Marijuana Dubbel Trubbel

I came into some Blue Dream trimmings for cooking and wanted to put it in a beer. Wasn't sure how to do that, but with a little Google-ing I was able to find some interesting anecdote. Here I will add mine to the internet for your pleasure and learning.

For starters, I needed to modify my Dubbel Trubbel recipe for partial mash, since I am now in Colorado and the mash tun is not. Quirky's Homebrew was able to give me a lot of insight and assistance with building and modifying my recipe.

Here are all the ingredients:

• 6.6 lbs of liquid light malt extract
• 1 lb dry wheat malt extract
• 1 lb clear candi sugar
• 1 oz Northern Brewer hops (55 min)
• 1 oz Hallertau hops (10 min)

 
Of course, minus the grains, which were:

• 0.8 lbs Belgian CaraMunich 
• 0.8 lbs Belgian CaraVienne
• 0.3 lbs Belgian Biscuit 
• 0.3 lbs Belgian Aromatic kiln.

 There is one ingredient above that is not in that list:
14 grams of Blue Dream trimmings for cooking.

Here is a better photo of it. It was given to me for the express purpose of making beer with, and was already partially used for brownies. After a bunch of research, I stuck to a reddit post for my basis. 17 grams of this kind of stuff for 50 bottles will be about 50mg THC per bottle, and I want to probably have a bit less. On top of that, this is trimmings, so will probably be a little less potent. I decided to make sure that it is  decarboxylated by adding to the boil, rather than create a tincture. I am not quite a confident enough chemist to feel comfortable with alcohol fumes around the kitchen. Also, I didn't want to boil off any of the valuables in the special ingredient, so I didn't want to add to the boil too early. I ended up putting it with the last hop addition.

I used a Belgian high gravity trappist yeast since I am expecting to have about 7.3%ABV. I also wanted to make sure there is enough nutrients for those crazy yeasties so I bought the yeast nutrient too. Pretty cheap, and has never done me wrong. I usually feel uncomfortable without that when not doing all grain, but I haven't had a problem without it. 

Ok, so on to the brewing! I pulled out my old brew kit that went to storage when I left Texas! It has not gotten the love it needed over the last 3 and a half years of me living in Australia, so I am happy to have used it a second time in 2018 (first was the GeoStout which I will introduce in future). The burner had been all rusted and was making a black film of crud all over everything, so I bought a new Bayou Classic element and installed it with only a few problems. It now finally works after taking it apart a few times.

I started with 6.5 gallons of water and warmed it for mashing. The 'grain tea' was 50 minutes starting at 160F and was down to 150F at the end. I sparged with 2 litres from the electric kettle which was about 190F, then added the dry and liquid malt extracts and the candi sugar. Once it was boiling, I pitched the Northern Brewer hops and prepared the marijuana. I probably should have ground it up, but in the end I don't think it matters much. I was more worried about clogging my keggle than not getting all the THC potency. It looked (and felt) kind of silly to add the marijuana trimmings and the hop pellets together before the addition, but I felt like it's always easier and less likely to spill if I make all simultaneous additions at the same time. After 45 minutes, I added both the marijuana and the Hallertau hops, as well as the Whirlfloc.

After 10 minutes, I cut the flame, and started the chilling. My counterflow had been left with some water in it and froze (damn Colorado weather!), bursting the copper piping. It has since been replaced with a immersion coil chiller, which works fine. It takes about 10 minutes to go from 200F to 65F as long as the water is cold and you KEEP STIRRING CONSTANTLY! This is one thing I, as well as many other brewers, tend to forget. After chilling, I transferred to the fermenter, and pitched. OG was a comfortable 1.065 which is a bit lower than I expected but reasonable.

After clean-up I sampled the fluid siphoned off for measuring gravity, about 100ml. It has a light marijuana smell and almost no marijuana taste. Just good ol' Dubbel Trubbel! I waited the requisite 20-30 minutes and, being the lightweight I am, noticed a slight buzz. I think this will be a tasty beer with not-too-strong THC high following.

Tasting notes to come!

One last Canada brew - Scottish 80 shilling!

