All Copper Counterflow Chiller Experiment

I recently picked up a hopback from B3.  Basically you use a hopback to infuse volatile hop flavor and aroma in you beers. Typically you gravity flow from kettle to hopback, then pump or gravity flow from hopback to a counterflow chiller (CFC) to your fermenter.  By chilling immediately after the hopback you retain those volatile hop flavor and aroma compounds.  So that's the theory but the problem is I didn't have a CFC so the hopback wasn't going to do me much good.

There are lots of commercial CFC's out there but I usually like to go the DIY route; plus some are really expensive.  I like the plate chillers but I worry about break material clogging them up and fowling up future batches.  The HomeBrewNetwork has a nice wiki on a DIY counterflow chiller.  The Cliff's Notes version is you insert 3/8" copper tubing into a 5/8" rubber garden hose, sweat some fittings and bam, you have a very decent CFC.  The only thing I don't like about this is eventually the rubber hose will crack and you'll have to figure out a way to replace it.  This would probably mean you have to cut some tubing out every time you have to fix it.  I stumbled upon a post from PJ on HomeBrewTalk.com where he'd built an all copper CFC.  I like this option better because you'll never have to deal with a cracked outer tube.

Mine is inspired by PJ's (his site can be found here with great instructions) but the end product is slightly different.  PJ builds his using 25 foot lengths of tubing (actually 50 footers cut in half).  I saw a couple commercial CFC's that used around 12 feet of convoluted tubing, so I decided to try to build a 10 footer and see what would happen...plus my wife wouldn't approve the budget for anything longer.  I built it a couple weeks ago and just got around to testing it today.

The test was pretty straightforward, I boiled 6 gallons of water and ran it through my CFC and measured the temperature of the water entering and exiting the CFC.  I know this isn't real scientific, but it's fairly practical.  I have ball valves on both my kettle and pump to regulate the flow rates.  The cooling water initial temp was 52.3 F.  I used a couple different flow rates on the cooling water.  I don't have an accurate way to measure how fast the water was flowing, so I'll just call it low and high.  Even on high, the flow rate wasn't terribly high.  Initial Water (Wort) Temperature = 205.3 F.

Round 1 Tests

1. Gravity feed with ball valves completely open, low chilling water flow - wort output temp = 93.3 F
2. Gravity feed with ball valve 3/4 open, low chilling water flow - wort output temp = 88.8 F
3. Gravity feed with ball valve 3/4 open, high chilling water flow - wort output = 84.0

Results will vary, especially when taking varying tap water temperatures into consideration, but as you can see above a 10 foot CFC can provide some pretty decent cooling.  These aren't quite pitching temperatures, but it's below temps where DMS is produced and most importantly should prevent those volatile hops flavors and aromas from being lost.  

That said, I wanted a bit more cooling capacity.  I had some cash burning a hole in my pocket from some hops rhizome sales, so I built a second 10 foot CFC this evening.  The plan is to daisy chain the CFC's so that I essentially end up with one big CFC with dual cooling inlets and outlets.  I don't know if I'd recommend going this route if you're starting from scratch, but since I had already built the first 10 foot CFC I figured this was the best way to ensure it's usefulness.  The price should be close to a 25 foot CFC but you'll have twice as many copper fittings to sweat; not a huge deal and if it is you probably should just buy one off the shelf.  Theoretically mine should provide better cooling than a longer CFC with a single inlet/outlet for the cooling water.  The first circuit will knock the temperature down near 90F.  My prediction is the second circuit should knock it down very close to the temp of the cooling water.

Round 2 Tests - The conditions for round 2 were the same as round 1.  By adjusting the flow rate I was able to get the output temperature down in the low 60's; not bad for a homemade chiller.

The dual circuits make the chiller a bit larger than I would have liked.  If you're starting from scratch I'd go with a 20-25 foot chiller rather than two 10 footers like I've created.  Based on my experience, anything longer than 25 feet would probably be overkill and unnecessary.

Unfortunately, aesthetically speaking, after connecting hoses and such I don't really like the look of my setup much.  It just doesn't have as clean a look as I would like.  One of the aspects that I like about home brewing is it allows for trial and error in various situations and there's always the opportunity to improve processes and techniques.  That said, at some point I may end up going with a plate chiller after all (and cleaning the heck out of it after each batch).  If I do, a 10 foot CFC would make a great pre-chiller.

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Hops Trellis

I've been relocating my hops plants and part of that has included building a trellis for the hops to grow on.  I was hoping to build a six post trellis (three sets of two posts) anchored to footings.  The benefit of this is it would have been free-standing so I wouldn't have to set posts below grade (eventual rotting).

