Brew3 Cost Analysis

Materials cost:

• Grain: $5.40
• Hops: $1.93
• Yeast: $0.75
• Water: $3.00
• Sanitizing solution: $0.50
• Bottles: $0
• Caps: $0
• CO2: $2
• Priming sugar: $0
• Wort storage bags: $0.60

Energy cost:

• Heating: $0.60
• Cooling: $0.30

~$15.10

100oz beer made

Testing doneness

Will a baster fit into the carboy to draw off beer for testing? (gravity and taste)

- What's the smallest size plastic bottle that will fit the fizz cap?

Brew3: IPA

Equipment: Boil pot, Fermenter, Airlock, Hydrometer, Idophor, Thermometer, wort chiller, strainer, funnel, ruler

Recipe:

2.5 gallons wort reduced to 1 gallon

2/5 oz Citra (14%) at 60 mins

2/5 oz Amarillo (9.1%) at 30 mins

1/5 oz Cascade (7.5%) at 5 mins

Cooper's Ale Yeast slurry (Brew1 Bottle2, Brew2 Bottle1)

Steps:

1. Start thawing wort 1.5 days ahead


Feb 25 9pm: Start defrosting
1. After 1.5 days, wort was only partially defrosted. Interestingly the frozen part was lighter, almost clear, than the liquid.
2. Reduce wort to 1.25 gallons

2/27 8am: Start reducing

8:20am: Hydrometer shows ~1.023

11:40am: Hydrometer still only shows ~1.031

3:10pm: Need the measuring cup for a yeast, so add 1oz malt extract to wort
1. At a reduction rate of .25 per hour, it took 5-6 hours.
3. Add hops according to schedule

3:34pm: Add first set of hops

4:01pm: Add second set

4:30pm: Add last set
4. Rehydrate yeast if needed (boil 1/2 cup water per 7g packet, cover put in freezer or water bath until 95-105 F reached ~30 mins) (or boil 1/2 cup wort and put in freezer or water bath to get a starter going)

3:28pm: Yeast food
3:46pm: Wort chilled and yeast added
5. Bring wort to rolling boil
6. Partial cover pot if at all
7. With a couple minutes left in boil, sanitize fermenter, airlock, blowoff tube, wort chiller, strainer, funnel, hydrometer
8. Finish boil at 60 mins

4:33pm: Wort reduced to ~1.1 gallons
9. Chill wort

4:50pm: Wort chilled
1. Once wort was in the high 70s, I aerated the wort by stirring/splashing the wort with the chiller.
10. Strain wort into fermenter
11. Measure OG

1. OG: 1.056
2. Reduction worked!
12. Pitch yeast
13. Cap with airlock (blowoff tube into sanitizing solution)

4:58pm: Done!

9:03pm: Krausen first appearing in tube
1. At 7:30am, temp is in mid 60s. Bubbling is still going.

2/28 5:50pm: switch to airlock

3/7 8:50pm: Dry hop 1/10 oz Amarillo 9.1% to 2L bottle

Brew2 Tasting

ABV: 3%
IBUs (calculated): 180

Aroma: Citrus, pine, sweet
Hops: Big citrus, pine aftertaste
Yeast: light
Texture: average
Finish: dry
Duration: average (25 seconds pine aftertaste, dry)
Not-acidic, average bitter

Overall:7


Solid Half-IPA

Picture from next day (2/28): Tastes the same

Brew2 Bottling

Equipment: bottles (0.5L, 1L, and 2L), caps, racking cane, bucket with spigot and bottle filler, hydrometer, iodophor, boil pot, jars (1 ~48oz, 2 10oz)

Steps:

1. Boil jars for 20 mins 

1. Boiled jars the night before
2. Cap boiled water in jars 
3. Put jars in water bath to cool
4. Sanitize all equipment
5. Rack to bucket with spigot



1. Siphoning is still a problem. May need to modify racking cane slightly or by longer tubing.
2. Spigot attachment is shaky, otherwise bucket is perfect
6. Add water to fermenter 

7. Fill bottles and cap
8. Measure FG

1. FG: 1.008
9. Pour yeast water off top to large jar 

10. Let yeast water settle 20 mins 
11. Divide top of yeast water among jars

Cheers!

Brew1 Tasting

Opened the 1.25L bottle tonight. I gave it a shot of CO2 about an hour before opening; however it came out pretty flat (only half the head was covered with foam).