I thought I was going to leave Canada a bit earlier, but ended up having one more go before I head out in a few hours! We dropped by The Vineyard in Calgary to pick up one more set of ingredients, and this time it was mostly +Mark Girard doing the recipe-ing. He developed a version of a nice Scottish 80 Shilling  and we did another go with his new and improved mash tun! This time, much more success. The grains fit much better in the 5gallon mash tun, the braided steel tubing fits better with the magic Mark fix, and the boil was much nicer with a hop bag to remove some of the sludge that they have been getting in their fermenters. 

I was really glad to be involved in three wonderful Hannah & Mark Brewing Co. brews while up here, and I look forward to many more from them in the coming months. Since I hope to be back and forth for the next year (plus) I can't wait to taste more of their creativity! 

Until I get the chance to brew again, enjoy these photos and some rambles on the brewing life in the US.

All fifty states can homebrew legally now! Alabama finally voted it in. Also, CraftBeer.com released a great image of the US with some of the craft breweries making up the map for Craft Beer Week. I want one printed up!  And lastly, the Texas house approved the new law for breweries distributing! We are one step closer to letting me bring my growlers into the breweries and get them filled up. FINALLY!!! 

End of Canada, and the bottling of an amazing RIS

It is about time to leave Canada, and also time to bottle the RIS so that it will be ready when I come back in July for the Calgary Stampede.  I was really happy with this batch because the sweetness was amazing, the alcohol was not overbearing, and the anise was powerful. However, we shall see as carbonation and age take advantage of this little beauty.  More taste notes will be added when I return...

We also tried to fix the mash tun, and I think I did that by forcing the small plastic inner hosing (inside the braided steel) over the barb.  I would have preferred a smaller barb or a larger hose/braided steel, but neither was really available at the local Home Depot in Calgary. However, it works!!!

Now I will head to some new places and start brewing with people in those locations. But in all honesty, I won't be there long enough to really enjoy them.  Keep reading over the next two months as I go to Colorado, the UK, Romania and more to start looking into various things about homebrewers, local bars, and other things I am interested in during a big trip!

For now, a Stegosaurus in a top hat says:

 __________________________
< Stay calm and make beer! >
 --------------------------
\                          .       .
 \                        / `.   .' " 
  \               .---.  <    > <    >  .---.
   \              |    \  \ - ~ ~ - /  /    |
      _____          ..-~             ~-..-~
     |     |   \~~~\.'                    `./~~~/
    ---------   \__/                        \__/
   .'  O    \     /               /       \  " 
  (_____,    `._.'               |         }  \/~~~/
   `----.          /       }     |        /    \__/
         `-.      |       /      |       /      `. ,~~|
             ~-.__|      /_ - ~ ^|      /- _      `..-'   
                  |     /        |     /     ~-.     `-. _  _  _
                  |_____|        |_____|         ~ - . _ _ _ _ _>

UPDATE:  5/14/2013 +Mark Girard  has made the label, and I love it! Do you???

Brewing Russian Imperial Stout with Anise & bottling Hair of the Dog IPA

Well Hello again! It hasn't been but a few days since the last update, but we up here in Calgary couldn't help but bust out the new mash tun yesterday! First we had to fix the tun, so it wouldn't leak anymore.  It cost a simple O-ring from Home Depot which I shoved into the area between the two walls of the cooler in the hole that was pre-drilled. Then I attached the hosing and the braided steel and voila! We were ready to rumble. You can see the new attachments I added on the pictures on either side of this paragraph.  I thought we would have a nice, easy brew day with the only problem being the fresh snow and the -8°C weather. It actually turned out to be a good thing, considering we needed the snow for chilling!

The recipe for the Russian Imperial Stout was slightly modified from my old Imperial Overlord Stout from last year; we used Millennium hops instead of Warrior, and added 1oz of anise seed (from our trip to Germany) in the last hop addition. Unfortunately, this post isn't as simple as hoped, because we had a few problems.  First, we had to bottle the last brew they had made before I arrived in Canada: Hair of the Dog IPA. Aptly named, considering it was the first brew made with their new dog, Emmy, around.  Apparently there are some dog hairs included in that recipe.  Not to mention, the name is appropriate for any alcoholic beverage!  That went without problem (barring the handful of spills which are imperative to any bottling operation), and we went directly on to mashing the grains for RISw/Anise.

