Brewing mead

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So another alcoholic beverage session coming up. This time we will be brewing mead.

Nothing fancy here. Things that you will need:

• Bucket (or fermenter), 1 is enough 2 could be good if you want to move it to the other vessel after the first fast fermentation is over.
• Water lock
• Thermometer
• Hydrometer
• Something to boil water in
• Various ladles
• Honey. 3-5 kg
• Yeast
• Kitchen scales
• Fermentation stop

I get my honey from my wife's coworker who owns a bee-farm. Mostly honey that is too old to be sold but good enough to brew on. So locally made and free, can't get much better.

Start with boiling some water. Just a little so that you can disinfect the bucket and ladles that you are going to use, don't forget the lid, thermometer and water lock.

Put water on boil. The formula that I've used before is 10 liters of water for 3 kg of honey. This time I think that I will try with a little less water but its still a lot of water. So start boiling.

Weigh and put all the honey in the fermentation bucket. Fill up with boiling water, this will kill any wild yeast and bacteria that is in the honey that can destroy your batch. Stir around to help it dissolve.

After it is dissolved, fill up the hydrometer and check the temperature. Let the test glass cool to 20 Celsius to make a correct reading. When you have the correct temperature, use the hydrometer to do a reading and write down the number as you will need that number when you bottle to calculate the alcohol percentage of the liquid.
If you can't wait for the temperature to reach the calibrated value, you can use a calculator to compensate (for example here)
My reading was 1.100 Specific Gravity at 23 Celsius. i.e. 1.101 SG after compensating for temperature.

At this point you will need to cool the bucket, I usually put on the lid with a water lock and place it outside for a couple of hours. You could I guess use a cooler from beer brewing but I think that is a little overkill for this. Usually it has cooled over night and I can set the yeast.

This time I will use wine yeast that needs to be pre-hydrated 15 minutes before usage. Just warm some water to 40 Celsius and stir in a glass. After 15 minutes, put the mix in the fermentation bucket and close the lid. Check that the water lock is sealed and put it somewhere where it can stay for a week or two.

Update some weeks later
Turns out it didn't start fermenting that fast, I probably kept it too cool the first 2 days. Moved the bucket to the living room instead and now it is bubbling. Will probably let it be for some while before testing it the first time.


One year later..
I kind of forgot about that mead keg in the cellar. Some other things on my mind this year.
Turns out that it actually tastes quite nice after 12 months in the fermentation keg. Will keep it for a while more as I do not have anything to tap it to.

Put in the fermentation stop. Clean up some bottles and tap the mead. Ready to drink once cooled

Until next time: Planning an epic bike ride with Strava and Google Earth!

Brewing wheat beer with the Coobra CB25

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So the other day we had our second session with the Coobra Craft Brewer 25. This time we tried out the full volume, 25 liters of wheat beer was on the menu.

The recipe:

3,5 kg	Pilsner (4.5 EBC)	Grain
3,5 kg	Wheat (6.0 EBC)	Grain
0,5 kg	Cara Plus 10 (10 EBC)	Grain
10 g	Hallertauer 4.8% boil 60 minutes	Hop
25 g	Saaz 4% Boil 30 minutes	Hop
15 g	Saaz 4% Boil 5 minutes	Hop
1 package	Safbrew Wheat (DCL/Fermentis #WB-06)	Yeast

Before we started, I put both the Coobra CB25 and the Coobra Sparge water heater through the cleaning procedure described in my previous post.
Once everything is cleaned up it was time to start.

This was our first attempt with wheat grain, and I decided not to taste any of the grain before we started (given that I broke my front tooth last time on a single grain.. thank god for Swedish dental care!)
As much of our beer so far has tasted similar, we also decided to try out some new hops. Especially the Saaz was a new buy. Hopefully it will turn out good.

The water pump didn't clog this time, it worked like a charm through the whole process.

When it came to boiling, we didn't have the opportunity to boil at a window (winter outside) and the CB25 is a bit too tall to fit under a standard cooking hood we ended up building some temporary steam channel out of corrugated paper. Successfully boiled away 7 liters in 1 hour, so good results.
Project for next time is to build something more lasting in steel plate, watch this spot for details ;).

Pre-fermentation tasting was promising. Just wait and see now, hopefully bottled and ready for christmas, but probably more like new years.