Aroma: Barnyard, slight cereal, sweet
Hops: Barely noticeable
Yeast: light
Texture: thin/watery
Finish: dry
Duration: average (45 seconds sweet on tongue, dry)
Not-acidic, very low bitter

Overall: 4


Very disappointing. Beer could be infected with wild yeast and/or affected by refrigerator light since it's stored on the upper shelf in a clear plastic bottle.

Shopping List

2.5 Gallon water jug
Coors Home Draft System
16g CO2 cartridges

Brew2 Cost Analysis

Materials cost:

• Grain: $2.70
• Hops: $1.75
• Yeast: $0.75 (amortized)
• Water: $1.50
• Sanitizing solution: $0.50
• Bottles: $0
• Caps: $0
• CO2: $2
• Priming sugar: $0

Energy cost:

• Heating: ? ~$0.30 (~1 kWh)
• Cooling: ?

~$9.50

~110 oz of beer made.

New mash tun design

The teabag mash/sparge did not scale well to a 10lb/5 gallon batch size. I was using a 15x23 nylon mesh bag which held the grains with about 5 inches of slack on the top. Stirring was almost impossible during the mash and the sparge most likely did very little to run off the grains.

Also with the teabag mash/sparge, it's a real pain to transfer mash liquid out of the pot. Dumping it is fast but adds a lot of aeration; while siphoning would take forever.

The new design is to dump the grains in with the water in the 20qt pot. Transfer the mash water by placing a splatter screen on top of the pot and inverting over a large funnel inside the 34qt pot. Sparge in the 20qt pot and transfer the same way to the 34qt pot.

Actually instead of the lid and splatter screen, I'll try different strainers.

Brew2: IPA

Single Infusion Mashing

Equipment: Mash tun (4.5 gallon pot 2 strainers), Lauter tun (10+ gallon cooler sparge water holder, 8 gallon pot), Boil pot (8qt pot), Fermenter (1 gallon carboy), Airlock (blowoff tube), Hydrometer, Idophor, Thermometer, wort chiller (4 frozen water bottles), strainer, funnel, clip on graduated device (thermometer)

Recipe:
6 gallons Crystal Geyser water
0.5 gallons Reverse Osmosis water
10 lbs. 2 Row Base Malt
0.5 lbs. of Crystal 120

1.2 gallons boil
2/5 oz Citra (14%) pre-boil
2/5 oz Amarillo (9.1%) at 30 mins
1/5 oz Cascade (7.5%) at 5 mins

Cooper's Ale Yeast slurry (Brew1 Bottle1)

Steps:
Mash:

1. Prepare Mash tun


 10:45pm: Strainer ball only holds 4 lbs of grain. Loaded up nylon bag instead.
2. Prepare strike water. Using ratio 1.25 qt/lb, 13.125 qts water to 164  F
1. 11:24pm water heated (40 mins from start)
2. Lost about 1 qt to heating
3. Temper in grains with strike water
4. With thermometer, maintain mash temp: 152 F for 60 mins

12:23am: Mash temp a little low around 148-150
5. Stir mash every 15 mins
1. Mash stirring is impossible in mesh bag. The grains are mostly clumped together with no space to move.
6. With 60 mins to go in mash, prepare sparge water: ~175 F at .5qt/lb water loss to grain, 5.25 qts loss or 7.875 mash water, 16.125 qts water, round up to 16.5
1. Lost about 3 qts to heating
7. While measuring gravity and wort volume, sparge until reaching 1.062 OG and/or 24 qts wort (310 pts sugar)

12:27am: Sparge start, 12:34am: Tea bag sparge resting on strainer

After sparge, put hot wort into Ziploc bags. 1 gallon bag is not big enough to hold 1 gallon. Instead, 3 quarts were put into a 1 gallon bag. 1 quart bag does hold 1 quart. 1 cup easily fits in sandwich bag.

Note: Did not measure gravity since it was too difficult to teabag sparge and measure.

Total wort collected was 5.25 gallons.