Now, here is where the real hairy part was (harharhar). The braided steel got kinked right at the barb going into the ball valve! In a valiant attempt to amend the situation, we accidentally popped off the end cap of the other side.  Needless to say, we ended up with a stuck mash. Luckily, we had an extra boil kettle, dumped all the grains and mash into it, attempted to fix the braided steel (to almost no avail), and ended up just sparging in any way that we could.  Fortunately I was not new to this method since I have done many brews with the BIAB method (feel free to search it or see previous posts). In the end, the mash tun worked mostly, but a new attempt at the filtering braided steel tubing will have to be made.  I guess we will try to use a larger diameter tube with the ½" silicone tubing inside, which will be directly connected to both the barb and the end cap. Also, it will probably be shorter to fit better inside the tun.

After all that hoopla, the rest was easy.  Mark downloaded a new app on his phone - BrewR - to simplify the hop additions and timing for the boil. The piles of fresh snow that were shoveled off of the deck allowed for a perfect cooling system, and the OG was a perfect 1.100.  After the big mess of the mash, we at least ended up with tasty beer.  Hannah even tasted it and said it will be amazing. And I definitely trust her on that one!

In a few weeks I will update on the fermenting transferring process of the RIS.  In the meantime, I will try to fix the mash tun. Until then,
                HAPPY BREWING!

Making a mash tun in Canada!

Well hellooooooo! It has been AGES since my last post, and for that I apologize. Not to all of you, of course, but to my sad, sorry self for being so lazy! I have been busy brewing and making new equipment, but not here.  That is all about to change!

I have been through a lot in the last several months, including the end of my job, a pan-continental drive/move, and several new beers.  Now I am in Calgary for an indefinite time to start a bit of a new life.  And what better to do in that new life than make a new mash tun for a new all-grain setup!!! Here is how I did it.

I began with some wild internet searches, which led me to start with the information from HomeBrewTalk.com and some amazing posts from FlyGuy. His DIY is here.  I discovered a few things I would like to change from his setup, but I still don't knock his.  It is great.

For starters, I had to go to the Home Depot (or sometimes L'Entrepôt de la Rénovation  :P ) here in Calgary with my bro +Mark Girard  and his fiancée +Hannah Gordon and try to get all these parts.  The cooler selection at Home Depot was... minimal. They only had a 5gal cooler so we had to deal, even though I strongly recommend a 10gal one. Damn metric system.  We then took all the parts from FlyGuy and tried to put them together in the store (Canadians are so nice! They even helped me to open all the packaging and test it out) before realizing that the removable plastic spigot on the cooler is larger than the suggested parts from FlyGuy. We were never going to get it together without leaking! I ended up refitting everything a size up.  These are the parts we ended up with:

LIST:

• 5 gallon beverage cooler (I still suggest 10 gallon)
• ½" MIP to ½" barb
• ½" ball valve, both ends FIP
• ½" x 3" nipple, MIP
• ½" O-ring 
• ½" female coupling
• ½" MIP to ½" barb 
• (The previous two parts are simply because I could not find a ½" FIP to ½" barb. Arses.)
• 12" braided steel flexible plumbing hose
• ½" brass plug 
• 2-3 steel ¾" washers
• Teflon pipe tape
• 3 steel clamps
• Some ½" high temperature silicone tubing
• about 1' of brew tubing

PS: Yes, that is snow. And yes, that is a Beatles glass. The bags near the tubing are empty; they are simply to show the part numbers that we acquired.

Here is a close up of what I did to the braided steel. I wouldn't say it is complicated, but it's not intuitive.  I used a hacksaw in the store to liberate the hose from it's valve attachments. They are leftover on the bottom right, and will be trashed. I then used a stick to push (DO NOT PULL) the plastic hosing from inside the braided steel. It is like a stabbing Chinese finger trap. Be very careful removing the hosing, and then throw it away with the valve couplings.

Inside of the braided steel, you will need to put 12" of the vinyl hosing after hacking large chunks out of it with a box cutter or similar utensil.  The vinyl is for support to keep the wet grains from crushing the braided steel, and the holes are to allow the wort to still flow. See to the right for that photo.