Unfortunately due to a bay window in the dining room I didn't have quite enough room for this setup, so instead I went with an in-line three post setup.  The posts themselves are 4x4x16 and are set in concrete 4.5 feet below grade and tied together with two 2x6x20 headers..  All lumber is redwood and was ordered from Burton Lumber in SLC.  I'm sure pressure treated would probably last longer but IMO the redwood looks a little nicer and accepts stain better than pressure treated.  Speaking of stain, all lumber was stained with two coats of Olympic Maximum Solid Color Stain in Mystic White prior to assembling.  I ended up with an overall height of 11.5 feet..that was until a rep from my HOA came by.  Turns out the HOA prohibits any structures taller than 8 feet in the backyard.  As I was talking to him I was looking around at the other yards and noticed no less than five structures exceeding the eight foot limit including his next door neighbor's shed.  I obliged the HOA and trimmed mine down to eight feet which is a lot lower than I wanted, but still much better than my 5 and 6 foot temporary trellises.  Besides, I'd like to build a patio cover at some point that will need to be around 9-10 feet, so I figured I'm going to pick my battles.  

My hops themselves are still spaced a little closer than I'd like but much more spacious than in the previous locations.  I added some new varieties this year so I'm doing a little experimenting to find out which ones will grow better in the Salt Lake Valley.  Utah has a pretty dry climate and can get hot during the summer.  The first summer here there was an entire month where it never got under 100 degrees.  Fortunately that isn't the norm, but we do routinely get up in the 90's.  If some varieties fail to thrive I'll remove them in favor of the ones that do better.  So far Cascade and Nugget seemed to do the best but I'm interested to see if that will change now that they have a bit more room to grow. 

Besides being on the warm side, our soil isn't the greatest.  Prior to re-planting I added some soil amendments consisting of composted steer manure and a blend of composted poultry manure and other organic material.  These were worked into the existing soil using a spade shovel and digging fork.

I'm still planning on adding some 2x2's to the top of the trellis but here's the finished product more or less.  I gotta say even at 8 feet there's a bit of flex in the posts and at 11+ feet there was even more.  Even though it's not at tall as I originally planned, the HOA may have done me a favor when the first windstorm blows into town.

Overall trellis

Just in time, purple tips of Cascades are starting to emerge

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Home Grown Hops

Springtime is almost here so it's time to start thinking about hops. I've been growing my own hops for a couple years now. They've done well but I have run into a couple issues. I bought some rhizomes from my LHBS as well as from Freshops.com. My plan was to plant the hops in a "temporary" location until I was able to find the time to build a trellis. Well, almost four years and one finished basement later and they're still in their "temporary" location.

The primary problem is they're planted in fairly close proximity to each other so the bines get intertwined making it difficult to harvest the varieties separately. Right now my freezer is full of mixed hops that I'll probably end up using in some kind of mongrel brew. This year I'm going to finally build my trellis and replant the hops in permanent locations.

The other issue is I didn't do a whole lot of planning when I selected my current varieties. I would have been better off focusing on flavor/aroma varieties, but I ended up with a few that are primarily known for bittering (e.g. Brewer's Gold, Nugget). I also didn't do much analysis as to which hops I tend to use most often. I knew I really liked Cascade and Centennial and had several recipes that called for them, but the others were kind of shots in the dark.

Current Varieties: The following is a list of the varieties I've had in the ground for the past three years.

• Brewer's Gold - Bittering hop with neutral aroma character. Grows well in all climates. 8-10%
• Cascade - Pleasant, flowery, spicy, and citrusy. Can have a grapefruit flavor. Grows well in all climates. 5-6%
• Centennial - Medium with floral and citrus tones. Grows well in all climates. 8-10%
• Liberty - Mild and clean aroma, slightly spicy character. Does better in mild climates but can grow in hot climates. 3 - 5%
• Nugget - Quite heavy and herbal. Grows well in all climates. 12-15%

Planned Varieties: I've been reviewing my recipes for the hops I use most often. Based on the number of my recipes they appear in, here are my top 10 hops: Goldings, East Kent (22), Cascade (17), Hallertauer (12), Northern Brewer (12), Columbus (10), Williamette (10), Centennial (9), Fuggle (8), Tettnang (8). I already have Cascade and Centennial so I can eliminate them from my wish list. Hallertauer doesn't do so well in hot dry climates, so I'll skip that one. Ditto for Fuggle. Pending availability, I'm planning on adding the following varieties this year:

• Chinook - Mild to medium-heavy, spicy, piney, and grapefruity. While it's often used for bittering, it does have a nice flavor/aroma profile and does well in hot dry climates.
• Golding - Mild, extremely pleasant, and gently hoppy. I brew with lots of East Kent Golding hops, so I'd love to give this one a try. Prefers cooler climates but does ok in hot climates.
• Mt. Hood - Mild, pleasant, and clean, somewhat pungent and resiny. Derived from Hallertau but unlike Hallertau it does well in all climates.
• Williamette - Mild and pleasant, slightly spicy, fruity, floral, a little earthy. Similar to Fuggle but tolerates warmer drier climates better than Fuggle.

