3B recipe

3.8# Malted Buckwheat
1.5# corn sugar
1# rice solids extract
1.5# Buckwheat honey
2oz Hallertaur @ 45
10z Willamette @ 10
1oz Styrian Goldings @ 30
.2 oz Amylase enzyme added to mash at 148 degrees for 1 hour.
Nottingham dry yeast

Mash in at 110, protein rest for 30 min, 1.5 gallons
Raised temp to 150 held temp between 140-149 with the added amylase for 1.5 hours.

OG 1.041/ 4 gallons

I ended up with a much lower gravity than expected and not a full 5 gallons, so we decided to not add more water and leave it at 4 gallons. I may decide to add more rice extract dissolved in a little water to see if i can get the yeast ferment further when I move it to the secondary.

Krausen!!!

Well the panic has been thwarted! I was worried yesterday when I didn't see more activity. Apparently the little beasties have gotten over their shock of being moved from a small glass container or warm water to a gigantic container of food. I might have to do a bit of feeding this batch with some honey and water in a week. I'm going to be doing some reading up on adding body to gluten-free beers that are not lagers.

This little baby is sitting in the laundry room where it stays in the mid 60s. I think at the tail end of the fermentation I'm going to crash cool it in the fridge for a few days and try to get as much yeast to fall out as possible. I think I might also do a secondary aging for a few weeks to a month or so depending on how it tastes.

Cool down in record Time!

This deserves its very own post. I did not check the weather before I started brewing today. Imagine how not happy I was to realize that we were going to be in the 90+ weather and I was going to have to cool the wort down to under 80 quickly.

I had that chiller prepped and running and sanitizer before I brought the pot out. I dunked it in and then ran in the house and started to rehydrate the dry yeast. I was desperately hoping that I could get it down to under 80 in like 20-25 minutes. I guess the brew goddess was with me today because I got it to 78 in like 20 minutes, which was better than I hoped for. I had to do this in the yard close to bushes because that is where the shade was at 3pm.

Brought it in the house and poured it into the carboy with the waiting 1.5 gallons of cold water. It seemed to take longer because I had to clear the funnel screen of all the irish moss that clogged it. Barnaby had come over to see how things were going and get a taste of the wort and he said it was a little thin. That's what we were afraid of...well that and a super low gravity. If necessary I can add some water and honey later to during the fermentation process but right now I'm not terribly concerned. We ended up with about 4 gallons of wort and a gravity of 1.041.

With this information I can tweak the next batch of buckwheat and not make it gluten free, but I think I'll look online and see if there are other ingredients we can add to it to build body. This would explain why GF free beers are lagers, they tend to the thin side in comparison to ales in my opinion.

The Mashout and the Boil

Oh so heavy! I really need to think about rigging something to hold the grains suspended over the pot so I don't physically have to do it. My delts got quite the workout. On the right is the bag of BW in a strainer over a pot to drain. On the left is the wort on the verge of boiling. I decided to only do 45 minute boil because I wasn't looking to have a lot of hop flavor just enough. Not to mention that I was using really low Alpha hops, aroma hops to be specific. I'm sure there's a reason that you don't use aroma for bittering, besides the obvious.

This went relatively well, especially because this time I put the hops in a bag and not let them run willynilly all through the pot, like grade schoolers. I was always a firm believer that children should be confined, and now I think the same should go for leaf hops. Once I got the boil going on I could do the extract additions whenever I wanted, except for the honey I added that at the 10 minute mark.

The Mash

Ok so now we've moved into the official letting it sit for 45 minutes until conversion. I added the enzymes and soon will be heating up the sparge water and then it's off to a boil and extract additions. This GF is done without any sorghum extract, which I believe is somewhat unusual.

Barnaby wants a low alcohol, lightly hopped, fairly dry beer. I'm hoping I can make that happen. I took a reading of the decoction and I had 0 brix. I had a 0 brix in the mash. Now I'm about 30 minutes into it after adding the amylase at under 150 degrees and I took a reading and I got a brix of 5. A significant jump which tells me that there is conversion happening. I don't expect the efficiency to be high on this at all.

