Mossy Cup Brewing Blogs

East Coast Brewery Tours

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:37:00 +0000

I just got back from Washington D.C. and a quick trip up to Harrisburg, PA, where I visited Troegs Brewery and Appalachian Brewing Co. Troegs Brewery was a fairly small operation, a lot like Rogue Brewery, but the tour was a blast. I really liked John, one of the brothers that started the brewery, and his tour. Had a great tasting and lots of fun.

Ventamatic Beer Faucets

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 04:08:00 +0000

I have a 4-faucet beer fridge that one person (well, one working person...) simply can not keep used enough for conventional faucets to not get sticky and freeze up with old, dry, sticky beer. Except for this new faucet, called the Ventamatic Beer Faucets. It is basically the same as the perlick faucets and they close from the back where the beer is. So, nothing should stick and get gummed up. After using two of these for a couple months now, I can say, these things are awesome and if you have sticky faucets, I would heartily recommend you try some of these. I think Santa is bringing me two more for Xmas!

New update

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 00:35:00 +0000

I know it has been a long time since much has been put on this page, but I have still been busy brewing. I'm going to try to get some of my latest batches up on the site soon. I just got done fermenting 10 gallons of fresh cider (it tastes like crap and smelled REALLY bad, so I hope it turns out...I doubt it will...bummer).

I just got back from a trip to Moab, UT. I tried some of the Derailleur Red Ale from The Moab Brewery, and I'm in love. I have to find a way to clone some of this!

How I Brew

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Sun, 01 Aug 2004 20:15:00 +0000

Finally got a section detailing How I Brew put up. It has details about all my proceedures for brewing and even has a sample data sheet for recording all my critical numbers. Hope this helps a lot of you out. I've had a LOT of questions and requests for something like this.

Rogue Brewery Visit

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 02:08:00 +0000

I just spent some time with my wife, Sarah, on the Oregon Coast for our 5th wedding anniversary. Much to my surprise, we were staying in Newport, Oregon. Yes, the SAME Newport that is home to Rogue Breweries!!!

You can swing by my brewery tours page and check out the pictures.

Anyway, we stopped by for lunch and a tour, but the tours didn't start until 4PM, so we just had lunch. Still, it was VERY cool. You have to walk THROUGH the brewery to get to the gift shop and the bar area upstairs, where they have a good pub and some great tastings of the Rogue labels.

You would NEVER know it, driving by, but nestled in the old run-down building on the warf, is a great pub/eatery and some very good brew. The tastings were great. Can't say I particularly liked the chamomellow (made with chamomile flavoring) or the chipotle flavored brew, but Dead Guy is always good, and I really liked the flavor of the Shakespear Stout.

Black Butte Porter - 20 gallon

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Sun, 21 Mar 2004 04:46:00 +0000

Well, I just got 92% efficiencies on my Black Butte Porter 20 gallon brew. I'm not sure if it is the concentrated 15 gallon mash (literally overflowing the mash tun as you heat it from 130'F to 155'F and the liquid expands) or if it is the new grain mill and the great crush I'm getting out of it, but the last two brews have been phenomenal on efficiencies.

I did 20 gallons on this, and am keeping 10 gallons. I'm going to try the old standby 1099 in one carboy and experiment with a drier 1318 London Ale III yeast for the other. I've had the 1318 in someone else's, and it was not too bad (certainly different). Oh, and my Moose Drool is almost GONE!

Plans...

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Wed, 18 Feb 2004 14:41:00 +0000

One thing that I really liked on one of the pages that I saw, was sort of a step-by-step break down of how his brew day went (critical temps, what went where, etc). I think I'll try to add a Brew Proceedure page that just sort of shows how/what I do. May save me answering a lot of questions all the time in the emails I get.

Oh, and I'm almost out of Black Butte Porter. Seems like it has the PERFECT OG to make it be my next 20 gallon brew from a single mash session!

Jason also picked up 10 pin-lock Coke style corny kegs for $10 each last Friday, so I'm taking 2 of them and getting some quick flare pin-lock taps for them to potentially put in my fridge if I need to. That way Jason and I can swap kegs once in a while if we need to.

