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The highlight of the February meeting was the tasting of the big beers brewed during the club's fall brew day held at Rich and Suzanne's house in October. The various beer tasted, along with the club's tasting notes, are shown below:

Note: The Doppleweizenbocks brewed by Phil and Bill were the result of Phil questioning the decoction versus infusion mashing techniques they each used. While this style of beer is typically brewed with a decoction mash, much like Phil did, Bill's was made using a step infusion mash. Phil did his standard double decoction mash and Bill used a protein rest followed by a single infusion. The recipes used by both were similar; the only changes being Bill substituted two pounds of melanoidan malt for an equal amount of Munich malt and grains were scaled for the differing efficiencies of their respective brewing systems. The same yeast starter was used for both beers. In the end, the club's tasting indicated it was extremely hard to tell one mash type from the other and both beers were given the thumbs up rating. It would appear the use of melanoidan malt in the infusion mash was a viable alternative to the double decoction mash.

The Other Stuff - Hints & Ideas

This past weekend, Darja and I had the chance to visit the Back Bay Brewing Company, one of our favorite brew-pubs. As always, the beer was excellent. Unfortunately, the rest of the news was not. The usual cask bitter wasn't on tap; instead we were treated to a cask version of their Freedom Trail IPA which was so good it reminded me of being in England. Darja had the Northernlight Amber Ale which she also reported to be quite good. While the amber hadn't changed much since the last time we were there, we were surprised to see it named after a dot com company. We were also a little surprised to see corporate sponsors on the beer menu. Maybe it has something to do with next week's marathon?

The sad news is we were able to confirm Back Bay will stop brewing in the near future. Current plans call for brewing to stop sometime in June or, at the latest, in July. According to the manager on duty, they feel "the crest of the brewpub industry has been reached" and its time to focus on other things. Instead of the usual Back Bay line-up, expect to see up to a dozen domestic and imported beers on tap. Since the brewery is owned by the same people as the Commonwealth Brewing Company, we can also expect to see a Commonwealth Ale to be at least one of the dozen! Rumor has it, Todd Mott, the head brewer may be moving to his own place in Quincy sometime last this year.

Now the only question remaining is, will they change their name?

I like to use biscuit malt in a few recipes I brew to add some creamy toasty mouthfeel, and I think it supports the beer with a bit more body. The summer beer I brew uses about 15% biscuit, with more or less equal parts Munich malt and flaked rye. The rest is base malt and I prefer pils so I can cold condition after a warm ferment with an English ale yeast.

Technically, biscuit (from DWC - 23L) is a unique malt that's lightly roasted, lending the subtle properties of black and chocolate malts. Used at the rate of 3 to 15 %, it is designed to improve the bread & biscuits , or toasted flavor and aroma characteristics to Lagers and Ales.

I find a low gravity summer beer, with biscuit and rye and high alpha west coast hops at about 20 IBU, when cold conditioned gives a great brew to drink a bit colder than a typical ale. The low gravity makes it available in quantity for quenching your thirst.

Back in 1993 when I made my first batch of home brewed beer I thought five U.S. gallons was a lot of beer. Neither that opinion nor that batch lasted long. For me a large part of the enjoyment of making your own beer is sharing the fruits of your labor with friends and family. This coupled with my own consumption presented a problem, I would run out of home brew long before I had a chance to brew more. This may not be an issue for you, if your current batch size is sufficient to your needs, great! (Disclaimer: If you are experiencing problems with your brewing or your sanitation procedures, address those issues before considering scaling up your equipment.)

As I see it, there are three ways to resolve this problem.

1. Brew more often.
2. Brew larger batches.
3. Drink less.

Ok, let’s dispense with option C right now, it’s really not much of an alternative anyway. Option A provides a choice for some, but requires a proportional increase in time and effort in brewing as well as cleaning, sanitizing and the myriad of other tasks involved. I found that as much as I wanted to brew more, it was not always possible due to other demands on my time. Another option available under A is to setup two or more separates mashes or extract boils simultaneously in order to achieve the required volume, followed by multiple boils in the case of all grain. This is very labor and time intensive and would, perhaps, require additional equipment. The process of elimination leaves us with option B.

Brew length is the term for the final volume of beer. In my opinion, increasing the brew length is of greater benefit to the all grain brewer due to the extended process time necessary in the all grain method. This does not mean that extract brewers do not realize a benefit from brewing larger batches. Indeed, the shorter brew time associated with the extract brewing processes allows the brewer to choose and experiment with several different ways to increase brew length.

Ok, first we need to make a few decisions here.

There are complete commercial systems available if you want to part with $800.00 to$1800.00. You may be thinking "I don’t want to spend a small fortune on brewing equipment when what I use now works fine" I could not agree more. When I was in the planning stages of building my home brewery I was inspired by an article I read in a 1997 issue of Brewing Techniques magazine, written by Randy Mosher entitled "The Buckapound Brewery - The Frugal Brewer's Guide to an Advanced Home Brewery". The gist of the article is, if you take your time and keep your eyes open and do most of the work yourself you can assemble a great system for a fraction of the cost of most commercially available brewing systems.

