My day started early at 7am by slicing and roasting the victi… er… pumpkins. I baked them in the oven for two hours at 350°F, then peeled them and mashed the flesh with a potato masher. I then mixed in four pounds of crushed 2 row and 3 quarts of water to form a somewhat thick minimash. I held this on the stove  at around 127°F for about an hour, followed by another rest at 150°F for as long as it took me to mash and sparge the main grain bed.

One I had about 9 gallons of wort from the main mash (look at that gorgeous color! It is a deep brown with red highlights), I put a large steeping bag in the kettle and dumped in the pumpkin. I left the pumpkin mush to steep for about 30 minutes, removed the bag and let it drain out, then topped up the kettle to my desired volume.

Things went went reasonably well. I haven’t brewed much because of the heat and running out of starter wort, so I felt a little rusty… but I came close to my 10 gallon target and had a pretty fast fermentation. We will see if I truly did ok in a few weeks when this goes on tap in time for Halloween and Thanksgiving.

I’ve got another brew coming up this weekend, but in front of an all-grain class at How Do You Brew?. I believe we are making a saison, which always turns out nice. It’s a bit late in the season for a saison, but I don’t care – I’m just glad to be brewing again.

So let’s turn back the clock a few months to March – I brewed a 10 gallon batch of Hefeweizen at How Do You Brew? at an all-grain class. The weather cooperated and it turned out to be a gorgeous day, and we had a great turnout – nearly 25 brewers in all. The class went relatively well and I managed to avoid getting a stuck mash or missing my mash-in temperature, and things were wrapped up and in the car by 5:30pm or so.

A few weeks later, we headed out for a 1 week cruise to the Carribean with our kids, and when we came back we jumped right in to a complete kitchen remodeling. I bring this up because it basically put our kitchen sink out of comission for nearly a month – all of the month of May, which meant pretty much my brewing activities ground to a halt. The kitchen sink is where I do all of my janitorial stuff like cleaning carboys, kegs, and kettles – so not having one made all that activity near impossible. Sure, some industrious homebrewers might take that as an opportunity to innovate and adapt their brewing practices to do things differently, however not I. The kitchen did turn out fantastic and was worth the wait, but I was very grateful to see the kitchen sink again.

I did manage to squeeze in one brew day during our kitchen remodeling – On May 20th, I took a day of vacation and brewed a batch of Citra Pale Ale to celebrate my birthday. A couple of friends came over to enjoy the day with me and participate in the process, and things went pretty well – I will say that cleanup was not quite easy, but I managed to get it done with the hose and a scrub brush. It was enough to convince me to hold off doing any more brewing until our kitchen was squared away again.

After we got our kitchen back, the next few weeks (first half of June) were seriously consumed trying to put everything back in the appropriate places and clean up the drywall dust that had spread throughout the entire first floor of the house. I think we mopped 3 times, dusted and vacuumed an equal number just to feel like we were back to status quo.

My next brew day occured this past Sunday, June 26th. I hauled up the big boy kettles and brewed up a 20 gallon batch of American Wheat. The brew day went pretty well except for three small glitches – first, I stuck the mash after only collecting about 4 gallons. I stirred, did another vourlauf, and didn’t have any issues after that. Second, I somehow ended up with a final gravity of 1.058 instead of 1.048, so my intended light summer quencher is going to pack a heavier punch than I had intended. Last, our groundwater temperature has risen such that I pretty much can’t cool anything below 80 degrees, so I ended up having to do the wet t-shirt water batch thing for a few hours to cool them down to pitching temperature.

10 gallons of the American Wheat will get a dose of 5 pounds worth of hand-picked and chopped cherries from Walnut Springs Farm in the secondary followed by a tertiary before kegging. The other 10 gallons I plan on leaving alone as a regular wheat beer. That should refill my empty kegs that are standing by, and I’ll have to get back to drinking again.

Hopefully I’ll get an opportunity to brew again in a week or two – I’m thinking maybe a belgian-style beer as my bottle stash is running pretty low and I need to replenish. With cases and cases of empty bottles, and plenty of belgian corks – I really need to put them to good use. If I don’t go belgian, I’ve got a few other ideas swimming around in the back of my head – maybe an amber lager or munich dunkel, or maybe I’ll go the other way with something high-octane like a barleywine or imperial stout. We shall see.

