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Prevent Stuck Sparges With Rice Hulls – The 101 On Rice Hulls

You might have seen in recipes the use of rice hulls. And when you see rice hull in a recipe you might be asking your self, “What are rice hulls and how do I use them?”

The Answer To Your Question…

Rice hulls are the protection covering of rice.  For homebrewers these can be a great tool for when you plan on brewing all-grain.  If you do all-grain brewing you use them as make shift springs.  When adding them to your mash they will get in-between the wheat or flakes and prevent clumps forming.  So picture them as little tiny springs making your mash fluffy rather than a big pile of goop.  Rice hulls can be added directly to your mash and they add no flavor or color to your beer, they are just an aid to help with preventing stuck sparges.

If your recipe does not have a large amount of barley in it and has primarily wheat, rye, or flaked whatever then it is usually a good idea to use rice hulls because without them it turns into a big dough ball.

How much should you use?

Typically people will use 8 oz to 1 lb per recipe when they are put to use.  One thing that you need to consider is, while they do not add flavor to the beer or color you do have to account for water absorption.  One way to minimize this is soak/rinse your rice hulls in water before adding it to your mash.  I have found that this helps while mashing.

I sometimes recommend for people who making their first all-grain batch to use rice hulls even if their recipes doesn’t have a large amount of flaked whatever or wheat or rye.  It will just help prevent a stuck sparge in general.

Conclusion

While rice hulls aren’t necessarily needed in recipes they can be used as a great tool to prevent stuck sparges.

 

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A Belgian Ale Which Will Rock Your World

We got a taste of warm weather, and we all know what means – it’s Belgian time!

With warm weather coming in, it really makes me itch for Belgian beers.  When Pinocchio said, Anything is possible if you just believe, I’m pretty sure he was referring to the world of Belgian brews.

(Got to love the Disney world of beers)

If there are rules with Belgian brews, they are pretty loose and for the most part they are common sense (keep it light and refreshing – for the most part).  You really can use your artistic side when brewing Belgian beers, AND ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!

Every year my summer project with brewing is to get really good at one style of beer.  That means I go over board on experimenting with a style. Last year was colonial beers (which if you are feeling extra patriotic, time your colonial brewers for the 4th of July), this summer its Belgian brews for me.  I’m on a quest to get a bit out of my comfort zone, expand my palate and my appreciation towards Belgian beers.

(Billy Holiday I know what you mean when you sang, “summertime and living is easy”)

So I wanted to share 2 different recipes that will hopefully spark some interest of yours into the world of Belgians.   I wanted to share 2 of them because I have managed to turn a Belgian into my favorite style of beer, a session brew.  The other well it’s more to, “style”.

Belgian Session Brew – 30 min boil 5 gallon batch

4 oz Crystal Malt 20L

3 lbs Pilsner Malt Extract

4 oz Malto Dextrin

.75 oz Saaz (30min)

.5 oz Saaz (5min)

Saf T-58

OG: 1.023

FG: 1.006

ABV: 2.2%

SRM: 3

IBU:  26.1

Directions:

  1. Heat 2.5 gallons of water up to 150 and steep your grains for 30 min.
  2. Take your grains out, add your dme and bring up to a boil
  3. In the beginning of your boil add .75 oz of Saaz hops
  4. Boil for 25min then add .5 oz of Saaz hops
  5. Boil for 5 min
  6. Kill heat, cool down, fill up to 5 gallons pitch yeast
  7. Primary – 7-14 days
  8. Bottle -14 -28 days

Why Would You Do That…?

Easy to answer, I like session beers.  Now this is a super light session, but again these types of brews are my jam.  The 20L will make it just a tad sweet and add a bit of color to it.  Malto dextrin is a non fermentable sugar, this will add a bit of mouth feel as well.  The Saaz hops are floral and have a bit of spice to them.  They are also low in alpha (3%) which will be good to balance out a light body.

It is light, 2.2%.  So it’s REALLY light.  If you have been working on, “Summer Shape” and working out but want a beer still, this one only has 65 calories per pint so don’t feel too bad having a few of these.

