[reminder] Elysian's Great Pumpkin Beer Fest '09

The Great Pumpkin Festival 2009

For the fifth year in a row, Seattle's Elysian Brewery will be hosting its annual Great Pumpkin Beer Festival this weekend (October 10-11). The event will take place at the Capitol Hill Elysian Brewery (across the street from Chop Suey) and will showcase the latest, greatest pumpkin-flavored concoctions from Elysian, as well as 16 guest pumpkin beers from several Seattle-area and non-Seattle-area brewers .

In addition to their flagship pumpkin ale Night Owl, Elysian is serving up:

• The Great Pumpkin Imperial Pumpkin Ale
• Dark o’ the Moon Pumpkin Stout
• Hansel and Gretel Ginger Pumpkin Pilsner
• Jack o’ Bite Barrel-aged Strong Scottish Pumpkin Ale
• Mr. Yuck Sour Pumpkin Ale
• Bete N’Owl Dark Belgian-style Pumpkin Ale
• Kaiser Kurbis Pumpkin Hefeweizen
• 8472 Amber Sour

The other beers will be from the following breweries: Allagash, Big Time, Cambridge, Dogfish Head, Elliott Bay, Iron Hill, Jolly Pumpkin, Nodding Head, Pike, Rock Bottom, Russian River, Silver City, Snoqualmie, Southern Tier, Stewart’s, Stoudt’s, and Trade Route.

But don't forget about The Great Pumpkin! For those unfamiliar to the festival, Elysian also a has a huge gourd filled with pumpkin ale which has been sealed up with wax and allowed to undergo a second fermentation. At 4:00pm on both Saturday and Sunday, a tap is hammered into "The Great Pumpkin" and the beer inside is served to the hoards of thirsty pumpkin enthusiasts.

FESTIVAL HOURS: Saturday, Oct. 10 (Noon-10pm); and Sunday, Oct. 11 (Noon-6pm). Tickets are a very reasonable $15, which includes entrance fees, a commemorative glass, as well as 6 drink tokens. Additional tokens will be available at the festival for $1.50 each. Tickets can be purchased at any Elysian Brewery, as well as at the gate.

If you happen to live somewhere far away from Seattle, but would love to get your taste buds on these wonderful beers (especially the Dark 'O The Moon Pumpkin Stout), Elysian will be hitting the road for two East Coast appearances: Blind Tiger in Greenwich Village, New York City (October 14) and South Philly Tap Room in Philadelphia (October 18).

DIY: Garden-Grown Hops

A quick how-to on growing your own hops

If you happen to homebrew and are worried that growing your own hops is too advanced, then think again. Below is a picture-heavy "how-to"on growing hops in your own backyard. It covers when to plant, when to harvest, and how to properly dry and store your very own home-grown hops.

The following pictures were taken over the course of this year's growing season. Rhizomes were purchased at a local farmers market here in Seattle. They were mislabeled, so instead of planting two different varieties, I ended up with two of the same - both Chinook hops. The rhizomes were planted in outdoor potting soil in mid-May next to a two-story shed. The area receives a lot of sun, which is great for hops. Twine was run up the side of a shed, reaching about 15 feet in height. The hops began growing as green vines. Once they reached about 1-2 feet long, the vines were wrapped around the twine in a clockwise fashion. In a couple of months, the vines reached the top of my twine.

In July, the vines began to flower, and by August they were plump and green (see pictures above and close-ups below)

The hops at this stage are moist and spongy. If you squeeze a flower between your fingers, it bounces back to its original shape - not ready to pick, yet. The flowers also have no characteristic smell to them.

By mid-September, the hop flowers were ready for harvest (pictured above). Now when flowers are squeezed, they feel dry and papery to the touch, and they hold their squished shape. Also, they smell amazing, or like hops for that matter. If you were to examine the flowers under each scale, you would also observe tiny yellow oil packets. This is lupulin, the wonderful product of hops that gives your beer its bitterness and aroma (detailed picture below - click for higher definition).

All the flowers were ready for harvesting. From the two vines, a 1 gallon bowl was filled with the bitter rewards.

The consistency of hops can be up to 70% water when picked from the vine. When weighing out your hops for recipes, this can be a problem since most recipes are set up for "dry hops." Using a food dehydrator is the quickest and best way to dry the hops out, in my opinion, as long as you don't use any excessive heat (>140 °F).

For normal air drying, hops can take anywhere between 24-48 hours to dry; however, using the food dehydrator on its lowest heat setting (95 °F), these hops were dried for 7 hours (pre-dried pictured above, dried pictured below). Once completed, the final harvest yield was a little over 5 ounces. Enough for a couple of batches.

