Brew day - Mango Wheat
Saturday was a brew day. This was my second time making a 5-gallon batch and I have to say, it went a lot smoother and more easily this round than the last. Afterwards, I felt so accomplished; but I also felt like a "real" brewer. It's the first time I really felt that way. Each step of the way, I felt confident in what I was doing. I knew what each step was and only referred to the directions to confirm what I already knew. Saturday was also the first time I got to use my DarkStar outdoor propane burner. I knew I wanted to brew that day and also knew we only had 1 propane tank, had had it over a year, and never refilled it. I just knew in my heart of hearts that if the propane tank was going to run empty, it would do it right in the middle of a 60-minute boil.
So, that morning I went and bought a back-up propane tank (something I'd wanted to have anyway). That was a bit of a chore because both Home Depot and Lowe's were out. I suppose everyone decided to fry turkeys this year, or something. We found tanks at Wal-Mart, my absolute last choice, but we hardly had to step into the store. We walked the 10 feet into the garden section and checked out at the registers there, then waited outside for someone to unlock the propane cage. I'd say we spent about 1 minute total inside the Wal-Mart, so that's a win for me. My foresight ended up being prescient, as about 10 minutes into the 60-minute boil, our original tank sputtered out and the flame died. It was so incredibly satisfying to know my obsessive planning ahead actually paid off for once. We swapped the tanks, added a few minutes to our boil time and were off to the races once again.
One benefit to using the outdoor burner is that we actually had a minor boil-over at 1st hop addition, but we were outside, so no big deal. We just hosed off the patio. Next time, we'll boil over the grass and it will be even easier. I can't imagine trying to clean boiled-over wort off my flattop stove. I can't even get regular boiled-over water off the stupid fucking thing. It would probably ruin the stove, honestly, so I am grateful it happened outside and we were much more cautious with our 2nd hop addition. The DarkStar is a BEAST, let me tell you. When this thing is cranked up all the way, it sounds like a fucking jet engine. It's sooo satisfying. This puppy boiled the 2.5 gallons of water in about 8 minutes, versus the several lifetimes it took my stovetop to do the same chore. It's so hardcore that when turned on high it actually burned off the paint from inside the burner. It's only aesthetics though, so I'm not worried about it. You can't really see the flame in my video but you can hear how powerful it is in the video:
It was a beautiful day to brew outside. The temp was around 70, maybe cooler, and it was sunny and bright. Got my lil burner, my lil aluminum pot. You're supposed to use stainless steel, and I may upgrade soon, but for now this is sufficient. The other nice thing is the pot cools down pretty quick (the handles and lid also don't get very hot) because aluminum doesn't retain heat very well.
We got our water boiling, then turned the burner off, poured in the 6 lbs wheat Liquid Malt Extract (LME) and mixed it in with my Big-Ass Spoon - yes, it's food-grade:
Got the pot boiling again (very quickly) and added our bittering hops - 1 oz. Willamette. Around this time is when the first propane tank ran out of juice, so we don't have much of a boil going here, but I really loved the way the hops looked drifting around in the wort. Kind of mesmerizing. After this, we got it to a boil again really quickly with a new tank and that's when we had our boil-over. But like I said, no big deal!
With the burner, I was able to get a really nice, rolling boil going and keep it going for the full 60-minute duration.
After 50 minutes of boiling had passed, we added our 2nd hop addition. We did this much more carefully and didn't experience any kind of overfoam or boiling over. The DarkStar temperature is easy to control, so even though we brought the heat down a skosh when we added the 2nd hops, we were able to bring it back up to a boil very quickly. These are the aroma hops, added in the last 10 minutes of the 60-minute boil; for this we used 1 oz, Cascade hops. After the final 10 minutes of boil passed, we turned the burner off, removed the pot from heat and would move into cooling the wort. The last time I did this, I used an ice bath in the sink and it took FOREVER. This time, I had an idea. I had put out a towel (seen in some of the photos) in preparation of this; I grabbed the towel, dropped it onto the first step of our swimming pool, and placed the hot pot of wort on that step. I stirred the wort and in my (very cold) pool, it cooled down VERY quickly, I'm talking less than 10 minutes until the wort was at 100F. I don't know if the towel was necessary, but I also don't know how a boiling hot pot touching the plaster of my pool would affect it, so better safe than sorry, right? This method worked so well, if you have a pool, I HIGHLY recommend it.
