Saison Brewday

I brewed the Saison recipe from Brewing Classic Styles last summer. It turned out very well. One of my best brews and closely resembling Saison DuPont, at least to my palette. The beer also tasted to me very similar to a hefeweissen but without so much of the banana overtones and sweet bready body. In any case I hope to duplicate my success, although I suspect the results of this one will be different, especially considering my temperature control issues.

Saison
3.25 gallon batch
6# 2oz Belgian Pils
0# 8oz Munich Malt
0# 8oz Wheat Malt
0# 8oz Cane Sugar
0# 1oz Caramunich 60L
--------
7# 11oz fermentables
(Only 6# 3oz in mash, add sugar during boil). 

1oz Hallertau, 4.3% AA, 60 mins
.5oz Hallertau, 4.3% AA, flameout

Brookline, MA water, with 1/2 tsp gypsum
1/2 tsp Irish moss @ 15 min

90 minute mash at 147F
90 minute boil to drive off DMS
Target pre-boil volume is 4.25 gallons

27 IBUs
Expected OG / FG: 1.065 / 1.004 at 70% efficiency

WLP56 - Belgian Saison I, start fermentation at 68F and allow to free rise over the course of 3-4 week primary to 80F or more.

7/28/12, 11:40am
Dough in with 2.25 gal at 158F. Ten minutes later the mash was right where I wanted it, at 147F. Aiming for a dry beer here.

1:10pm, added .96 gal boiling mash-out water.

2:20pm, boil started. Pre-boil OG was 1.049 at 4.25 gallons. (Including the sugar.) Approximately 70% efficiency, as I was hoping. If the final volume is 3.25 gal this will hit my target OG right on.

4:15pm, wort was around 100F. Placed in 70F basement to cool before transferring to fermenter and pitching, which I will probably do later this evening. My wort chiller still leaks at a few places. Extremely annoying.

7:00pm, transferred wort to plastic bucket and aerated. The wort was like 80F or so but I put the bucket into a bin filled with 65F water and some ice blocks. Pitched yeast. Got very slightly less than 3 gallons.

7/29/12, 6:45pm
No bubbling in the airlock yet, but clearly the pressure in the bucket is building up because the airlock is looking like bubbles will soon start coming. Also the wort is sitting in 68F water.

7/30/12, 4pm
I was getting really worried that something was wrong because there were no bubbles in the airlock. I opened the top of the bucket to see a thick krausen with lots of yeast on top. After I replaced the bucket and airlock there were lots of bubbles. There was probably an air leak somewhere. Anyway. the bucket is in a pool of 70F water. In a couple of days I will take the beer to a warmer place, like the attic or garage, for it to ferment at the warm temps necessary for it to completely finish with the right fruity / spicy mix.

7/31/12, 4pm
Active fermentation appears to have stopped or dramatically slowed. Moved fermenter and bin of water to the garage, where ambient temps are currently 75F. During the days the temps will likely go to the mid-80s and at night will be in the high-60s. At any rate I hope that the high temps will encourage the fussy saison yeast to complete fermentation. Last time I brewed this beer, for the first few days of fermentation I kept the fermenter in cool water and then took it out. The bucket sat in my apartment, which probably never went below 75F and during the afternoons probably went up to the 85F - 90F range as the sun came through the windows. The beer turned out well that time. I hope to repeat that success.

8/18/12
After three weeks of fermenting the gravity was down to 1.005. Great! The beer had a good estery smell but I detected a slightly sulfury quality which I hope will go away. Bottled with 2.6oz sugar. Got slightly less that 3 gallons. Collected some of the leftover yeast for use in an upcoming funky table saison, which I plan to ferment with WLP565 and Brettanomyces.

Smoked Porter Brewday

I have been studying for the Massachusetts bar exam for the last two months. Fortunately I have made it through the hazing ritual (whether or not successfully, I don't know) intact enough to spend the next few days relaxing and brewing beer.

I have attempted this recipe before but the resulting beer did not have any hint of the smokey flavor that it should have. It was chocolatey, coffee-like and roasty. It got a 35 in a local competition in the porter category. What most likely happened was that the local home brew store sold me the wrong grain. Instead of rauchmaltz I ended up with amber malt or something. This time I bought my grain from Brewmaster's Warehouse. The Brewbuilder feature of that store is pretty cool since it lets you build and buy your own recipes, each of which will come in its own sealed plastic bag. Anyway, I hope this attempt will yield a prominent smoked flavor like the Alaskan Smoked Porter. (The Stone Smoked Porter is good too but has only a subtle background of smoke, in my view.) The recipe comes from an old issue of BYO. You can easily find it on the interwebs.