Once dry, the hops should be stored in air-tight, moisture-free bags. If you don't plan on using them right away, you should definitely freeze these bags. If you happen to have access to a cryovac system, these work amazingly, too. Now all that's left with these Chinook hops is to brew some Arrogant Bastard clones...

I know there's plenty of literature out there that explains all of what I've covered, but I've come across a lot of conflicting advice. This was the way I did it, and it worked beautifully. Hopefully this post may help someone out there whose on the fence about growing their own hops.

DIY: Mash/Lauter Tun

Making your own Mash/Lauter Tun

In college, we discovered a loop-hole in our club funding policy. While it was against the rules to use student club funds to purchase alcohol, it turns out buying equipment and ingredients that could be used to make alcohol was perfectly fine. So I helped found The Brew Society, and last I heard, the club is still going strong many years after my graduation. Back then, we did strictly all-grains, and we brewed them pretty seriously (using the bio department's incubation rooms to regulate fermentation temperatures and the autoclave to sanitize all of our bottles and equipment).

Once in grad school, home brewing sadly got pushed to the side, and for years I didn't even own any brewing equipment. Just last year, however, I came into possession of a friend's brew kit - and since then I've been dabbling with partial grains. Getting ahead of myself, I recently went ahead and purchased ingredients for an all grain; unfortunately, I have no all grain equipment. So, rather than buy a mash tun and lauter tun, I've decided to build it all myself. Now you can spend A LOT when it comes to this type of equipment, so if I can save money without sacrificing functionality, then I'll do it. Hopefully others who are in the same boat may find this helpful.

I don't plan on brewing anything larger than 5 gallon batches, so when I first started shopping around for Rubbermaid coolers, the 10 gallon seemed a bit large for my desired scale. A nice compromise was the 7 gallon Rubbermaid cooler, which can be found at Walmart.

Once I had this in my possession, the question became either to use false bottom or manifold - I chose a false bottom. So now that I knew what I wanted, I purchased the rest of my supplies:

Supplies:
Rubbermaid 7 gallon cooler ($40.00)
Stainless steel false bottom ($30.00)
5 ft Tygon Norprene tubing ($6.00)
3/8" ID copper pipe ($0.25)
3/8" in-line valve ($2.50)
2 stainless steel hose clamps ($0.75)
Permatex clear RTV silicone sealant ($5.00)
Adjustable wrench (borrowed)
Pipe cutter (borrowed)
Half-round file (borrowed)
Hack saw (borrowed)

Total: $84.50

The end price turned out to be a little more expensive than I had originally hoped, but compared to most MLT that you can buy online, it's still over a $100 savings. The cooler is definitely the most expensive part of this assembly - there's no getting around that. To save a little more money, the false bottom could have been replaced with a manifold; however, the false bottom seems to get better efficiencies and is less prone to stuck mash.

Assembly of the mash/lauter tun was quite simple and fast. Using an adjustable wrench, the plastic nut on the inside of the cooler was removed (the nut is an odd size, so an adjustable wrench works best). Rather than spend +$50 bucks on a ball valve/bulk head package, I followed a similar prep posted on RonBlog. The faucet was taken out of the cooler, and using a hack saw, the faucet end was removed from the bulk head.

A small length of 3/8" copper pipe was inserted through the faucet bulkhead. It was a snug fit, but I used food grade silicone sealant to ensure a watertight fit.

Now it's important when using a sealant that comes in contact with any type of beverage that you make sure it is food-grade sealant. A way to check is to look for the NSF seal of approval. If it doesn't say so, then it's probably not good for you. Don't go cheap on this either - you may not care, but your friends that you share your beer with probably will. A good sealant to use is Permatex's (#66B) RTV silicone sealant. It passes the NSF 51 Standard (food safe), and it's waterproof and flexible with a temperature range up to 450 °F!

Once the bulkhead is placed through the cooler wall and tighted down with the nut you previously removed, you can now connect the false bottom to the copper pipe. I used Tygon's Norprene tubing, which is designed for hot beverages so you know it's food safe. This tubing is thick-walled so it won't collapse under weight of the grain bed, and it's good up to 275 °F. On the outside of the cooler, I affixed more tubing and an inline valve (food grade). These were tightened down with hose clamps, and the job was finished. Very simple.

UPDATE: After its inaugural run, this MLT held its watertight seal, and was able to maintain its temp for an hour (only losing 1 °F in that time). I also got an efficiency of around 90% using a batch sparge. It was very easy to clean up - definitely worth building one of these.