Boil:

1:23am: Boil set up including 1 cup wort for yeast starter

1. Add hops according to schedule
1. 11.5g Citra added at 189F (1:30am)
2. Rehydrate yeast if needed (boil 1/2 cup water per 7g packet, cover put in freezer until 95-105 F reached ~30 mins) (or boil 1/2 cup wort and put in freezer to get a starter going)

2:06am: At 80F, pitch yeast from Brew1 yeast wash Bottle1
3. Bring wort to rolling boil
1. ~1:35am
4. Partial cover pot if at all
5. Sanitize fermenter, airlock, blowoff tube, wort chiller, strainer, funnel
6. Finish boil at 60 mins
1. 2:35am: 1.125 gallons wort left
7. Pull a small amount of wort for gravity testing and chill in freezer and measure gravity
8. Chill remaining wort
1. Chilled to 74F
9. Strain wort into fermenter
10. Pitch yeast
1. Yeast starter at 80F
11. Cap with airlock (blowoff tube into sanitizing solution)

3:02am: Yeast ho!

OG: 1.032

Low OG

1:52pm: Fermenting action

3:41pm: Create extra malt: ~3.25 oz Eden Malt Syrup and 2 oz water

Over 1.080 scale

4:35pm: Added 4oz to fermenter before fermenter spewed

11:00pm: Bubbling slowed to about 1 per minute

7:20pm (next day): Switch to airlock (pressure noted against inner airlock) / About 1 cup blew out of fermenter through tube.

Equipment measurements

Inches
8qt boil pot
1qt 6.625
2qt 5.75
3qt 4.875
4qt 3.875
5qt 2.875
6qt 2

20qt pot
2qt 7.25
4qt 6.5
6qt 5.625
8qt 4.625
10qt 3.875
12qt 2.875
14qt 2

34qt pot
2qt 11
4qt 10.25
6qt 9.75
8qt 9
10qt 8.25
12qt 7.625
14qt 7
16qt 6.25
18qt 5.5
20qt 4.875
22qt 4.125
24qt 3.5
26qt 3

Crockpot
1qt 3.5
2qt 2.75
3qt 2
4qt 1.25
5qt 0.5

Coors Light 1.5G Keg

Weight of full new: 14 lb 1oz

Weight of empty:

Brew1 Yeast Washing

Equipment: Boil pot (8qt), jars (1 ~48oz, 3 10 oz)

Yeast Washing:

1. Boil jars for 20 mins 
2. Cap boiled water in jars 
3. Put jars in freezer to cool 
• In reality, put the jars in water bath. Changed water a couple times. Took about half hour to cool.
4. Add water to fermenter 
5. Rack yeast water to large jar 
6. Let yeast water settle 20 mins 
7. Divide top of yeast water among jars

Brew1 Tasting

Following ratebeer's tasting sheet (http://www.ratebeer.com/documents/tastingsheet.pdf):
ABV: 5%
IBUs (calculated): 40-60

Aroma: Straw, cereal, nutty, sweet
Hops: Definitely Cascade
Yeast: light
Texture: average/thin
Finish: dry
Duration: average, hop
Not-acidic, slight bitter

Overall: 8

Brew1 Bottling

Equipment: bottles (1L swing top, 1L plastic, 0.5L plastic), caps (2 carbonaters), racking cane, bottle filler, hydrometer, iodophor, sugar (cane)

Steps:

1. Sanitize all equipment

10:42pm ~1ml per liter bottle

10:47pm Sanitizing

10:57pm After a long ordeal with the Ziploc funnel, sanitizing liquid is in bottling tube

2. Given the ratio 160 ml sugar per 480 ml water and for 2 pints beer, boil 24 ml water and add 8 ml sugar 

5 tsps water

1 heaping 1/2 T sugar

After 2:38 in microwave, the sugar mixture turned to syrup

3. Measure sugar mixture volume and calculate division according to bottle conditioned bottles

(Comment: Only 1 bottle conditioned bottle. No division necessary)

4. Add sugar mixture to bottles that will be bottle conditioned

Comment: About half of the syrup was added

5. Start siphon

11:05 pm: Bled sanitizing solution into 1L plastic bottle. Filled swing top almost to top. Poor siphon/some aeration. Siphon stopped before fully filling bottle.

11:15pm Reloaded racking cane.

6. Fill bottles and cap

1L and 1/2L bottles went more smoothly.

7. Measure FG, if haven't already

11:27 Camera fail. FG: 1.013 (1 1/2 notches below red line)

12:29am: Carbonated and chilled

Prost! 8-)