One thing to note with this beer is that it is only a 30 minute boil.  To make this one would be pretty quick.  Also you might see that it has dry yeast as the recommendation.  I generally do this with session beers because it’s odd to me to buy yeast that would cost about half of recipe (session beers are pretty cheap to make if you can take out the expense of the yeast), so I would get dry yeast for this one.  It’s still a Belgian style dry yeast.

If you were going to do this one all grain I would read up on a post we did about the no sparge technique.

If you were going to add any other grains to it I would suggest any of these:

  • Honey Malt – this will bring a sweet flavor to it kinda like honey nut
  • Flaked oats – increase the mouthfeel
  • Aromatic – a bit of Belgian smell
  • Caravienna – much like cara munich but lighter.
  • Acidulated malt – gives a tang to the beer

If you were going to add any or all of those grains I would keep it below 8 oz for the total amount of grains.  Not to many specialty grains are needed for this brew just because it is so light, the balance can be thrown off very quickly.  THINK SMALL!

On that note, if you wanted to add spices to it, add them in the last 10-5 min of the boil.  Half or even quarter what you would normally use in a normal batch as well (we’re talking on the lines of .25 oz of coriander/.25 oz orange peel or even less than that).

Again with small beers, balance is key and it  can be thrown off very quickly.  Less is more when it comes to these small beers.

And now up for another Belgian.

Belgian Blonde Ale

4 oz Carapils

4 oz Vienna

4 oz Victory

4 oz Oat

6 lbs Extra Light Dry Malt Extract

8 oz Light Candi Sugar

1 oz Hallertau (60min)

.5 oz Saaz (5min)

WLP 530

OG: 1.062

FG: 1.011

SRM: 6.78

IBU: 23.7

ABV: 6.6%

Directions:

  1. Heat 2.5 gallons of water up to 150 and steep your grains for 30 min.
  2. Take your grains out, add your dme/sugar and bring up to a boil
  3. In the beginning of your boil add 1 oz of Hallertau hops
  4. Boil for 55min then add .5 oz of Saaz hops
  5. Boil for 5 min
  6. Kill heat, cool down, fill up to 5 gallons pitch yeast
  7. Primary – 7-14 days
  8. Bottle -21 -35 days

Why Would You Do That…?

With a 6.6% ABV you really don’t have to wait too long for it to sit in the bottles.  You will find a lot of Belgian brews to be around 7% or 8% which is I guess to style, but when you have brews that big I typically recommend them to sit in bottles not measured by weeks but by months.  The reason is, they tend to taste, “Hot”. You really start to see that when it comes around the 7.5% mark and you drink it with the timing to a, “normal” ale.   Having this one a bit lower in the ABV (not by too much but by enough) means that if you made it now, you can have it ready in the middle of the summer with ease.

As far as the specialty grains that are in this recipe:

  • Cara pils – helps with the head retention
  • Victory malt – gives a biscuit like flavor
  • Vienna – has some bread tones to it
  • Oats – will make it a bit silky
The hops are pretty mellow hops (noble hops are always clutch to use).

If you wanted to make your own Belgian candy sugar we do have a post about it.  Also if you wanted to do this all grain the post for conversion is helpful.

Being 6.6% it would be a pretty good beer to have once the sun starts to set and you are relaxing.  Typically I wouldn’t think of grabbing one of these after mowing the lawn of doing outside yard work in general.   Is it refreshing though? Most defiantly.

Hope you enjoy, and make sure to leave your comments and questions in the space provided below!

Are you brewing any particular beers this summer time?

 

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You Know You’re A Homebrewer If….

I wanted to put something up for this windy Wednesday that might bring a smile and found this.