DIY: Immersion Wort Chiller

Making your own Immersion Wort Chiller

Note: I know this has nothing to do with music, but I felt that it was worth publishing. Enjoy!

An immersion wort chiller is one of the most common chilling tools used by home brewers. Its importance in the home brewing process is paramount, not only shaving hours off your total brew time, but it also greatly minimizing the effects of oxidation and bacterial invasions! The two most common types of wort chillers are immersion style and counter-flow style. While both are efficient at lowering the temperature of your wort from 212 °F to yeast pitching temperatures (60-75 °F) in a matter of minutes, the simplicity of the immersion chiller was attractive enough for me to pursue making one for myself.

First the basics - What is a wort chiller?

At high temperatures, your wort is easily oxidized if aeration occurs, which can cause numerous types of undesirable off-flavors in your finished beer. Also, between the temperature range of 140-90 °F, nasty types of bacteria can multiply and ravish your hard work. A wort chiller helps prevents these problems by rapidly lowering the temperature of your wort prior to yeast pitching. If you want to get serious about home brewing, you should seriously consider obtaining one of these simple pieces of equipment.

What types of wort chillers are there, and how do they work?

A great website here explains the two main types of wort chillers: immersion and counter-flow. This site also lists the pros and cons of each wort chiller style. For simplicity, I'll just talk about immersion chillers since that's the style I've decided to go with. Essentially, cold water is run through a copper coil, which is immersed into the hot wort. Copper is used because of its high thermal conductivity, which quickly transfers heat from the hot wort to the cooler water inside the chiller (Warning: I've seen places selling stainless steel chillers for exuberant amounts of money - don't fall for this; copper works better!). Using cold tap water, the unit uses the coolant to absorb heat by running it through a series of coils. The chiller then dispenses the exhaust heat from the system by expelling into a sink drain. I like "simple", which is why I've decided to build my own immersion wort chiller. I've posted pictures to help anyone else who would like to build one. I know that there are plenty of others out there who have shared this same story - I just thought I'd share mine, too.

Disclaimer: to anyone who is trying to decide whether you should buy a pre-made wort chiller or attempt to build one yourself, I would recommend just buying one at your local homebrew store. Only when you can obtain cheap copper coil ($0.50 - $1.00/foot) is this financially worth it. The pluses to building your own, though, include a $5-10 dollar overall savings and the ability to custom-fit your chiller to your kettle. You just have to ask yourself how much your time is worth.

So with that said, here is how I decided to build my immersion wort chiller.

Supplies:
25' 3/8 OD copper coil ($13.00)
20' 3/8 ID Tygon tubing ($6.00)
2 stainless steel hose clamps ($0.75)
3/8" spring tube bender ($3.29)
Aerator-to-Hose adapter ($3.99)
1/2" female hose mender ($1.79)
Copper wire (borrowed)
Pipe cutter (borrowed)
Half-round file (borrowed)
3 gallon stock pot for the form (borrowed)

Total: $28.82

Before bending any copper, I first found a round object to use as a form. This three gallon stockpot fit very nicely into the 5 gallon boil kettle I currently use for partial grains.

Using the 3 gallon stockpot, the copper piping was tightly coiled around the exterior (note: to avoid scratching your form, you can wrap in an old t-shirt or some thin cloth - oh well).

Once I was happy with the shape of my coils, the inlet and outlet were fashioned using the spring tube bender. The ends of the inlet and outlet were angled downward to avoid any leaky tap water feeding into the wort. The excess copper was cut with the tube cutter, and the resulting burrs were removed with a half-round file. Stainless steel hose clamps were used to attach the Tygon tubing to the copper tubing. I've seen some people use compression-fit hose barbs to attach their copper tubing to the rubber tubing - this is a huge waste of time and money. Simple hose clamps will do the trick.


To increase the surface area of copper in contact with the wort, I evenly spaced the coils out and tied them into position using some low gauge copper wire.

Finally, I put together an adapter that allows me to either connect the chiller in my kitchen faucet for these cold winter months, or to an outside faucet on the nice summer months. Just take you aerator from you faucet into any local hardware store and they can tell you what size adapter you need. They should be able to sell you an aerator-to-hose adapter for a few bucks, which can then be attached to a garden hose mender (essentially a female garden hose end with a hose barb on the end). Hose clamp this to the inlet Tygon tubing, perform a leak test, and you've got yourself an immersion wort chiller.

After this is properly used, I'll report back how successful it was at cooling wort.

UPDATE: This wort chiller was able to cool 5 gallons of boiling wort to yeast pitching temps (212 °F to 60 °F) in 10 minutes. It helps that Seattle's tap water is around 50 °F.