Finally, it was all put together, and ended up using the rubber seal from the original spigot in the cooler. It was going swimmingly, except a challenge to get the wrench on the inside to tighten everything up. We thought we were there, but discovered a slight leak. I will have to go get more O-rings tomorrow. I believe that is the major problem here. There are a few more pictures (here's one), but we will have to put it together again tomorrow and I will give a final set of photos then.

As soon as it is ready, we will make the first all-grain batch for the "Hannah & Mark Brewing Co." tomorrow. Anise Russian Imperial Stout! Slightly a take on the Stone Brewing batch of the same style. Can wait to make it work tomorrow! Only one more trip to L'Entrepôt de la Rénovation... I hope.

Jockey box... next toy?

I have been thinking about this for ages now, and with plenty of beer in bottles (Dead Ringer, El Présidente, Bière du Pére Fouettard, Dubbel Trubbel, ARyePa, and Åroner Weizen) I need kegs! Also, I have four rarely used kegs that I want to start using more. Only problem is how do I do it without a dedicated fridge or kegerator?

Solution: jockey box! I am going to invest in this soon and make an instruction kit like this guys... http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Jockey-Box-Beer-tapcooler/

Whaddya think? Anyone wanna help or have suggestions?

El Presidenté

 Yesterday was the day! I finally got around to making the White House Honey Ale that I got from Northern Brewer. It smelled amazing and is popping away despite the fact that I used dry yeast, which was something I didn't want to do, but decided if I was going to do it like the White House said, I would stick to their recipe.  If things go one way next month, we may see more White House recipes; if things go the other way we may never see White House beer again! This was, however, one of the easiest beers I have made in a long while!  For starters, the kit was all made up, the grain came pre-crushed, there was an instructions list, and hop schedule.  All I had to do was follow instructions! My setup was even a little overkill for the beer...


The process was just like the partial mash brews I used to do on the stovetop, so I filled up my keggle, brought the water to 152F, plopped in the grain sack, and mashed. Plucked it out after a small mashout of up to 170F, brought to a boil, added the Golden Liquid Malt Extract and the Breiss DME. Brought to a boil again for 15 minutes and added 1.5oz of UK Kent Golding, boiled 30 more minutes, added 1.5oz of UK Fuggle, boiled for 10, added the honey and kept a boil for 5 minutes, then killed the heat. A quick siphon through the counterflow and then pitch the (rehydrated) yeast with a touch of yeast nutrients, and voila! Not much more to it than that. And without all the grain I was left with very little cloudiness in the wort. I really have to start taking pictures of the process steps, because I have noticed that I have a lot of photos of the same stuff on here.

Northern Brewer really did charge me a little much for having the kit pre-made  but this one was for nostalgias sake. It will go to secondary and bottle before (hopefully) I head to Vegas so I can pop one open right when I come back to pore over the election results. Also, Not going to work too hard on the label, but might steal some good ones from the internet...                                          thinking of this one:





                                              Or this one, as it came:




             Thoughts?



Lastly, I bottled the Dead Ringer IPA as well, so that will be ready to open right before I leave town for a week! Tasting notes on both to come. Next week: Bière du Père Fouettard! A Holiday beer for all to fear... 

Post-brew/post-weekend followup

After starting early with the assistance of a brew-virgin, the IPA brewing was finished by 1pm on Saturday, but the heat and the hangover were a little more than I was willing to handle to brew the Presidents beer, so he'll have to wait a few days.

The Dead Ringer, which I have yet to give a proper name, was a fairly simple recipe that I was surprised to find has only one type of hops.  Makes it not too complicated but also not too complex.
   60mins - 0.75oz Cascade Style
   20mins - 1oz Cascade Style
     5mins - 2oz Cascade Style
   Dry Hop in Secondary - 1oz Cascade Style

The grain bill was equally simple with 11# Rahr 2 row and 1# Breiss Caramel 40.  I might play with that in the future to get a bit more sweetness and color, but for this time it seemed ok.  I mashed for 60 mins, at 152-155F depending on the fluctuation in temp, stirring nearly every 10 with my new mash paddle, which I love.  I'm going to have to figure out a way to keep my temp more regular during this process, as I think I am losing efficiency there. At the end I sparged with 2.5gallons of 170F water and started the boil.

It perfectly came out to 5+ gallons after the boil and the chilling process, but I did forget to add the BreakBrite again.  I hope that isn't a problem.  Hasn't seemed to be in the past. I am excited to see what it comes out like!

