Cold Crash for Dry Hops

Before photo: 5 oz. each of whole organic Summit and Centennial hops after one week dry hopping.

So far, my batches of beer have been good, but the hop aromas have been disappointing. This brew will be different. My second original recipe, Bin Laden's Dead Double IPA, is loosely based on Alan Spirits' HOTD Blue Dot D-IPA. The cake at the top of the fermenter is all lose hop buds, and lots of them. I used a paper funnel to get the hops into the carboy, and about half way through the first 5 oz. of hops, I started to wonder how difficult all those floating buds were going make the transfer to a bottling bucket.

After sunset I hauled the dry hopped brew out to my emptied lagering freezer for cold crashing. I'll lower the temperature by 4 ºF each day for the next week until the probe reads 32 ºF. Some of the the homebrew forums advise this procedure as the best way to get those hops to settle to the bottom of the fermenter. Something tells me I'm going to get a little bit under a full five gallons on this batch.

The second thing I started wondering about as I filled the bottle with those buds, was how I would ever get them out again. A bent aluminum light stand leg might work to pry the buds out one or two at a time. Couldn't take more than a week.  But then I found the great advice online that a bottle washer attached to a garden hose should blast the hops right out of the carboy.

Big League Beer Prices

A "large" size glass of "premium beer", Manny's Pale Ale from Georgetown Brewing, costs $9.75 at the ball park. This is kind of funny, since a full growler at the brewery costs only $5.00.

Going All-Grain on a Blue Dot Clone

Here's a very low res video of my makeshift lautering setup, shot with my IPhone. The kettle has a nice false-bottom.

One expert (Papazian) says use 1 quart of water per lb. of grain, another (Palmer) says use  2 quarts per lb. I ended up splitting the difference at 1.5 quarts per lb. Which Palmer recommends as a good compromise further into his book. With just over 15 pounds of grain, my 7 1/2 gallon boil kettle barely held the full mash.

Our new gas stove proved to be an unpredictable tool for keeping an even mash temperature from top to bottom of the kettle. During the first half hour of the mash I applied a very low heat to keep inching the thermometer reading above 152 ºF. But I know the pure liquid at the bottom of the mash, underneath the two-inch high false bottom, was hotter. And I quickly discovered how long the heated stainless steel bottom would keep transferring heat after I turned off the burner. I had added a half gallon of 170 ºF water with heat from the stove, and suddenly the core temperature jumped to 160 ºF.  Quickly I moved the nearly full kettle to the sink, (fortunately we have a galley kitchen), and a half gallon of cold water and sprayed cold water over the bottom and sides of the kettle. This got the the center of the mash to approximately156 ºF with half an hour to go in the sixty minute mash.

My homemade rotating sparge arm worked amazingly well, but I think I'll make some modifications on the re-design. All stainless steel, smaller holes, less solder. Or just buy one that's pre-built.

I followed Jon Buhagiar's DIY brass design from his BoHack blog site. Note he has an incorrect size for the large diameter tube that has to fit over the o-rings and into the transfer tubing. My local hobby shop was out of the piece in brass, so I ended up using stainless steel for the outer piece. Construction of the arm itself involved trial and quite a few errors. The water outlet holes need to be as small as possible, and I found that the gravity flow pressure wasn't enough to properly turn with more than five holes on each side of the rig. My soldering was also a bit out of practice, so I ruined my first try by filling the arm with solder. By the second attempt, I decided to just reheat the whole thing and force most of the excess solder out of the tube with an old coat hanger wire. At the end, because brass has a fine coating of lead, I soaked the arm in a solution of two parts vinegar to one part hydrogen peroxide.

Even though the arm worked flawlessly on my first lauter, I think I'll try one more time and use stainless steel all the way through.

With 8 oz of whole bittering hops and another 4 oz of pellet aroma hops, transferring from the brew kettle to the primary fermenter took a long time and a lot of stirring to keep the drain screen clear.

In another first, I dispensed with cloth bags for boiling the hops. This is good for added bittering and hop aroma, but made the transfer after chilling the wort slow as molasses. Even with a stainless steel kettle tube screen, the whole hop cones and the massive trub from the sparge kept clogging up the exit valve.

The proteins and sugars began to settle out after I pitched the Scottish Ale Yeast starter.  OG came in slightly high, at 1.080. This is going to be one big Double IPA.

I gave the wort sixty seconds of pure oxygen to make it a more comfortable environment for the yeast. Sure enough, by Monday morning fermentation had begun. In the afternoon, the trub was churning and bubbles popped through the airlock in a steady rhythm. The heat blanket and temperature control are set, and the insulated fermenting cabinet is keeping the surrounding temperatures stable. In a few days the batch should be ready for transfer to secondary and dry-hopping.

