My last batch of pale ale came out pretty heavy on the diacetyl side. I was instructed to ferment at a cool 67 degrees F, and am now wondering if a diacetyl rest would have come in handy. I also bottled after about a week and a half instead of the usual two weeks. Could this have been a factor in the lack of diacetyl breakup? If anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to know what you think!

The brewing continues. The lunch yeast starter is the latest of my most recent brewing adventures. I got two batches of IBA entered into the local community brew competition, and one great batch of chocolate hazelnut robust porter brewed before messing up a batch of American pale ale (that's 0 for 4 pale ales now). Most of the IBA was so good it didn't last very long, but the porter is managing to stick around despite it being an amazing brew. Tonight I will be conducting a great pairing with the porter alongside some chewy brownies. Should be great.

Anyway, today I attempted to get a yeast starter going during my hour lunch break. Let's just say I was late getting back to work. Although I will say that I made it back sooner than I thought I would. Altogether, I think a yeast starter does take about an hour, which is really pretty good. I think it went without a hitch, except when pitching the yeast. I think it will be okay, but I am a little worried about contamination. I use Wyeast - the one with the smack pack. Well, there are actually two smack packs within the whole package. It consists of two separate pouches attached to each other. I apparently had only ruptured one side of this pack. Long story short, I think it will be okay, but I had to cut the un-broken pack and pour it in separately. I don't like to handle anything having to do with yeast too much, so I hope that will be alright.

So what am I starting some yeast for? That's right, a round five attempt of pale ale! This time, I'm calling it a North American pale ale because my local homebrew shop started to only carry Canadian two-row barley, and I can't in good conscious call it an American pale ale. We'll see how it goes!

If you live in Montana then you probably already know that on the first of this month HB 400 took effect. The day of 14% abv beers is dawning, and many breweries are already coming out with the big stuff. If you live in the Missoula area, here is your big beer roundup:

Big Sky

• - Big Sky Kriek, 10% abv. A high gravity cherry ale on sale at Worden's (if you're lucky) and elsewhere soon.
• - Ivan the Terrible Imperial Stout, 10% abv. Comes out no later than November 15th.

Bitterroot

• - Colabeeration Baltic Porter, about 9% abv. On tap at Bitterroot Brewing NOW!
• - The Power of Ten Imperial IPA. This is brew #1000 since the start of Bitter Root Brewing 11 years ago. 100 IBU's, 10% ABV, dry hopped with 1 pound per barrel of hops. A unfiltered, very hoppy, very bitter beer brewed with over 3.5 pounds of hops per barrel. Coming out this month.

Blacksmith

• - Barleywine, 12% abv. Coming out October 24th.

Kettlehouse

• - Brick and Mortar Porter. Coming soon.

If there are two bits of knowledge that I have emerged from my brewing hiatus, the first would definitely be sanitization. You cannot produce good beer unless you properly clean and sanitize your brewhouse. I learned this the hard way. The second would be making a yeast starter for your fermentation, or perhaps more in general, having a major focus on creating an environment for proper fermentation. The yeast and the fermentation are really where all the magic happens. It is the single most important process in making great beer. Extracting good wort is not that hard, nor will it have as significant impacts in flavor and overall quality as the actual fermentation.

The fermentation is where the important transformation happens, and the yeast are the ones doing all the important work. If your yeast aren't happy, it won't matter how good your wort is, your beer won't turn out as great as it could, and thats the point. This includes how viable your yeast is, how much yeast you pitch (both of these involve making a starter), and how comfortable your yeast is (we're talking temperature control here).

When I started out brewing these things were pretty overwhelming, and I just wanted to make some beer. I didn't want to bother with sanitization to the degree that you should because I just didn't think it would make much difference. After several infected beers I've had enough and learned my lesson. Making yeast starters actually scared the hell out of me. I thought I'd be doing all this extra work and it would be really confusing and involve a lot of science. Actually, I was also quite worried about sanitization during this process too, and I figured there was no way that I would be able to keep things germ free enough to pull it off. I have to say though, all of these things are easier than you'd think.

Sanitization is just a process that you need to get used to doing. Just make a big old 5 gallon thing of sanitizer (I use star-san) and just dunk everything that will be used after the boil for at least five minutes. Once I had that big ol' bucket of sanitizer made it was pretty darn easy to keep things bug free.

The starter is even more important. I wont go into the process, but there is some great info on yeast starters in thebrewingnetwork.com's archives. I'll be honest, I went and got two extra pieces of equipment for this. I got an Erlenmeyer flask because you can take it right from a boil to an ice bath and it won't shatter. The other piece was a stir plate to keep the starter oxygenated throughout its growing process. At first I thought this would be either expensive to buy or hard to build, but I actually found a great deal on ebay through stirstarters.com. Try 38 bucks, nice.

The process is quite simple, you're basically just making a 2000 ml mini beer with some DME to pitch your yeast into a few days before your brew session. If you have an Erlenmeyer you can just brew it and cool it right in there, pitch your east and through it on the stir plate. It sounds simple I know. I don't think I'm over simplifying it. It really is pretty easy. I think the biggest thing is that once you make that starter it kind of locks you in to brewing in a couple days. Once you care about making a yeast starter that impulsive brewing sort of goes away. You have to plan on it a day or two in advance.

These two aspects of brewing have greatly improved my beer. They are fairly new additions to my process, and I haven't had a lot of finished products in which I have observed both of these practices, but in the last couple of brews the results have been dramatic. The last few beers have been on another level than all my others. They are so easy to do I'm surprised I haven't been doing them since the beginning. If you don't think about either of these processes I hope you try them out, and I hope they help!

