Brewing

Often when I am brewing I save a few jars of wort for use in making yeast starters for future batches. Some folks save it in the freezer, but I prefer canning it since I can then just store it indefinitely on the shelf. Technically speaking, beer wort is not a low enough pH to reliably can it with a boiling water canner, so you have to use a pressure canner.

Here is a series of videos on how to clean and sanitize Cornelius kegs for using in homebrew. You can also find a great deal on the matter to the left in the "Book Navigation" box under "Brewing". I'm finally starting to migrate content over from my brewing site, and my kegging page is the first to come over. I have 1 of the 2 pages done right now and should have the 2nd done by the end of the weekend.

Last week I got an email from the Ontario Craft Brewers about a new "Ambassadors" program that they have going. So I clicked on the link to check it out, and decided after seeing it to sign up. I figure I already consider myself a Beer Ambassador, so why not, right? Wow, I had no idea what would happen next! This morning a huge box arrived by courier on our front step, and it contained a whole bunch of swag, shown here!

So far this year I've been brewing mainly German-style beers with a quick stop in Belgium, so today it is something British inspired. I've still got a half keg of Belgian Wit, most of a keg of a German Dunkles that has been lager for a good 5 weeks already, and 4 kegs of Koelsch-eh, 2 in the fridge already and 2 not. So time to change things up a bit.

Normally I stick with very simple grain bills, but had a bunch of odds and ends to use up so this is what I came up with. I don't expect much character from the small amount of Smoked malt that I used - used it mainly because I needed more base malt and did not want to use up any of my 2 Row because I have other plans for it next weekend. Note to self - buy more base malt.

• 4.6 kg pale ale
• 2.3 kg Weyermann Dark Munich
• 400g Fawcett Malted Oats
• 400g unknown base malt :-)
• 500g Caramunich III
• 1.7 kg Weyermann Rauch/Smoked

For a total of 10kg

My last batch of Koelsch-eh started off fairly well inside of 24 hours, and is now in the fermentation grotto at about 14C

On Sunday I brewed again - another Koelsch-eh and in fact the same recipe as last time except for 2 minor factors : (1) I adjusted the pH of the liquor by adding 1ml of 75% phosphoric acid to 58L of water, and (2) I forgot the whirlfloc in this last batch.

But basically it goes like this :

Grain Bill

• 9 kg OiO 2 Row Malted Barley
• 1 kg local organic flaked barley (sourced from Mountain Path)

I finally got around to stringing up my hops bines - oh man, I waited way too long to do this! What a mess! The thing is, I have my roof being reshingled and wanted to wait until that was done because I was afraid the hops would interfere with his work. But finally they just got way too unruly sprawled all over the ground and I had to deal with them. I've got a whole bunch of Hallertauer that I've had for about 7 years now, and some new Nugget as of the last year. I figure by next year they should be producing just about enough to keep me self-sufficient in hops.

When stringing hops you have to use some sort of organic twine like baler's twine. I've tried synthetic ones but the hops just can't cling to it - they grow up so far and then their weight causes them to slide back down again. I simply have come hooks and eye screws screwed into the 2x4 on my eaves, and stakes in the ground below. I use a double length of twine and twist the two lengths together.