Here's my interpretation of the HOTD Blue Dot clone recipe from Brew Your Own Magazine:

Blue Dot IPA clone (all- grain)

•  Weyermann Organic Pilsner Malt, 13 Lbs. 2 oz.
•  Organic Rye Flakes, 2 Lbs.
•  American Summit Whole Hops 4 oz. (75 mins) – replacing Warrior
•  American Chinook Whole Hops 4 oz. (40 mins) – replacing Magnum
•  Belgian Admiral Hop Pellets 4 oz. (10 mins) – replacing Columbus
•  American Summit Whole Hops 5 oz. (dry hop) – replacing Warrior
• American Centennial Whole Hops 5 oz. (dry hop) – replacing Amarillo
•  Yeast: Wyeast Scottish Ale, 125 ml XL
•  ¾ teespoon Organic Irish Moss (10 mins)
•  1 Servomyces capsule (10 mins)
•  Organic Corn Sugar (Dextrose), 0.75 cup for bottling

1. Start yeast at least 48 hours before brew day, then chill over night in refrigerator to settle the yeast, then bring to room temperature in a dark place. Dump off excess liquid before pitching.
2. Heat 24 qts. of filtered water to 165 ºF.
3. Add grains and steep for 60 minutes at 154 – 156 ºF.
4. Heat  5  gallons of water to 170 ^oF in a separate pot. Sparge the grains with this water when the mash is complete.
5. Add water to the liquid collected from the grains to make up to 7 gallons and boil for 180 minutes. (You need to perform a full wort boil to get the right bitterness and character from the hops.) Add hops as per ingredient list
6. Add Irish Moss flakes and Servomyces capsule with 10 minutes remaining.
7. Cool kettle to 68 ºF with wort chiller.
8. Transfer liquid to primary fermenter.
9. Aerate cooled wort with pure oxygen for sixty seconds.
10. Pitch yeast starter.
11. Ferment at 68 ºF. till activity slows.
12. Transfer to secondary fermenter, leaving behind most of the trub.
13. Add dry hops and ferment in secondary 7 to 14 days.
14. Transfer to bottling bucket, add carbonating sugar, bottle.

Grain bill and hops:

7 Bridges Earth Day sale 15% off all organic ingredients!

Qty	Item	Total
1	Wyeast Scottish Ale, 125 ml XL	$7.00
14	Weyermann Organic Pilsner Malt, 1 Lb.	$29.96
2	Organic Rye Flakes, per Lb.	$4.42
1	Organic Corn Sugar (Dextrose), 1 Lb.	$4.17
2	Belgian Admiral Hop Pellets 2 oz.	$8.34
1	American Centennial Whole Hops 1 oz. package (2010)	$2.38
1	American Centennial Whole Hops 4 oz. (2010)	$6.38
1	American Summit Whole Hops 1 oz. (2009)	$1.90
2	American Summit Whole Hops 4 oz. (2009)	$10.20
1	American Chinook Whole Hops 4 oz. (2010)	$6.36

Subtotal                                                                                                            $81.13

Rating my Mother's Day Farmhouse Ale

Brewed this organic Seven Bridges Cooperative Richard's Farmhouse Blonde Belgian Ale (Mash-Extract) on January 17, and conditioned it in the cellar at 54 ºF for three months. 

Aroma: 8 out of 10

Appearance: 4 out of 5

Taste: 7 out of 10

Palate: 3 out of 5

Overall: 16 out of 20

Total Score: 3.8 out of 5

There are two different pours possible from this brew, one being careful to leave the yeast cake undisturbed, is a clear orange-honey-amber.  The other, allowing some of the lighter top layer of yeast to mix in with the body, is half-opaque with white cloudiness. And the beer gains a bit of flavor complexity from the stirred up yeast. 

You don't want to leave a freshly opened bottle sitting for too long, as the carbonation is very active. In a minute or two, foam will issue forth from the bottle top and erupt over the counter. Even the most careful initial pour will produce a massive off-white mousse of a head that takes some time to fade. Lacing is minimal. 

Aromas of slightly under-ripe banana, honeydew mellon, and clove, with a whiff of alcohol. And you can tell from across the room, this is going to be a great farmhouse ale. Taste is chewy fresh-baked bread, apricot, ripe white currants, cinnamon, black pepper, and faint coriander. Sparkly mouth feel and a clean fresh finish. This one took twelve weeks in the cellar to condition, and it was worth the wait.