Grain Mill Costs vs. Payback Time

When I started all-grain brewing I thought of a grain mill as a bit of a luxury item but I found out that it's almost a necessity. For years, I looked at the fact that the local homebrew store was kind enough to crush the grains in their mill for me, and I thought that was great. Then I started doing price comparisons. I found that by buying just enough for the current brew I was paying roughly double what I might pay if I was buying my malt by the bag.

Then I started doing the math. Let's say that on an average IPA or APA you're using 10 pounds or more of American 2-row as base malt. And let's say you brew five batches of beer per year. Yeah, you may do more but let's start here. Buying my base malt by the bag, I can get 50 or 55 pounds for about $35, depending on the maltster. Buying the same quantity per recipe (by the ounce) I'm looking at about $70. Using Maris Otter as a base those numbers roughly double. So I'm looking at a minimum of a $35 savings per year, more if I brew over five batches, and even more if I brew a barleywine or other big beer. I think most homebrewers could count on saving $50 or more per year.

Now let's look at the equipment costs. You can go with various manufacturers, but the Barley Crusher 7lb model sells for $130 with free shipping and 15lb model goes for a bit more. I went with the 7lb model partly because I'm cheap, partly because it's easier to store. I also bought a large plastic garbage can with a lid for grain storage. I already hand the electric drill I would need to power it. Given the savings of $50 or more per year, I'm looking at a three year payback, max. Give the formula a bit more time if you also need to buy a drill; or you can easily crush all your grain just using the hand crank while the mash water is heating.

The Barley Crusher is a dual roller mill, and I find that it will crush the inside of the grain and leave the outside hull largely intact. The finely crushed grains will give you great efficiency while the intact hulls will help prevent a stuck mash. It has a hand crank, or it can be driven by a 3/8″ drill motor. It comes pre-assembled on an MDF base that has little knobs on the bottom fit a standard 5 gallon plastic pail. All you have to do is put on the handle or drill and start cranking. MDF is a reasonably sturdy wood product, but not particularly moisture resistant, so I put a couple of coats of varnish on mine. The mill itself is a machined-aluminum housing built around cold-rolled steel rollers. There is an adjustment knob for the gap on the unit. BC Products offers a free lifetime warranty on the mill.

"OK", you say, "But what if the grain goes bad? You're better off buying fresh malt every time." Au contraire, mon frère. That would be true if I crushed it in advance, but I'm storing un-crushed malt in a bag inside in a plastic container. It all comes from the same harvest as the malt in the store, so buying malt from the store for each batch is no different than getting it from my storage. In fact, the temperature in my garage is typically cooler than the homebrew store, so I'm probably keeping my malt fresher. I still have to buy some malts by the ounce, but my beer got a lot cheaper by taking the base malt out of that equation.

Chipotle Imperial Robust Porter

This beer worked out in a marvelous way. I've been thinking about brewing it for quite a while, and now that it's done the chocolate and the roast and the smoke and the pepper all come together.

I bought 3 pounds of smoked malt a while ago, but it never seemed all that smoky to me. There was some vague smokiness, but not to the level I expected for putting my nose in three pounds of smoked malt. I also had some dried chipotle peppers that I bought at a Hispanic grocery store, they smelled smoky but I doubted their ability to add enough smoke to five gallons of beer. The two worked together to give me the level of smoke and heat I was looking for. My aim was not to make a beer that was hugely smokey or fire-breathing hot... I just wanted to build a nice interplay of flavors to work with an Imperial Porter.

Notes: The recipe says two ounces of chipotle but that's a guess, because I added 14 dried chipotle peppers to the boil without measuring their weight. I kept them in a hop bag and pulled the bag out of the boil when the wort was spicy enough. I was originally planning to use Black Patent instead of Carafa, but on brew day didn't happen to have any of Black Patent around, and I did have some Carafa.