Smells like baking bread

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Tue, 10 Feb 2004 02:56:00 +0000

It really adds up when 20 gallons of brew is bubbling away making alcohol. I love the smell of brewers yeast working away on that sweet nectar! I put in two blow off tubes on the most aggressively filled carboys. Looks like the worry over only pitching two 125mL XL Slap packs in 20 gallons is over. Things sure do take off well when you pitch in a well aerated wort. I've noticed my krausens go up significantly and my lag times drop a LOT ever since moving over to using pure O2 to aerate my wort inline on my CFC.

WOOT!!! 87% on 20 gallon mash of Moosedrool!

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 00:59:00 +0000

I just got done with my 20 gallon brew of Moose Drool and I got a whooping 87% efficiency out of my mash. I did 43 lbs of grain in a single mash at about 1.0 qts/lb on my mash, and I was figuring on only about 70% efficiencies. This is the first brew with the new Grain Mill and I was worried that with that much grain, I was going to have low efficiencies and, worse, possibly a stuck mash. I ground the grains all last night, and the crush was a LOT more than I'm use to (even after backing off the crush a lot and gapping the space more than stock). Well, I was worried about all that fine crush, but it turned out SPLENDID. As it was, we had to use 5 carboys to get all 21.5 gallons in. I did all 43 lbs at once in the mash, and then drained the 4.5 gallons of initial runnings (hit 1.113 SG on that) into one of the boil kettles, and then batch sparged about 13 more gallons (in 4.5 gallon increments), then fly sparged the last 6 gallons to hit my 25 gallons preboil volumes. Pumped the wort for a long time between the two boil kettles to equalize the gravities, and hit 1.053 (was shooting for 1.044). Well, boiled for 80 minutes, and ended up with about 21.5 gallons in the kettles at 1.061, for a grand total of 87% efficiency. I didn't stir the mash once after the initial dough in.

Thanks for all the help, Rob! We played cribbage, drank beer, and ate some brauts and chorizos cooked in chocolate oatmeal stout in a crockpot. It was a great time.

Pete's Wicked Ale

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Sat, 24 Jan 2004 23:56:00 +0000

Just had my first couple glasses of Pete's Wicked Ale clone I brewed on Dec, 07 of last year. It is VERY tasty. A bit darker (mostly due to clarity) than the commercial version, but very good. Could use just a little more bittering hops, I think. I'm sure I'll brew this one again, but I'll have to see how the Moose Drool I'm planning to brew next turns out.

The Full Suspension is also ready, I'm just waiting for space in the fridge!!! Super Bowl weekend ought to take care of that problems. Grin.

New Keg Fridge

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Sun, 18 Jan 2004 01:25:00 +0000

I finally hit the cooling lines on my Woods freezer that I was using as my keggerator while drilling some more holes for 2 more taps. Lost all the coolant and I'm not sure it is going to be fixable. I picked up a used refridgerator today for $75 and spent the day cleaning it, removing shelves, and taking the interior of the door off (so that all 4 kegs will fit in there). Drilled 4 new holes and mounted the splash grills and 4 taps. Got a 4 line manifold put inside on the back wall and plumbed out the back to the C02 tank. Also got a small shelf made for the back kegs (the back of most fridges is sloped, so, you have to build a square stand for the kegs to sit on in the back).

Now I'm just hoping I can find a way to repair my old freezer to use it as a temp controlled fermentation cabinet.

Oh, yeah, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Wicked Brew

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 03:26:00 +0000

Took the opportunity to invite some of the folks from the local Treasure Valley Brew club over to watch an all grain brew. Jack, Steve, and Cory all made it, and Cory brought some brauts that we crock-potted in some of my oatmeal stout for a couple hours and then ate them on buns with some hot honey mustard...mmmm.

Jason did a double batch. One AG and one extract. He got the extract/steeped batch of Full Suspension going first in the boil kettle and then started the mash tun and HLT cranking up to temp to do an AG clone of Pyramid Snowcap Ale. It was cold and really rained toward the end of the brew day...but any day brewing is a GOOD day!

