Batch #1 - IPA into the bottles

Our first batch has been dry hopping in the secondary fermenter for a week now and bubbling is down to once every five minutes or slower. It could probably stay in the secondary fermenter for another week - but I'm ready to get this batch into bottles and start a new batch.

First step, clean out the bottles.

Since brewing day, I've been working on cleaning out old bottles. Some of them had been sitting around for months and have never been cleaned, so the bottoms of some of the bottles look like used petri dishes. In other words, they were in need of a thorough cleaning. Here was my cleaning process, which was probably overkill:

1. Rinse the bottles with a carboy jet cleaner attached to a hose.

2. Soak the bottles in a bleach solution. I used two capfuls of Clorox per 5 gallons of water. Then let the soak for a week.

3. Rinse the bottles with a carboy jet cleaner. Scrub with a bottle brush. Then rinse again.

4. On bottling day, I soaked all of the bottles in an iodophor solution for 30 minutes to sanitize.

5. I don't know if this is necessary, but after sanitizing, I placed a sheet of plastic wrap over the tops of all the bottles to insure that nothing got in before bottling.

On to the bottling...

Bottling was pretty simple. First, we boiled 3/4 cup of corn sugar in two cups of water for ten minutes. Next, we siphoned the beer from the secondary fermenter into a sanitized 6.5 gallon plastic bottling bucket. After siphoning in a gallon, we poured in the sugar water and then finished siphoning. The sugar will carbonate the beer in the bottles.

We also took a specific gravity reading and a taste at this point. The specific gravity was 1.017. Oddly, it had gone up since the last reading, but that is probably due to an inaccurate reading last time. We also took a taste at this point. It was amazingly good despite being flat and warm. Good bitterness and a heavy hop aroma. I thought it tasted a bit too alcoholic (almost like a barleywine), but Josie didn't think so.

After siphoning into the bottling bucket, I attached the bottling stick and started filling up bottles. One important note here, if you close the top of the bottling bucket, the beer will flow extremely slow. It took me about a six pack to figure this out.

After the bottles were filled, Josie put the caps on.

Thats it. Now we just wait two weeks and the beer should be carbonated and ready to drink.

Batch #1 - IPA - Secondary Fermenter

Its been one week since fermentation began and its time to transfer the beer into a secondary fermenter. I did a good bit of research on the debatable subject of secondary fermentation and decided to give it a try. Racking the beer from the primary fermenter to a secondary fermenter gets the beer off of the sediment and aids in clearing the beer. The problem is that everytime you expose the beer to oxygen, you risk contamination. Further, some people think that leaving the beer on the sediment (trub) has no negative effect on taste so racking is just a waste of time unless you plan on fermenting for a long period of time (lagers and high gravity beers). One thing people do tend to agree on is that it is best to rask to a secondary fermenter if you plan to dry hop the beer. Since I was planning on dry hopping (and because I was getting bored and impatient just watching the jug of beer sit in the corner) I decided to rack the beer to a secondary.

First things first, I needed a secondary fermenter. I purchased a 6 gallon glass carboy this time instead of another 5 gallon. The reason I bought a 6 gallon is because next time I plan on using the 6 gallon as the primary fermenter and racking to the 5 gallon. With a 6 gallon primary, I won't need a blowoff tube. Apparently using a blowoff tube results in the loss of some hop aroma.

After getting the new carboy out of the box, I immediately proceeded to drop on the driveway. Nice move. It has a small (1/4") crack on the inside near the neck. I will probably replace it before the next batch, but for now I think it will be ok because the crack is airtight and is higher than the beer will sit.

The racking was pretty simple. We sanitized the new carboy, stopper, airlock, hydrometer and siphon. Then we removed the blowoff tube and stopper and took a reading with the hydrometer. The specific gravity was now 1.015. According to the charts I think I am around 7% abv. That sounds about right for an IPA.

Next I sat the fermenter on the table, inserted the auto-siphon, pumped once and the beer started flowing into fermenter #2. We took a quick sample at this point. It was actually really good. Good bitterness and flavor. It was a little yeasty (as expected) and lacked some of the hop aroma I was shooting for, but overall pretty good. The dry hops should add a good bit of aroma.

