A Hop Trellis Design For Growing Hops In The Back Yard

With the hop shortage in full swing, I decided to take a stab at growing my own hops. I’m not alone. I have found a ton of posts of new backyard hop gardeners. My bought my hop rhizomes from Thyme Garden and they should be arriving any day now. One thing though. I do not have a trellis set up yet. After scouring my yard to find the perfect place, I decided on the side of my house.

I have read a lot about different designs and am going to take a stab at building one this weekend. I did not want to “just wing it”, so I laid it out on the computer. Below is what I will be building, unless I hear some objection to this design from someone more experienced than myself.

What do you think?

Scotch Kissed Vanilla Bean Robust Porter

I’ve had my eyes on some different recipes for a Vanilla Bourbon Porter and I have one major issue with them all. I am not a huge Bourbon fan. I am a Scotch kind of guy. I don’t know why the Bourbon was attracting to me when I like the peaty flavors of the Speyside and the lighter fruitier flavors of the Highlands. So I put together a recipe for myself that include Scotch.

I wasn’t looking for a huge high gravity Porter, just to make something more sessionable. The hops I used may not be typical Porter hops, but I sure love the flavors of Chinook and Cascade.
Since I am a Scotch drinker, I had a couple bottles on hand. I chose a 12yr Glenmorangie Sherry Wood Barrel scotch. I believe this style is now discontinued, so I only went with 3oz of it. I didn’t want the scotch flavor to be overbearing or the center of focus, so just a kiss is what it needed.

The vanilla beans I bought at Whole Foods. I don’t know much about them, so I just opened the containers and took a deep sniff. I chose the one that smelled the best. The Papua New Guineas won out. They did not have Bourbon Vanilla Beans, so they were not an option. I hear those are the best, but I had to use what I can get. Whole Foods prides itself on the freshness of the products, so I feel these may be better than picking some up at the local homebrew store. I could be wrong, but the Whole Foods was right around the corner. Two beans came in a tube, so I just bought one tube. I didn’t want to make the porter too vanilla either, just a light hint of it. I just wanted to enhance the flavor, but still taste mostly like a porter.

Basically I just cut the beans down the middle and then cut in quarters. Then I soaked them in the scotch on the day I started brewing. Once the primary fermentation slowed (3-5 days), I just poured everything in the primary.

Below is the recipe I used. I’m still an extract brewer (hopefully not for long), so I don’t have an all-grain version of this. I’m sure it isn’t too hard to convert.

Steeping Grains
0.5 lbs - Simpson's Chocolate
0.5 lbs - Simpsons Dark Crystal

Malt Extract
6.0 lbs - Munich Malt Syrup
1.0 lbs - Dark Dry Malt Extract

Hops
1.0 oz - Chinook (60 min)
1.0 oz - Cascade (1 min)

Yeast
Wyeast #1187 Ringwood Ale Yeast. (Fermented at 67 degrees).

Added Flavors
2 beans – Papua New Guinea Vanilla Beans
3oz (3 shots) – Shots of Glenmorangie 12 year old Sherry wood finished Scotch

Comments
I fermented at 67 degrees. This is my first batch using the temperature controller and I was able to keep the beer at the exact temperature for the duration of the fermentation. I also decided against secondary fermentation. After listening to Jamil Zainasheff, a world-class brewer, he states he usually never uses a secondary. I decided to try it. I will be bottling this week. I’ll post a comment on how it came out.

Update:
This beer scored a 28.5 at nationals in the spiced and herb beer category. The main issue was it wasn't vanilla and scotch enough. So I entered this into another competition as a Robust Porter. It received 39 points and the only comment was that it could have used a little more malt complexity.

Upgrades To My Home Brewery

Though I am new to brewing, I have really taken a liken to it (hence the blog). I recently have received some bonus money and what else should I spend it on besides brewing supplies. Of course, I am saving a good part of it, but this is bonus money. It was a little extra for working hard. Therefore, it is time to play hard. Here are the major additions to my home brewery.

15 Gallon Brew pot fitted with Spigot and Blichmann Weldless Brewmometer
I wanted to do full 5-gallon boils, so I needed a big pot. Then I thought to myself, if I am going to invest this money in to a big brewing pot, why limit myself to 5-gallons. I want equipment I can grow into. So, I went with the 15-gallon pot. Now I can brew 10 gallons comfortably. Why not?

Bayou Classic Cast Iron Burner
Well, having a 15-gallon brew pot does no good if you can’t heat it up. I purchased this Bayou 185,000-BTU 20-PSI propane burner. I don’t have a natural gas line in the house, I can always upgrade the regulator and get up to 220,000-BTU out of this thing. This burner is massive and will bring my wort to a boil in no time flat.