Personally I get a great deal of enjoyment and satisfaction brewing with equipment that I built myself.

Let’s concentrate on between 10 and 15 gallon batches. Let’s face it, there are lots of good container options at this volume range and it’s still manageable for one person to make a batch in a reasonable amount of time. I have seen much larger systems but they are not very practical when it comes to dedicated space and energy requirements. There are many vessels in this range well suited for use as hot liquor tanks, mash tuns or mash / lauter tuns. We can separate them into the two most popular approaches.

1. Insulated coolers

Coolers are light, durable and hold temperature extremely well. In most cases they already have some kind of spigot installed in them which makes them easier to covert for use as a brewing vessel. They are well suited for single infusion, step infusion (by the addition of boiling water) and decoction mashing schedules. The one shortfall that I can see is they can not be direct heated so they can only be used for a mash/lauter tun or as a hot liquor tank and not a boil kettle. The two types are as follows.

1. Cylindrical (Rubbermaid/Gott)

This is a very popular option as they come in a 10-gallon size and will hold around 25 pounds of grain. They can be fitted with several commercial lautering options including "Phil’s Phalse Bottom"(Listermann Manufacturing Company) and the "EASYMASHER ®" (Jack Schmidling Productions Inc.) as well as any configuration home made copper manifold. These coolers can be found in many retail outlets as well as online and generally cost between $45.00 and $55.00

2. Rectangular

Rectangular coolers are also a good choice and are generally far less expensive ($12.00 to $25.00), but copper manifolds seem to be the best option for a lautering due to the large bottom surface area of the cooler.

1. Metal containers

With metal vessels you have the advantage of heating the vessel directly so that they can be used as a kettle as well as mash/lauter tun and hot liquor tank. They work well with all mash schedules.

1. Stock pots

Stockpots of various sizes are available in both aluminum and stainless steel. Aluminum is a less expensive material although much more care must be taken when cleaning aluminum pots, as they are less durable and more prone to pitting. Stainless steel stockpots are extremely durable. Stockpots can be fitted with several lautering options including perforated metal false bottoms, the "EASYMASHER ®" (Jack Schmidling Productions Inc.) and copper manifolds. The major problem with pots of this type is they are very expensive. Usually a pot large enough to boil 10 gallons of wort will cost from $80.00 to $120.00 for aluminum and $150.00 to $200.00 for stainless steel

2. Converted kegs

Brewing larger batches means the kitchen stove may no longer be up to the task. Well, lets face it, not everybody loves the smells’ brewing inevitably creates, so perhaps it’s time to move the operation into the great outdoors. This is when it’s nice to have a well ventilated, yet covered outdoor area to work in. For me this is my brewery / workshop. (My wife affectionately refers to it as the garage) My propane burner is one of my favorite pieces of brewing equipment Warning: The use and or storage of propane and propane accessories indoors may result in serious personal injury and or death! Please read and understand all safety instructions included with any such equipment.

The mash for a mid to high gravity 5 gallon batch of beer, can be stirred with an ordinary kitchen spoon. The same cannot be said for a 10 or 15 gallon batch. You will need something a bit more serious. Large stainless steel spoons and hard wood mash rakes are available. You can also fashion your own wooden mash paddle just make sure your use a "hardwood" like oak or ash. If you are a bit more adventurous, a mash mixer may be a nice accessory to have. This could be something as simple as a "savonious rotor" mixer (This is shaft-mounted rotor used by sheet rock installers to mix spackling compound.) driven with a hand-held drill, to much more elaborate configurations with electric gear motors and shaft mounted mixing propellers.

Obviously if you are making more wort you need more fermenter space. You can buy more buckets or carboys and split up you wort (a great way to experiment with several yeast strains by the way) or look for larger fermenters. I use a 54-liter glass demijohn as my primary and it works nicely and was less expensive than two smaller carboys. The down side is it’s very heavy when full. I also plan to look into using ½ barrel sanke kegs as a fermenter.

Obviously there are some unique challenges associated here but necessity is the mother of invention. First you have increased the scale of your equipment so a simple lifting of these containers when full is definitely not advisable especially when they are hot. The thing to do is set up your system so that you can lift them onto a stable and sturdy support structure when they are cool and empty and fill and heat them in place. There are a number of ways to do this and it’s going to be unique to each individual system so I will not go into particulars. Another thing to consider is to choose or design your system to fit your into available space. You may want your system to be a quasi-permanent fixture in your home, others will want more portability.

I chose to make the upgrade to a 10-gallon system at the same time I made the jump to all grain brewing. (The first mash I did was a small 3-gallon batch on my old electric range just to get the basics down, but I did not setup a 5-gallon system.) I can make a 5-gallon batch in my 10-gallon system and I do periodically, when I want to experiment with a beer style or I’m brewing a very high gravity beer. More often than not I make 10-gallons at a time.

If you’re interested in brewing larger batches, do some research and figure out what best suits your needs and your budget and make the jump.

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