Once the beer was completely transferred to the second fermenter, I shoved about an ounce of cascade hops into the new fermenter. That's it, racking and dryhopping done. I put the new stopper and airlock in place and put the fermenter back to bed. Its bubbling about once a minute (or slower) now. I'm planning to leave it like this for two weeks before bottling.

One thing I am not certain of is whether I racked at the right time. You are supposed to rack after primary fermentation ends. How do you know when that happens? The general rule (which is what I used) is one week. Another theory is to wait until bubbling gets down to about 5 per minute. That is about what mine was at, but I never timed it. Still another method, and probably the most accurate, is to take daily hydrometer readings. When the readings level off, primary fermentation has ended. This method, however, runs the risk of contaminating the beer every time you take a reading.

I guess that is it for now. I have no pictures of the actual racking procedure because I was cheap and bought batteries for my camera at IKEA. I ran through 10 AA batteries in 10 days and only took about 30 pictures. Bottom line, the camera had no juice on racking day.

Here are some pictures after one day in the secondary fermenter. The hops are covering the top and the beer is noticeably darker than it was in the primary.



Now, wait two weeks .......... In the meantime I'll be cleaning out old beer bottles and getting ready to bottle.

Batch #1 - IPA - Primary Fermentation

The first day of fermentation did not go as planned. I put the fermenter in the basement and waited. After 24 hours, there was no activity. I consulted the books and decided that the problem was that the basement was too cold. The temperature needs to be around 70 degrees, the basement was hovering around 65 degrees. I decided it was time to move the fermenter upstairs. When moving the 5 gallon jar, I undoubtedly stirred things up a bit, not sure if this is a problem or not.

Day 1

After moving it upstairs, the fermenter immediately kicked into action. The first day was just a little bubbling and a small ring of foam at the top.



Day 2

Fermentation picked up on the second day. There was now a large head of foam (technically Krausen I believe) and a steady stream of foam moving through the blowoff tube. The bubbling was very rapid (at least one a second) and the beer started smelling very hoppy!! I was a little concerned at this point that the color of the beer was much darker than any IPA I've seen.



Days 3 through 6

The next few days of fermentation saw a slight increase in activity. By the 6th day, fermentation had slowed to a bubble every few seconds and there was nothing coming through the blowoff tube except gas. One unexpected change was that the beer was getting lighter. It was now really starting to resemble a pale ale.

Day 3


Day 4


Day 5



I think primary fermentation should wind down tomorrow and then I will rack the beer to a secondary fermenter to get it off the trub (the sediment on the bottom).

Batch #1 - India Pale Ale

For our first beer, we've decided to do an India Pale Ale. We recently moved to Oregon, in the heart of hop country, so an over hopped IPA seems like the natural choice. Plus, after consuming gallons of Bridgeport's Fresh Hop IPA last fall, I've set a goal of making an all-grain fresh hopped IPA of my own this fall. Oregon has plenty of fresh hops, so all I need to do is figure out how to use them before the harvest.

While my goal is to eventually brew all-grain, I've decided to go with a partial mash (extract plus steeped grains) recipe for my first batch. I picked up a basic IPA recipe and ingredients at Bader Brewing Supply in Vancouver. I'm going to use the recipe as a basic framework. Here are the ingredients.

Goodbye Shotgun IPA


6.6 lbs Unhopped Light Malt Syrup (Coopers brand)
2 lbs Light Dry Malt Powder
1 lb 20L Crystal Malt
1/2 lb 40L Crystal Malt
1/2 lb Dextrin Malt
1 lb Victory Malt
4 oz Cascade Hops (6%)
2 oz Amarillo Hops (9.5%)
1/2 tsp Irish Moss

Steeping the whole grain

After sanitizing everything I could think of I fired up the stove and started heating up 3 gallons of water (filtered and ozonated). Once I hit 150 degrees, I started steeping the cracked grains in a grain bag.