Alaskan Smoked Porter Clone 
3.25 gallon batch

4# 8oz Briess 2-Row Brewers Malt
1# 10oz Briess Smoked Malt
1# Weyerman Pale Ale
0# 8oz Crisp Chocolate Malt
0# 6oz Briess Caramel 40L
0# 4oz Crisp Black Patent
---
8# 4oz Total Grain

0.5oz Chinook, 13.9%AA, 60 min
0.5oz Willamette, 7.5% AA, 15 min

Safale US-05

Anticipated OG / FG: 1.063 / 1.017 (70% Mash efficiency)
Anticipated IBU: 51 (Tinseth)
Anticipated SRM: 45

-----------------
7/27/12
Dough-in with 2.58 gallons of 165F water. Wow, got a nice whiff of smokey almost bacon like smell. 10 minutes later the actual mash temp was 152F. A couple of degrees lower that target, but that will probably be OK.

Got my first runnings. Ended up with 2.8 gallons or so. I must have screwed up the measurements for the mash-out water volume because I was only supposed to get 1.88gal of 1st runnings. Crap! Added 2nd runnings water, reduced so that I hope to get only 3.75 gal of pre-boil wort. If more I can boil longer to reduce the volume of wort and hit the right OG.

Got about 4.3 gal of pre-boil wort - more than I calculated. Boiled for 90 minutes.

Put almost exactly 3 gallons into the 3-gal Better Bottle when the wort was around 85F. Let sit in 65F water to cool to pitching temps.

Did not take a gravity reading. That was dumb. Also some equipment issues because my wort chiller was leaking a bit at the intersection b/t the plastic tubing and the copper tubing.

Ack, a dog hair may have gotten into the fermenter! Or maybe it is a long string of coagulated trub protein.

Pitched around 11:15pm, when beer was at about 72F. Let sit in 65F water bath.

7/28/12, 4pm
Krausen is forming. May have to bust out the blow-off tube pretty soon.

7/29/12, 6:30pm
Very active fermentation with a think brown krausen. Surprisingly though it is not blowing an schmutz out of the airlock.

8/11/12
Bottled today with 2oz sugar. FG was 1.015. Got 28 bottles, plus about 14oz of beer left in the bucket / hydrometer sample. The uncarbonated beer tasted like a mix of chocolate, coffee and smoke. Tasting to come in a week or two.

Oaked English Barleywine Tasting

Yesterday, in celebration of surviving the Massachusetts bar exam, I opened a bottle of Oaked English Barleywine that I brewed in early November 2011 and bulk aged for a few months on medium-toast oak cubes. The recipe is from Brewing Classic Styles.

I still intend to age this until around Thanksgiving at which point it will go well with the cold weather and heavy food. Perhaps I will let a six-pack age for a few years. However, this beer has not been stored properly, as it was aged in a basement around 65F-70F and taken on a 650 mile drive in the back of a U-Haul in late May. Apparently the best way to store beer is at a constant temperature of 40F or so. Oxidation may also be an issue. In theory, however, bottle-conditioned beers like this one are protected somewhat from the aging by the biological activity of the yeast.

A drink for sitting by the fireplace.

Oaked English Barleywine
11# English 2-Row Pale
0# 8oz Crystal 40L
0# 8oz Crystal 120L
Magnum bittering hops, Kent Goldings flavor and aroma.

Expected IBU: 66

3 gallon batch.

British Ale - WLP005 - Ferment at 68F.

Brewed 11/11/2011

Actual OG / FG: 1.092 / 1.022
About 9.8% ABV.

Ferment 4 weeks, transfer to secondary with .75 boiled oak cubes. Store 3-4 months.

Bottle with 1.75oz sugar and rehydrated Nottingham yeast.

---------
Take these notes with a grain of salt. I already had drank a few beers before this one and now I'm recalling what it tasted like last night.

Appearance: Slight brownish head that quickly dissipates but leaves some bubbles clinging to the side of the glass. Ruddy, brown color. Really hazy despite that this bottle was in the fridge for two weeks before pouring. Not sure if it is chill haze, yeast disturbed from the bottom of the bottle, or tannins from the Oak. The mud-like color is not appealing and I wish the head were a better.