Cheers!

Well life goes on in an out of the brewhouse. Things change and others stay the same. It was quite the summer, and a lot of things happened. I did quite a lot of traveling, hiking, and camping. I picked up a new hobby that hopefully doesn't take too much energy away from brewing - I started fly fishing. There is a pretty good chance that it could develop into quite a habit. The good news there though I suppose is that beer is definitely a part of fishing. 

There was a freaky point once when I almost thought that I wouldn't be able to enjoy beer again. I went my brew club's meeting after camping. Man I don't know if it was from not boiling some water long enough before drinking it or just plumb too many beers and not enough sleep and water but I was pretty much off of beer for weeks. Yeah. Weeks.

After that it had been quite a while since I last brewed. I had to pretty much remind myself how by ruining a batch of pale ale, and just about ruining a second batch of pale ale. But it did end up getting back into it. I had fun making a simple meathe with sweet marjoram and bay leaves. And I had an awesome spending spree when I upgraded my equipment for brewing all-grain batches. 

I converted a 5 gallon cooler into a mash tun and got all kinds of other goodies. I got a grain paddle, 6 gallon carboy, new thermometer, a 2000 ml erlenmeyer flask and a stir plate for making yeast starters, and the coolest thing of all - a 10 gallon brew kettle! It was practically like Christmas that week.

I christened it all by brewing an India Brown Ale last week. I found a nice Moose Drool clone recipe, ran out and got some yeast from Big Sky, and used the hop schedule from a clone recipe of Mirror Pond's Hop Henge. It was great to try my hand an my first all-grain batch. I think my session went well and am excited to try it!

Anyhow, I'm back! It's gonna be a great fall! I'm planning a wheat beer, a pumpkin ale, and a christmas spiced ale. Might even try a Berliner Weisse.

Cheers!

Oh I'm back on the net and making some changes to the site. I'll gather my thoughts and get an update as to what's happening in the 'ol brewhouse soon. I'm getting a bunch of things ready to start doing all-grain brews and yeast starters. All kinds of good things going on.

Just got back into town yesterday from Washington D.C. drank some great beers and saw a lot of awesome sights. The only sight that was not so great was the Pothole Pale Ale when I got back. Lotsa bacteria type stuff on the surface. Oh well, time to get brewing that again now that I'm here!

It's been a great week this past week for my yeast. I re-racked my two carboys and had a little tasting session out on the sunny Porch. The first beer was the Belgian blonde, and the other was the pale ale.

Both beers seem to have attenuated well so far. I think The Belgian blonde is currently at right around 1.010. It started out at 1.042. It's a great unfiltered golden yellow color. But oh man the smell and taste - I used way to much cardamom. If you like cardamom you'd probably love this, but it is definitely not the subtle spicyness I was going for. Woops. So I changed the name from Northwest Belgian Blonde to The Unholy Cardamom Belgian Blonde. What can I say, I'm hoping this flavor dies down as it ages.

The pale ale however, totally lifted my spirits. Aside from being quite cloudy, this is (so far) the best tasting, most drinkable beer I've ever made. I have a feeling I will be doing mini-mashes (at least) every brew day from now on. There is a perfect balance of malt and hop, and no off flavors. It has also attenuated quite a bit more than the blonde ale. It is sitting at about 1.007 from 1.041.

I probably tasted a little too much of it the other day and was starting to feel a little buzzed from a couple fills of my little 7 oz. tasting glass! Anyway, I've been thinking on a name for this brew and decided on Pothole Pale Ale. It's a beer that I'm pretty excited about.

Cheers!

Hey! This is my first "in brew" brew log entry! I am currently doing a partial mash pale ale on this fine Friday evening. Tomorrow (May 2nd) is National Homebrew Day, and seeing as how I'll be busy with the first farmer's market of the summer and the local Garden City Brew Fest with more than 50 beers on tap, I figured I'd better do my part for "The Big Brew" today.

Okay, so back to the mash. I've got a lot of different sources of info and it's impossible for me to remember everything and get it all straightened out. So I'm just kind of going for it with this partial mash process to further along my homebrewing journey. So I found some recipes to get a general idea for the proper grain bill in a partial mash brew and after choosing a little bit from what grain I had and getting some other grain, here's what I'm going with:

• 2 1/2 lbs. 2 Row Malt
• 1 1/2 lbs. Wheat Malt
• 1/4 lb. Munich Pils
• 1/4 lb. Honey Malt
• 1/2 lb. Flaked Wheat

I'll mash that all for an hour in about 5 and a half quarts of water at 150 degrees. I had heard that the ratio you get when you divide the pounds of grain by 1.33 is a pretty good one for the amount of quarts of water to do your mash in. When that's done I'll strain out the grains and start my usual hour boil with 3 lbs. light DME and 2 lbs. light ME. I've also got a whole bunch of leftover hops that I'm planning on using. Here's my hop bill:

• 1 oz. Willamette (Boil 60 min)
• 1/2 oz. Magnum (Boil 45 min)
• 1/2 oz. Fuggles (Boil 45 min)
• 1/2 oz. Saaz (Finishing)
• 1/2 oz Tettnanger (Finishing)

I'm hoping for a pretty nice Pale Ale with this recipe. If anyone sees any fault with that please let me know. I'd love to hear what you have to say. As for a yeast I'll be using the Safale us-05. Sounds good! I'll let you know what happens.

Happy Homebrew Day!