Stout 3.0

After a long period of mourning, and a proper send off for our IPA we returned to our equipment with a new resolve.

What better to replace our lost IPA than a nice dark stout, just in time for Spring! Everyone loves dark beer on a warm day!

Here at Midnight brewing we have a tendency to be a little off with the dates and brewing schedules. About the only beer that we timed correctly was our Pumpkin Ale. Our Belgian was in the late fall, Our Holiday ale was brewed mid December...

But lets get to the 3.0,

Due to requests from a certain connoisseur of our stout, we decided to up the roasted barley and chocolate malts in this version. Version 2.0 was good after sufficient lagering, but was lacking the complex flavors that we achieved from version 1.0 which was an extract brew.

And another installment of Lessons learned:

All started off well, we struck early and even got the mash off to a good start. Until the dreaded stuck run off. We have been referring to stout since our first all grain batch as "the cursed beer". You may say "Oh dark beer, no problems there". Sure, its forgiving in the flavor department, but since we moved to all grain we have had no luck with our lautering and stout. See Stout 2.0

A little history of our mash tun; we set out to design a mash tun that resembled "El Cheapo Mash Tun"
Short Story: We bought the wrong kind of braid, the plastic polymer kind, not the stainless steel. We thought it might have been a little too easy to cut (ok so our trips to the hardware store aren't always that fruitful or relaxing).

Anyways, my cousin a veteran homebrewer gave me a piece of the stainless steel braid at Easter that he used in his mash tun. Awesome right? I agree. Multiple homebrewers in the same family!

But the awesomeness ends there as we decided that we wanted a quick brew session and that we should wait to modify the mash tun until after this brew...

Well after 5 or so mashes, the polymer braid that we had been using was completely crushed, which left us with a runoff worse than an old man with an enlarged prostate.

A few of the solutions that we tried:

Blowing up the hose: Not recommended, can easily burst blood vessels and blow who knows what into your delicious mash. Succeeded in getting the flow to pick up briefly, but quickly stopped again. A Brewer laughed hysterically at this one as I must of looked like I was doing some kind of crazy imitation of Dizzy Gillespie

Remove braid and hope for best: Not recommended either, results in large volume of wort everywhere and a slight "deck" taste to your finished beer.

Ultimately we poured the mash into our fermenter temporarily and installed the new braid. Which of course worked perfectly.

Lesson learned: If you got an equipment upgrade, use it right away.

Brew School?

Thought about getting a professional education in commercial brewing? I found this blog of a brewer attending the program offered by Versuchs- und Lehranstalt für Brauerei in Berlin (VLB). I haven't read much of it myself but the gist of it is that he is a brewer that is blogging from Berlin about the program and his experiences there. Worth checking out if it's something you have thought about doing yourself.

Midnight's First (But Not Last) IPA

Well faithful readers (all two of you) it has been awhile and for that we apologize. But the wait is over and a new post is come. I bring you a tale. A tale filled with adventure, mystery, intrigue and disaster. Okay maybe not the first three so much as that last one but hey if it reels you in, it reels you in.

So several weeks ago, back in ye olden times of February, we set out to brew the IPA I prattled on about. It was going to be marvelous. As expected the local brew shop did NOT have a good selection of hops AND they had jacked up the price. Well not to be put of we forged ahead and chose an assortment of hops, some of which we had never worked with before, much less heard of. Let me lay it out for you:

Base malt of 2-row barley (naturally)

Vienna malt

Cara-pils to add a little body

As for the hops this is where it gets wild and crazy:

Mt Hood pellets 4.2% AA

Chinook pellets 11.2% AA

UK Phoenix pellets 10% AA

Saaz whole leaf 2.5% AA

Kent Goldings whole leaf 5% AA

SG:1.056 (corrected)

The SG was somewhat higher than anticipated. Normally we do not have the best efficiency in the world and so overload on the grain a bit. Apparently our efficiency has improved. In any case by the end of the boil our brewery (read: the back deck) smelled overwhelmingly hoppy. We were on the right track to IPAdome.

Now this is where the "adventure" begins. It turns out that a member of the Midnight Brewing team who shall remain unnamed (not me) neglected to bring the sink adapter for our wort chiller. Normally not such a big deal but we were on a tight schedule. Places to be, beers to drink, the usual. So instead of the usual cooling of the wort and pitching of the yeast we decided to risk letting it cool on its own in the fermenter and ask our kind and gracious... brewery landlord/adjunct-assistant-junior-brewer-in-training/Allison pitch the yeast in the morning.

