One of the main proponents of the Texas Two-Step method is Chris Colby over at Brew Your Own Magazine. In Chris’ description, the brewer would completely boil one half of the wort, cool it, and add it to the fermentor before starting the boil on the second. Some folks even suggest brewing the second half the following day and adding it to the already-fermenting first half.

The method I use is perhaps more accurately described as a split boil, but the same concepts are involved. I’ve got a couple of pots that are larger than 3 gallons each, so I can split the batch between the two of them and boil both simultaneously. I use the 5 gallon kettle that I started out using in extract brewing for about 1/2 of the wort and an 8 gallon Megapot for the other half. You could use just two 5 gallon kettles, though. The evaporation rate is higher when you have two kettles going instead of just one, so I shoot for at least 6.5 gallons of wort pre-boil to get 5 gallons in the fermentor, instead of my normal 6 gallons. If you get a vigorous boil on your stove with 3-4 gallons of liquid, you’ll want to increase that to 7 gallons or so.

Once the kettles are at a boil, I simply split the hop additions between the two kettles. For hop utilization rates, it shouldn’t matter much if one kettle has the high gravity first-runnings and the other has a lower gravity, or if both have the same gravity (it is a bit different, but pretty darn close). But if you were to have one kettle of the first runnings and another of the last runnings, they would have different pH, and I’ve read that a pH that is way off can result in the extraction of more astringent flavors from hops. So to keep things even, I pull the wort into a single vessel and mix before splitting it into the two pots. A 6.5 Gallon Bucket with spigot would work well for this purpose. If brewing extract, you could just split the extract/sugar additions between the two kettles.

A final consideration is chilling – if it takes you 20 minutes to chill down 3 gallons of wort, you might not want to just wait on one pot while chilling the other. Any late addition hops might loose some of their aroma/flavor potency in the kettle with hot wort in it. Ideally you want to chill all the wort down quickly. One method would be to prepare an ice bath for one pot and use a wort chiller on the other. If you are obsessive about water use like I am, you can use the waste water from the chiller to fill up a lukewarm bath for the other kettle, which should take the temperature down enough to preserve hop aroma. Then you can switch the chiller to the other kettle to take it down the last ~30 degrees or so. It might seem like a good idea to combine the wort before chilling, but the splashing during transfer would result in hot side aeration that might be detrimental to the final product.

Hopefully this will help some people keep brewing all-grain during the winter (or rainy days) and others who don’t want to invest in a huge kettle for full volume boils. I know there are a bunch of brewers out there who use these methods, and probably have good advice, so feel free to comment away. Cheers!

The other reason I’ve decided to try my hand at an American Lager is that I’ve had a few recently that were good enough to force a reconsideration of the style. A Pre-Prohibition Lager brewed by Michael Dawson was the starting point. Nuanced, balanced, just the right amount of body, entirely drinkable. Then Brooklyn Lager came to Minnesota – a distinctively modern take on the overlooked Amber Lager style in the US. And finally, recent news that Yuengling Brewery is now the biggest in the US (most of the other big breweries are owned by foreign companies or brew their beer outside the US) brought their American Lager back to mind.

So, with all that historical bolstering and lager philosophizing will I go for a highly accurate, representative beer for the style? Nah, I figure I’ll get all inspired on it.

5 lbs Rahr 2-row
2 lbs German Munich
.5 lbs Flaked Maize
.25 lbs Flaked Barley
.4 lbs Briess Carapils

.5 oz Northern Brewer @ 60 min
.5 oz Czech Saaz @ 5 min

Mash at 152
OG 1.048 (approximately 80% efficiency)
Wyeast 2124 Bohemian Lager

My goal here is to tread the lines between crisp and silky, new world and old. The corn provides crispness, dryness, and a distinctive grainy/sweet flavor. The tiny amount of flaked barley is there for smoothness, and with any luck I’ll get a flavor that shifts a bit, with a slightly full and silky start yet a crisp, dry finish. Carapils lends some body and sweetness, and the hops are minimal, just a bit to keep it interesting. Rahr 2-row is a plain malt, and this beer should be mainly plain, but a small amount of Munich should keep it interesting without dominating.

