Cold Weather Brewing

[newguy]

I thought that you warm weather brewers may find my winter brewing interesting, so I'm going to be documenting my brew day. I mash in my basement, then haul the wort outside to boil & chill, then I haul it back into the house.

8:48 am. Primed my HERMS system with water. Outside temp: -16C. +20C inside.

 

[matti]

vodka weather more likely or Crown Royal whiskey weather.
Any chance you could send us a case of CR?

 

[newguy]

9:08 am Time to go outside and get the hoses for my CFC so that they'll be thawed out when I need them.



This is the sidewalk to the backyard. The kettle will be set up beside the back door later on.



These are the garden hoses I use for my CFC, and they're frozen solid since they're in my unheated garage. Normally the garage is much cleaner, but I've been building kitchen cabinets for my mother in law.



The hoses in their new home for the next several hours, our jacuzzi tub in the basement. In a little while they'll be nicely thawed but for now they're stiffer than a 14 year old who just discovered his dad's stash of playboys.



9:12 am The water in the lauter tun has just reached the set temperature, so it's time to pump it over into the mash tun.

9:21 am Lauter tun is now empty, it's time to start the recirculation. The mash temperature is now sitting at 142F, and my set temperature (what I want it to be for the mash) is 153F. I guess I should mention I'm brewing a Vienna. 80% special pale malt (a little darker than the ordinary pale 2 row) with 20% munich malt.

 

[newguy]

9:37 am The system hit the target mash temperature of 153F (actually overshot 1F), and now it will hold it indefinitely. I'll use its built-in timer to mash for an hour.

 

[newguy]

9:42 am Time to feed the starter. Wyeast 2308 Munich lager getting a go-round from my stir plate. This is the plate's inaugural run. I pressure cook premade starters in pint sealers. To feed a starter, I just dunk a jar in sanitiser for a while, then pry off the lid and dump it in. Outside temperature has actually fallen to -17C now.

 

[newguy]

10:42 am The hour long mash @ 153F is done, so it's time to ramp up the temperature to 167F for mashout. I'll soon fill the lauter tun with water to bring up to 167F for the sparge addition. Outside temperature is still -17C, with the 19 km/h wind it feels like -26C.

 

[newguy]

11:06 am The lauter tun has been filled with the sparge addition and the controller is now heating it up to 167F

11:07 am Mash temperature has reached 167F and recirculation has been halted. Time to drain the mash tun into the kettle. I drained & recirculated 2l before the runoff cleared up.

11:11 am Runoff into kettle has begun.

 

[newguy]

11:26 am This is the burner and stand, set up and ready to go. You'll notice the water tap beside the stand - I'll need that later for the CFC. The piece of OSB (oriented strand board) on the ground is there to help protect the glass carboys from rocks, which will break them, and from thermal shock (warm carboy + snow = )

The 2x4 in the picture will be used to prop up the kettle when it is almost drained.

 

[newguy]

11:52 am The mash tun has been drained into the kettle and the sparge water has been heated to 167F in the lauter tun. Now I'm pumping the sparge water into the mash tun. Once the water has been transferred, I'm going to recirculate until the mash comes up to 167F again before stopping the system and draining the mash tun once again. This is a modified batch sparge procedure. It works well with a HERMS, and my efficiency is very good using it: 85%.

12:02 pm The lauter tun is empty and the temperature of the mash tun has settled @ 158F. Recirculation has begun - the unit will bring the temperature of the mash back up to 167F before I stop the system & drain again.

 

[newguy]

12:17 pm Monsters fed. Cheese omelettes, their favourite. Outside temperature up to -16C now - positively balmy!

12:29 pm Mash hit 167F again; recirculation halted and second drain started. Runoff was clear so didn't have to manually recirculate any wort.

 

[newguy]

12:34 pm The starter is going to beat hell - a good thing.



12:42 pm The carboys each have 2l of star san which I just finished shaking/swirling for a minute each. They'll now be allowed to settle for a couple of hours before I drain them and pour in the starter. The stairs to the back door can be seen in the background. I'm doing the second drain into the smaller pot behind the kettle because there is no way that I'd be able to carry a full 10 gallons up the stairs and onto the burner.

 

[newguy]

12:55 pm Second drain is complete.



12:59 pm Kettle is full, and burner is lit. Preboil gravity is 10 brix, 1.041. The kettle should reach a full rolling boil in about 40 minutes. The steam in the picture is actually from the dryer vent on the left. I'm also doing laundry today.



1:04 pm Spent grains dumped in the backyard. Wild jackrabbits feast on this stuff, and are occasionally chased by wild coyotes who venture into the city. Yes, we've had both in the yard before.

1:15 pm Cleaning of the system begins. This consists of recirculating clean water through everything twice (recirc & dump, recirc & dump).

 

[newguy]

1:35 pm It boiled a little faster than I anticipated and boiled over a little. Oh well. This will be a 90 minute boil, lid off. This is 1.4 oz of Target (aa = 10%) for 22 IBU. I know it's not really to style, but it's the bittering addition and I want to use up these hops. The temperature is still -16C. The coldest I've ever brewed in is about -30C with one hell of a howling wind. Even under those conditions, my 170,000 btu king cooker propane burner didn't have any problems keeping the wort boiling.