Here's my beer, going for a swim:
Now, 100F is still too warm for the yeast. I mean, the yeast would probably be okay, but it's not ideal. I had prepped in advance 3 gallons of water by placing them in the freezer. We poured 1 gallon of cold water into the (sanitized) fermentation bucket and then the cooled wort on top of that (I like to start with cold water in the bucket, there's no reason not to). Then we added the remaining water to bring the volume up to 5 gallons - this ended up being the other 2 gallons of cold water, so that worked out perfectly. My wort was at EXACTLY 70F, which was golden because pitching temp for Safale US-05 yeast is between 64-75F. Fantastic! I aerated the wort by stirring it vigorously with my Big-Ass Spoon. There are other/better ways to do this (you can slosh the stuff around in the sealed bucket, you can buy aeraters, etc), but this is the method I chose and I'm fine with it.
Here's my happy yeasty boys (I will never not call them that), pitched into their new home:
All told, it was an EXCELLENT brew day. Everything flowed smoothly, and I really felt confident in what I was doing. Planning for the propane going out, having the overboil happen on the patio and not the stove, using the pool to chill my wort; I just felt like I planned everything correctly, worked smart and was prepared for potential issues. It felt really good. I feel like a brewer now, a "real" one. I find myself talking confidently with other brewers both online and in real life (we hit up 3 breweries this weekend, so naturally I talked my ass off). It is just such a satisfying hobby and I'm not only glad I got into it, but I'm glad I'm learning and improving and becoming more capable and confident. That's important to me.
Sunday morning I checked on my airlock and found (as expected) it bubbling happily away, turning my wort into delicious, delicious beer:
This beer I'm pretty excited about; I made this one just for us. This beer will ferment for 2-3 weeks (until SG is stable) and then I will rack it to a glass carboy for secondary with 5 lbs of mango. The mango will be frozen and thawed repeatedly to break down the flesh of the fruit and make the flavor infuse better into the beer. I'll keep it in secondary for probably around 2 weeks, but again, the SG will tell me when it's done. Then I'll bottle and wait another 2 weeks to drink. While this beer is 6-7 weeks out, I am still very excited to try my first mango wheat. Oh, and there's some other good news: I tried my Oktoberfest again and it's not as bad as I remember it being. It's still not my favorite, but the flavor tastes more "normal" to me, if that makes sense. Additionally, my coffee-chocolate stout that was SO BITTER has tamed over time. I have decided when I bottle it, I'll add some cold brew coffee to the batch to enhance the flavor.
Once the stout is bottled, my 2-gallon fermenter will be freed up. I have a couple of more kits I could use (from Mr. Beer), but it's super tempting to start experimenting with all-grain brewing (not using malt extracts). If I do Brew in a Bag, which involves putting the grains in a giant mesh bag instead of boiling them loose in the water and having to use a mash tun, I have everything I need to start doing all-grain. I could really make my own beer, guys. My own recipes, my own experiments. And a 2-gallon batch is a great place to start for that. Wish me luck!
So, that morning I went and bought a back-up propane tank (something I'd wanted to have anyway). That was a bit of a chore because both Home Depot and Lowe's were out. I suppose everyone decided to fry turkeys this year, or something. We found tanks at Wal-Mart, my absolute last choice, but we hardly had to step into the store. We walked the 10 feet into the garden section and checked out at the registers there, then waited outside for someone to unlock the propane cage. I'd say we spent about 1 minute total inside the Wal-Mart, so that's a win for me. My foresight ended up being prescient, as about 10 minutes into the 60-minute boil, our original tank sputtered out and the flame died. It was so incredibly satisfying to know my obsessive planning ahead actually paid off for once. We swapped the tanks, added a few minutes to our boil time and were off to the races once again.
One benefit to using the outdoor burner is that we actually had a minor boil-over at 1st hop addition, but we were outside, so no big deal. We just hosed off the patio. Next time, we'll boil over the grass and it will be even easier. I can't imagine trying to clean boiled-over wort off my flattop stove. I can't even get regular boiled-over water off the stupid fucking thing. It would probably ruin the stove, honestly, so I am grateful it happened outside and we were much more cautious with our 2nd hop addition. The DarkStar is a BEAST, let me tell you. When this thing is cranked up all the way, it sounds like a fucking jet engine. It's sooo satisfying. This puppy boiled the 2.5 gallons of water in about 8 minutes, versus the several lifetimes it took my stovetop to do the same chore. It's so hardcore that when turned on high it actually burned off the paint from inside the burner. It's only aesthetics though, so I'm not worried about it. You can't really see the flame in my video but you can hear how powerful it is in the video:
Click to viewIt was a beautiful day to brew outside. The temp was around 70, maybe cooler, and it was sunny and bright. Got my lil burner, my lil aluminum pot. You're supposed to use stainless steel, and I may upgrade soon, but for now this is sufficient. The other nice thing is the pot cools down pretty quick (the handles and lid also don't get very hot) because aluminum doesn't retain heat very well.