Dry Irish Stout

What can I say about this? It’s classic, it’s on the nitro, and it’s an NB kit:

Target OG 1.042
5 gallons, all grain

Grist:
6 lbs Maris Otter
2 lbs flaked barley
1 lb roasted barley

Mash:
152 F for 60 minutes
170 F for 10 minutes

Boil:
1.5 oz Cluster (or equivalent … I had some Chinook pellets lying around) @ 60”

Fermentation:
Chill, O2, and pitch Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale from a 1500 mL stir-plated starter. Primary at 65F. Inhale the offgas from the airlock (you know you want to): sharply coffeeish and grainy-sweet.

Rack to secondary after 12 days, crash cool and keg after 7 days (FG 1.012).

Packaging and such:
It should be mentioned here that the keg to which the beer was racked was fitted with a diffusion stone attached to the gas-in dip tube inside the keg with a couple feet of 1/4″ ID bev tubing. The dry stout was force-carbonated to a low level with CO2, then after a few days of cold conditioning, hooked up to what in my house is known as The Nitro, which lets us do this:

edit 2/13: The Nitro. Since BTV #55 posted, I’ve had some requests for more info on carbonating and serving. I’ll provide the disclaimer that this is just how I do it and isn’t meant to be gospel … in a nutshell: CO2 to about 1.8 psi (beer at 35F, regulator set to 8 psi), then vent, replace the CO2 hookup with beer gas and dispense at 35 psi through a stout faucet.

Extract version:

But of course.

Sraid Dhasain Single Stout

Or, a Dublin porter circa 1880, and named (in Gaelic) for the most awesome thoroughfare in Dublin city: Dawson Street.

Before we begin – cite your source, give a disclaimer! The grist formulation, hopping rate, and other historical data were gleaned from Mr. Ron Pattinson via his blog Shut Up About Barclay Perkins; the choice of specific malts, hops, and yeast, plus the mash, boil, and fermentation schedules for this re-interpretation of an old beer are mine.

“Single Stout” is what Guinness used to call their basic porter, elided from “single stout porter.” “Stout”  in those days – like “mild” – being not a beer style in its own right, but an adjective; in this case denoting a stronger and burlier iteration. Therefore stout porter would be bigger, presumably in both gravity and hopping, than plain old “porter.” And eventually “Single Stout” itself was elided into just “stout,” which became a style and ceased being an adjective.

But if you sneak a peak at the constituents of the grist in the recipe below, you’ll see this isn’t really dry Irish stout as we understand it today. What’s different? Amber and black malt are in, unmalted flaked and roasted barley are out (brewing with unmalted grains was illegal at this point in UK brewing history – England gained revenue from its Malt Tax, so brewers weren’t permitted to use adjuncts; flaked and roast barley didn’t find their way into Irish ales until later). Higher OG. Quite a hop rate, if not significantly more bitterness.

“So it’s basically a robust porter brewed in Ireland back when Queen Victoria was breeding Volpinos.” Yeah, but … shut up. My reading of Mr. Pattinson is that what made Irish porters uniquely Irish was the eager and early adoption of highly-roasted black malt by the brewers; the omission of brown malt (English porter brewers were still in love with comparatively pale-colored and toasty-but-not-burnt-flavored brown malt); and the persistence of Irish brewers in blending new and aged beers (which English porter brewers had more or less given up on at this point in the 19th century in favor of “entire”, but which Guinness still practices today). Alas, I have no suitable aged beers in my cellar with which to blend this batch, so I’ll just have to find a way to choke it down unblended …

So then: 85% pale malt, 10% amber malt, and 5% black malt, target OG of 1.060, single infusion mash in the mid 150s F for body. A single big bittering charge of low-alpha hops to fiftysomething IBUs, fermentation with Wyeast’s Irish Ale strain … let’s get jiggy.

Sraid Dhasain Single Stout Porter
OG 1.060
5 gallons, all grain

Grist:
9 lbs Warminster Maris Otter
1 lbs Amber malt
10 oz Black patent malt

Mash:
154 F for 75 minutes
168 F for 10 minutes

Boil:
4.5 oz East Kent Goldings (whole) 3% aa @ 60”

Fermentation:
Chill, O2, and pitch Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale from a 2000 mL stir-plated starter. Primary at 65F. Inhale the offgas from the airlock (you know you want to): warm and toasty, with a strong roast component and a surprising level of herbal hop.