So you’ve made a few batches of beer and they have turned out pretty good.  How do you really know if you are a homebrewer yet?  Well I found this which may help:

# votes You know you’re a homebrewer if…
21 . . . you don’t think that 10 gallons of beer is a lot.
10 . . . you’ve ever used a mop on a ceiling.
10 . . . you see the acronym R.D.W.H.A.H.B. and know what it means.
9 . . . it started out as a hobby then ended up as a habit.
8 . . . you have more varieties of beer on tap than your local bar does.
8 . . . you hate to wash the family dishes, but think nothing about standing over a sink for hours cleaning empty bottles.
8 . . . you buy beer according to ease of label removal or the type of bottle it comes in.
7 . . . you can name at least 10 different varieties of hops, but can’t name 10 congressmen.
7 . . . you refuse to pay $8.00 for a beer in a restaurant because you can make 5 gallons for that much.
7 . . . the only time you clean your kitchen is just before brewing a new batch.

The full list is here.  A few of my personal favorites from the full list are:

If you’ve tasted the finest commercial beer and said, “I can do better.”

If a smelly, moldy, disgusting college-dorm fridge is a gift from the gods.

If you have more kegs than your average fraternity.

If you name your new puppy “Fuggles” or “Growler”.
If you’re surfing the net at 3:40 am looking for homebrew websites or recipes.
Hope you enjoy!
Cheers
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How Much To Carbonate Your Kegged Homebrew

When it comes to kegging homebrew, the topic is a little up in the air.  Everyone has an opinion (like everything with homebrewing).

Sometimes it can feel as if the blind are leading the blind and the information well,  sucks.  At the end of your quest for knowledge you still have no idea what you are doing,  self-confidence in your brewing abilities is out the window, and you have wasted all the battery in your laptop.

(I’m too scared to brew…) 

Hopefully this will give you a hand and gives you a quick answer to your problem with not knowing how to force pressurize your homebrew.

I want to share this website that has a free calculator, to at least get you in the ball park when it comes to kegging your own beer. If you click here  it will help you get what you need to start kegging.

Now I must admit, I’m not completely sure how long you are supposed to keep this carbonation up when looking at the website.  I guess until the brew stops taking the carbonation levels.  For me it’s usually around 3-7 days (I still do DME/Corn sugar even when kegging but that’s a different post on why I do that).  Again that’s my experience it might be different for you.

For those that are bottling, they also have a calculator for you as well.

Biggest thing I can suggest when it comes to kegging your beer or priming your beer is, take notes.  You will always have beers that are particular and prefer different carbonation levels, or take different amounts of time to get carbonated to your desire.   It’s good to know what worked and what didn’t in the of doing repeats.

(Notebooks always make you look legit)

With all that said, I hope this helps a bit.  If anyone has any other websites that they go to for help with pressurizing their beer, please leave it in the space provided below.

Cheers

 

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10 Items For Homebrewing Emergency Kit

To me brewing is fun and relaxing but one thing that is not, is when you start brewing and all of a sudden you forget something that is pretty important to the brew.  When brewing beer things can happen and it’s good to have an, “emergency kit”.  What I mean by an emergency kit is, having supplies that are general and that fix a lot of problems.  These items are low-cost but will get you out of a bind.

The idea of an emergency kit is that you are already committed to making your beer and something is missing or is not working.  With an emergency kit a lot of problems can be fixed. The container I use to hold my emergency kit is a tackle box.  Makes it easy to have everything organized and also in one place.

I really do recommend building an emergency kit if you are a homebrewer.  The cost is low and with just about 10 items you will be able to have most of your worst case scenarios covered until you can find a better fix.

10 items that every home brewer should have in there emergency home brew kit:

Dry Yeast

Having a variety of dry yeast will help with stuck fermentations as well as dead yeast.  I like to have a few different types of dry yeast for different styles of beer.  Dry yeast is relatively inexpensive.   Also dry yeast will last more than a year.  

1) General Ale Yeast – I recommend Safale S-33 or Coopers ale yeast

2) English Ale Yeast – Safale 04 or Windsor

3) Belgian Ale Yeast – T 58

4) Wheat Yeast – Wb-06

5) Lager Yeast – Safale 23

For Bottling

When you get to bottling the last thing that you need to forget is caps and corn sugar.  Having an extra bag of 50 caps or an extra bag (3/4 of a cup) of corn sugar lying around will help you not break your bottling process.


6) Extra Caps

7) Corn Sugar

For Fermentation

So you got done with your wort and time to start fermentation, or not…. 

