Trevor's Brew

Jack's Lantern, Part 7

2008-02-08T10:50:00.002-05:00

So, I promised bottling pictures for this last post in the Jack's Lantern series.

I don't have any. I can only assume that they were eaten by my camera.

But, that's OK. They wouldn't be very exciting anyways. What is exciting is the beer. My father-in-law claims it's the best one I've made so far, and I'm not one to argue with a statement like that.

Glancing over at the calendar, I can't help but notice that it's the second week of February. That would explain why I can't seem to find my notes on the Jack's Lantern - I brewed it in September. If memory serves (which it usually doesn't), this one clocked in at around 7½% ABV. And I used mostly 16oz bottles, so drinking a whole one packs quite a punch.

Age seems to have done the beer well, which is a good thing because the last 11 bottles have just been distributed to my friend Mike's Beer Club (of which I am a proud member).

I hope everybody likes it.

Jack's Lantern, Part 6

2007-12-26T12:03:00.000-05:00

For the second-to-last post in the Jack's Lantern series, I have 3 pictures to share. They were taken on October 1, 2007, which is the day I transferred the beer from primary to secondary fermentation.

Here's a picture of the beer in the primary fermenter, after about 2 weeks of fermentation:

I used the ultra-high-tech method of putting the bucket on a table and standing on a chair to siphon the beer into a glass carboy for secondary fermentation:

The final post in the Jack's Lantern series will include pictures of the bottling process, as well as my thoughts on the final taste of the brew.

Jack's Lantern, Part 5

2007-10-22T08:58:00.000-04:00

I took regular Specific Gravity readings during the sparge, and wrote them down on my recipe sheet. I had some trouble finding a reliable temperature adjustment chart, though, leading to some nice scribbles:

After all of the wort was extracted, the final S.G. reading was 1.063 @88°F, with a temperature adjusted value of 1.067.

After we returned from the Big Pour, we started the boiling process. Since I don't have a pot big enough to hold 6½ gallons, we had to use two pots:

I was pleasantly surprised that the wort neither foamed up nor boiled over, which has always been a problem for me. This seems to be an advantage to boiling at full volume, compared to the concentrated boil of the partial mash technique.

We added the hops according to the recipe - 1½ oz at the start of the boil, and ½ oz with 10 minutes left. The spices went in just after the last dose of hops. Just before that, with about 15 minutes left on the boil, we put our wort chiller into one of the boil pots to sanitize it.

Next, we chilled the wort one pot at a time using a copper coil wort chiller:

Finally, we combined the two pots of wort together into the primary fermenter, and pitched the yeast.

Flying Time

2007-10-11T15:47:00.000-04:00

So, it seems that a lot of time has passed since my last post.

Shrug.

Thankfully, laziness on my part does not translate to lazy yeast. I'll get Jack's Lantern Part 5 posted soon, but in the mean time I'm actually about to start work on what will become the penultimate Jack's Lantern post this year: Tonight is Bottling Night™!

Jack's Lantern, Part 4

2007-09-24T16:23:00.000-04:00

Up to this point, everything had been going perfectly. It was 11:00 in the morning, and I didn't have to be anywhere until 5:00.

Naturally, this meant that I'd be running into trouble.

I left the lauter tun alone for the full 60 minutes, so that the mash could do its thing. Then it was time to sparge. I got everything set up so that I could open the drain, and it would drain into my fermentation bucket (that's the only bucket I have that will hold 6+ gallons of liquid).

My friend Mike and my brother Tyrone arrived somewhere around this time to give me a hand, which soon turned out to be a very good thing.

We poured about a half gallon of 170° water into the top of the tun, using a large wooden spoon to diffuse the flow. This pretty much filled up the tun. We then opened up the drain a bit, and the wort started to flow. We recycled about 1 gallon of wort in 3 or 4 batches. The wort was pretty clear at this point, so we stopped recycling and watched the water level at the top of the tun.

As the wort drained, the top level of the grains got lower and lower, while the distance between the top of the grains and the top of the water stayed the same - about 2 inches.

Somewhere around the 2 gallon mark, the flow began to slow down. And it slowed down a lot. After about 45 minutes, we had around 2½ gallons of wort and there was barely a trickle coming out. There was still a lot of water above the top of the grain bed.

We tried using the wooden spoon to break up the grain bed, with no luck.

I thought that maybe the grains were clogging up the manifold at the bottom of the tun, so I suggested that we could try emptying the grains out of the tun and putting them all into a large grain bag. Then we could put the grain bag in the tun, and it would act as a filter between the grains and the manifold.

I couldn't find my grain bag.