Cleaning the equipment

The wheat grain makes a real mess. After a normal batch it is usually no big project to clean the equipment after use, but the wheat seems to attach itself better to the surface.

Efficiency

Using beersmith we have estimated that the efficiency is more like 58-60% then the stated 75%. So next time we should probably try out with a lower efficiency number.

Until next time: Challenge yourself to do something new

Disclaimer
I bought this product myself and this is my opinion on them. I am in no way affiliated with the manufacturer of this product.

Brewing with the Coobra Craft Brewer 25

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Finally the time came to brew a batch of beer with my home grown hops. As this was a test session, we pretty much used whatever ingredients we had at hand. Also, this was an excellent time to try out my new toy. The Coobra Craft Brewer 25 and the Coobra Sparge Water Heater 16.

The recipe 

Malt

• 3.5 kg pilsner malt
• 1 kg Abbey malt
• 0.5 kg Cara 150

Hops

• 20 g Magnum (60 minutes)
• 120 g homegrown fresh hops (20 minutes)
• 60 g homegrown fresh hops (7 minutes)

Yeast

• Safale US-05

Estimated alcohol by volume: 5.5%

The process

Cleaning procedure of the Coobra Craft Brewer 25

In the manual it stated that you should run the pump with a 10 liters of water and a cleaning substance for 5 minutes, followed by running it 10 liters pure water for 5 minutes * 2.

The cleaning substance we decided to use was vinegar, roughly 3 table spoons in the 10 liters.

We decided to go with vinegar as it is OK even if there would be some rest products left after the 2 water runs. I.e. it is safe.

Cleaning procedure of the Coobra Sparge Water Heater 16

As stated in the manual, we filled the heater up with water and boiled it up and then discarded that water through the ball valve.

Mashing

Time for the mashing process. We filled the Coobra Craft Brewer 25 with the water amount we planned to use. (I actually forgot to write down the water amounts)

Setting the initial temperature was no problem on the control unit, and popping the watts up to 2500 to get the water heated in minutes.

After the water reached the given temperature 73º C , we set down the watts to 700 and lowered the temperature to 66º C.

We threw in the malt and stirred it around a little so that it got all soaked.

Time to start the pump.

The spreader was a nice touch, spreading the pumped water over the malt bed

The Coobra CB 25 pump in action

This was nice, the pump pumped for 48 of the 50 minutes, the after that it clogged up and I had to shut it down and be cleaned. When reading the manual we found out that the bazooka filter in the brewer sometimes can let through small bits of the malt and when it happens, you just open the pump and rinse with clean water and the pump is in action again.

Halfway through we started the Coobra Sparge Water Heater 16. When it indicated the correct temperature (81º C) it went from heating to keeping warm mode. After a test with a manual temperature check, we noticed that the heater was off by 10 degrees celcius. So we set the thermostate to 91 and after some minutes it was OK.

Sparging

After the timer completed it was time to start sparging. Ideally we would have used the pump bit as it was out of order we ended up using a bucket. But it was a real improvement to heat all the water to the correct temperature at once.

During the sparging we started to lift up the mash bed. For sake of simplicity it had steps so that you can lift it up little by little and leave it there to drop.
It seems that you can do it all in place with this method, but we decided to move the mash temporary to an fermenter for 2 reasons.

• We had to move the brewer from the kitchen
• Gives us a better view of how many liters we are dealing with

Boiling

Total volume at the start of boiling was 22 liters.

We set the started the Coobra Craft Brewer 25 again and just set the power to 2500 watts and it started to heat the water until it started to boil.
We threw in the first sock filled with hops and secured it to the brewer with a clothespin. After 40 minutes we added the second sock and with 7 minutes left we threw in the last one.
We tried to place the cooling spiral into the boiler for the last 10 minutes to let it boil to clean it. But it was really problematic with the socks in place and the silicon tubing to the spiral touched the brewer (that was hot) etc, so I don't think we will do that the next time.

After one hour, we had boiled 3.5 liters of water and were down at 18.5. This was good by our calculations.

Starting the cooling water in the spiral the the excess heat was removed in 10-15 minutes or so, quite OK time.

Tapping it all into the fermenter through a juice filter to get out eventual fragments of malt.
We also tapped a little to a tasting glass and to the test tube for the gravity check.

We were really impressed with the round taste at this point. Really has potential to become something nice. Gravity before fermentation was: 1.055.