Temp Controller for HLT Gas installed

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Mon, 27 Oct 2003 04:37:00 +0000

I got the temp controller and the ASCO 1/2" solenoid valve installed in the system today. I'll have to do a burner test run and see how hot it gets. Had to rewire a lot of stuff and I removed the mis-matched old ASCO valve in the bypass line of the HLT and replaced it with a matched one and use that one for the gas valve, since it only has a very small 3/16" orifice for flow.

Rye IPA Label

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Sat, 11 Oct 2003 15:28:00 +0000

I just got a label for the Rye IPA made up. Going to put it on tap this weekend.

Double Dog Brew Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Mon, 06 Oct 2003 17:38:00 +0000

After finishing two separate all grain brews yesterday, a 10 gallon Horsetooth Pale Ale and a 10 gallon repeat of the Fat Tire, I was beat. Jason Hoodenpyle also was over with his brew frame and made 10 gallons of AG Black Butte Porter. So, I ended up with 15 gallons of brew last night (and I racked the Rye IPA to keg and bottled 5 gallons of the B52). So, I didn't have three blow off tubes, and I just picked the brew with the lowest OG and the one that had the most head space and put an air lock on that one...heheh. Well, guess which one took off the fastest? The pictures below are last night on the left and 12 hours later on the right.

Jason also had some great ideas about printing up some labels for our brews to stick on our kegerators under the taps to tell what we had. I came up with the following ones, which I printed out and stuck on some cool business card refrigerator magnets from Walmart.

Blow Out!!

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Sun, 14 Sep 2003 14:43:00 +0000

The B-52 and IPA both started bubbling pretty good last night after only 5 hours. I took them out in the garage so that they could get down to around 68'F over night. Got up this morning and found this:

At least they didn't explode. I got them all washed down, and some sterilized blow off tubes put in. I'm very surprised, as I have not had to use blow off tubes since I went to the 6 gallon carboys for primaries. Guess I aerated enough...grin. The picture on the right is after only 15 minutes on the blow off tubes.

Denny Conn's Rye IPA

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Sun, 14 Sep 2003 03:36:00 +0000

Jason Hoodenpyle and I got together for another brew. Jason did Skotrat's B-52 Light Ale and I did Denny Conn's Rye IPA (both 10 AG brews).

This was also the virgin run of the new temp controller for the mashtun and HLT using the new solenoids and temp controller. Let me tell you this: it worked like a dream. Set the temp, and just keep the HLT at about 10-20'F hotter than the target temp, and the controller took care of the rest. Uh, that was until the march pump locked up. About half way through the Sac rest of the mash, the magnetic drive impeller jammed. I broke it down (see pictures below) and disassembled the impeller and found a bunch of sticky-goo (technical term) on the impeller shaft. I've decided that this is simply too easy to break down to ignore cleaning, so I'm going to go through it after at least every other brew.

I managed to find enough time during the boil to clean 3 kegs, rack the oatmeal stout to one of the kegs and clean the carboy (in addition to taking the pump impeller apart). The oatmeal stout is tasting pretty chocolaty! And the pear cider tastes like champagne (uh...duh, it is running about 14% alcohol by volume and I used champagne yeast).

New Electronic Temp Controlled Mashtun

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Fri, 12 Sep 2003 03:04:00 +0000

Here are the new pictures of my Ranco Electronic Temperature Controlled (ETC) mashtun. I have to thank Walt Fischer from the Homebrew Digest Forum pages for the cool idea. I've been thinking about something like this, but didn't really know where to get the solenoids. Walt's setup convinced me to try to pick up some off Ebay and see what I could do. As an electrical engineer, I had to give it a try..grin.

I got the same ETC that I'm using to control the temperature for my kegs in the keg freezer I got. I also bought some Red Hat 120V AC solenoid valves. Now, the system picks up the temp in the mashtun and bypasses if it is above the set point or sends the wort through the HLT heat transfer coils if it is too cool.

Oatmeal Breakfast Stout

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Mon, 01 Sep 2003 21:22:00 +0000

I just finished up the 10 gallon AG brew of Oatmeal Breakfast Stout with the help of Nathan Rowland. Missed my OG again! Hit 62% efficiency and I left a full gallon in the boil kettle because of the willamette whole hops plugging the SS strainer. I'm ordering another false bottom today and I hope I can find some Zymico bazzoka tubes somewhere too. You can also see my awesome little brew buddy, Riley James McClain, who is just over 11 months old now.

