Beer

     It has been a week and Ned has been churning and bubbling in his bucket. It’s time to transfer him to the secondary fermenter (a glass carboy) with some fresh cascade hops. The practice of adding hops to the secondary fermenter is traditionally associated with india pale ales (IPAs) and was originally intended to keep beer from spoiling on the voyage from Great Britain to East India. Brewers (and drinkers) on the East Coast of the United States sometimes insist on calling pale ales from the Pacific Northwest IPAs because they are almost always dry-hopped. What can I say, we like our hops! Beers from the Pacific Northwest also benefit from having near-by Cascade hops growing fresh in Washington and Oregon (they were developed in Oregon in the 70’s) and are perfect for dry-hopping because of their low alpha acids and clean floral/citrus aroma. They produce very large cones and lose their volatiles quickly, thus when purchased in home brew stores they will never be impart the crisp flavor that is found in beers that are brewed close to harvest time in Oregon, but I digress. On to Ned!
     First, we open up the primary fermenter to take a look at the wort--it has changed quite a bit since last week and now fills the kitchen with a rich floral aroma.. Mmmm. The crud stuck to top of the fermenter is called trub and consists mostly of the hop debris that floated to the surface and were pushed to the sides by the frothing during the very vigorous yeast reproduction in the first 24 hours.

Next, we syphon the contents of the primary fermenter into the carboy. You never pour beer once it has started to ferment. The bi-products of the fermentation are what gives beer its flavor, but these bi-products become very sensitive to oxidation. Since the yeast have chewed up all of the oxygen and turned it into carbon dioxide, they are protected, but if you churn the beer it will mix with air and impart nasty spoiled-beer flavors--yuck! For the syphoning, we use a racking cane, which is just a plastic pipe with a stand-off at the bottom. This allows us to syphon the beer from the bottom (to avoid churning with air) while leaving behind the trub at the bottom of the fermenter.

This is a good chance to grab a bit of beer for testing.

It is time to add the hops. This is my first time exploring the magical world of dry-hopping, but it seems pretty simple... I just drop on the remaining oz of Cascade hops from the boil into the carboy. It’s still winter here and first thing in the morning, before the house has thawed, my fingers are still red. Brrr.

As the carboy fills the hops mix into the beer, which is looking a lot like a Mir Pon Pale Ale at this point I have to say. More importantly, the kitchen is now filled with the fresh floral sent that is familiar to anyone that has had the pleasure of opening a cold Mir Pon on a hot summer day.

While the carboy is filling we can check the specific gravity. I get a reading of 1.015 which puts us at 3.4 % alcohol by volume. Mir Pon is 5.0 % so we have a way to go, but my original gravity was low so I’m probably not going to get all the way to 5.0. The color of Ned is strikingly similar to authentic Mir Pon, though more hazy. Mir Pon has a gorgeous chill haze, but Ned is at room temperature. This is normal though, as beers clarify quite a bit during secondary fermentation and bottle conditioning.

Ok, Ned is safely in the carboy, but we’ve left a substantial volume behind in the form of trub, and we want to minimize the head space in the carboy because this will be the only source of oxygen during the secondary fermentation. If we play our cards right, Ned will force the air in the head space out within a few minutes as the yeast wake up a bit and the liquid degases (either from nucleating on the hops, or simply from being smacked around by the transfer). Last time I used tap water, this time I’ll use filtered water.

It is time to attach the air lock to the carboy and stick Ned in the corner for about nine days. Since the heater I used to keep the primary fermenter above 65 °F is incompatible with glass Ned will be subject to the whims of a poorly insulated New England apartment in January. These fluctuations are less important in the secondary fermentation, but they will still affect the flavor making Ned a completely unique brew.

Take a look at this. It is the trub that is left at the bottom of the fermenter and is the primary reason for secondary fermentation. Up to a point, the longer a beer sits around and “conditions”, the smoother and more balanced the flavors will be. However, the longer beer sits on top of this trub, the more bitter (and generally funky) it will get. Some beers, like Belgian Sours, can condition for years, but Ned will only need about another week in the secondary fermenter, soaking up the yummy Cascade hops and safely isolated from the fat, protein, mineral salts, and (mostly) dormant yeast cells that make up the trub.

     The last thing I do is have a taste of Ned (there is no point in the brewing process that the beer cannot be ingested). The wort in the primary fermenter was horribly bitter--and not in a good way--with a sweet, malty taste that didn’t compliment that horrible bitter taste at all. This time, after a week in the fermenter, the bitterness is gone and is replaced by a pleasant, hoppy, bitter aftertaste. The nose is floral and sharp, a lot like a Mir Pon, and the flavor is... Not quite a Mir Pon, but similar, and overall tasting like a hoppy pale ale just like home! Also, Ned lacks a lot of the off flavors that have plagued my other beers (even Albert had a bit of these). I think this is because I used an American yeast starter instead of dried yeast, so they got a foothold faster and were able to out-compete the bacteria, of which there were a lot fewer to begin with because of the wort chiller.
     I’m off to a week of job interviews, but when I get back we’ll bottle Ned... And 2-3 weeks from then he’ll be ready to drink!

     Mirror Pond Pale Ale, or “Mir Pon” as it’s known by Oregonians, is brewed by the Deschutes Brewery in Bend Oregon and is my favorite beer in the whole world. Unfortunately they don’t distribute out here in Massachusetts so my Mir Pon supply is limited to what I can smuggle in my checked luggage (because, of course, we can’t bring beer on planes anymore). This is unacceptable, so I’ve decided to take stab at brewing my own. Naturally Deschutes doesn’t give out the recipe and I don’t have access to fresh Cascade hops or snow melt from Mt. Bachelor, but the Internet is full of recipes that attempt to replicate this beer. Keeping a journal of your homebrews is the key to making better beer, so I name my beers to make it easier to keep track of them. I’m calling this one “Near Pon Ned” (last time I brewed “Albert the Altbier”).
     Mashing grains at home is beyond my abilities (and time constraints) at the moment, so I make my beers using the extract method. The four ingredients of beer are: water, barley, hops, and yeast. The extract method uses barley, but instead of mashing it, malt-extracts are added to the brew pot after extracting the crystal (crushed malted barley). For this clone, I am brewing a five gallon batch based on a recipe I found at skotrat.

Here goes...
Heat 4 gallons of Cambridge Tap Water to 150 °F

Add the crystal malts

Heat for 30 minutes on the way to 170 °F

Add the malt extracts and gypsum and bring to a boil. I always screw something up. This time I added three times as much gypsum as I meant to. I should have added one teaspoon, but I added one tablespoon--d’oh! Sulfate should be kept below 450 ppm and mine is around 775 ppm.

Remove the lid and add the bittering hops

After 30 minutes... More bittering hops!

During the last five minutes, finishing hops are added, then the wort chiller is submerged in the brew pot to bring it to 70 °F as quickly as possible (10 minutes in the winter)

The cooled wort (wort is the the name given to the mixture that will be fermented) is then transfered to the primary fermenter, diluted to five gallons (churning as much air into it as possible), and the yeast is pitched

     Now we wait... The Original Gravity--the measure of density relative to water--was 1.041, which is 0.009 less than the recipe cited. This could mean that I didn’t extract the crystal completely, or that I should have added more malt extract (Clo made some cake from the leftover, so maybe it is better this way). I don’t have a picture of the primary fermenter because it is just a plastic bucket with a heater strapped to it (to keep it above 70 °F so the yeast won’t go to sleep). Next weekend I will rack (wrack?) Ned to the secondary fermenter for dry hopping. One week after that, it will be time to bottle!