Now.... Just need to come up with names and art ideas ...

Here is my most recent labelling attempt. It's already on bottles and waiting to be drunk!








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Now here is why I did not brew on Sunday... There was already too much awesome in the day!

What a wonderful day to brew!

It has been a while because of various events: camping on the beach for a sunrise swim with the dolphins, a road trip to Austin for BearFeast, getting tossed about the Guadalupe River on tubes... you know, the normal. In any case, I felt like trying two new things today.  The first, I decided to attempt a Northern Brewer recipe because IPA does not tend to be my strong point.  Dead Ringer sounded good, and I have spoken to both my parents and both my brothers about it, so I decided to give it a whirl.  Quite the box arrived at my door with all that grain and my new mash paddle! The second new thing is the Presidential White House Honey Ale (extract kit) which I got all the ingredients up for... So here goes! Gonna start the mash for Dead Ringer early.  9:15am on a Saturday.

More posts to come ...

Happy fridge

I know it has been a while since I updated, but a lot has been going on.  I have spent the last 9 weeks travelling and having fun and doing some work, but mostly I have brewed less and tasted more.  My famous Hopabple has been reinstated, this time as an all grain recipe.  I strongly suggest playing with fruits in IPAs as they stay hoppy but less bitter in the aftertaste.  In any case, I also have been trying to harvest some Trappist yeasts, and since I went to Belgium and brought back a crate full of various Trappist beers (including several of each Westvleteren!) I will be working on propagating what is in those bottles. Mmmmm more Trappist beers to drink...

Back to the original reason I sat down to do this... I opened up the fridge to put in a handful of Brazilian beers that I just acquired on my most recent trip, and found a very happy fridge. It made me realize that this must be shared and I must get back to the blog!

Until next time... HAPPY FRIDGE!

ARye PA round 2

Memorial Day weekend... perfect time to grill and brew!It was quite a hectic weekend which started off with a quick trip to DeFalco's to pick up a few grain supplies (like my base 2-row malt) between work and heading to a Rammstein concert.  I was whipped afterwards but it was one of the most amazing shows I have been to!  In any case, Sunday was a brew day and I made sure I had all the ingredients ready to make a round two of my RyePA which was very tasty last time.  The grain bill is as follows:

9.5# US 2-row malt
2.5# Rye Malt
1.5# British Crystal 55L
0.5# Wheat malt, red

On Saturday I started up a starter of White Labs California Ale (WLP001) yeast in my 2000mL Erlenmeyer flask by sanitizing it and the stir bar, adding two tablespoons of Light Dry Malt Extract (DME) and about 600mL of water and heating it on the stove to make sure there were no unfriendly growings before cooling it, and then pitching the yeast and the stir bar in and letting it sit on my stir plate for 24 hours.  I originally tried to make my own stir plate out of a cigar box, computer fan, phone charger and some rare-earth magnets, but it didn't quite work right, so I bought this one from Bell Brewing a while back.  Good price and it comes all inclusive.  By Sunday afternoon those little yeasties were very happy and ready to go crazy in my beer!

This mash was a little bit different than last time because Thomas was able to help me stir it up every 10 or 15 minutes to get a good efficiency, but we also kept heating up the kettle a few degrees every time as well since we were continually losing heat.  We started at 160F and added the grains to the grain bag, which dropped the overall temperature to 157.  Every time the temp dropped to 155 or so we bumped it back up to try and keep a continual temperature high enough for a good mash.  The color was rich and the smell was great right away!  Mmmmm one of my favorite parts of brewing is the smell...

For the boil, I've been using a hop bag which I purchased in November at the homebrew shop my parents frequent in Colorado, which has really made a big difference in my setup since I almost never have to filter hops out or deal with clogs in my system now.  I just tie it to the kettle handle and let is sit about halfway down during the boil, as you can see to the right, and open it up whenever I need to add!  Sometimes this gets a little warm, and sometimes I risk dropping the bag entirely, but so far it has worked pretty well.  The hopping schedule for the RyePA was:

60 min  1oz       Cascade pellets
60 min  0.75oz  Mt Hood pellets
30 min  0.25oz  Mt Hood pellets
30 min  0.25oz  Mt Hood whole hops
5 min    0.75oz  Mt Hood whole hops
7days   1oz       Cascade whole hops (dry hop, secondary)

It was pretty hot on Sunday and we decided to roll out our awning for shade, but left the kettle in the sun to keep the heat from possibly damaging the shade, since it was pretty hot right above the kettle. Darn propane... :P

Now for the part I have been really excited to write up: the homemade counterflow cooling system! I wish I would have taken some pictures of making it, but that was long ago.  There are plenty of walkthrus on the interwebs (like this one for example), so take a look. It's not a walk in the park, mind you... we ended up using KY (non petroleum based lubricant!) to get the 25 feet of copper tubing into that damn hose.