Black Butte Porter

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Thu, 28 Aug 2003 02:56:00 +0000

Here is the Black Butte Porter in a side by side. The taste is quite splendid, and has a very nice roasted tasted to it. The color is very nice, though still settling a bit and is not quite as clear yet and is a bit lighter in color (ever so slightly) than the real thing . I think I shall like this beer very much, indeed. I can only hope that the Breakfast Oatmeal Stout I'm making this weekend will be as nice.

Pappony Cider (Pear-Apple-Honey)

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Sun, 17 Aug 2003 15:15:00 +0000

I have been wanting to do a hard cider for a while (actually, my wife said if I really wanted to brew something she might like, I could try matching Ace Pear Cider...sigh). Anyway, I did a little research and found a ton of conflicting comments/instructions. Some emphatically saying boil to kill native yeasts, some saying don't, the native yeasts are the best ferment. Some saying you can't use pasteurized, some actually preferring it. Some saying use beer yeast, some wine, some champagne.

Anyway, I finally just decided that the best way to figure it out was to write up my own recipie and try it out.

So, I got the following together:

4 gallons Apple Cider (no preservatives, but it had been Pasteurized)
6 29oz cans of Bartlett Pears in juice (again, no preservatives, but Pasteurized).
2 lbs Rasins
5 lbs Pure Clover Honey
Lavlin 1118 Wine/Champagne Yeast

Blended the pears and honey up to a fine puree. Blended Rasins in some of the apple cider. Brought entire concoction to boil for 30 minutes.

Now came the hard part. The rasins and puree plugged every method I used to try to CFC chill it. SS scrubbies plugged, even trying to pump it was bad. So in the future, I will try using the juicer I bought just for this (but I was convinced I should be able to just blend it all and boil it for a while and get more fermentables).

Anyway, I finally just poured the remainder through a strainer/funnel into the carboy sitting in an ice bath and let it cool. Pitched yeast, and 5 hours later, it is just starting to bubble. This looks like it is going to turn out more like Apple Jack than any sparkling cider (grin) as it is very dark and looks like a Wiezen more than cider.

The taste of the original solution is great though so far...we'll see how it filters (any ideas on filtering the final ferment?.

I ended up with an OG of 1.118 (refractometer says it is 1.106). Anyway, this is going to probably be pretty high in alcohol content unless I chill it early to stop the ferment. I'll plan to rack to secondary in one week and just keep it in my beer fridge at 40'F (I know they recommend secondary fermenting at around 55'F, but I don't think I can handle drinking my beer that warm).

The pictures below are all out in my shop on my counters next to my plumbed in deep sink.

Black Butte is bubbling!!

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Wed, 13 Aug 2003 04:06:00 +0000

The Black Butte Porter is bubbling away after about 30 hours of lag time. Here are some pictures of it and my little brew buddy (who looks like he has had too much...grin.

Deschutes Brewery Black Butte Porter Clone Brew

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Sun, 10 Aug 2003 21:26:00 +0000

Everything went pretty well. Was done with brewing and cleaned up by 1:30PM. I even cleaned the remaining 3 kegs and racked the Easy Wiezen to a keg (almost certain that this is going to be a "dump out beer" due to the nasty burnt taste when I took an SG reading). The Fat Tire is actually coming along pretty well, and the color is almost a perfect match with the real thing, unlike the partial extract we did a couple months ago (see further down). The taste is a little more mild and a little less "burnt" tasting. Not sure why, but tasting the AG brew vs the Real Thing makes the original taste just a little burnt (not hoppy, just wierd). I think I'm going to like the AG version I did (which is on the left in the image below).