Statistics
Brew Date:	November 25
Batch Size:	5.0 gallons
Original Gravity:	1.084 measured   (1.087 estimated)
Final Gravity:	1.024 / 6.1° Plato    (1.021 to 1.025estimated)
Color:	37° SRM / 74° EBC   (Black)
Mash Efficiency:	73% measured    (75% used for O.G. estimate)
Bitterness:	48.0 IBU / 11 HBU   ƒ: Tinseth
BU:GU Ratio:	0.55
Alcohol:	8.4% ABV / 6% ABW
Calories:	288 per 12 oz.

Malt & Fermentables
%	Lbs.	Oz.	Malt/Fermentable	PPG	°L
67%	11	0	American Two-row Pale	37	2
18%	3	0	Smoked Malt	37	9
7%	1	2	American Crystal 120L	34	120
3%	0	8	Special B	30	180
2%	0	6	Roasted Barley	25	300
2%	0	4	Chocolate Malt	34	475
1%	0	2	Carafa II	32	412

Hops
Use	Time	Oz.	Variety	Form	AA
Boil	60 mins	1.25	Northern Brewer	pellet	9.0
Boil	30 mins	0.75	Northern Brewer	pellet	9.0
Post-boil	10 mins	2.0	Cascade	pellet	5.5

Yeast
Type	Strain	Description
Safale	US-05	Dry Ale Yeast in dry form with low to medium flocculation and 73% attenuation

Miscellaneous
Use	Time	Amount	Ingredient
Boil	10 min.	2oz.	Dried Whole Chipotle Peppers

R.I.P. Cheap Corny Kegs

OK, they're not dead yet but I've watched the prices go up, and the supplies go down... and I can read the writing on the wall. The Corny Keg supply is living on borrowed time.

A Cornelius keg (AKA Corny keg) is a metal keg originally used by the soft drink industry for the soda fountains. These soda fountain kegs became generically known as Cornelius kegs because they were originally made by the IMI Cornelius Company, and subsequently by several others. Corny kegs were designed to be filled with syrup which was mixed with carbonated water and dispensed as Coke or Pepsi products. As the soda pop industry has gone to "bag in a box" (BIB) systems for syrup dispensers the old Cornelius kegs have been taken out of circulation.

For years, Homebrewers have seen the used kegs as the best value they could find for a sealed 5 gallon stainless steel container. As a result, thousands of old Corny Kegs have been used to store and dispense home-brewed beer. The kegs come in two varieties, Pin-Lock (Coke) and Ball-Lock (Pepsi). Ball-Lock seems to be the choice of most homebrewers I know.

As the year ends, there are no local Craigslist entries for Ball-Lock Corny Kegs. There are still Pin-Lock kegs available in Olympia. The supply on eBay has also dried up, and the few that are left are going for twice the price of a year or two ago. Prices are up on Amazon as well. On one hand, I'm thinking, "Wow, I'm glad I bought when I did." On the other hand, I'm thinking, "Wow, I wish I bought more than I did."

Barrel-Aging Your Beer With Oak Chips or Cubes

Oak barrels have been used in brewery storage for many years, but recently craft brewers have turned to oak for its aroma, flavor and mouthfeel impact. Commercial craft brewers are likely to use barrels, often ones that were previously used for whiskey storage. Barrel-storage between batches and batch sizes are a problem for homebrewers, so we are more likely to follow in the steps of Budweiser and use wood chips or cubes; except for a few who use dowels or chair legs. Homebrewers will also be likely to use oak instead of Bud beech.

"Grown in America, Beechwood is harvested and processed into chips for use in Budweiser's fermenting process. Beechwood aging enhances fermentation creating a crisper, more sparkling carbonation while imparting smoothness..."—The Budweiser Way, http://www.budweiser.com/

When used effectively, oak-aging can enhance beer flavor and complexity lending the full, rich properties of the wood. When overused, oak can make your beer too dry and "woody." All of this is dependent on the specifics of how you do the aging. There are several basic flavors that derive the the compounds found in all species of oak:

• Eugenol: Clove-like taste
• Furfural: Caramel sweetness
• Lactones: Coconut and aromatic wood flavors
• Vanillin: Vanilla aroma and flavor

The three most common types of oak used by brewers are American, French and Hungarian, and each has its own flavors. Each is available with different levels of toast, typically Light, Medium, Medium+ and Heavy. The flavor profile of oak changes during the toasting process, so the flavor and aroma compounds that come out depend on the variety of oak and the level of toast it gets.