Rack to secondary after 12 days, crash cool and keg after 7 days (FG 1.016), carbonate to a low level (I did about 1 vol. of CO2), condition for about a week and then get on it. There you go.

Partial mash version:
Amber malt requires a mash, so my fellow stovetop extract brewers (and I still do stovetop extract batches) can grab a big mesh bag and a strainer and also get jiggy:

5 gallons, partial boil*

Grist:
2.5 lbs Warminster Maris Otter
1 lbs Amber malt
10 oz Black patent malt

Mash:
154 F for 75 minutes
168 F for 10 minutes

Boil:
6 lbs Northern Brewer Gold malt syrup
6 oz Goldings (whole) 3%aa @ 60”

* – if you do a full-volume boil, scale the hop addition back to 4.5 oz as for the all-grain version

Slainte!

Further reading and watching:
www.northernbrewer.com/brewingtv – Episode 55 includes the brew day and tasting notes
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-many-stouts.html
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2007/11/irish-porter-london-porter.html

This new, mild kind of winter seems to have slightly betrayed the craft brewers who stocked their reserves with burly winter ales. A fortified malty beer seems overkill when one’s winter coat is merely a cardigan. The holiday celebration ales that were meant to provide adequate grit to ride a bicycle head on into Alberta Clipper winds make for an aloof ride down streets that are barely dusted with road sand. Flexible times for mother nature call for flexible definitions of winter ales; and I’ve got a couple recipes inspired by smooth, dark session ales to suit the season.

The first is a modest brown ale inspired by a porter from Epic Brewing, Salt Lake City’s only brewery devoted to higher gravity bottled beers. The chocolate malt addition is the star in this beer, not at all distracted by the light & neutral hop character. A dark ale with a perfectly smooth finish, ready for thirst quenching gulping. A great beer to fill a stein & while away the belated task of raking the leaves you thought would be hidden under snowfall by now.
8 lbs. 2 oz. English Maris Otter
1 lb. English Pale Chocolate
6 oz. English Roasted Barley
4 oz. Briess Carapils
Mash @ 150 degrees

EXTRACT OPTION: Replace the Maris Otter with 5 lbs. of Muntons Light DME & steep the other grains as weighed out.

0.3 oz. Nugget @ 60 min.
1 oz. Tettnang @ 15 min.
2 liter starter of White Labs WP051 California V fermented at 67 degrees for 2 weeks, keg conditioned for 2 weeks thereafter.
OG. 1.049
FG. 1.008

A smoked ale had been on my honey-do list for over two years, but it wasn’t until I sat down at Minneapolis’ only gastropub/skee ball emporium that I got hoisted to the point of inspiration to do so. Furthermore Beer’s Three Feet Deep is a rare instance where peated malt character didn’t totally turn me off. Though I suspect it was a mouth balancing act with a nice bacon burger that pushed my taste buds over the edge of acceptance. I had to push aside my ample supply of Chinook hops to accommodate some minty/spicy German Perle, and excavate last year’s Hallertau Mittelfruh in a frosty corner of the freezer. This recipe utilizes the vastly underused Briess Cherrywood Smoked Malt for a very graceful smoke flavor that’s not at all overpowering, and hardly considered dominant.
8 lbs. Rahr 2-Row
2 lbs. Briess Cherrywood Smoked Malt
6 oz. Briess Carapils
4 oz. English Dark Crystal
4 oz. English Chocolate
Mash at 150 degrees

EXTRACT OPTION: Replace the Rahr 2-row with 6 lbs. of NB Gold malt extract syrup. Steep the other grains as weighed, but reduce the Cherrywood Smoked Malt to 12 oz.

1 oz. Perle @60 min.
0.5 oz. Hallertau Mittelfruh @30 min.
OG. 1.052
FG. 1.006
2 liter starter Wyeast 1332 Northwest Ale, ferment 2 weeks primary, 2 weeks secondary.