I’ve been longing for a better connectivity solution on my brew gear than hose barbs and hose clamps for quite a while. I’ve lived with it for this long mostly because the only other option I liked was the tri-clover fittings that professional breweries use, but those things were incredibly expensive and I had to be honest with myself – why use tri-clover fittings that attached with threaded fittings to the vessels? Yeah, you will be sanitary at the connection points, but those threaded fittings could still harbor all kinds of bacteria and what not. About the only way clover fittings made sense was if I were to replace all my brew gear and had 100% sanitary welded clover fittings, and while I’d be envied by all of my brewing buddies – come on. I just couldn’t justify it. Fortunately MoreBeer finally dropped the price on their stainless quick disconnect fittings, so I jumped at the chance.

I picked up 9 of the female connectors with barbs for the hoses, 11 of the male threaded parts to go on the kettles and pumps, and a bunch of replacement gaskets just in case I needed some. That should be everything I need to completely convert over all my brew gear – from my 3 quart grant all the way up to the 28 gallon monsters. No more wrestling 1/2″ hoses on and off the barb fittings, fighting with a screwdriver and hose clamp to seal it up, and all that jazz. From now on I’ll be plug-and-play all-the-way, baby. My 10 and 20 gallon systems are enjoyable to use as it is, and this will make it even more so. I can’t wait to take them out for a test drive.

Thank you wifey and children! You’re the best!

The original gravity is also a little higher than I intended at 1.058, but even though it doesn't fit within style guidelines I doubt anyone is going to complain. I used 36# Optic pale and Maris Otter base malts, 2# Crystal 60L, 1# Special Roast, 1# Carabrown, and 2# Pale Chocolate malts with 2oz Magnum for bittering and 5oz Sonnet Golding for flavor and aroma. This is the first time I've brewed this recipe, and I realized that breaking out the 20 gallon equipment for "experimental" batches doesn't freak me out anymore. I'd never make 20 gallons of something totally wacky without testing it on a smaller scale, but for run-of-the-mill mostly-to-style kinds of beers – sure, no problem. Besides, I'm likely giving away 10 gallons of this batch anyways.

Nearly all my fermenters are occupied right now – I've got one 6.5 gallon fermenter that's empty and a 3 gallon that I hardly ever use, but the 8 others (1 12gal, 2 6.5 gal and 5 5 gal) are all full… That should help fill most of those empty kegs I've got sitting in the basement.

I probably won't brew again until March 27th – my next All-Grain class at How Do You Brew?. I was in there on Thursday picking up 3 sacks of grain and Marlana told me the class (20 people?) is already full. Teaching all-grain is always rewarding, and hopefully the people get something useful out of the class too. If nothing else, they should realize that if this bozo can do this, so can I…

The first batch of 2011 was 10 gallons of Maibock, the sixth batch of lager-style beer I think I’ve brewed. The batch as I remember it went pretty well, and at a crisp 36 degrees outside I didn’t freeze any hoses and the wort cooled very quickly. I pitched a big mixed starter of WLP820 Octoberfest and WLP833 German Bock yeast, so the flavor profile should be a little different than previous batches (where I used strictly the German Bock strain). It was a pretty long boil – 120 minutes, and my initial gravity turned out pretty high (1.070+), so hopefully there was enough yeast to finish the job. Nothing is worse than putting all that time and energy into a beer and it turns out overly sweet and underattenuated. We’ll have to wait for May to find out.

One week later I brewed 15 gallons of Smoked Porter. The weather was warmer this time, and I got to use my 26 and 28 gallon kettles for the first time in a while. This brew day was textbook perfect, and although my mash did cool off more than I wanted it to, it did not get stuck. I used my automatic grant to transfer the wort (pretty much the only way I do large batches anymore), and all the electronics and pumps worked as expected. Making 15 gallon batches seems somehow trickier than 10 or 20, and I haven’t exactly figured out why – perhaps because I am not accoustomed to thinking in those terms – But this time I did not end up short and managed to get 15+ gallons into the fermenters. I pitched healthy starters of WLP002, had full fermentation within 12 hours, and was done within 72.

I am completely out of primary fermenters, so until I move one of these two batches to secondaries, I won’t be doing more brewing. I will likely rack the porter today and the Maibock later in the week.

Here’s hoping I do a better job of writing new posts and keeping on top of this blog thing – if life stops getting in the way, of course

I knew that I wanted to use the Mini in my next generation pump control box to replace the PICAXE 28×1, and that meant the serial UART had to be used for communications to and from the XBee wireless modem. This also meant that all my LCD backpacks were essentially worthless – I wouldn’t have any way to communicate to them without a second UART. After some digging around on the web, I found Adafruit’s I2C backpack and Szymon Kobalczyk’s uLiquidCrystal library and I was back in business.