Aroma: Complex. Sweet malt, dried fruit and moderate oakiness. Slight earthy hop aroma. Pretty nice.

Taste: Again complex. Sweet malty taste balanced by oaky tannins and dark fruit like raisins or plums. A little bit of hot alcohol particularly in the aftertaste. Hop bitterness is in there somewhere.

Mouthfeel: Sweet and a little bit heavy but not as syrupy as port wine. Low to moderate carbonation.

Overall: A complex, alcoholic beer with strong flavors of malt, dried fruit and oak. A sipping beer best suited for the cold winter months and paired with heavy food or as a desert beer.
-----

So I think this one will be pretty good as long as the sub-optimal storage conditions and potential for oxidation do not destroy the beer. I will write another post in November when this beer is about a year old.

Lübecker Hefeweissen Tasting

My first attempt at hefeweissen was brewed on June 16 and has been sitting in bottles for about three weeks. So its about 5 weeks old. I unwisely first tasted it when it was only three weeks old, after which I feared that it would be undrinkable. The first bottle was a weird grayish color with a boring taste. It was so uninspiring I though that I might need to dump the whole batch.

Fortunately the beer has improved somewhat but it is not what I would like it to be. I drank a Paulaner Hefeweizen a few days ago as an exemplar of the style. My own beer is OK and drinkable but not nearly as good as the Paulaner.

Appearance: Good white head with nice lacing. Liquid is light yellow, with a slight grayishness. When first poured it is quite clear but with the yeast it takes on a bit more haziness. It's not quite as bright golden yellow in color like a nice German wheat beer should be.

Aroma: Smells only slightly fruity. Not a strong smell.

Taste: Like the smell it does not have a real banana smell. The phenolic / clove character is there but it clearly should have some more banana flavor. Also lacks the bready, sweet taste of a good wheat beer.

Mouthfeel: A little bit over-carbonated but the lack of sweetness and body makes it seem a little thin and not bready enough. A little bit like a thin and dry saison.

Overall: Drinkable but by no means what I was aiming for. The lack of banana taste is the most disappoint aspect of the beer. I'd also like some more body in the beer. Perhaps my fermentation temperature control is not quite up to the task but that said I would like to try again because to me good hefe is magnificent.

For Next Time:

•  Use a direct heated step mash so that I can get better efficiency and to hit my temps correctly. Hit 112F, 152F and 167F, then transfer to the MLT and sparge w/ 170F water.
• Do not use Irish moss.
• Try to ferment at the right 62F temperature.
• Perhaps use a different brand of yeast. Apparently the WLP300 is not as good as the Wyeast wheat yeast. Also I have though of culturing some yeast from Sierra Nevada Summer Wheat.   

Side Note: How do you get good photos of your beer so that the photo looks like what you see with your eyes?                                                           

Brewing Books

I have amassed a small collection of brewing related books. Although a huge amount of information and recipes are available on the interwebs from various blogs, forums, etc... having this information organized into books by recognized experts is invaluable.

The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, Charlie Papazian
Like many homebrewers this is what got me started. I had been wanting to try homebrewing for a while, but after seeing this book on the shelf and reading it over I decided to finally try it out. I relied on this book during my first few brews and still sometimes refer to it. That said I have not tried any of the recipes, and the level of detail in this book is relatively basic.

How to Brew, John Palmer
I have read only the free on-line version, not the expanded print version. Again, I use this as a reference book but have not brewed any of the recipes. The book has more technical and up-to-date material than the Papazian book, and covers additional topics like cooler-MLTs, metallurgy, batch sparging, and others not found in the Papazian book.

Brewing Classic Styles, Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer
Mostly a collection of recipes with a small how-to about brewing process. Generally assumes that the reader knows how to brew, so this is not a beginner's book. The recipes all come with good information about the style, the best process to use to achieve a good example of that style, and general tips for each type of recipe presented.

I have brewed the Nut Brown, the Saison, the American IPA, the Stout, the English Barleywine, the Hefeweissen, and soon, the Flanders Red from this book. The recipes seem to be pretty good, though since I may not have brewed them quite properly it can be hard to tell. (My Nut Brown, Saison and Stout turned out pretty well, the American IPA not quite.) The recipes are generally conservative rather than boundary pushing or experimental. This is because they are designed to win competitions, in which the judges often assign points more on the basis of fidelity to existing style rather than on the basis of innovation. You will not find any whiskey barrel-aged vanilla bean stouts in here.