The above box of hops was discovered in an antiques shop by Northern Brewer designer Garth. A quick search online uncovers a single reference to the company; a description of the box from a museum website with an estimated date of 1935. It still contains the original hops, now dry and brown with age. The instructions on the side are a bit odd:

MAKE YOUR OWN YEAST

DRY HOP YEAST – Boil 1 oz. in 3 pints of water 20 minutes, strain it into a jar and stir in 1 teacupful of flour, 1 tablespoonful of brown sugar and 1 teaspoonful of salt. When cooled to blood heat, add 1 gill yeast. After standing 4 to 5 hours, put away for use in jugs with corks tied down.

This appears to be some type of veiled beer recipe of the type that was common during prohibition. Hey, it’s not intended to get you beer! It’s just for yeast harvesting purposes. Why you’d need hops to make your own yeast, and why a recipe for yeast includes yeast as an ingredient, are questions best left unanswered.

But the presence of 75-year-old-hops leads me to think of one thing: lambic. It is well known that lambic brewers use aged hops in their brews, in order to get the some of the antibacterial properties with little of the bitterness or flavor usually associated with hops. Though I’d doubt that many would use hops this old, making a beer from 70-year-old ingredients is quite alluring. All I’d have to do is bulk age it for 30 years, and voila! A Centurian Lambic!

First tasting: damn good! Homegrown hops in a bowl for ambiance.

In Brewing TV epsiode 54: Jake’s got a Brand New Bag, I walked viewers through my 4th brew in a bag to date.  The brew day went smooth, and I finally hit my target OG.  The recipe was simple; a sessionable CDA, nothing crazy.  Below is the recipe. Cheers!

For 3 gallon batch @ OG – 1.060

Put five gallons water into 8-gallon kettle
Strike water to 160F.
Line inside of kettle with mesh/straining bag.
Pour in all grains (grist below). Stir well, bust up any clumps,
Get water temp to 152-154F with heat or a bit of cool water (if needed).
Mash at that temp. for 75 min. Goose heat as needed.

Grist Bill
5.25 lbs American 2-Row
0.5 lb Carafa III
1.25 lbs Medium Crystal

After that 75 min has passed, take soaked grain bag out and drain above kettle in strainer (preferable) or colander until liquid has mostly been drained. Remove strainer/bag.

Jake’s pre-boil gravity at this point was: 1.052 (13BRIX)

Bring to a boil. Add hops as scheduled.
60 min  - .5 oz.  blend of Mt. Ranier, Palisade and Centennial pellets
10 min –  1 oz.  blend of Mt. Ranier, Palisade and Centennial pellets
5  min – 1.5 oz  blend of Mt. Ranier, Palisade and Centennial pellets

Finish boil. Cool wort to pitching temp.
Pitch yeast – Safale US05

And you just made all-grain beer. Boom.

All for brew, brew for all – Jake

The Madagascar vanilla beans are a bit more expensive, and they provide some deep and dark complexity – think of flavors like leather or tobacco, combined with a rich and lingering vanilla aroma. In contrast the Tahitian beans have more of the stereotypical vanilla flavor to them, with bright and fruity notes. Together they provide a good deal of intensity, but also some unique undertones that keep their contribution from being one-dimensional. The Urca recipe calls for five vanilla beans in the secondary, two of the Madagascar and three of the Tahitian. This is quite a lot of vanilla, considering that a lot of homebrew recipes only call for two or three. The vanilla is definitely up front in the final product, especially in the aroma, but it doesn’t overpower the beer. Let’s take a look at the recipe to see what backs it up:

Partial Mash
1 lb English Maris Otter
0.875 lbs English Medium Crystal
0.75 lbs Flaked Barley
0.5 lbs English Chocolate Malt
0.5 lbs Belgian Aromatic Malt
0.5 lbs Belgian Special B
0.25 lbs English Black Malt
Mash at 156 degrees

3.15 lbs Gold Malt Syrup added at 15 minutes remaining
2 lbs Munton’s Light Dry Malt Extract added at 15 minutes remaining

3 oz Willamette Hops (45 min)

All-Grain
OG 1.061
4.25 lbs English Maris Otter
4.25 lbs Rahr 2-row Pale
0.875 English Medium Crystal
0.75 lbs Flaked Barley
0.5 lbs English Chocolate Malt
0.5 lbs Belgian Aromatic Malt
0.5 lbs Belgian Special B
0.25 lbs English Black Malt
Mash at 156 degrees