8) Air Lock

9) Extra #6,#6.5, #10 rubber stopper with hole

For Boiling

Hard to steep grains when you don’t have a muslin bag.  Having an extra muslin bag or two is cheap and will help with out a doubt. 

10) Extra Muslin Bag

All things to consider if you plan on coming up with an emergency kit for your homebrew.

 

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Homebrew Explosion Video

For what ever reason I find videos and pictures of homebrewing gone wrong to be hysterical.

I don’t know the percentage but, to make it seem dramatic we’ll say 99% of the time your home brew explodes is because what ever you are using (if it’s either a blow off tube or an air lock) gets clogged with hops and then no pressure can escape.  The pressure builds up and there you go.

Below is a short video clip of an imperial stout that exploded.  Unfortunately I had to edit a lot of it out due to profanity, which in my opinion made it even better but I didn’t want to offend anyone.

A little back ground though, the guy had a lid and a blow off tube.  Even with a blow off the fermentation blew the lid off the fermentation about 6ft away from the bucket and there are hops on the ceiling as well as over this whole kitchen… hilarious.

Enjoy your Thursday week is almost over!

 

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Making Free Beer And Wine Labels Just Got Easy

The one aspect of making your own beer and or wine that so unique to this hobby versus other ones is customization.  You can literally do what ever you would like to do when making your own beer and wine.

A personal favorite for me with making beer and wine is having your own fictitious company and calling your recipes what ever you would like to call them.  It becomes fun to have your own, “business” coming up with labels for your different beer and wine.   I’ve seen labels and logos from customers that should be submitted to art shows because they are so beautiful versus some of my friends which are hilarious with raunchy names (examples should not be provided).  But that’s the beauty of the hobby, it’s what ever direction you want to take it.

So to add to the customization of your own beer and wine I wanted to share a label making website which is free.  This can add a little something extra to your homebrew or your wine, especially when giving it as a gift.

The place that I’ve been going to recently for labels is labeley.com.  There is no cost to it and pretty easy to use.

If you know any other good websites, please let us know.

 

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Great Beer Book For The Spring

Since March is here and if you have a garden then you know, it’s gonna be planting season (another one of my many hobbies).  What’s cool about homebrewing is you can plant your own hops in your back yard.  With craft beer catching on, you might want to see if your local garden center has hops that you can plant.

Even if you didn’t want to plant your own hops and you wanted to have stuff in your garden that can be used for your beer, check out what different herbs can be used in your beer.

A great book for this is called, “The Homebrewers Garden”. This book is pretty cool in the sense that you as a homebrewer can get some knowledge on what to plant and how to use different herbs/spices to really enhance the flavor and the aroma of your beer.

 

 

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Easy Dandelion Wine

I wanted to put this recipe out before you start seeing them.  I love country wines and this is as country as they come.  In my opinion nothing says homemade wine quite like Dandelion Wine.  This is a recipe that I have used in the past and it works out pretty well.

 Dandelion Wine. 

When it comes to this wine, you want to make sure that you only have the pedals.  The green bottom to it gives it a weird after flavor to the wine.  This wine can be seem a little tedious considering you have to take off all of the green bottom but honestly, it sounds pretty clutch when you tell people, “I make dandelion wine”.  So here is the recipe.  Hope you enjoy and leave your comments and questions in the space provided below.

1 Gallon Batch


4 cups of dandelion petals

2 pounds granulated sugar

1 pound of light raisins

1 tablespoon acid blend

1 package Lavin d47 yeast

1 teaspoon yeast nutrient

1 ½ cups of room temp orange juice

Directions

  • Take the petals, sugar and raisins mix in a bowl.
  • Bring 1 gallon of water to a boil then rinse over raisins, sugar and petals.
  • Mix all ingredients together minus the yeast including add acid, tannin and yeast nutrient
  • Put in 1 gallon glass jug
  • (If you add campden tablet let it sit for 24 hours with top and air lock)
  • Pitch yeast and let it ferment for 2 weeks.
  • Rack into secondary fermentation (glass jug)
  • Let it sit for 4 – 6 months
  • Add campden tablet, and stabilizer (pot.sorbate) wait until air lock has shown no more fermentation
  • Add 6 ounces of sugar boiled in water
  • Then bottle

Keep for a year before you drink.