Copper Immersion Chiller
Again, having a 15-gallon pot has some obstacles. One is chilling the wort. With my 4-gallon pot, I would fill the sink with ice and soak burry the pot in ice. This new pot is almost twice as big as my sink and may have trouble in my bathtub. Plus, who can lift and carry all that wort. For that reason, I got a chiller made out of 50 foot of copper tubing. This Chiller should chill the wort down quickly.

Digital Temperature Controller
I feel that my beers haven’t been as good as they can be and I have read that maintaining a proper temperature throughout fermentation could be even more important than going all-grain. I plan to try all-grain soon, but I want to get a hold of my fermentation first. I coupled the temp controller with some fermawrap since it is winter here, and I have a fridge in the garage for when the temperatures get hot out in the summer.

I can’t wait to set this stuff up and get brewing. This weekend will be fun for sure.

The Stir Plate Project

In a previous post, I wrote about a yeast starter I created. This was a great learning experience and it really helped out my IPA I created. A yeast starter helps get the fermentation process started quicker. By growing the yeast culture, instead of just throwing in a White Labs tube, there will be more yeast further on in their life at pitching time. This will help drop the specific gravity down, increasing the ABV and drying out the beer. So what can one do to help out the starter even more? Keep the yeast starter on a stir plate.

What is a stir plate?

In short, a stir plate is a piece of equipment that continually stirs liquid (in our case, wort). With a yeast starter, the stir plate keeps the yeast in suspension and does not allow the yeast to settle. It also continually adds oxygen to the yeast starter. This helps keep the yeast growing and reproducing. As long as there is oxygen in the yeast starter, the yeast will reproduce.

One issue with stir plates is their price. A retail stir plate can go anywhere from $100 USD to $500 USD. If you’re a home brewer like me, spending a couple hundred on a stir plate is not an option. But how can you get the benefits of a stir plate and not pay the premium price. My answer, I built one.

After searching the web, I found hundreds of people who have built their own stir plates. These ranged in price from cheap and simple to complex a little more pricey. Still, most were under $50 USD. I went the cheap route.

I discovered a page from Dave Trumbell and the Stir Plate he created. I pretty much just copied his. In the end, the price ended up being around $22 USD, but I had some help. I ended up having some parts around the house. I took apart an old Hard Drive from a computer and stole the Rare Earth magnets from within. I also had some old 6-volt power supplies to old electronics that I kept “just in case”. Steve Hawk had a couple computer fans to add to the mix. I ended up making 2 stir plates. One for me and one for Steve.

Here is a video of the stir plate in action:

Vinnie’s Blind Pig IPA

It’s been over two months since I brewed last and was itching to brew an IPA. Due to the world wide hop shortage, it’s difficult to find the correct hops for most hoppy recipes. I ended up buying one of the only IPA kits left at MoreBeer.com. It is a recipe by Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River Brewing Company and is the original double IPA version he created while working at Blind Pig Brewing. The beer is considered the first American Double IPA ever brewed commercially.

I haven’t moved to all grain brewing yet, so the recipe was a malt extract kit. Steve Hawk came over to help out with the brew, take in all the aromas that 5 ounces of hops give off, and share some of his personal home brews.

The recipe was pretty simple and went as such:

Malt Extracts
9.0lb - Ultralight Malt
1.0lb - Bavarian Wheat

Grains (steeped 30min)
0.5lb - Carapils
0.5lb - Crystal 40L

Hops
2.0oz - Centennial (60min)
0.5oz - Cascade (30min)
1.0oz - Cascade (15min)

Water Treatment
1 - Whirfloc (15min)
1tsp - Gypsum (15min)
1 - White Labs Servomyces Capsule (15min)

Secondary Fermentation
0.5oz - Cascade
1.0oz - Centennial
1.0oz - American Oak Chips

Bottling
4.0oz - Corn Sugar

Since this is only my second brew ever, I am learning and trying new things. I ended up doing a couple steps different this time, hopefully for the better.

The first thing I did different was creating a yeast starter. This was a fun experience and I am hoping it pays off at the end by really dropping the specific gravity way down, helping dry the beer out.

The boil went smoothly. I tried another new method with the boil. I only added half the Malt extract at first to the boil and the second half with only 15 minutes left. This was to keep the specific gravity down of the wort in the kettle. I did this to allow the centennial hops to isomerize. Since I am only boiling 3 gallons in the kettle, the SG is really high during the boil. Then I add the extra 2 gallons in the fermentor to get me up to 5 gallons. The acid in the hops will not bitter as well in high gravity wort. By only adding half the Malt, the hops have a better chance to isomerize cleanly and really add some good bitterness. By adding this to the last 15 minutes, the malt will still pasteurize. Be careful, the added malt may cause another hot break and boil-over.

I treated my water for the first time in this brew. I added Gypsum to help protect against a soapy taste some IPA’s sometimes get. It does so by lowering the PH a little and making the beer a more acidic. The next new addition to the boil was a Whirlfloc tablet. This is a water clarifier like irish moss. My first beer was a wheat beer and wheat is supposed to be a little cloudy. I wanted the IPA to be as clear a possible, without having to use a filter. I was going to go with the Irish Moss, but have read better things about the Whirlfloc tablets.