Chips vs. Cubes: Chips are generally thin, flat shreds of wood similar to the chips of wood you get when chopping a tree by hand with an ax. Because of the thinness of chips, the toast level is more uniform and they impart their flavor to beer fairly quickly. (Speed is the attraction to beech chips for the folks at Budweiser who appear to pare theirs down to ribbons of wood.) Due to their relatively greater thickness, cubes may be able replicate the complex flavors of a barrel a bit better than chips because the cubes have more levels of toast. Cubes also expose un-toasted surfaces to your beer, something that doesn't happen in barrels. Cubes take a bit longer to impart their flavor and cost more due to being more expensive to produce. Which is better? It depends on your usage.

Sanitation: Maintaining sanitation is a concern, but it's not as big a problem as sanitizing barrels. There are multiple ways to go, and have used several successfully:

1. Steam: Put your oak cubes or chips and 1/4 cup of water into a microwave-safe container with a loose-fitting lid. Microwave on high for three minutes. Let it stand for another three minutes.
2. Boiling: Use just enough water to cover the wood, and cover the pot or container with a loose-fitting lid. You can do this on the stove top or in the microwave.
3. Alcohol: There are some sanitizing properties in alcohol, and the level of alcohol in whiskey is enough to do the job with prolonged contact. I use a Mason Jar and just enough booze to just cover the wood. You'll need to add more booze almost daily as the oak absorbs it.
4. Oven: This method should work just fine but I haven't tried it so I have no recommendation on heat or times.
5. Pressure Cooker: The super-safe way of steaming. Very effective but requires extra equipment that most homebrewers probably don't have.
6. Just throw them in: You'll probably be just fine in most cases.

Process: There are several ways you can oak your beer:

1. Chips/Cubes in the Primary: Put your oak cubes or chips in when at the same time you add your yeast The yeast will metabolize some of the oak vanilla flavors and leave others behind. Chips are probably the better option here due to short duration.
2. Chips/Cubes in the Secondary: This is probably the most common way for homebrewers to do oak aging.
3. Oak Tea in the Secondary: If you sanitized by boiling or soaking in alcohol you now have an oak tea of one sort or another. The alcohol-based tea will be laced with vanilla. The water-based tea will be dry, woody and possibly a bit astringent if you've boiled it for long.
4. Hybrid: Some combination of the previous methods.

I've had success creating bourbon-aged oak flavor by soaking the wood in bourbon for several weeks. You could add only the chips to your beer after a shorter soak in bourbon, but with several weeks to work, the bourbon gets gradually darker as it pulls the flavors and toast out of the chips. If you add only the chips and discard the bourbon tea at this point you're probably throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If you add only the tea and discard the chips you're probably doing the same thing to a lesser degree. Reserve the tea until the end of your aging process and add it in gradually until the taste is right. Switching to Port for a Port Barrel Aged Old Ale also worked well.

Depending on the quantity and variety of oak you use, the taste of your beer will change more or less subtly over time. You'll probably need to wait at least a couple of weeks and maybe as much as six months. You'll need to taste the beer during the next weeks/months to monitor how the flavors of the oak compounds are mergiong into the flavor of your beer.

The Brewing Network has a good discussion of wood aging but it takes a long time to download. Not because of file size, their sever seems to have issues.

Ice Cider / Cidre de Glace

Ice cider or Cidre de Glace is the cider equivalent of ice wine: it is made from the frozen juice of apples. There are two main ways to make ice cider: cryoconcentration and cryoextraction.