I missed my OG on the Black Butte Porter. Tried for 1.057. Got 1.046. That was in 10 gallons. This sucks. I think I need to adjust my efficiencies down to 65% until I get this under control. I just did a 152'F single step mash in 7.5 gallons (this had initial runnings of 5 gallons at 1.057). Then sparged 7 more gallons (recirculated for 20 minutes single step sparge) in and hit 12 gallons pre boil at 1.036. Boiled 90 minutes to get down to 10.15 gallons and hit 1.046 SG. That works out to a 61% efficiency. One thing I might need to think about doing is using more water in the initial mash. I guess as I adjust my efficiency down, this will naturally raise the initial grain and the amount of water in the mash and require less volume for the sparge to hit the 12 gallons pre boil.

The O2 worked great on this. Just ran it slow and steady and low on the preasure. I put the carboys in a cooler of ice water to get the temps down better on the initial, but the stupidly forgot to turn the damn CFC water flow on for half the second 5 gallon batch. Put both in a nice bath water, and they are at 76'F right now. Pitched the yeast in (forgot to set it out and break the slap pack last night, so I did it at 6AM today, and gave it 7 hours by the time I pitched...instructions say 6-8 hours..should be good. We'll see how fast it takes off.

The color on this latest brew is sure wonderfully dark. I'll think about doing a coffee hop in the secondary on one of the 5 gallons.

Kegs all cleaned and plumbed

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Tue, 05 Aug 2003 04:24:00 +0000

Finally got two kegs all cleaned up and sanitized. Plumbed the CO2 lines and quick disconnects. Should be ready for beer tomorrow!

Brewed some Easy Weizen LME

noreply@blogger.com (Jeff) — Sun, 03 Aug 2003 02:07:00 +0000

I took the time to finally brew 5 gallons of "Easy Weizen" Liquid Malt Extract (LME) tonight. Phew...it was more than I expected:

I just did my FIRST extract brew this past weekend, after jumping straight into HERMS brewing and AG (yes, I do everything backwards). I had purchased a "starter" set from a LHBS for the bottles, carboy, etc. and had 7# of LME for an "Easy Weizen" 5 gallon recipie with dry yeast that came with it that I never had done. Well, I figured this would be CAKE after doing the AG brews, and I had a couple hours last Saturday night, so I pulled the LME out of the fridge and got it warming up in some hot water, while I boiled 5 gallons of sterilization water in my HLT (to be run through the CFC and QD lines and pump).

Heheh...first the recipie called for me to bring to a boil 2.5 gallons (blah...blah..blah..screw that, I have a 15 gallon boil kettle, I'm doing a full wort boil here!!!)... Grin, well, I got a nice full flame boil going, dumped in the LME, and hops, and immediately smelled my mistake. I jumped for the flame controls and turned it down, but the thick smoke (not steam) that was rolling out of the top of the kettle told me it was too late.

Well, I decided to finish it and see how it would turn out. It smelled pretty bad (burnt sugar/LME/Hops smell), but then the LME smelled ucky (technical term) to me to begin with..shrug. I finished the 60 minute boil and then cooled into the carboy with CFC and aeration stone and did lots of aeration shaking even after that and pitched the dry yeast (I guess you just dump it into the carboy on top of the foam and shake it up?).

The SS boil kettle had a nice black teflon coating on the bottom from the carmelized/burnt LME that was hard to scrub off, so I just decided to try drying it out. Surprise...if anyone ever has this same problem, let it dry...the black stuff had all peeled away and curled up leaving nice clean SS behind after 24 hours. I'll BKF it and make sure, but I sure hope there isn't any permanent smell left behind.

Well, within 4 hours after pitching the dry yeast, this stuff was bubbling away like nothing I've done before (OG was only 1.040), and it was pretty much done after about 28 hours. The trub has a nasty looking black soot stuff on it that has collected, but the beer looks pretty good (for a weizen) and the smell wasn't too bad coming from the ferment. Any experience on how beer tastes that has been burnt/carmelized in the boil?

Couple things I've learnd:

Turn OFF the flame before adding any extract to the boil.
I've begun thinking about how quickly I try to bring my mash wort to boil (also a full flame on the first runnings and on the batch sparge that I add over time), and I think I'm going to take a little more care to not super heat it so much. I always reduce the heat once it is boiling to keep the hot break down, but never thought about the possibility that I could possibly be even burning some of my wort as I bring it to a boil.