Smoked Beers, Ray Daniels and Geoff Larson
I like Rauchbiers and smoked porters for their rustic, campfire taste. This book covers their history and the techniques used to smoke malt and brew smoked beers. I have only so far brewed the Stoffla (as an ale though), an obscure Franconian style with a sour-smokey taste. (I used acid-malt as called for in the recipe.) It turned out well, but not having a reference beer or style guideline I cannot say if it tasted as the recipe is supposed to taste. I plan to brew the smoked mild at some point, and if / when I have the capacity to lager, the Bamberger-style Rauchbier. Probably a book only for those enthusiastic about smokey beer. 

The Complete Homebrew Beer Book, George Hummel
This was given as a gift to me. I have never brewed a recipe from this book but they generally look pretty good, although they are all extract only, or sometimes partial mash. The process information is very basic, however, as the book is designed for beginners. It recommends 70F - 72F fermentation temp for all ales, as well as to secondary all of its beer. In my view, these are both bad ideas. Also it provides little in the way of description of each beer. So, good source recipes, but follow a better process.

Brewing Better Beer, Gordon Strong
Billed as a manual for advanced brewers, this book reads more like a "philosophical" treatise rather than a how-to guide. It generally does not have detailed instructions for improving your technique, but rather general pointers, ideas and themes. The section on steeping dark grains is, however, pretty specific as to the technique for reducing the acrid or harsh taste of highly roasted grains. The part on using first wort hops and "hop bursting" is also pretty useful. Finally I liked that part about different mash schedules and sparging techniques. By tuning the mash type and sparge technique to the style you are going for you can get really good results. Overall a pretty good book but in my view it does need to be more specific in its recommendations and discussions of various techniques. Unlike some reviewers, I did not find the tone of the book to be overly arrogant or self-centered although I can see how some might view it that way. It really is however, a treatise on Strong's method of brewing.

Tasting Beer, Randy Mosher
Aimed at a general audience of people interested in beer, this book does not focus on homebrewing. But it does contain a good history of beer, a description of various styles, tips on developing your palette for beer and detecting off-flavors, and pairing beer with foods. Highly recommended, but as Mosher says, the best way to really become a connoisseur is to taste a lot of beers, take notes, and become a beer judge.

On my list to read is Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels. After a quick browse, it appears to offer quite a bit of in-depth technical process advice as well as style advice. I will report back later. 

Cascade Session IPA Tasting

About three weeks ago I brewed a Cascade Session IPA intended to be a low-alcohol hoppy beer appropriate for drinking in quantity over the summer. Today, on this momentous occasion, I taste the results of my tremendous effort. Oh wait, the occasion is momentous and the effort was not tremendous. But I digress.

Appearance: Hazy orange in color. White three finger head that dissipates over a few minutes to a very thin covering of foam. Head leave a small lacing over the sides of the glass.

Aroma: Tropical fruit hop smell like grapefruit or so. Not quite as strong as I'd like though. Smell persists even as I continue to drink.

Can I interest you in my banana?

Taste: Slight fruity hop taste, with moderate bitterness. A metallic taste (similar to the undesirable aftertaste on my previous attempt at a hoppy beer) predominates in the middle and end of my sip. I hoped to get a bold, fruity bitterness from the Cascade hops. I'm not sure if that good taste is hiding under the metallic quality or if it is just absent completely.

Mouthfeel: Low carbonation, but it doesn't feel thin. It doesn't have the resiny tounge coating quality of some hoppy beers or the body and maltiness of bigger IPAs. It's pretty dry though.

Overall Impression: Nice hoppy smell, good appearance, but the taste is not what I want. I'd like a grapefruit type flavor from the Cascade hops and a smooth bitterness.

Issue: WTF is the metallic taste??? Could it be a little bit of rust from the non-stainless steel in my MLT (now replaced by stainless)? Could it be a by product of over or underpitching? What about the water?? Arg!

For Next Time: Increase the late addition hops to get better smell. Find and destroy the source of the metallic taste. Cool the wort as fast as possible to pitching temps. Pitch the correct amount of yeast.

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Currently most of the bottles are sitting in a dark basement room at about 68F. Perhaps the beer will get better over the next few weeks. If so I may post again on this beer. 