 

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How To Design A Recipe – Step 7 Final Step

So to finish off this series we are going to create a few recipes to show what we have learned.  We have gone through a lot and now it’s time to test the knowledge and put into some practical use.

First off let’s do an American Pale Ale

(The Sweet Nectar Of Life)

Starting off with flavor from specialty grains.  I would like it to have a bready flavor, kinda sweet with a biscuit after flavor and good head retention.  So with that said I’m going to go with:

Munich Malt – bready flavor kinda sweet

Victory – Biscuit flavor

Carapils – head retention.

I want good head retention and a bready flavor so that will be more then the biscuit will be in the back ground.

.5 lb Carapils

.5 lb Munich Malt

.25 lb carapils

I want a 5ish% for the ABV so it can be drank easily.  So that means

 (This can happen if you have too many brews over 5%, you turn into, “that guy”)

7 lbs LME or 6 lbs DME (Malt Extract Post Has Got This Info In It)

So what we have right now is:

.5 lb Carapils

.5 lb Munich Malt

.25 lb carapils

7 lbs LME or 6 lbs DME

Next let’s do the hops.  An American Pale Ale needs American hops.

.5 oz Galena 60min

1 oz Cascade  5min

Those hops will give a classic American Hop flavor as well as aroma.

Now for the yeast.  For anything American, a classic strain of yeast is California 001, so that is what we are going to use.

So the recipe looks like this.

5 lb Carapils

.5 lb Munich Malt

.25 lb carapils

7 lbs LME or 6 lbs DME

.5 oz Galena 60min

1 oz Cascade 5min

California 001

And that is a recipe for a pale ale.

To try one more, let’s do brown ale.

Same process.  I want this beer to be sweet darker, malty and have nutty flavors.   For that we’ll choose 60L crystal, toasted malt which we will have to make and victory malt.

To make toasted malt take 2-row and put it in the oven at 300 for 15 minutes.  Around this time you will smell it turning nutty.  Some might say that you need to keep it in a paper bag and let it, “mellow” out in time but truth be told with regular toasted malt I have had no trouble using it right away.

To really have that biscuit flavor you would want to use M.O for base malt, for extract you will just need to add a bit more of the victory to it to make it taste biscuit like.  So the specialty grains will look like this.

.75 lbs Victory

. 5 lbs 60L Crystal Malt

.25 lbs Toasted Malt

As far as the malt extract typically browns are a bit lighter in the ABV department.  So lets shoot for 4.5%. That will be about 5 lbs DME.  We are going to use golden light because we are using specialty grains and don’t need any other flavors.

So for the recipe looks like:

.75 lbs Victory

. 5 lbs 60L Crystal Malt

.25 lbs Toasted Malt

5 lbs DME Golden light

Now off to the hops.  We want earthy hops from the European region.  The hops we are going to use are Kent goldings and fuggles.

1 oz Fuggles (60min)

1 oz East Kent Golding (15min)

As far as yeast goes, your choices are 002 English Ale, 005 British Ale, 013 London Ale, 023 Burton Ale.  For me I have become a really big fan of 013 London Ale yeast.  It makes a pretty leveled out beer which is malty enough to bring out the British Style. So the recipe looks like.

.75 lbs Victory

. 5 lbs 60L Crystal Malt

.25 lbs Toasted Malt

5 lbs DME Golden light

1 oz Fuggles (60min)

1 oz East Kent Golding (15min)

London Ale Yeast 013.

With all recipes they pretty much follow the normal set up of take 2.5 gallons of water, heat up to 150 steep grains for 30min then take out add malt extract.  You don’t have to add all of your malt extract to the beer in the beginning there is a reason why you can and some might say should add it in two different sections.  We do have a post about it.
When you see the number in time next to the hop that means the amount of time the hops are boiled for.

So that sums up our recipe series.  Hope you enjoyed and now feel confident on how to build your own recipes.

Cheers

 

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