Man's Best Friend Update

So I've been a bit busy here the last few weeks. Jess and Ike came down to visit last week. Ike ended up bringing a cold from "Up North" and infecting all us southerners! While they visited, the Man's Best Friend fermented in the fridge!

Hefeweizen yeasts are known for their banana/clove/bubble gum flavors when they're fermented at the higher end of their temperature range. For Man's Best Friend, I did not want to get any esters into the flavor. Leah and I racked it to the secondary tonight, so in about a month, I'll be able to taste it. Based on the initial tasting during the racking, this beer may turn out to be very tasty!

Original Gravity: 1.052
Final Gravity: 1.013
Alchohol By Volume: 5.08%
Calories: 231 cal/pint
Color: 4.8 SRM
Bitterness: 14 IBUs

Beer Review - St Feuillien Tripel

As I stated in my earlier Tasting Beer thread, "One thing you have to perfect if you are to become a complete brewer, is how to taste beer. While it doesn't sound that hard, it actually is quite difficult when you don't always know what you're trying to taste for.". Refer to this post if you're wondering how I taste my beers.

So in order to perfect this craft, I have to see how others have perfected theirs! This is my first official beer review so take it easy on me! The views below are mine and mine only... Your mileage may vary.

Appearance
St. Feuillien's Tripel pours a nice golden orange color. The small amount of suspended yeast provides a light turbidity to the brew. The short (say 2 finger width) head that I did have with the beer quickly dissipated. Note: I have heard that hard water will kill head retention in glassware, while I haven't noticed head retention problems in other beers that we've tried with our glasses, this may be a result of the mineral content of our water.

Smell
The beer has a nice yeasty aroma with a bit of sweetness and citrus. There's a hint of something else too... Refering to my handy dandy beer color wheel - I think this may be the phenolic odor (adhesive strip smell), that is in there with the citrus.

Taste
Ahhh taste! The best part of the brew! The initial taste I got was more of the enhanced phenolic flavor. It definitely comes out more over the smell....at least I think it's phenolic...keep in mind... I'm new at this!! :-) There is also a nice spicy bite to the flavor. I perused a couple of other reviews on this beer, and they mentioned white pepper. It's not quite something I can taste yet though. I'm going to have to go out, and buy some now just to verify! Pepper or not, it is spicy! The finish was the worst part of this beer. Really....everything was on the A- to B+ scale up to this point...however the finish left something to be desired...and it wasn't another sip! This was the hardest part of the beer to determine the flavor. I'm going to say it was a very resiny hop bitterness. However the bitterness left the palate very unappealing. While at 8.5% ABV, the aftertaste slowly diminishes with the glass, even after the bottle was empty it still left a harshness.

Etc...
Well that was my first experience into the wonderful world of official beer tasting!! If you have any comments, criticisms, complaints, or questions please let me know. I always appreciate feedback. One thing I do know for sure... I need to get myself a nice duvel tasting glass! I've also attached the beer tasting wheel for your viewing pleasure! I just turned on the Brew Crew playing the Cubs on WGN...GOTTA GO!!

Beer Tasting Wheel

Man's Best Friend

I've finally put the finishing touches on what I've called "Man's Best Friend". It's a german style Hefe with a blend of Wheat, Pale, and Aromatic Malts.

1.00 lb Rice Hulls (0.0 SRM) Adjunct 7.84 %
6.00 lb White Wheat Malt (2.4 SRM) Grain 47.06 %
4.50 lb Pale Malt (6 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 35.29 %
1.00 lb Wheat, Flaked (1.6 SRM) Grain 7.84 %
0.25 lb Aromatic Malt (20.0 SRM) Grain 1.96 %

60 min 1.00 oz Hallertauer [3.90 %] (60 min) Hops
7 min 1.00 oz Select Spalt [2.00 %] (7 min) Hops
5 min 2.00 oz Malto-Dextrine (Boil 5.0 min)

Full Recipe

It will definitely be exciting to try my first all grain wheat beer. The first of many to come!! I chose to go with close to a 60/40 blend of white wheat malt and pale malt. This ratio, along with the flaked wheat should bring out a strong wheat flavor in the brew. The flaked wheat should also provide the chill haze to the beer that is desirable in Hefes. The aromatic malt will lend a distinct, almost exaggerated malt aroma and flavor to the beer, while the malto-dextrine is there to add a bit of body. Hallertauer hops are used a lot in wheat beers. It has a soft, pleasant, and slightly flowery, spicy flavor and aroma. The Select Spalt will be used just for a bit of aroma.

I also wanted to share a great graphic I found online in regards to hop utilization. As you can see, this graphic depicts how your hops will contribute to the beer depending on different boiling times.

Spent Grains

Switching to the all grain brewing process presents a new waste stream in our household. A waste stream of sugarless barley, wheat, oats, and other grains. So far we have come up with 2 great ways to help us reuse this waste stream into something else.

The first and easiest way to reuse our spent grains is to compost them! Leah and I have been composting our kitchen scraps for well over a year now. We had purchased 2 60 gallon pickle barrels from Mt. Olive pickle company for $5 each! That's about 10% the cost of buying them brand new! They still had a bit of pickle smell in them, but a good rinsing, and a week out in the sun made them smell good as new.

Before last week, our compost was aerated about once a week by turning the barrel on its side, and rolling it about the yard. This however failed to mix the compost up properly, and also failed to introduce oxygen to the lower half of the barrel. Oxygen is necessary for composting bacteria (kinda like aerating the wort).

Composter Design

A couple weeks back I designed a tumble style composter that rotated about an axis in the middle of the barrel. You can see the design I created in Delcam Powershape (free for personal use) to the right.

The materials included 38 ft of 2x4s, 12 1/2" bolts, and a 1 1/4" conduit pipe.

Scott and I built the whole thing in less than 5 hours.

The finished product looks and works great! The barrel tumbles with little effort, and mixes anything we add to the it in just a few turns!

The brewing grains we have added to the composter so far have broken down in a matter of days. The bacteria in the compost bin LOVE all the residual sugars in the grains. We've also been adding our trub (sediment and yeast left behind after fermentation) to the composter as well. The yeast and sediment are extremely beneficial to the compost process, and help to break everything down even faster!

Completed Composter!

Grains in the Composter Mix in Perfectly After a Few Turns!

In addition to composting, Leah has taken up baking dog cookies with the spent grains! The grains make a perfect low calorie & high fiber treat for the dogs since most of the carbohydrates from the grains have been removed. When she has perfected her recipe, I'll get her to post it.

Other ideas for recycling grains such as granola, bread, cookies, or tofu burgers can be found from the Seven Bridges Cooperative website. This was the company we purchased our all organic ingrediants from!