Sour Wort Berliner Weisse

I have wanted to try to make a sour or funky beer for a while. Most of the sour beer recipes in Brewing Classic Styles and on The Mad Fermentationist call for at least a year of aging because the "bugs" do not work as quickly as beer yeast to consume the sugars in the beer. For a number of reasons the requirement of allowing most sour beers to age for a really long time has not allowed me to brew those styles, although that has recently changed. Still, I want to try the easiest method for getting a sour beer before attempting a sour that needs to have a lengthy aging period.

With a sour mash technique to impart the requisite acidity of a Berliner Weisse it is not necessary to store the beer a long time. As I understand it the basic idea behind the sour mash is to perform a regular mash, raise to 170F, then either 1) allow the beer to cool to between 115F - 120F or 2) sparge, collect the desired amount of wort, and cool to between 115F - 120F At that point, a handful of grain can be tossed in the mash or wort, inoculating it with Lactobacillus bacteria that, over the course of anywhere from a few hours to a few days, will turn the wort sour. Eventually it should have a "clean" sour smell like a sourdough starter for bread. But the process is variable since you never know what "bugs" will end up in the mash. If the mash smells putrid, vomitty or fecal then something other than Lactobacillus is present.

Once the souring is complete the wort can be boiled to kill the souring bugs and fix the level of sourness. Regular yeast can be used to ferment the remainder of the beer. 

So this beer is a bit of an experiment since I might pick up some bad bugs during the sour mash. If so, I can discard the mash if it smells really terrible or see if the foul smells can be boiled away to get a cleaner beer. I would prefer to just go from grain to glass, tossing only if the end product is really terrible. At least it's a cheap recipe.

How much of the mash or wort to sour? Dave Green of Brew Your Own recommends souring only part of it unless a very sour flavor is desired. Brewing Classic Styles suggests that the whole wort can be soured for an assertive sourness characteristic of the style. The blog Brain Sparging on Brewing suggests a partial sour mash unless you want the beer really sour. I did see somewhere a suggestion to sour the whole mash for a Berliner Weisse here but some feedback on that thread indicated that the very low pH of a soured wort requires a TON of yeast to ferment properly. Well I'll pitch an entire packet of US-05. I hope that's enough.

So I've seen differences of opinions. Ten brewers, fifteen different methods....

What I will try is the full wort method, souring by tossing into the wort 4oz of grain. This is experimental. Perhaps the best way to find what works is simply to experiment, see what the results are, etc... Think of this blog entry as the notes to an experiment.

Ich bin ein Berliner Weisse
Volume: 3 gallons

2.5 lbs Belgian Pilsner
1.0 lbs Weyerman Pale Wheat
(0.25oz extra grain as an innoculant) 

Mash at 149F for 75 mins, or until iodine test indicates complete conversion.

0.5 oz Hallertau pellets, 3.9%AA - 15mins  - 7 IBU's

Boil Time: 15 mins

Expected OG: 1.031
Expected FG: 1.008
Expected ABV: 3.1%

Yeast: Safale US-05

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The Mash

7/3/12
4:12pm
Preheated cooler with 1.1 gallons brewing water at 165F or so. Dough-in when water was at 160F. Hit my mash temp almost exactly - mash was at 150F after 15mins of mash. Reserved the extra 4oz grain for later use.  At 5:10pm, mash was at 148F. Started heating mash-out and sparge water. 

5:25pm
Added .9 gallons of mash-out water at boiling.  After a brief stir the mash was right on target at 167F - 168F. Yay!

5:35pm
Actual mash temp was 165F. Not bad. Recirculated 4 qts., collected 1.6 gallons first runnings.

5:40pm
Added sparge water at 170F. Stirred gently. Actual mash temp was 166F. Started boil of grain bag and a marble to sanitize.

5:50pm
Recirculated and collect 2nd runnings. Ended up with almost exactly 3 gallons in my bottling bucket. Cleaned out my MLT, then transferred the wort into the the cooler so that its temperature is relatively stable over the souring period. Took a small sample of wort for the hydrometer. Temperature of the wort in the cooler was 145F. Left outside without the top of the cooler. Wait for wort to cool to 125F or so before inoculating with grain.....

6:49pm

Wort plus inoculant, covered with foil.

Wort was at about 132F. Hydrometer reading said I got 1.031 pre-boil OG. This equates to 71.8% efficiency. In the typical range of 68% - 72% when I do a batch sparge the right way.

7:03pm
Wort was at 128F. Will inoculate soon. Apparently the Lactobacillus cannot survive about 131F, but the by adding the grain the temp of the wort will drop. Still, I want to be sure that the nice little bugs survive.