But now that all the joints are soldered and the thing is basically sealed (the hose leaks in one spot), it works.  I have the heat tubing to connect to the spigot on the kettle and to the top of the counterflow and then set the counterflow on a double-stacked bucket so it dumps perfectly into the fermenting carboy, as you can see to the left.  Once it is hooked up, just throw the switch and let it flow! The top part you can see the heat tubing with beer flowing in and the hose with water flowing out. In about 15 minutes all the beer flows from the kettle to the fermenter and is 78 degrees, perfect for the yeast to be pitched. There's a better view of the whole setup on the right, with Thomas checking the flow out of the kettle.

After all was said and done, I had A-RyePA round 2 made and it smelled exquisite. It started popping away within about 45 minutes and we finished up a dinner consisting of chicken breasts, steaks, squash, peppers, corn and zucchini all popped on the grill during the cooling process, and finished by the time cleanup was done.  Of course, since I had just gone to Albuquerque the weekend prior for the solar eclipse I had brought back a dozen New Mexican craft beers which went well during the day and the meal.  Between those beers, old homebrews, the grilled meal and a good day of brewing, it was a perfect end to a Memorial weekend!


PS: Still looking for a label for "ARyePA" beyond the simple text that I have here.  It works, but it's not as sexy as the others. Six pack for the designer! I plan on making this on a regular basis too, so it will be reused ;)

Bottling day!

The time has come for bottling! Tonight I ended up bottling both the Spaceship Juice and the Dubbel Trubbel.  Spaceship was 49 bottles and Dubbel was 52 12oz with one 750mL because sometimes it's nice to age in large bottles.  I am still looking for a label for the Spaceship Juice (however, I have had two people say they were interested in making one!).  The label for Dubbel Trubbel (round 3) was graciously designed and drawn by Alicia* about a year ago and I continue using it. It is AMAZING if I do say so myself and I would love to keep that theme of the monks in the future, but who knows. Take a look at it below...

The setup and method I use for bottling is not that complicated, but since I have done this so many times I have a way to do it that seems to be easy enough and fast enough on my own.  For starters I have an autosiphon with a clip so that I can keep the end from sitting in the sediments, which is a great plus.  I don't know why it took me a year to buy the clip, because it changed everything.  I also have two buckets set up: one with B-Brite (caustic sanitizer) and one with Easy Clean (oxygen based no-rinse sanitizer) for cleaning my hoses, siphon, caps and bottles. The first thing I do is dissolve 3/4 cup per gallon of beer of bottling sugar and add it in, stir, and let settle. Next, I sink a dozen bottles at a time in the caustic and then rinse, until I have enough - usually about 55.  Then a quick rinse of each one in the sink and sink a dozen in the no-rinse.  At this point the caps go in a colander and stay in the no-rinse as well for a bit while I set up the siphon and hose. After removing the caps and bottles from the sanitizer, I add the next dozen bottles to the no-rinse. Fill the 12 bottles, cap, get out of the way, and then cycle through, 12 at a time until the beer is about 3 inches from the bottom of the carboy, then tilt it with a wedge. Finish filling and capping, then done!

Next time, a quick picture of labeling.  Thinking of brewing this weekend as well. I have the yeast starter for another RyePA which I might start up tonight or tomorrow... That was a good beer!


Anyone have any suggestions for recipes? Or if you want to see what I have in the closet or in the lineup, check out BeerCalculus at HopVille.  It's like BeerSmith but online and free. http://hopville.com/brewer/recipes/Rockstar1 (That's my page :)


* Alicia has a few websites as well. I am only very familiar with http://www.skyfallmanga.com/  Please take a look!