Small Thoughts for Small Minds

Joe and I brewed a Bohemian Pilsner together in January, for the upcoming (March 17th) club competition. To be ready for the competition, we needed to keg our beers this past weekend. Not wanting to waste all of that nice yeast in the bottom of the secondary fermenters, we decided to brew a Classic American Pilsner on Monday.

I picked up some six row pale ale malt and the various hops at the local homebrew supply, Blue Ridge Hydroponics & Homebrewing (yeah, I agree - it’s an odd combination…)

I wanted to follow the pre-Prohibition ingredients and methods as much as possible, which is why I chose six-row over two-row. Outside of North America, six-row is ONLY used for animal feed… (See here for an interesting article comparing the two types of barley.)

The next challenge was finding corn in the right form. I needed it to be degerminated as the germ contains a significant quantity of oils. (Oils are bad for head formation and retention…) The "high end" corn meal/grits were all whole grain, while the "bargain" stuff, although degerminated, was enriched, and I didn’t want those additives (especially the iron, which could be a problem for the yeast).

Finally, at the last minute (Sunday night), I found grits from Bob’s Red Mill that perfectly (excepting price) fit the bill…

Here are all of the ingredients (other than the yeast):

I kegged the Bohemian Pilsner on Sunday night. I added about 700 ml of starter wort to the yeast cake in the carboy. Since the Boh. pils had been lagering for five or six weeks, the yeast cake was quite compact. I aggressively swished it around and poured it into the Erlenmeyer flask, along with a lot of foam. Since the garage was around 50 degrees F, I put the stir plate and flask in the garage on my work bench. Because the starter wort was at room temp, the yeast took off very quickly. And because the flask was already full of foam, it pushed through the airlock almost immediately. I decided to just loosely cover the opening with a piece of foil (to keep out any airborne bits…)

This is what it looked like in the morning:

A wee bit of overflow…

The gelatinization temperature of corn is higher than the denaturing temperatures for alpha and beta amylase (the enzymes responsible for converting starches to sugar in brewing). To handle that, we perform a cereal mash. This starts by mixing the corn grits with a small (around 30%) of malted barley and about 5 cups of water per pound of grain. 

Hold the temperature at about 100 deg. F for a 15 minute protein rest. Bring it up to saccharification temperature (around 150 deg. F) and hold it there for around 30 minutes. This allows the barley’s enzymes to partially attack the corn’s starches (milky white color in the liquid as shown in the picture below). This thins out the cereal mash which allows the next step (a long boil) to happen without the mash forming a thick goo with a propensity to burn…

As the boil progresses, the corn gelatinizes. The mixture is so thick that it "pops" and can splash hot stuff on your hand while you stir. (And you have to stir a lot to keep if from burning on the bottom of the pot…)

We boiled for about an hour to be sure.

As you can see from the picture below, Joe is absolutely tickled pink that he doesn’t have to get burnt stir it any more. (Well, that and the fact that he’s enjoying my homebrew…)

While Joe was stirring the boiling cereal mash, I was grinding a bit of material off of a pair of my stainless steel disconnects. (I had installed all of them - a dozen or so pairs - during the weekend.) Two of the male pieces were different from all of the rest and didn’t work with the female pieces I had. Luckily I had to remove material rather than add material…

Here’s one pair (not showing the lever arm for connecting/releasing). There’s a LOT of stainless steel fittings in my home brewery…

After boiling, we added the grits mixture to the main mash (already in progress). Here I am checking the temperature of the mash…

As mentioned in a previous post, Joe and I seek inspiration while brewing, searching out the most inventive brews to drive our creativity and fire up our imagination.

This session was no exception…

And to make it even better, John M. stopped by with a couple additional brews…

We started with Dogfish Head Brewery’s (Milton, DE) Burton Baton and Reaper Ale’s (San Diego, CA) Sleighor Double IPA (no longer available outside of San Diego County…) Excellent beers!

Here’s the sparge in process. This beer is so light, you can barely tell the difference between the hoses containing water and those containing wort (and you’d probably be wrong about a couple of the hoses…). Of course, in this case, light in color does not mean light in flavor. This is NOT a light beer…

Here’s another beer from Southern Tier Brewing Company, Big Red Imperial Red Ale. (We tried their Unearthly Imperial IPA last week.)

We first-wort-hopped with whole Sterling hops (a cross between Saaz and Hallertauer).

We bittered with Cluster hops (pellets) and used a late addition (15 minutes) of Saaz hops (pellets). (Cluster hops may be the oldest hop variety grown in the US. It was widely used by the pre-Prohibition (American) brewers for bittering because of the lower cost, but they still used Noble hops for aroma and flavor additions.)

During the boil, we enjoyed the hop aromas, the conversation, and (of course) some more inspiration…

Bell’s (Galesburg, MI) Two Hearted Ale, Breckenridge Brewery’s (Denver, CO) 471 Series Double IPA, and Arcadia Brewing Company’s (Battle Creek, MI) HopMouth Double IPA.

After pitching the yeast and pumping in the oxygen…

I’m not accustomed to using so much hop pellets. Apparently they tend to stick to the side of the kettle. Hopefully we didn’t lose out on too much flavor…

The hop splooge mostly got filtered out by the whole hops…

And, finally, the beers are gently put to bed in the fermentation fridge…

I’m really starting to build up a lot of homebrew. I’m not drinking much at all since I’m still dieting. (Although the snacks I put out while brewing set me back a few days in that endeavor…)