So this is my rhizome wish list for this year. These four varieties are fairly common so I'm crossing my fingers they'll all be available. I've noticed a couple online suppliers have started selling or are taking pre-orders. I'm gambling in the hopes that Freshops.com has all these varieties available this year, preferably in the "jumbo" size. Based on personal experience, they often produce hops the first year whereas regular sized rhizomes tend to take at least a year to get established, so I prefer the jumbos.

If you're new to hop growing here's a few things to keep in mind.

• Use homegrown hops for flavor and aroma additions. These will be the most useful for brewing since alpha acid content varies year to year. There is no easy way to determine alpha acid content, so buy you bittering hops at the LHBS and grow your flavor/aroma hops.
• Pick a variety that will grow in your area. If you live in a hot dry climate, don't pick a variety that prefers cool moist climates. It may grow but probably won't produce any cones.
• Pick varieties that you use most often in your favorite recipes and styles.
• Don't over-water the rhizomes as this can result in rot.
• Do watch for pests and signs of fungal infection. If you have to treat them be sure to use treatments that are brewing-safe.
• Do provide a sturdy support for them to grow on. My temporary support is made out of PVC irrigation pipe. It's ok in a pinch, but it has severely warped after a couple seasons and has had a hard time supporting the weight of the bines. Plus my wife hates the way it looks.
• I thought it was worth mentioning that hops are toxic to dogs. Use caution especially if you have a dog that likes to chew on plants as they can be deadly. Fortunately, my dogs have never shown any interest in my hops; I wish I could say the same for my peach tree. I think spent hops would be more attractive to dogs since they've been flavored/saturated with malt sugars. Bottom line, if you have dogs, use common sense.

Update 3/5/2011: Freshops.com is now taking orders!!!

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Arrogant Bastard Clone

This weekend I'm brewing the Arrogant Bastard Clone from The Jamil Show. This is the re-brew recipe that the hosts agreed was very close if not identical to the commercial version.

This is a pretty popular brew among beer enthusiasts and clone recipes are highly sought after by homebrewers; just search some message boards and you'll see tons of requests and attempts at brewing this beer. I've seen a couple recipes where it looks like brewers are throwing in everything but the kitchen sink. That's one of the reasons why this one is so surprising; because it is so simple...it seems too simple.

For this brew I made a 1.6 liter yeast starter on my DIY stir plate. I'm using a 70 minute mash at 148 F. The boil is a 90 minute boil. This recipe utilizes quite a few hops so I'm mixing in some RO water. This isn't something I normally do, but Utah has very hard water and I want to avoid overly sharp bitterness that can happen when pairing lots of hops with water that has high mineral content. I'm shooting for about 30% RO water and 70% carbon filtered tap water. Speaking of water, I'm going with a water to grain ratio of 1.3 quarts per pound. This helps ensure my mash isn't too thick so I'm able to recirculate. This also puts me at max on my Hot Liquor Tun as it's capacity is right at five gallons and I need 20.67 quarts for my strike water.

The recipe is as follows:

14.30 lb Rahr Pale Malt

1.60 lb Special B Malt

0.85 oz Chinook [13.00 %] (85 min)

0.85 oz Chinook [13.00 %] (45 min)

0.85 oz Chinook [13.00 %] (15 min)

0.85 oz Chinook [13.00 %] (0 min)

1 Pkgs Dry English Ale (White Labs #WLP007)

Brewing Notes:

I believe Tasty's SG was 1.077. Utah is very dry so I always tend to have a lot of evaporation. Most my boils are 60 minutes so the 90 minute boil had even more evaporation than normal. I ended up topping with some water to bring the volume up. Before topping off, the refractometer read 22.6 brix (SG 1.095). After topping off my refractometer read 20.8 brix for a specific gravity of 1.087. I forgot to mention, I also added one Whirfloc tablet and 1/2 teaspoon of Wyeast Yeast nutrient.