One more picture of the rolling boil. I caught it mid-roll in this picture, but believe me when I say that it produces geyser-like eruptions even in winter.

 

[newguy]

2:25 pm Time to start sanitising my CFC. I fill a pot with water and put the works on the stove to boil. It takes about 30 minutes to reach a full boil, and I boil it for a further 10 minutes. Everything is timed to be ready when the boil is complete, which will be 3:05 pm.



2:30 pm The starter has been removed from the stir plate and the yeast has settled out. Like I mentioned earlier, this is my first time using a stir plate and this is the most yeast slurry I've ever had.



2:35 pm The starter has been split evenly between the 2 carboys, which have been drained of sanitiser. A little foam always remains, but it doesn't hurt the beer at all. I pitch the entire starter (liquid too), not just the slurry. It isn't hopped, so the flavour impact on the batch is minimal. The outside temperature has creeped up to -15C. Lucky me!

 

[bonj]

Thanks for the brewday pics. :super: Is that actually an immersion chiller?

Even -15C is scary to me... :lol: It's 8:10 in the morning and the air-conditioner's been cooling for the last hour. Current temp outside is about 25C, but with the sun beating down on the windows... it heats the house up quite a bit.

 

[newguy]

3:05 pm Flameout. I just added 2oz of German Tettnang pellets (aa = 2.3%), and am now gently whirlpooling the wort. OG is 1.053 (12.8 brix). I was shooting for 1.050. I'd rather miss gravities on the high side, so this is good. This also means that my efficiency is a bit higher than 85%.



3:17 pm Everything is hooked up and ready to go. I place the kettle right next to the house's water tap to lessen the risk of the hose freezing up.



A closer look at the tap on my kettle and the short loop of vinyl tubing connecting it to the CFC.



3:24 pm One carboy filled already. This is going a bit faster than normal.



3:37 pm Everything is done. Notice I disconnected the hoses immediately. I don't want them to freeze up and burst the water pipe leading to my tap.

 

[newguy]

4:01 pm This is the trub & hops in the bottom of the kettle. I know, they're not leaf hops. So sue me. I prefer pellets - they take up less room in my freezer and they don't plug up my kettle's tap. I also knocked down the system and put everything away at this time. It makes for some cold fingers - especially when they're wet and freeze to the metal parts - but it's quick, easy, and I don't have to worry about cleaning spills outside.



4:12 pm The jacuzzi doubles as a sink for washing the kettle. I prefer the warm months because I just wash everything outside with a hose. Much easier that way.



4:21 pm Each carboy gets a 30 second shot of pure oxygen. My measurements tell me I chilled the wort to 50F - right where I wanted. I'm trying something new with this batch. I've tasted lagers that friends have made at room temperature and I couldn't tell that they were fermented warm. My carboys rarely get above 62F down on the basement floor where I keep them, so I'm doing this lager that way. It will be an interesting experiment.



4:30 pm That's all folks! I hope you enjoyed looking over my shoulder all day. In 90 minutes I'm going to listen to the brewing network live podcast for the first time. I've heard many good things about it but haven't bothered with it yet. Today is different. Our club's executive (in truth, it was really just 3 of us) brewed an imperial IPA using my system and we bottled some of it to give away to sponsors. One of those sponsors is Jamil Zainasheff because he gave us an autographed copy of his book that we're going to give away as a prize at our upcoming competition. Apparently they're broadcasting their discussion of it tonight, and of course I'm dying to hear what they have to say about it.

 

[Steve]

Thanks for the run through Newguy. Always good to see how other brewers brew. I would call yours extreme brewing. -16 Jeezus! I thought it was cold under my carport. Dont like the sound of your fingers sticking and freezing to the kettles if you clean outside! You're one dedicated brewer!
Cheers
Steve

 

[newguy]

Thanks for the brewday pics. :super: Is that actually an immersion chiller?

Even -15C is scary to me... :lol: It's 8:10 in the morning and the air-conditioner's been cooling for the last hour. Current temp outside is about 25C, but with the sun beating down on the windows... it heats the house up quite a bit.

It's a CFC. -15C here is nice, as it is often -30C. My worst brew day was just after I moved to BC. Our house had a carport (basically an attached garage that was never completely walled in). I brewed in the garage by the light of one crappy 60W bulb, shivering my ass off in -5C weather, and getting soaked by every fitting on my CFC (they were all leaking). Within a week I started to turn the carport into a proper garage. I never froze my butt off again.

 

[bugwan]

OSB (oriented strand board)

That's the last time I call it particle board - love the OSB idea, never heard that before...!

Great to see pics on the site, there aren't enough around these days. That's quite a challenge beating off -16 degrees, but good to know the burner can handle it. I've got a similar one and has no trouble in our Winters (I think about 6 degrees was my coldest day!).

Can you tell us a bit more about the "Brew Buddy" hardware you have controlling your HERMS? It looks like a commercial piece of kit, manufactured for brewers, rather than converted from another application.

Cheers mate
Dave.