Overall impressions

Before, we have used a friends plastic brewer modified with heat control. The Coobra CB25 was a real boost. Hopefully the water pump works a little better next time, too bad it got stuck at the end of the cycle.
Overall: Would buy again

Update July 2, 2018
We have been brewing with the Cobra CB25 during a number of sessions now.
Things we've found out:

• Add extra boil time. Our recipes said 60 minute boil, when we started with a 15 minute pre-boil with no hops, we hit the mark. I.e. recipe for 6.2% but we always got 5.4%... with pre-boil, we get the 6.2%
• Service the water pump. It has stopped twice for us. When it gets warm, a little plastic bit inside of it can move out of place. Open the pump, make sure the plastic part is at an OK length to be able to rotate in an controlled fashion. The length is adjustable, design flaw or feature? Who knows : )
• Would still buy, the amount of top class beer that this thing outputs is amazing. All my friends and neighbors love it.

Next time: Brewing wheat beer with the CB25

Disclaimer
I bought this product myself and this is my opinion on them. I am in no way affiliated with the manufacturer of this product.

The Alice Themed Wedding

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So a month ago me and my better half got hitched. She said yes already back in 2009 but we kinda pushed the event in front of us for some years for various reasons. But now in January this year, when I was hospitalized for pulmonary embolism, we decided to get it done.

Invitations

The save the date cards my wife drew by hand. The actual invitations we ended buying and adding some extra touches by hand. This took a lot of time but was a fun part of the preparations.

Wedding website

We ended up using theknot.com for our wedding website. The actual invitations only included the link to the site and the password. All relevant information was put on the wedding website.

Theme

Whenever we've talked about the wedding during the years, we have always ended up wanting to have a theme and the theme has pretty much been Alice in Wonderland from day one.
Next question was. Which Alice? After a lot of pondering we decided on the old Disney version.
We made clear in the invitation that it was not a masquerade, but theme based details and accessories would be great!
We ended up buying 60 cat and bunny ears that people could wear, and everyone did!

Locations

For the ceremony, we decided on a local landmark bridge. Talked with the owner and got a yes of course!
For the party, we asked the brides sister if we could use their barn. And the answer was yes as well. They already had a bar and party area on the upper floor but we needed more room for the dinner and toilets etc. So we ended up building those during the spring and summer. Took more time then we anticipated and got a little stressful at the end, but damn, the best decision....

Rings. 

We went to the jewelry shop (the same that we got our engagement rings from) and decided on a pair of rose/white gold rings. No diamonds as she didn't want any.

Guests. 

52 guests decided to attend and that perfectly matched a deck of cards. So the place cards were just 2 decks of cards. One in the envelope and one at the place. I think we invited 64 from the start but as expected some were not able to attend.
We specified that there was a lot of time for families to find baby-sitters. Only the closest families kids were invited as well as some toddlers. So in the end 11 of the 52 were minors.

Party program

We did this ourselves as well. We ended up buying a laser printer and printing in black and white and adding extra color touches by hand. We colorized average of 7 programs per night, took 2 hours per night. So make sure you plan for the time if you decide on doing things by hand. It is a lot of work but gives in the end a personal touch to the party.

Drinks. 

Me and a friend brewed been in the spring, 26 bottles of IPA and 24 bottles of bitter. Together with home made mead and apple cider there was a variety to chose from for the dinner.
2 weeks before the party we went to Systembolaget (the Swedish alcohol monopoly) and ordered all other alcoholic beverages for the dinner and party.

• 4x4x24 33cl bottles of beer. Different brands, mostly lager..
• 2x4x24 33cl bottles of cider. Different brands and flavors
• 10 bottles of champagne for the toast when we arrive at the party
• 1 bottle of champagne (little more expensive) for us during the photo-shoot after the ceremony
• 4 red bag-in-box wine
• 2 white bag-in-box wine
• 10 bottles of bubbly rose wine
• 6 bottles of vodka for drinks
• 1 bottle of Makes me smaller, vodka and a lot of pulverized super sour hard candy (a lot)
• 1 bottle of Grows me taller, vodka and a lot of pulverized super salty hard candy (a lot)

+ a lot of non alcoholic beverages and water

We ended up returning 1/4 of the alcoholic drinks afterwards, but better that then running out during the evening.

Flowers

The bride decided to go to our local grocery store and order 200 roses. More than enough for the party and bridal bouquet (that she made herself)

Catering.