Cryoconcentration is harvesting the fruits late in season and pressing the fresh juice which is left to freeze. Cryoextraction is a traditional method similar to the one used to produce ice wine. Apples are left on the trees until the end of January. In either method, the concentrated (but non-fermented) cider is higher in sugar and in apple taste than 'regular' cider. This is in contrast with beer world, where Eisbock and similar styles are created by freezing fermented beer.

I'm going with a variation on cryoextraction. I bought five gallons of frozen cider from Minea Farms in Redmond. They typically have five or six varieties of cider, in a mix of fresh and frozen. I got two gallons of Golden Russet, two gallons of Pink Lady and one gallon of Honey Crisp.The idea is that the sugary part of the cider will thaw faster than the watery part, so I can drain concentrated cider from the partially frozen gallon jugs.

What I hope to end up with is more or less Cidre de Glace: "Drinks produced by the fermentation of apple juice, which must have a concentration of sugar before fermentation made solely by the natural cold of at least 30 Brix and whose product has a residual sugar content of at least 130 grams per liter. Finally, the alcohol will be obtained over 7% and less than 13% alcohol by volume." The problems with making authentic Cidre de Glace is that I need my own orchard and cider press. And I can't cheat by adding apple juice concentrate... which I will probably need to do to get to my desired OG.

Time for some brew math. 30 Brix is approximately 1.130OG. Apple juice is typically somewhere in the neighborhood of 12.6 Brix or about 1.051OG. You can calculate Brix from the grams of sugar. 1 gr per 100 ml is one Brix. To get from 12.6 to 30, I need to concentrate each gallon to .42 gallon. And that's just the bottom end of the range, which will yield two gallons of ice cider from my five gallons of regular cider. If I collect all the sugar from one gallon into 1/3 gallon, I'll come in at around 37 Brix for just over 1 1/2 gallons of ice cider. But I know I'll never be able to get all the sugar as long as I leave some of the ice behind. I'm beginning to understand why Cidre de Glace is expensive.

Here's my high-tech cryoconcentration apple cider apparatus:

I took some scraps of wood to build a rack that holds the gallons of frozen cider upside down. The openings of the sanitized juice bottles below are slightly larger that the openings of the cider jugs, so they catch everything that drips out. Now I just need to monitor them to make sure I don't let the cider melt for too long.

I was expecting that I might need to back-fill with frozen apple cider concentrate. This would clearly be cheating in the Cidre de Glace world, but I won't be selling it so things should work out just fine. What I wasn't expecting is how much frozen apple cider I would need.

If you recall that the Brix of cider should be 12.6 or higher, my extracted cider came in at about 25 Brix, so I had just about doubled the gravity. The problem is that I need to be at 30 Brix for Ice Cider. I'll need to add enough frozen apple cider concentrate to bring it up to 30. To do that I'm going to need 72 ounces, or six cans:

72oz	@ 44 Brix =	3168
200oz	@ 25 Brix =	5000
------		-------
272oz	@ 30 Brix =	8168

The CPVC Brewery Experiment

If you want to skip to the chase here it is: The experiment failed, but it probably didn't have to.

CPVC vs. PVC:  Polyvinyl chloride, abbreviated as PVC, is used for the drain lines, drain vents, sewer lines, and some water supply lines for applications such as sprinkler systems. Chlorinated polyvinyl chloride, abbreviated as CPVC is a thermoplastic produced by chlorination of PVC. CPVC can withstand higher pressures and temperatures than regular PVC, with an upper temperature tolerance of 180 degrees in fairly high pressure applications; so it can be used for hot water pipes. It's cheaper than copper pipe and easier to install. I figured this would make it an ideal pipe for my homebrew setup. It would need to withstand temperatures as high as 212 (boiling) but low pressures (only what a March Pump could push.)

I used CPVC to plumb the whole system, including CPVC ball valves. Things went well for a while.

After a few batches, the CPVC ball valves started getting a little temperamental. After a few more, they started falling apart. I think the problem was residual wort that got in behind the valve mechanism, so even though I rinsed the system thoroughly, there was a little sticky sugar residue. The valves were getting stuck, but loosened up after I turned them on and off at the start of the brew day. There is a little clip that holds the handle onto the shaft. Those clips started popping off when too much pressure was applied to the valve handles. Finally, one of the valves stopped turning at all.