7:15pm
Wort was at 128F still. Added unmashed grains to the sanitized bag with marble. Gently placed into the wort. The grains sank. Placed sanitized aluminum foil over the wort and put the top back on the cooler. Temperature reading (with sanitized thermometer) was 126F. Perfect!

Now, the suspense! Will it smell cleanly sour? Will it smell like vomit? Stay tuned......

7/4/12
10:00am
Wort was at about 100F. Smell was slightly sour but not assertively so. A few krausen bubbles had formed under the foil Taste was also a bit sour but not puckering. Actually rather pleasant - a kind of sweet and sour mix. I want a nice, assertive sourness. Pulled about two cups of wort, heated on stove to boiling, and added back. A few minutes later the temp was only 105F.

10:10am
Pull about a quart, heated to boil, added back. At 10:20am the wort was at 115F. The wort has been souring for 15 hours.

1:10pm
Wort was at 108F. Smelled cleanly sweet-sour but not strongly so. 

3:00pm
Tasted a very small sample of the wort. It tasted sour to me. And smelled sour. About 20 hours after inoculation. Transferred wort to boil kettle. Wife thought it smelled sour too. Proceed as per normal brew day.....

3:45pm
Wort was around 95F when my chiller could cool it no further (at least without using a huge amount of water.) Transferred to 3-gallon better bottle, placed in basement of 67F ambient air.

8:35pm
Pitched dry yeast into 70F wort. Better Bottle was in 62F water. Followed directions on yeast packet - simply sprinkled it on top of the wort. I then shook the carboy to distribute the yeast and aerate a little bit.

7/5/12, 11am
Krausen forming. The beer is in a tub of 66F water.

7/612, 8:45am
High krausen has passed. Airlock no longer bubbling. That was a fast fermentation. 

Lübecker Hefeweissen

German wheat beers are great for summer. I love their fruity taste, light color, and slight phenolic / clove character. Their appearance when poured into the proper type of glass is magnificent. My wife doesn't like them much but I have wanted to brew one for a while. The below recipe is scaled from Brewing Classic Styles. The fermentation temp is pretty low because apparently higher temps can result in a unbalanced bubblegum or overly banana like flavor. What I'd like is the right balance of banana and clove character.


Lübecker Hefeweissen
3 Gallon batch
2.75# Belgian Pilsner Malt
2.75# Weyerman Wheat Malt
0.25# Briess Extra Light DME

0.5 oz Tettnanger, 3.5% AA, 60 mins

Expected OG: 1.044
IBUs: 13

Mash
112F for 15 mins, to get 4-vinyl guiacol, a precursor to the clove character
152F for 60 mins
167F mash out for 10 mins

90 minute boil to reduce DMS.

Whitelabs Hefeweisen Ale, WLP300.

Ferment at 62F, raise to 68F after active fermentation to get good attenuation.
 

6/16/12
Mash conducted using infusions of hot or boiling water. Ended up with a pretty dilute mash after all those water additions. As a result, the first runnings were almost the complete pre-boil volume, so this ended up more like a no-sparge than a batch sparge. Crappy efficiency, thus the .25# of DME added to the boil to up the gravity a little.

Next time I think I'll try a decoction mash or direct heating the mash when I need to do multi-step mashes. That way I can avoid overly dilute mashes.

Pitched at 65F, when beer was in 55F tub of water. Pitched around 3PM. No starter.

Didn't take post-boil OG reading. Got a little more than 3 gallons into the 3 gallon carboy. Only a little headspace.

6/18/12
Very active primary fermentation despite the low ambient temps around 64F and that the beer was sitting in a tub of 60F water. Used a blow-off tube.

6/22/12
Still slight activity visible through the glass carboy. Replaced blow-off tube with airlock. One bubble / minute or so. Lost some beer to blow-off. Now there is almost exactly 3 gallons in the carboy.

6/28/12
No visible activity, some yeast has flocculated but still a lot of yeast is floating at the top of the carboy, especially on the carboy walls. Looks a beautiful hazy yellow / orange color.


7/1/12
Bottled with 2.75 oz of table sugar, for about 2.8 - 3 units of CO2. FG was 1.011. Got almost exactly 3 gallons. I used mostly 22oz and 16oz bottles, which apparently can withstand high pressure. I did use a few 12 oz bottles, which I hope will not explode as 3 units is roughly their pressure limit.