4-5 months might not be a good idea.

Am I making any sense?

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sure...

Bulk vs bottle conditioning...lots of theories on this one but many feel that bulk conditioning will mature a beer faster than bottle conditioning and there is a benefit to the whole batch conditioning one vessel with all of the suspended yeast vs splitting between bottles for all of the conditioning.

When I dry hop a beer in the secondary with an extended conditioning time, I time the dry hop period to end right before transferring to the next step so the beer doesn't wind up sitting on the hops for too long and get that grassy thing going. So if I plan on dry hopping for 10 days, I add the hops 10 days before I plan to transfer to the bottling bucket.

Thanks Brewt00l. I'm thinking of secondary until about May, then bottling. But am open to any other suggestions or time limits.

I normally keg, but this batch will get bottled. I plan to let it sit in the primary for one month and then the secondary (corny) as long as I can before it's time to ship off for the swap.

So essentially, I'll be shipping beer that is not carbonated...yet.

If I remember correctly, there was talk of the swap for this happening in the spring so we could bypass hot summer shipping conditions. I'll be keeping mine in the primary for about 2 weeks, then it'll hit the secondary for a couple months. I figure I'll bottle it in March or April and I assume the swap will happen in April or May.

August is way too far off....

I'm thinking of bottling mine sooner, rather than later. That could be an interesting comparison as well. Obviously everyone's beer will be different, but if we notice those that bottled earlier taste less 'mature' than those that waited - it might be helpful for adjusting when we decide to bottle big beers,etc.

My hand is going to be a bit forced when it comes to bottling. I'm going to leave mine in the primary until we're getting ready to move. I'll bottle as late as I can, but it could be (cross your fingers that we sell the house) soon. I think it's already pretty close to having a stable FG, so I could bottle without worry at any point.

Mine fermented out even quicker than my Pecan Scottish. That's still gently chugging away, while the RIS is ready to transfer or even bottle right now. I might leave it in primary for 2.5 wks then bottle directly. We don't need no stinking secondary - I mean, if the beer is hazy, who's gonna notice? It's coal black!

chriso said:

We don't need no stinking secondary - I mean, if the beer is hazy, who's gonna notice? It's coal black!

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+1 to that! Plus if I understand correctly I believe the darker barleys (Roasted, Black Patent, etc) have something that eliminates chill haze.