The vise grips seemed like a good temporary solution that would get me through the brew I was currently working on. Nope. The shaft would turn but the valve wouldn't turn on. I had to go back to a completely gravity-fed solution, which meant lifting seven gallons of hot wort up to chest level. Not so much fun. I'll be re-plumbing the system before I brew anything else. The pipe and connectors seem to work well, but the valves should be metal.

DIY Counterflow Chiller

After years of being somewhat satisfied with my immersion chiller, I decided to move up to a  counterflow wort chiller. As you probably know, counterflow chillers get their name because the cooling stream of water is flowing counter (in the opposite direction) to the hot wort. According to John Palmer, "Counterflow chillers use more water to cool a smaller volume of wort faster than an immersion chiller so you get a better cold break and clearer beer."

I built my counterflow chiller out an old garden-hose, some flexible 3/8″copper tubing and various odds and ends. I already had the hose, the pipe and some of the fittings laying around. The major purchase for me was the 3/8″copper tubing. If you have a copper immersion chiller you could scavenge the tubing to convert it into a counterflow. You're going to find most of the other parts and supplies you need on the plumbing aisle.

NOTE: I used 1/2" copper pipe and fittings. You could substitute  1/2"PVC and it would work just as well. It's cheaper and you won't need to solder anything.

Parts:
25' garden hose
25' of 3/8" ″OD copper tubing.
1' of 1/2" copper pipe
2ea. 1/2" copper tee fittings.
2ea. 1/2" copper female
2ea. Brass compression fittings for 3/8" copper tubing
4ea. Hose Clamps
Teflon tape
Solder
Flux
Tie Wraps (AKA Zip Ties)

Tools/Supplies:
Fine Sandpaper
Hacksaw or Tube cutter
Propane Torch
Screwdriver
Drill
3/8" Drill Bit
Vise

I started by building the two end assemblies. Cut six pieces of 1/2" copper pipe about 1 1/2" long using a hacksaw or tube cutter. The pieces can be a bit longer or shorter, you don't need to be precise. Use the sandpaper to 'shine' the inside of the fittings and the outside of the pipe sections. Home Depot will be happy to sell you special little tools to do this, and they're not expensive. After you've shined the surfaces to remove oxidation, apply flux and sweat (solder) the joints.

End Assemblies

The copper compression fittings are the standard pieces you may have under your sink. When they're used in your house, the 3/8" tubing goes only part way into the fitting. We're going to want the tubing to go all the way through, so we need to use the 3/8" drill to remove the internal stop. Please, DO USE a vise to hold these little parts while you're drilling. Things can get rather unpleasant when your holding small parts with pliers if the drill bit binds.

Drilled out on the left, original on the right.

Cut the last several inches off both ends of the garden hose. The flexible 3/8″copper tubing is probably in a coil. Straighten it out as much as possible and shove it inside the garden hose. Slide one of the hose clamps over each end of the hose, then slide one assembly over each end 3/8″tubing until you can shove an inch of the copper pipe from that assembly inside the hose. Secure with a hose clamp, and tighten the compression fitting around the 3/8″copper tubing. Wrap the whole thing around something round. I used a Corny Keg. Tie-wrap the layers together to prevent your wort chiller from acting like a Slinky when you lift it. Slide one of the hose clamps over each of the little end pieces of the hose, jam the hose over the copper pipe coming from the sides of the two copper tees, and secure the hose clamps. You're done!

When your wort chiller is complete, connect it to your garden hose, and slide 3/8″ ID flexible tubing over the 3/8″ copper tubing tubing in a line between your boil and your fermenter. Hook it up so that the assembly that has the outgoing wort is on the same end as incoming cold water.

I added a thermometer to mine so I could monitor the outgoing wort temperature. I had to add a bunch of brass compression fittings on the end to make that work. Normally, the cool wort would come out where the thermometer is, rather than out of a tee'd connection.