We got our water boiling, then turned the burner off, poured in the 6 lbs wheat Liquid Malt Extract (LME) and mixed it in with my Big-Ass Spoon - yes, it's food-grade:
Got the pot boiling again (very quickly) and added our bittering hops - 1 oz. Willamette. Around this time is when the first propane tank ran out of juice, so we don't have much of a boil going here, but I really loved the way the hops looked drifting around in the wort. Kind of mesmerizing. After this, we got it to a boil again really quickly with a new tank and that's when we had our boil-over. But like I said, no big deal!
With the burner, I was able to get a really nice, rolling boil going and keep it going for the full 60-minute duration.
After 50 minutes of boiling had passed, we added our 2nd hop addition. We did this much more carefully and didn't experience any kind of overfoam or boiling over. The DarkStar temperature is easy to control, so even though we brought the heat down a skosh when we added the 2nd hops, we were able to bring it back up to a boil very quickly. These are the aroma hops, added in the last 10 minutes of the 60-minute boil; for this we used 1 oz, Cascade hops. After the final 10 minutes of boil passed, we turned the burner off, removed the pot from heat and would move into cooling the wort. The last time I did this, I used an ice bath in the sink and it took FOREVER. This time, I had an idea. I had put out a towel (seen in some of the photos) in preparation of this; I grabbed the towel, dropped it onto the first step of our swimming pool, and placed the hot pot of wort on that step. I stirred the wort and in my (very cold) pool, it cooled down VERY quickly, I'm talking less than 10 minutes until the wort was at 100F. I don't know if the towel was necessary, but I also don't know how a boiling hot pot touching the plaster of my pool would affect it, so better safe than sorry, right? This method worked so well, if you have a pool, I HIGHLY recommend it.
Here's my beer, going for a swim:
Now, 100F is still too warm for the yeast. I mean, the yeast would probably be okay, but it's not ideal. I had prepped in advance 3 gallons of water by placing them in the freezer. We poured 1 gallon of cold water into the (sanitized) fermentation bucket and then the cooled wort on top of that (I like to start with cold water in the bucket, there's no reason not to). Then we added the remaining water to bring the volume up to 5 gallons - this ended up being the other 2 gallons of cold water, so that worked out perfectly. My wort was at EXACTLY 70F, which was golden because pitching temp for Safale US-05 yeast is between 64-75F. Fantastic! I aerated the wort by stirring it vigorously with my Big-Ass Spoon. There are other/better ways to do this (you can slosh the stuff around in the sealed bucket, you can buy aeraters, etc), but this is the method I chose and I'm fine with it.
Here's my happy yeasty boys (I will never not call them that), pitched into their new home:
All told, it was an EXCELLENT brew day. Everything flowed smoothly, and I really felt confident in what I was doing. Planning for the propane going out, having the overboil happen on the patio and not the stove, using the pool to chill my wort; I just felt like I planned everything correctly, worked smart and was prepared for potential issues. It felt really good. I feel like a brewer now, a "real" one. I find myself talking confidently with other brewers both online and in real life (we hit up 3 breweries this weekend, so naturally I talked my ass off). It is just such a satisfying hobby and I'm not only glad I got into it, but I'm glad I'm learning and improving and becoming more capable and confident. That's important to me.
Sunday morning I checked on my airlock and found (as expected) it bubbling happily away, turning my wort into delicious, delicious beer:
This beer I'm pretty excited about; I made this one just for us. This beer will ferment for 2-3 weeks (until SG is stable) and then I will rack it to a glass carboy for secondary with 5 lbs of mango. The mango will be frozen and thawed repeatedly to break down the flesh of the fruit and make the flavor infuse better into the beer. I'll keep it in secondary for probably around 2 weeks, but again, the SG will tell me when it's done. Then I'll bottle and wait another 2 weeks to drink. While this beer is 6-7 weeks out, I am still very excited to try my first mango wheat. Oh, and there's some other good news: I tried my Oktoberfest again and it's not as bad as I remember it being. It's still not my favorite, but the flavor tastes more "normal" to me, if that makes sense. Additionally, my coffee-chocolate stout that was SO BITTER has tamed over time. I have decided when I bottle it, I'll add some cold brew coffee to the batch to enhance the flavor.
Once the stout is bottled, my 2-gallon fermenter will be freed up. I have a couple of more kits I could use (from Mr. Beer), but it's super tempting to start experimenting with all-grain brewing (not using malt extracts). If I do Brew in a Bag, which involves putting the grains in a giant mesh bag instead of boiling them loose in the water and having to use a mash tun, I have everything I need to start doing all-grain. I could really make my own beer, guys. My own recipes, my own experiments. And a 2-gallon batch is a great place to start for that. Wish me luck!