After some prototyping success and more consideration, I realized that if the backpack was using a MCP23008 digital I/O expander, this same circuit layout and code should work for the larger MCP23016 and MCP23017 digital I/O expanders, but with the added bonus of the chip driving a LCD display, as well as 9 pins worth of LED outputs and switch inputs. I could actually use a single MCP23017 IC to handle all display information for the control box panel!

The screenshot to the left shows the MCP23017 LCD interface in action. It displays a 3 line message, followed by a fourth line with a count of the milliseconds since the program initiated and a custom smiley-faced character (part of Szymon’s test programs that I lifted and threw into my test). The last 3 digits of the milliseconds don’t show up well in the photo because they change so fast, but you get the idea.

There is plenty of testing and prototyping that remains before I can gut and reassemble the pump control box, however these little steps form the building blocks of the transformation. I also have several large 20 gallon batches on the near horizon that will require my box and grant to be operational, so I don’t want to do anything rash before I can part with it for a few weeks.

I’ve been working on some other circuitry mayhem utilizing PICAXE 08M modules and high-intensity RGB LEDs – that particular project has more work to be done before I unveil it, however. It definitely embodies the whole “needless but cool use of technology” that makes me grin, and I’d be suprised if a few folks didn’t want some for their own… Mwaaa haa haa.

I ordered a new 3280 point breadboard, a couple of SparkFun protoshields, and broke open my stash of integrated circuits to have a little fun over Thanksgiving. I’ve slowly been building my C# skills and device libraries ever since. I am 100% confident that I’ll be able to make my wireless grant a reality in the next couple of months, once I get done tinkering. So here are the classes I’ve developed so far:

• Microchip 12-bit ADC converters MCP3202, MCP3204, and MCP3208
• Microchip 8 and 16 bit digital I/O I2C expanders MCP23008, MCP23016, & MCP23017
• 8 and 16 bit I2C EEPROM family 24LC16B thru 24LC256
• LCD117 (P. H. Anderson) backpack for LCD screens 2×16 up to 4×40

The MCP230XX and 24LCXXX chips are both contained in the same project file (I2CTests.zip), and the LCD117 class is really just a wrapper for the (already pretty simple) serial commands for configuring and displaying information on the LCD screen. All the classes have been extensively tested and proven to work (as long as things are wired up properly).

It may not seem like a lot, and I suppose it really isn’t, but we haven’t been home much over the past month or so and when we’ve been home the weekends have been totally crazy – I suspect I will not be brewing any new beers until early 2011, although I suspect I’ll come out of the gate with lots of brewing activity.

The line-up looks something like this:

Kegs:

• 10 gallons American Stout
• 10 gallons American Pale
• 5 gallons Citra Pale
• 5 gallons Pumpkin Brown
• 5 gallons Mango Witbier
• 5 gallons Abbey 1.5
• 5 gallons Munich Dunkel

Secondaries / Tertiaries:

• 10 gallons Blackberry Pale
• 10 gallons West Coast Red (hop bomb)
• 5 gallons Saison

Fortunately I’ve got a good reason – 20 gallons of it will be gone before December. We’re donating 10 gallons to be served at our children’s school auction next weekend, and 10 more gallons are coming with us to the lake in NC for Thanksgiving.

I think my next batch will be another lager – perhaps a bock… followed by a Doppelbock? I haven’t really figured it out. My friend Brian and I still need to brew a barleywine, but given how busy both of us have been, I’m not sure when that’ll happen – maybe December, maybe after the first of the year…. we’ll have to see.

No additional progress on my wireless grant yet – I realized just recently I need a USB mini-B in order to connect to the Netduino (when I went to connect to it the USB cable didn’t fit!), so I gotta hunt one down. I think they are the cable that alot of cell phones and other smaller devices use these days, so it shouldn’t be too hard – maybe at Best Buy?

So I will forego the previously long-winded description of why and how, and sum it up thusly: I am working on replacing my grant and pump control box electronics. There is alot of really cool and new components out there, and I’ve learned how to better use stuff I’ve already got – for example, taking advantage of the ADC and digital input capabilities of Xbee modules will allow me to make my grant completely wireless without having alot of electronics involved.

The Netduino is an absolutely amazing little chip platform based on the popular Arduino that has lots of power, can be programmed in the Microsoft .NET Micro Framework, and is a huge step up from the PICAXE chips I was using before. Granted Revolution Education (the makers of PICAXE) have come out with newer and more powerful platforms since the once I purchased back in 2008, however I felt like this was the ideal time to switch platforms. It will form the “heart” of the new control box, and will allow me more flexibility and options that were not possible using the PICAXE chips.

