Happy Holidays

The holiday beer festival was held in Omaha over the weekend. My brew club was serving up some fine ales in ugly sweater attire. Fine beers were had by all. I was most impressed with Abita's Machiatto Stout.

Water Tips for Omaha

Last night, I gave a presentation to my brew club on water adjustments. They might tell you what I gave them was punishment--well a little. Water can get complicated, but it doesn't have to be that way. In a follow up to that meeting I put together a quick cheat sheet for adjusting Omaha tap water to get Calcium, pH and bitterness closer to desired levels. If your water is like Omaha water then this might work for you too.

Simplified Water Additions for Omaha

There is a full presentation where I try to make a few cases for water adjustments.

• Manage your pH to get better flavor stability, crispness and efficiency
• Adjust the Chloride to Sulfate ratio to control the perception of bitterness (1:1 is balanced; lower ratios are more bitter and higher are more malty)
• Aim for 100ppm calcium to get better kettle reactiona (hot & cold breaks) and yeast flocculation

You can find the presentation here and a copy of the Bru'n Water spreadsheet with the latest Platte West water plant figures here.

Fermentation Fridge

I happened across a refrigerator that perfectly fits my conical fermenter. This ferment was purchased a few years ago from Stout Tanks and Kettles. The refrigerator is manual defrost, which is something nice to have, when you are going to add a temperature controller. Yes, that implies I am going to add a temperature controller--or already have. I will post up some pictures and design notes on the temperature controller I built at a later time. You could also just hook up a Johnson controller and call it a day.

Something to note is that the Johnson controller (A419) is only single stage. That means it can turn one device on only. So, it functions as a heater or as a cooler controller but not both. I opted to create a two stage controller...sometimes all you need is cooling, but in Nebraska, my garage gets so cold, that I might need the heating too. Think diacetyl rest in the winter.

Getting Under The Hood

I've always enjoyed figuring out how things work. So when it comes to making beer, I still like to do some of my own calculation. I own Beer Smith and use it too. Beer Smith is great software--but I just like to get under the hood sometimes. Here is a quick look at the spreadsheet I have developed over the last few years.



I did say this is just a look, which is why it is a pdf and not a spreadsheet. If there is interest I will clean up the spreadsheet a bit and post it for public consumption. Now, how about the layout? Did I miss anything important? Is it easy to follow?

Yeast Rafts

In an interesting follow up to my last post, I noticed that I had yeast rafts. I opened up my fermentor to take a sample and wow, it was yeast raft central.

This is a saison using the Belle Saison strand and has been in the fermentor since last Friday night (6 days, 12 hours).

Sneak Peak

Here is quick look at some bugs. This Oud Bruin is aging and will soon be added to a barrel. This is part of a homebrew club project with the Local 402 Brewers Union.

It has been over a month since the Roeselare strain was pitched into this batch. The batch was fermented in my basement with a fairly steady ambient temperature in the lower 60's.