Brewing with Adjuncts: A Cereal Mash HowTo

There are several reasons why you might want to do a cereal mash:

1. You're brewing a style that calls for rice or corn adjuncts, such as a Classic American Pilsner.
2. You're brewing an Oatmeal Stout or some other beer that calls for un-malted grains.
3. You're using some un-malted barley or wheat.

In any of these scenarios, a portion of your mash will consists of grain that hasn't been malted. These grains lack the enzymes created during malting, and the starches they contain are not readily convertible to the sugars you need for brewing. Fortunately, the malted grains in your mash will have enough enzymes to convert all their own starch and more, but you'll need to go through an additional cooking process to gelatinize the un-malted starches to make them ready for the mash. If you think you might come up short on diastic power, you can replace some of the 2-row malt in your recipe with 6-row.

As with other brewing ingredients, there are shortcuts. If you're brewing a style that calls for rice or corn adjuncts, you can skip the extra process by buying pre-gelatinized “flaked” rice or corn at the homebrew store. No need to run any of this stuff through a grain mill, just toss it into your mash. As with malt extracts, buying special ingredients will be more expensive than using the 'regular' grains. You can also use instant rice, oatmeal or grits to reduce your cooking time.

Various sources use the term 'Cereal Mash', but it's really a 'Cereal Boil'. More on this later. The boil is used to break down the starches in un-malted grains to make them accessible to the enzymes in the main mash. If you're using grits or oatmeal, you won't need to mill these grains before starting the boil. If you're using rice, un-malted barley or wheat you'll want to mill them first. It will take significantly more effort to mill these grains than to mill their malted counterparts.

If you want to streamline the process you will need a pot large enough to hold your adjunct(s) and the boil water. Let's take a look a the process. Determine the amount of water you'll need, usually, about 3 to 4 quarts per pound of grain. Heat the water to boiling, add your grains and continue to boil for at least 30 minutes. Stir constantly so the mash doesn't scorch. Bits of grain will start to stick to your stirring spoon as the grain breaks down and the starches start to gelatinze.

Once the cereal boil is complete you can just add it directly to your mash. You can (and should) be strategic about this and use it as a way to do a stepped mash. You could (for example) mash in at 140, and use the cereal boil to raise your mash temps to 152. As long as your cereal mash is only a small part of the overall grain bill, you shouldn't notice any difference in the mash or sparge processes. If you're using a lot of adjuncts, you may want to add rice hulls to prevent a stuck mash.

I've never been able to figure out the reasoning behind what seems to be the 'official' way to do a cereal mash. The problem is that the 'mash' attempts to convert the starch that isn't convertible yet because it hasn't gone through the boil yet; using a quantity of malt that falls well short of  having enough enzymes to be useful. To make it work you'll need to manage two mashes at the same time, or you'll need to add a bunch of time to your brew day so you can com[plete your cereal mash before starting your real mash. But in case you're interested here's what to do:

1. Add 1/4 cup of malt along with 2-3 quarts heated water per pound of grain to reach a mash temperature of about 158°F for corn or rice, 145°F for barley wheat or rye. Hold the temperature there for 15 minutes.
2. Bring the cereal mash up to a boil and hold it for 30 minutes.
3. Add the cereal mash to the main mash.

My First Mead

I've been brewing beer for a number of years, and finally decided to try a mead. Or actually a couple of meads. I started by getting fifteen pounds of Orange Blossom Honey from Miller's apiary in California. Then I got another fifteen pounds Buckwheat, and three pounds of Snowberry and Star Thistle honey from Miller's apiary near Spokane. The two Millers don't appear to be related.

The Orange Blossom, Snowberry and Star Thistle honey went into the carboy yesterday. I hopefully heated the honey enough (145 degrees for 20 minutes)to zap the wild yeast and beasties without driving off the finer aromas. I didn't bother measuring the original gravity because the fruit is going to throw the numbers off when it is added.