As a proof of concept I wired up a couple of “switches” (pretty much alligator clips that I can touch together to simulate the high and low level switches in my grant) and a LM34 temperature sensor to the Xbee module. I configured the XBee to read the temperature sensor on pin 20, and the two switches on pin 19 and 18. The stuff in the upper right of the photo is just the 3.3V regulator to convert the 9V battery into the proper voltage. The Xbee transmits readings every 1/2 second, and will be picked up by the Netduino to trigger the pump on/off states.

A quick little test program shows that the output is being transmitted, with the red box showing when the various “switches” are opened and closed. 00 = both switches closed, 02 = one switch open, 04 = the other switch open, and 06 = both switches open simultaneously (Bits 1 and 2, for those goobers out there that are so inclined)… The ADC reading from the temperature sensor follows as the next two bytes, 0x01AA, which converts out to roughly 75 degrees. I can use this ADC reading to capture the temperature of the wort as it exits the grant.

I have alot more work to do before I can physically implement this and replace the guts of my control box, but as a proof of concept it works quite well… and I’m honestly expecting this to work alot better than the current “wired” implementation for several reasons. I can’t wait to see this through to completion.

So what else has been going on? I haven’t been inactive, that’s for sure. Within the past few weeks I’ve brewed a crazy amount of beer, and will likely continue to do so. I brewed 15 gallons of American Stout, 5 of which went to my sister and the other 10 which is sitting in kegs down in the basement. I also brewed 10 gallons of Abbey Singel, 5 of which went to my sister, and the other 5 sitting in a keg. Then there was the 10 gallons I brewed at How Do You Brew? for an all-grain class, 5 of which came home with me and is still conditioning in a secondary. There is also 20 gallons of pale ale that is currently aging, 10 with dry hops and 10 with blackberries picked from Milburn Orchard. As always I must include a shot of the blackberry beer because it is just so comical – where else can you get a pink/red/purple beer than from blackberries.

I also took the yeast from 10 gallons of the pale ale and pitched it into a batch of beer I brewed this weekend – a huge and hoppy red/brown ale which I haven’t quite settled on a name for. It used roughly 40 pounds of grain and a pound of hops, and should turn out somewhere in the neighborhood of 8% ABV and 100 IBUs. Hops were Columbus and Amarillo for FWH, Summit for bittering, Columbus and Citra for flavoring & Aroma, and I’ll add another 1.5oz/5gal of Amarillo as Dry Hops once it hits the secondary. I want this batch to be big, aggressive, sticky, and just… well… ridiculous.

Enough for now – Hope you enjoy your fall, and that it won’t be so long before my next Post! I’m slackin’!

For whatever reason, I couldn’t get the XBees to reliably communicate with the PC inside the house. This caused the program to throw a couple errors, and as a result I didn’t record most of the brewing session to the database. These issues were also enough to convince me that I seriously need to consider putting an LCD display on the grant control box that also shows gallons collected, time remaining, etc – all the same information it sends to the PC. This would allow me to at least benefit from all the intelligence I built in without having to run back to the PC, mess with it to get the communication up and running again, etc. I also could run BrewzNET on my laptop in the kitchen, dramatically reducing the distance, or use some XBees with duck antennas to improve reception (right now I’m just using tiny chip antennas), but that’s all stuff for later.

While I was running around fooling with the electronics, I somewhat lost sight of what was going on outside. As the kettle filled, the vinyl hose in the kettle can more easily slip out of the kettle due to increased buoyancy and the pressure from the pumping liquid… and unfortunately it did just that as I ran out to check on things. The hot wort sprayed all over me, my feet, the control box, pumps, etc. as I tried to get it back into the kettle. This fortunately kicked the GFCI, which killed the power and prevented electrocution and damage to the electronics – I finished collecting the last 2 or so gallons manually and pouring the contents into the kettle, not wanting to tempt fate or risk my slightly soggy electronics. I only lost about 2.5 quarts of wort, the tops of feet were only a little tender and my t-shirt took the worst of it, but no burns or blistering so I really dodged a bullet there.

NOTE TO SELF: Find a good way to securely fasten the hose into the kettle.

The remainder of the brew was pretty uneventful – 90 minute boil, 2 oz of Columbus at 60 minutes, 3oz Rainier at 10 minutes, 3 more of Rainier at 3 minutes. The wort went into the fermenters crystal clear thanks to a decent bed of spent hops, and we were fermenting within 12 hours of pitching. Hopefully 5 gallons will be ready to bottle and 10 gallons ready to keg in a couple weeks, which will help restock my dwindling stockpile in the basement.

These cooler temperatures mark the coming of fall and my favorite time to brew. Expect more frequent updates in the next few months as my brewing activities ramp back up, absent the heat of summer.