2.75 oz Willamette (30 min)

30.4 IBU

The first thing I’m noticing here is the high amount of dextrins – there is over a pound of crystal malt between the Medium Crystal and the Special B, and the mash temp is quite high at 156. So the body will be very full, and it may be on the sweeter side. In addition, the flaked barley is amazing at providing a very full, silky, and smooth body (think Guinness). The roasted grains are on the low side for a porter of this strength. A lot of porters will have at least a lb of roasted grains, but this one has only .75 lb, and most of that is Chocolate malt, which tends to be more smooth than Black Malt or Roasted Barley. And finally, the Aromatic Malt is great at providing a little complexity to a malt bill. The hops contribute about 30.4 IBUs, which is pretty low, especially given the high starting gravity, so they pretty much stay out of the way while providing a little balance and maybe a bit of flavor. So all together, this reads like a very smooth, very full tasting porter with moderate to low roasted character for the style.

Adding the vanilla beans directly to the secondary has a similar effect to dry-hopping; you get a lot of aroma without much bitterness (in this case it would likely be astringency). That aroma is very clear in the final beer, and it really brings the vanilla to the front of the flavor. Taking a sip of this beer, I get a rich vanilla flavor first, followed by a very full body, reminiscent of a mousse or meringue, and then some subdued roasted grain in the finish. This beer would go great with a dessert like molasses cookies.

What other beers would work with vanilla? Well, a couple of popular homebrewer recipes use vanilla in a bourbon porter. Bourbon definitely has vanilla tones at times, usually as a result of the oak it is aged in, and the grainy intensity of it can pair well with vanilla. Try our Bourbon Barrel Porter Kit with a couple of vanilla beans added along with the oak and bourbon. Oak is well known for contributing vanilla flavors due to the compound vanillin, which has an unmistakable vanilla taste. Any beer that uses oak can have this flavor enhanced by adding real vanilla, so beers like Imperial Stout are a good match as well. Vanilla is used all over the place in baking, though, so I wonder if it wouldn’t work well in other beers besides porters, stouts, and brown ales. Adding just one vanilla bean to a cream ale would be a great experiment. After all, vanilla is most often used in food to add complexity rather than dominate the flavor. A single or even half a bean could add something intangible to a noble hop aroma, for example.

Let us know if you’ve got a good recipe or a good idea for using vanilla! Cheers!

So I thought to myself. I wonder how long it would take homebrew to freeze — or least get seriously slushy — on a day like this. Here’s what I found out.

Cheers!
Chip Walton
NB/BTV Video Project Manager

Everyone knows brewing beer is fun. But brewing beer with the purpose of supporting a non-profit service community is even more fun. And when that community enthusiastically is involved and it generates excitement, the project kind of takes off on its own.

We are brewing beer at a Norbertine abbey in Paoli, Pennsylvania. Daylesford Abbey.  After a discussion about the Abbey, how difficult it is in this economy to support non-profit communities and a random thought, “hey, they should brew beer. You know abbey beer.” And so an idea was born.

The Daylesford Abbey sits on almost 130 acres of rolling fields and forests and the Norbertines have a tradition over 800 years old of brewing beer in Europe. Abbot Richard Antonucci had just returned from the Prague, Czech Republic abbey when we sat down at lunch and pitched the idea…he immediately got it. From there we wrote a plan, contacted a trusted partner in Norther Brewer, and we were on our way.

The abbey has a industrial kitchen that can deliver between 100 and 120 meals at a time. We asked for a small portion of it for 6 hours at time to boil water, mash some grain, use the sinks, etc. They also have a basement which is vast that we ferment in and store beer.

We are eager to see where this goes, but the plan is to use the beer as a platform for local abbey awareness and eventually…more. Stay tuned for another update. We are on to something very special here and with many thanks to Northern Brewer.

Eric Snyder

This abstract from the National Institute for Biotechnology Information represents one of the few scientific confirmations of the issue, and this page has a record of one homebrewer’s experience (their dog was fortunately saved).

Keep your dogs safe!