I decided to call a local home brew shop that I knew was open on Saturday (South Hills Brewing Supply), to see if I could get any advice. I talked to the owner and he suggested that I should add ~2 pounds of rice hulls to the mash, stir it up, and start the sparge again, cycling water through until it runs clear just as at the beginning of the sparge. He also liked my grain bag idea.

Mike and I left Tyrone to watch the trickling sparge while we went to the home brew shop to buy rice hulls and a grain bag.

When we got back, the sparge was going so slowly that to the best of our estimates, we still had about 2½ gallons of wort. We removed the grains into a 5 gallon boiling pot and worked about 1½ pounds of rice hulls into it. Then, we lined the inside of the lauter tun with the newly purchased grain bag and transferred the mash back inside. We topped it up with sparge water and got back to draining out the wort.

We cycled quite a few batches back through the top until the wort started running clean again, but fortunately, the drainage never slowed down.

Eventually, we had extracted the full ~6½ gallons of wort. At this point, it was time to take a break and head to the Steel City Big Pour.

Jack's Lantern, Part 3

2007-09-19T18:45:00.000-04:00

Fast forward to Saturday morning. 8am. Time to make the Pumpkin Cereal Mash.

Since the pumpkin had cooled in the oven overnight, I wanted to put some heat back in. I turned the oven back on for about 15 minutes, while I heated up 1½ gallons of water to somewhere near 165°.

I put all of the pumpkin pieces into the roasting pan and poured the 2 pounds of 6-Row malt on top. Then I added about 1 gallon of the hot water and stirred it all together.

I tested the temperature (~145°), and put it into the oven.

Since the temperature was lower than I wanted it to be, I turned the oven up to 200°. I ended up leaving it at 200° for the entire 2 hour mash, yet the mash temperature never got above 150°.

At 90 minutes into the mash, I used a potato masher to break apart all of the pumpkin pieces.

While the pumpkin cereal mashed for its final 30 minutes, I turned my attention to the main mash. For the main mash, there were 10¼ pounds of grain. I planned to use 32 oz water per pound of grain, so I heated that plus a couple quarts worth of water to 170°.

I didn't want to risk knocking the manifold loose at the bottom of my lauter tun, so I combined some of the grain and water outside of the tun and stirred it all together. I then poured this newly created mash into the bottom of the tun. I repeated this process a couple of times, until I had mixed all of the grains with the right amount of water.

Then, I stirred everything in the tun to combine, avoiding the bottom inch or so. Finally, I poured all of the pumpkin cereal on top and stirred it into about the top half of the mash. I took the mash temperature (153°), screwed on the lid, and left it to mash for 60 minutes.

Jack's Lantern, Part 2

2007-09-19T15:31:00.000-04:00

The first step to making Jack's Lantern is to quarter, seed, cube, and bake the pumpkins. I decided to do this on Friday night, so that I would have more time on Saturday to finish. I had a hard stop at 4:00PM Saturday, on account of the Steel City Big Pour. No way I was going to miss out on that!

I started with 6 small pumpkins...

Then quartered them and removed the seeds...

Then removed the stems and cut them into cubes...

Finally, I baked them at 350°F for 2 hours. Some of the pieces burned pretty badly because I didn't rotate the pans at all. I threw out all of the extra crispy pieces. Next time I'll be more careful.

I planned to start the pumpkin cereal mash first thing in the morning, so I just left the pans of pumpkin in the oven over night.

Jack's Lantern, Part 1

2007-09-19T14:29:00.000-04:00

September.

That means it's time to brew up a batch of spiced pumpkin ale.

I've been wanting to try all-grain brewing for awhile, and what better way than to just dive in head first?

After much recipe searching, I found something called "Jack's Lantern Pumpkin Ale": http://groups.google.com/group/rec.crafts.brewing/browse_thread/thread/976a2be80adeacad/89b303c802262a72?#89b303c802262a72

I made a few changes to the recipe based on recommendations from the home brew supply store (Country Wines). Here's the recipe that I ended up making:

Grains and Adjuncts

7 pounds Maris Otter malt
1 pound 40°Lovibond Crystal malt
1 pound Wheat malt
1 pound German Munich malt
¼ pound Chocolate malt
2 pounds 6 Row malt (for pumpkin cereal mash)
14-15 pounds (before removing seeds) Pie Pumpkins (for pumpkin cereal mash)

Hops and Spices

2 oz Hallertauer Hersbrucker hops (1½ oz @60 min, ½ oz @10 min)
1 tbsp Ceylon Cinnamon (@5 min)
1 tbsp Ground Nutmeg (@5 min)
2 tsp Ground Ginger (@5 min)
½ tsp Cloves, broken (@5 min)
1 tsp Allspice (@5 min)

Is this thing on?

2007-09-19T09:28:00.000-04:00

[tap tap tap] Testing, 1-2-3.

At this time, we would like everybody to proceed to the next post. Thank you.