Fermentation Notes: This has been an extremely active fermentation. My youngest daughter came upstairs last night (2/13/2011) and told me "Daddy, there are bubbles coming out of your beer." I went to check on it and the airlock was plugged and foam was pushing out around the lid seal. I pulled the airlock and a few seconds later a little plug of hops shot out of the drilled stopper and splashed against the ceiling. Ahhh, good times. I swapped out the airlock for a blowoff tube running into a mason jar filled with sanitizer. I checked it this morning and the mason jar was overflowing with foam. Given the low mash temperature, I figured this would be a highly fermentable beer, but it still caught me by surprise.

Tasting Notes:  I wasn't able to do a side by side because AB isn't sold in Utah, but this pours and tastes exactly as I remember AB.  This is a very tasty beer that will be part of my regular rotation.  It's also very drinkable considering the high ABV.  It has a very nice malt profile and is very balanced with the hops. 

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Brewing Up Some Ginger Beer

Batch #1 - 2/1/2011

I've been researching ginger beer recipes the past couple weeks. A lot of basic recipes call for powdered ginger rather than fresh ginger. This seems to be more for the sake of convenience as most brewers seem to go with fresh ginger on follow-up batches. The consensus seems to be that powdered ginger is more "warm" while fresh ginger is more "spicy". After looking over several recipes I went with the following which should yield about two liters.

150 grams fresh ginger

250 grams table sugar

2 liters of water

Juice of three lemons

Ginger Beer Plant

Method: I peeled the ginger and ran it through a juicer. It seemed to be a little hard on the juicer so next time I'll probably try using the blender. I collected the pulp from the juicer and put it into a stainless tea ball. This was then steeped in 2 liters of water on the stove for about 10 minutes. I then pressed the liquid out of the ginger pulp. I dissolved the sugar in the saucepan and then cooled the water to about 76 degrees. I then combined all of the ingredients in a large jar. This will sit for about 48 hours before I transfer it to a 2 liter pop bottle where it will condition until it's carbonated.

Follow-up:

I was pleased with the way this turned out. It had some very nice ginger flavor, aroma, and spiciness. The lemon juice provided some pleasant citrus notes. I also enjoy the nice tang that I assume comes from the GBP. It was a little too much ginger for my wife's taste, but she isn't a big fan of commercial ginger beer so I didn't expect her to rave about my homemade brew. I think it might benefit from a touch more sugar next time.

The Dark and Stormy cocktail was very good as well. I'm not a big cocktail fan, but I really enjoyed this one. It's pretty light yet flavorful without being overly sweet. I think these will be a hit at summer BBQ's.

Washing the GBP was a little bit of a pain. I had a lot of ginger sediment that settled out after a day or two. I think I didn't quite peel the ginger as well as I should have because there seemed to be a few bits of it amongst the GBP. So long story short, it took a while to remove the sediment and bits of peel.

Batch #2 - 2/26/2011

After the successful first batch, I made a TLC batch and set my 64 ounce mason jar in the window on a paper towel.  Long story short, I forgot my dog loves to chew/shred paper towels so about an hour after placing it in the window it came crashing to the ground.  I was able to save some from the broken shards of glass but I'd guestimate I lost anywhere from a third to half of the GBP.  I've been nursing it along with TLC brews ever since.  It seemed to be recovering well so I kicked off another batch today.  I basically used the same recipe as batch #1 except I scaled it down by half.  This time I cut the ginger into thin slices and tossed everything into a saucepan for a quick 10 minute boil.  A lot of the recipes I've found don't include a boil but the sanitary beer brewer in me can't help it.  After cooling the brew I poured it through a strainer onto the GBP.

Update  Batch #2  This one turned out very well too.  I didn't do a side by side comparison, but using fresh ginger slices didn't seem to cause any problems flavor-wise.  Since it was a lot easier to remove the thin slices than the ginger puree, I think this is the method I'm going to stick with.

Batch #3
I can't remember exactly which day I brewed this one but I used one lemon, one lime, and one small orange for my citrus juices.  I think this one was my favorite so far.  Spring can't get here soon enough as far as I'm concerned.   


Batch #4 Recipe

Ginger Beer Recipe from Matt on Yahoo GBP Group

2l water
200g white sugar
juice of 1 lemon
5 tbsp powdered ginger
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp vanilla extract

Put everything except the vanilla in your brewing container and leave
for 2-5 days, until a frothy head begins to form on the liquid. Siphon
off the liquid, leaving the sediment and plant behind, into a large
container. Taste, and add more sugar if needed. Add the vanilla and
siphon again into bottles (optionally through muslin to remove any
excess ginger and yeast powder). Seal and leave for 24-48 hours to
pressurize.

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