The picture to the right is a sample I took. It would be awesome if the end resulting color was that but I think it might end up a little darker. To the right is the decoction. I think it went ok. It definitely raised my temperature and I was mashing at temps between 140-149 because I was adding amylase enzymes.

BW Brew Day!

So today I woke up at 845am and knew in my bones that I just had to brew today. I've put it off and put it off for about a week. I know the reason. I haven't wanted to undertake a task as big as partial-mashing because not only am I PMing I'm also doing so with BW, an ingredient I have never worked with. My notorious procrastination tool is to read, read, read about a subject in the hopes of circumventing any problems that come my way.

As you can see I'm using that nifty partial mash technique I found on HBT where I mash in the pot on the stove and use the mesh bag to teabag the grains (though technically BW isn't a grain it's a fruit).

My various pots on the stove. The really large one in the back is the brew kettle but I'm mashing in this smaller one. I'm really hoping I get some fermentable sugars from the BW and not just a nice dark color.

BW didn't take as long as I expected

Other than it being 90 degrees outside the roasting didn't take as long as I thought, only close to 4 hours total. I didn't need to have them in as long as I expected. I'm not sure if that is because they were wet or because the oven was a convection oven.

To the right is cooked BW and the left is the raw laid out on a cookie sheet. Cooked it tasted nutty, and reminded me a little of caramel malt. I toasted the second batch lighter than the first to hopefully give it some balance. The plan is too do a test batch of 5 gallons this week.

This is after the first hour! I was really surprised at how brown they were getting in what I thought was amount of time. I took them out and moved them around to get the more cooked ones into the middle and the less cooked out towards the side. It looks like the top rack is less than stellar place to be in the oven so I put the more done looking tray on that one when I put the BW back in for it's next stage. I upped the temp to about 225 and set the timer for 30 minutes. It smells really nutty here in the kitchen. The pungent sprouty smell is almost gone and now it smells almost meaty and nutty in here. There's no way I could have just set these in the oven and walked away until the timer went off. I believe there will be a small window between well roasted and done and completely fucked. I'm hoping to not sail through the window headfirst and fall screaming to my death.

So my friend comes by after walking the dog and walks in and the first words out of her mouth are, "God, that smells awful!" I kind of laughed. After the sprouty smell I think it smells fine. I'm tempted to taste a few when they come out.

During the course of this post I've made a temp adjustment to 250 and put the clock back to 30 minutes. It's roasting out nicely. Some are truly getting charred and toasty (the smaller ones) and others are in the mid range.

Sprouts are finding their way to the oven

Today was a good morning to do the BW. It's cool outside so I can have the kitchen door open and
nice breeze is blowing in. The whole place smells like bean sprouts, it's going to get pretty cloying really quick I have a feeling.

Ok so back to the roasting. I decided not to do the roasting at the house I"m living in,even though it's only 2 doors away, because I didn't want to carry cookie sheets of sprouts, and I realized after I'd filled the fourth cookie sheet and hadn't even gotten the rest out of the bowl that this was going to be more involved than planned. It would be better to take up more space in the house I started the project in than try and move everything and realize what I need is back at the first place. So I had to make sure that my notes said where I was doing this, so that I didn't try to duplicate the process. Barnaby and Olga of Teutonic Wines have a convection oven so I'm hoping I can get at least 2 racks at a time done in there and cut down on needing to be at this all damn day. Thankfully, they're both out and about today so I'm not in anyone's way.

I read that you could roast BW wet or dry so that solved the problem of waiting to long to roast. I worried that the little sprouts would get too long and the BW would lose viability. It seems like they've doubled in length overnight. I was pleasantly surprised when I came in and saw them. this picture doesn't really do them justice, I just wanted to show them on the cookie sheets.