With this brew, I bought an oxygen system. The system is basically a Bernzomatic Oxygen tank with some tubing and a stainless steel air stone. I aerated the hell out of the wort with pure oxygen before pitching and I aerated again 5 hours after pitching the yeast. This should help the already increased yeast supply grow more vigorously.

The yeast has been pitched in and I am waiting for it to start fermenting. I think with these new techniques I used will make the IPA come out awesome. There is still so much to learn and I hope to add new methods to my techniques for the next brew. I will update the blog with the IPA’s progressions.

Yeast Starters

The more I read up on home brewing, the more I get fascinated with the science and biology of the process. One aspect that I find interesting is the yeast. These little animals are extremely important to the overall brewing process and are probably the most mysterious part of the process too.

When first starting out, a lot of kits use dry yeast. After the brew, the directions usually say to sprinkle the yeast on top of the wort. This works fine, though it often takes time for the yeast to rehydrate, start reproducing, then start fermenting. Some people believe that dried yeast just doesn’t add to the complexity in taste that live yeast does. One thing is true though, there are many more varieties of liquid yeast then there are dry yeast.

Using liquid yeast usually helps in the quickening of the process from cooled wort to fermentation. That is a crucial time in home brewing, a time when things can go wrong. The quicker the yeast start doing their jobs, the less chance of contamination to occur.

For most average gravity brewing styles, a single White Labs tube or Wyeast smack pack of yeast is enough for a 5 gallon batch. When creating a high gravity or lager beer, it is best to help the wort out by pitching additional yeast. This can be done by purchasing multiple tubes or you can create a yeast starter that can turn one tube into the amount you need. Since my next brew is going to be a double IPA with a starting gravity of about 1.070+, I decided to create a yeast starter.

I purchased a 1000ml yeast starter kit from MoreBeer.com. It was pretty cheap, only $12. The kit included a 1000ml Erlenmeyer flask, 1/2 pound of dried malt extract (DME 10), and 1oz of yeast nutrients. The process is pretty simple.

I first mixed in 1 cup of DME 10 and a pinch of nutrient with about 800ml of Brita filtered water. I placed the Erlenmeyer flask on the stove and brought it up to a boil for 15 minutes. I boiled in the beaker cause it seemed like a cool idea and it brought me back to my high school days. Though, it has it’s issues. Since the flask gets extremely narrow up at the top, the littlest boil over would go shooting up and over. This would happen so quick that it was hard to catch. It only happened one major time, I would recommend using a small sauce pan and then funneling in the cooled wort into the flask after. And on another note, you don’t need a flask at all. An old sanitized mayo jar would work too, though they are glass and if you pour pour hot wort or cooling hot wort in it, the glass may crack. It is best to always use cooled wort if using regular glass. Since I boiled in the Erlenmeyer flask, i just took the flask and put it in an ice bath in the sink. 5 minutes later, it was pitching temperature.

With my order from MoreBeer.com, I also bought a Oxygen system to get the most out of my wort. The system came with a regulator, some tubing, and a stainless steal air stone. The oxygen had to be purchased separately, so I had to run out to the local Lowes Hardware Store and purchase a disposable can of BernzoMatic Oxygen for about $8. After sanitizing everything, I stuck the air stone in the wort and turned the knob to the gas. Billions of the tiniest bubbles came out and created a Guinness style draft head on the wort. Adding Oxygen will greatly help the yeast grow and reproduce. Since I don’t own a stir plate yet, I would just swish it around every so often to help keep in oxygenated.

I plan on brewing my Blind Pig Double IPA clone tomorrow and I now have a healthy amount of yeast to pitch. By looking at the flask, I think I have about 3-4 times the amount I started with. I plan on sticking the flask in the refrigerator tonight to have the rest of the active yeast fall to the bottom of the flask. Then I will siphon or pour off some of the spent wort. This way I don’t contribute to off flavors by adding different wort to my IPA wort. Most people just throw it all in, but I don’t want to get any off flavors by using a different style wort. I could have always made 1000ml version of the double IPA and pitched it directly in, but that will be later on in my home brewing career. This was my first starter and I think it turned out great.

Beer For The Bosses?

So this week is the big industry show and all my bosses and Veeps will be in town. My Imperial Stout is aging nicely and its in great gift sized 220z bottles. Of course the obvious dilemma I face is whether to share this beer with those who will decide in the next few weeks how much I will make in 08. Now its not like I just want to drink all this beer by myself. I want to share it but is the gift of Homemade Brew sending the right message? Does it say, "I'm innovative and varied in m tastes. I can be an asset because of my many skills and talents" or "I am a drunk, so much so I make my own booze. In fact I'm drunk right now."? Thoughts comments?