At this point I bet you are thinking: "Where's the adventure? Your fermenter will be sealed even if it cools slowly it should be at least somewhat aseptic. Sounds more like a tale of laziness than intrigue." Fear not fair reader for there is still more. So not only was the yeast going to be pitched in the morning but we noticed that the gasket on our fermenter lid that the airlock passes through was torn. So there was a small, ever so small opening through which potentially contaminating wild yeast and bacteria could move and get at our cooling wort. But hey, we are adventurous so why not forge ahead. It gets better. The yeast we were going to use (from Wyeast Laboratories in one of those convenient smack to activate pouches) had been activated say... a month ago... or two... give or take a month.

So there you have it... adventure and definitely mystery. Would this actually work? Shall I skip ahead? Well the short answer is no. Of course not. This is a tale of mystery, intrigue and disaster. So a week and a half later we set about bottling. The bottles had all been cleaned and sanitized, labels were removed (Thank you brillo pad) and caps were ready. First we made the transfer from our fermenter to our bottling bucket. That's when you could smell the first hints of disaster. Something was off. It smelled hoppy but only a little bit. It seemed more muted than it should have been. There was something else there covering it up like that layer of dust that covers our brewing books on how not to screw up a brew. Not only that but it was far cloudier than it should have been. So we decided to have a little taste before bottling just to be sure all was well with Midnight Brewing Co's first IPA.

Normally this is where I would go on and on about how good it tastes. No. No, not this time. Tell me, have you ever licked the wall of a basement? Or maybe just chewed on some wet cardboard. Perhaps both in one sitting? If not then you can't quite fully understand the flavors we were getting. It was heinous. I mean it was bad. Not only that but the taste didn't really seem to want to go away. No, no it would rather chill on your taste buds letting you enjoy the rankness for as loooong as possible. I will have nightmares about this one. So long story short it was a tragedy. The whole batch went down... the... drain. Tears ensued, albeit manly ones. The Midnight Brewing flag was lowered to half staff.

The first Midnight IPA has joined the ranks of such brews as the Raspberry Wheat and the Scotch Ale. Though I think this one definitely tops the list of Midnight's catastrophic brews since it was utterly undrinkable by anyone (for some bizarre reason that totally escapes us there are some people out there who love the raspberry wheat AND the Scotch Ale).

Lessons learned: Don't cut corners. Do what must be done. There is nothing like investing so much time into a brew and watching it swirl down the drain like so much Budweiser. We are going to repair the fermenter gasket and someone is going to pin a note to their chest from now on reminding them not to forget the sink adapter. Oh and I will remember to buy fresh yeast this time (yeah that was my bad).

Until next time readers, grab a homebrew and raise it in silence as testament to this failure.

Conversion to all-grain

Back in September Midnight Brewing took the plunge and converted to all-grain. Behold the trials and tribulations of rapid brewery expansion!

What to Brew Next?

Ah the eternal question facing every brewer. "So I have this beer and it's great but what do I make now?" Well I have a beer (Belgian at the moment) and I have little idea of what to do next.

So we were pondering this question and came upon the idea of making a really intense IPA along the lines of an Imperial. Two reasons for this: #1 One of our tasters is always commenting (read: complaining) about how our beers are a mouthful and she likes really hoppier beers. Okay, so some recent brews have been a bit thicker I'll admit, but that is because of the maltiness that we get and maybe a bit of over zealousness with some oats... And #2 Hop shortage. We all know about it. We have all read article after article on the subject. We all know it's here and so I won't go into it.

In any case, what with this business of hops being scarce the thinking was, wouldn't it be nice to have one last big hurrah before we have to start making modifications to our other recipes to cope with the loss of our usual hops (Ingenuity and creativity be damned!)? Well it would be nice. So with that in mind B brewer paid a visit to our local homebrew shop and lo and behold the shop is essentially out of hops. Out, empty, gone, devoid of hops, there is a hop vacancy, the lights are on but no hops are home, need I go on?

Staff teleconference time to discuss the problem. B Brewer suggest we bitter with what Anheuser-Busch uses... urine. Okay sorry cheap shot (though true perhaps? I once heard a craft brewer say his favorite beer is Budweiser because every time he drinks one it makes even his worst beer taste better). I had no suggestions. Teleconference over.

Maybe we could just throw in the mish mash of obscure hops they have left. We could call it... Hop Medley, Hop Melange, Hoppodge, Hop Jumble (can you tell I just visited Thesaurus.com?).

Well readers, we now have a plan. IPA. Ordinarily this brew would be happening today but B brewer has a group meeting for class and I am sick with one bastard of a cold. So this brew will happen likely this week late at night or next weekend. Stay tuned for the results.