We decided to not cater anything. Instead we bought and prepared everything during the days before and handed out work assignments in teams during the whole night.

Photographer

We ended up hiring an upcoming photographer who didn't cost that much, but had an excellent portfolio to present us. A little bit more risky, but one tenth of a professional photographer.

She photographed the wedding ceremony as well as the wedding photos afterwards.

For the rest of the evening, we had asked guests that we knew liked to photograph to bring their cameras. Some excellent photos from these friends

We also bought 3 digital cameras (the cheapest ones we found, total around €60.) and placed on the tables, labeled 'Use me!'. Got an extra 400 photos of the evening from those.

Also, we had already 3 months before started to use a hashtag on Instagram (following patter #brideandgroomYEAR) and pushed our guests to post with that hashtag during the evening.

Photo booth

Hand made photo booth frame fitting the Alice theme and a Canon EOS 400 on a tripod to photograph all the guests during the evening! White veil as backdrop as well as flashlight and a large reflector in the ceiling.

Turned out good, pretty much every guest made an appearance.

Best man, Brides maid, Toast master

We decided to not have any. Instead the bride explained the idea of the evening, people were allowed to hold their speeches whenever there was time etc.
It turned out work good with our guests, plus we did not stress out our closest friends by giving them the most stressful jobs at a wedding.

Work assignments

In the party program leaflet that every guest received when they found their seat there was a list of jobs for the evening.

• Prepare starters
• Clean the tables of dishes
• Put leftovers in refrigerators.
• Prepare main course
• Barbecue duty
• Clean the tables of dishes
• Put leftovers in refrigerators
• Prepare desserts
• Clean the tables of dishes

During the evening we had also some more general assignments

• Bar assignment. Keep track of the drinks table during the dinner and server drinks after the party started.
• Music. 1 person selected who had access to the music

OK, this was a little controversial idea that turned out to be a good one.

During the years we have attended a number of weddings and it is always the same thing, you end up sitting at your table during the whole dinner (that is 4-8 hours) and only talk with the people seated around you. We did not want that.

So instead, by giving the guests work assignments in teams consisting of people from other tables they were forced to mix with people that they did not know from before and talk with them. As a grownup you grow to know other people mostly by working together and if you mix that into a party where people do not know each other from the start, they will end up making new connections.

The dinner ended up going on for 6-7 hours. BUT, after each course there was a natural pause where everyone not on assignment had a chance to walk around, mingle and chat with people. When the next course was ready, the bride rang a bell and everyone was seated again.

Lessons learned from the assignments was that some of the work teams could have had a couple more members to speed things up. But otherwise, turned out to be a fantastic idea to get people to talk with each other!

Conclusions

In the end, we ended up doing a lot of things ourselves and the project lasted 6 months. This probably saved us a lot of money, I have no idea what this would have costed if everything was catered, rented etc. But that doesn't really matter. In the end it was more true to ourselves to do it this way then letting someone else do it. It got a personal touch on all planes and having the dinner and party on top of a barn, the cozy and joyful atmosphere infected our guests as well. 

Planning a wedding in this way you have to know your audience a little bit, know that there are people who enjoy cooking, talking, bar-tendering, photographing etc. and wouldn't mind to be bossed around for an evening as a surprise : )

I guess I forgot to write about more then half of the stuff, if you have any questions then feel free to ask in the comments and I'll try to answer to my best ability.

Until next time: Work to Live, Don’t Live to Work

Bottling homemade apple cider

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So last weekend we finally bottled our cider.

During the fermentation period we've learned a lot and we had to throw out the first batch (the one that was dry-hopped.). 

Also, forgot the time on a batch of mead and it went over time with 4 weeks. so out with it as well. Better luck next time.

Cider batch #2, 20 liters, was put on fermentation on September 27, 2016. A lot of it was covered in Homemade Apple Juice/Cider.

Picture of siphoning from one fermentation barrel to an other

The timetable that worked. Even if it can be optimized a little. I think that the key was to add the extra sugar, the apple-sort that I used was kinda sour, and not adding sugar rendered the cider undrinkable. The key is tasting, a lot.