The steeping grains smelled like a bowl of grape nuts. After steeping the grains for about 30 minutes at 150 deg, I removed the bag and brought the water up to a rolling boil. The water had a deep reddish brown color.

Boiling the wort and hopping

Once the water was boiling, we added one cup of Coopers Unhopped Light Malt Syrup. This stuff has the consistency of thick maple syrup and is incredibly messy.

Time for some hops. To begin, I opened a 2oz package of Cascades and a 2oz pacakge of Amarillos.

I only planned to add 1 oz of each but accidentally threw in all 4oz!! Josie had even asked me beforehand "Are you using all of those?" I think I said "no" at the same time I was dumping them all in the pot. I decided to have another beer and figure out how to remedy this situation.



My concern was not that the beer would be too hoppy, rather I was concerned that I didn't have enough hops left. My understanding is that hops added at the beginning of the boil will contribute to bitterness, while hops added at the end of the boil give beer flavor and aroma.

In order to get the perfect balance of bitterness and flavor, I planned to add 5 oz of hops over the course of 60 minutes in 15 minute intervals. I was going to use the last ounce to dry hop after fermentation.

Josie suggested removing some of the hops from the wort and setting them aside to add later. This seemed like a reasonable solution. About a minute after adding them to the boil, I removed about 2 cups of hops. I have no clue what this is going to do the beer, although I imagine its going to be impossible to replicate.

After boiling for 15 minutes, I added a big scoop of the wet hops and 1/2 tsp of irish moss. The hop aroma coming off the pot at this point was incredible. After another 15 minutes (30 min total) I added another scoop of wet hops to the boil. Right about that time, it started hailing.

At the 45 minute mark, I added the remaining wet hops to the wort and put the wort chiller into the pot. Putting the chiller in at this point sanitizes the copper tubing, but also makes stirring the wort tricky.

With three minutes to go in the one hour boil, I added 1 oz of dry cascade hops. Then I turned off the heat and added the remaining malt syrup and malt powder. This is where I may have screwed up. The malt powder didn't seem to dissolve completely - it was like stirring two pounds of flour into a bowl of maple syrup - not easy. There were big clumps of malt powder everywhere. Next time I think I will boil more water to begin with in order to make stirring easier. The books and recipe say to boil only 3 gallons in the pot (the other 3 gallons go into the fermenter cold) but I think is to aid in cooling the wort. Since I have a wort chiller, I don't need to worry about cooling the wort in the fermenter.

Chilling, pitching and fermenting

Once I got the wort mixed as good as possible, I turned on the hose and started chilling the wort using an immersion wort chiller. It cooled to 75 degrees in about 8 minutes. I poured 3 gallons of cold water into the fermenter (5 gallon glass carboy) and then poured the wort in through a strainer and funnel.

I used a beer thief to take a temperature and specific gravity reading (70 degrees, specific gravity 1.070). Not sure how accurate this reading was though because I didn't wait for the wort to settle first. Assuming it was accurate, the original gravity is pretty high. Based on my research, this is going to come in at around 7.5% abv.

Next I pitched in the yeast (California Ale Yeast - liquid), attached the blow off tube and moved the fermenter to the basement.





Now its time to wait.

Make yer own

A few months ago, Josie (my wife) and I were trying to think of ways to escape our office jobs and do something enjoyable for a living. At one point during these brainstorming sessions, we decided we were going to open a microbrewery.

To kick off our new business, we headed to the local homebrew store and bought some supplies. Basically a bucket, some tubes, a glass carboy and a funnel. Microbreweries brew in 5 gallon batches, right?

Anyhow, after months of procrastinating, its finally time to brew.

First, a disclaimer: I have no clue what I am doing. My sister bought me How to Brew: Everything You Need to Know to Brew Beer Right the First Time by John Palmer for my birthday. A few days earlier I had picked up a copy of The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing by Charlie Papazian. I've read bits and pieces of both books, otherwise my only knowledge of brewing beer is derived solely from repeated viewings of Strange Brew and multiple visits to the Sweetwater Brewery in Atlanta.