Date	Action
September 27, 2016	fermentation start 20 liters
October 8, 2016	moved to second fermentation barrel, added 2liters of freshly pressed juice. 21 liters
October 15, 2016	tasting, added 1 cup of sugar
October 23, 2016	tasting, added 1 cup of sugar
November 11, 2016	tasting, added 1 cup of sugar moved to other barrel. 19litres
November 20, 2016	had stopped, added more yeast to start it again
December 10, 2016	stopped again, added 6grams sugar per liter to get bubbles in the bottles. Bottled
December 24, 2016	drinkable, hopefully :)

Picture of bottle cleaning, the quick way

Just a quick tip on the bottle parts. You basically have 2 options, either to buy new or re-use. We went with the re-use option, a friend was able to get a box of used ones from a local pub. Doesn't hurt to ask, right?

Before bottling into used, a real good cleanup is needed. All the sediments need to go, otherwise your freshly brewed cider will turn bad. So a bottle cleaner is a good investment, shouldn't cost more than a few bucks. If you are like me and think that it is boring work to clean 40 bottles, why not attach the bottle cleaner to your nice electric screwdriver and get the power boost. 

Picture of the actual bottling process

Lastly, the actual bottling. We used a pump siphon and a bottle vent. (one that you press to the bottom of the bottle to open and when you pull it up, it closes automatically). Really easy to use. Be sure to not bottle the last liter as it is mostly yeast. Keep an eye on the quality when it pours down the pipe and just stop when its not clear anymore.

Hope this was informative enough for some of you out there.

How to make Homemade Apple Juice/Cider

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We've lived in our house for 2 years now and I've wanted to brew my own cider from day one. Last year our apple tree produced the might number of 3 apples in total, so no cider for me.
This year, a totally different story as you can see in the picture below.

This is the first time I try to do this so the process might not be optimal and I am sure that things could be done better.
The goal of this post is to have at least one bucket that has started the fermentation process.

Things you need

• Sturdy buckets, heavy duty. Not the $1 ones.. it has to be able to take a beating
• Kitchen knife
• Cutting board
• Fruit press
• Ladle
• Some nails and a wood stud (45x45 mm)
• Saw
• Hammer
• Fermentation bucket with a lid (I used 30 litres)
• Fermentation lock
• Yeast
• Cup (for tasting!)

First we need to create the tool to use for crushing the apples

The apple crusher

There are many tools that can be bought for crushing the apples but why waste the hard earned money when all you need is some wood stud, a saw, a hammer and some nails to create your own crusher.

Home made apple crushing tool in action

The process

Apple juice flowing into a fermentation bucket

1. Collect apples
2. Cut apples in 4-8 pieces depending on size, throw them in a sturdy bucket
3. When you have a 2 or 3 layers of sliced apples it is time for the crusher. This part is good training.
4. When you have crushed apples, Pour them into another bucket.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 until you have a filled bucket
6. Fill the fruit sack in the press, try pressing a little with the ladle
7. Use the press
8. Repeat 6 and 7 until you cannot move the handle
9. Empty the fruit sack in your compost.
10. Repeat until you have filled the fermentation bucket.

The Yeast

Fermentation bucket in action

Yeast eats sugar and produces alcohol and dicarbon oxide. The higher sugar rate of the in going liquid, the more alcohol there will be.

The yeast is added to the fermentation bucket, read on the package how to do it. Some require some pre-activation steps. Also read what temperature your yeast works best in and store the bucket in that temperature.
I decided to use champagne yeast for my batches. There are hundreds of different yeast cultures to chose from, but this felt right for me.
Add the lid and the fermentation lock. Fill the lock with water to the line and wait.

My plan is to do 3 batches. 

223 grams of hops being weighted

• Über hopped apple cider (24 liters and 223 grams of fresh hops)
• Hopped apple cider (24 liters and 70 grams of fresh hops)
• Apple cider (just 24 liters)

So. The first two batches need hops, luckily enough we planted some last year and it is ready for harvest now as well. We did a little pre-tasting of the hops last weekend and we think it could be cascade but I am not sure. We found it in a private garden and they did not know what kind it was.

So, remember that I've never done any of this before so it is a little bit experimental. Reviews on the outcome will come later. 

OK, so I could read up on how to dry hop cider but where is the fun in that. My best guess is to add the hops into the fermentation bucket after the yeast has been added, before the lid is put on. And then filter them out during after the fermentation is done. That way they should be protected from oxidation by the fermentation lock.

Apples in a wheelbarrow

So. Now to continue with batch 2 and 3, the wheel barrow is full and waiting :)

Be sure to find out how it went in the next post.

Happy brewing