I preheated the oven to 300 degrees on regular bake for a half hour, per instructions from the owner of said tempermental oven, and then dropped the temp down to 200 and switched it to convection. There was room in the oven for three cookie sheets evenly spaced so I put them all in. I'll keep checking and if needed I can take one out and rearrange so there's more even heat distribution. It'll bake for 1 hour at 200 and then you bring up the temp 25 degrees at a time for 30 minute intervals until you reach the color you want.

I'm resisting the urge to check on it constantly since I know that drops the temperature and causes longer cooking time. There's still at least another 2.5# to roast today.

Success!

It was touch and go for awhile but I woke to this. The buckwheat, from here on out to be known as BW, had started sprouting little rootlets. Not all, but a good many. I'm planning on talking with a friend who is food science teacher about the process, including what kinds of container would be best so I don't weigh down the seeds.

The next time I do this I'm going to do less than the four pounds I initially dumped into a bowl and I don't have to let them soak for 2 days. Maybe a few hours and then put them in a colander. The rinsing is the key I think because these babies get really slimy and seem to be constantly oozing starch. We've had weather here in Portland that has been over 95 degrees and I was a little concerned that it was a little too hot but the kitchen is pretty comfortable. I had initially put them in Barnaby's wine work area but changed my mind and brought them up because I was worried about mold and bacteria and what those would do to the BW. I'm really sensitive to mold and I always get stuffy and sneezy when I spend to much time in their basement. Besides I was being over-protective as usual and wanted the BW where I could keep a constant eye on it.

The next step is drying and roasting the BW.

Fresh Buckwheat Hell

Buckwheat is a pain in the ass. Right up there with pellet hops.

I had to separate the buckwheat into two colanders because we'd just put too much into the first pan. Those little suckers swelled like fat ticks and now I have two aired containers oozing gelatinous goo. They better spout or I'm going to be really disappointed...and then pissed, moving straight into frustrated anger. I do have a plan for what to do with the remaining 4# in case this attempt is a bust.

I would have taken pictures of the process but I would need someone to hold up the colander so I could get a picture of the greyish goo dripping from the container. I'll have to wake up through the night and check to make sure goo doesn't over flow all over the table.

From Food Matters

How to Sprout Buckwheat: Place 1 1/2 Cups of buckwheat groats into a bowl and cover it with 2- 3 times as much room temperature water. Mix the seeds up so that none are floating on the top. Allow the seeds to soak for about an hour. Drain the water in a colander and let them stand, rinsing 3 times per day with cool water for 2 days. You will notice a gooey substance on the buckwheat, which is starch. Make sure that you wash this off thoroughly. Spouts will form after a day or two.

So because this was my first effort every little thing appears to be the tip of the failure iceberg. After soaking and rinsing the buckwheat in water for two days my friend Barnaby, whose house we're doing all this in, calls me this morning and says it's possible that the buckwheat was already processed and not going to sprout. Both of us were thinking that it was a good thing we picked up amylase enzyme to put in the mash. Before I totally threw in the towel I searched online and found this food website which gave clearer directions than any of the entries written by the brewers that malted. I have to remind myself to write a better entry when I post my recipe.

Nature at its finest

These are chardonney grapes (I think) from Barnaby's backyard vineyard. I took this picture and many more pictures a few weeks ago when I dog-sat for Sophie and Sabrina. I had just visited a couple of days ago and it was amazing how much growth there was in the span of a couple of days. I can't imagine what it will look like when I head over later today.

Today's weather was a nice reminder of the Portland that I love and missed. The cool, overcast and grey days that seem to stretch on for weeks. The days of endless sun just seem to make me pissy and introverted. Of course, it could be the lack of any brewing happening in my life that is making me pretty unhappy. The lack of space to work and money to get some last minute equipment is disheartening. I know it's important to prioritize and basic necessities always trump everything else, but it's really starting to wear on me.

My plan for today is to walk over to the library and drop of some books. Walk around the neighborhood and take some pictures and come back to the house and do a little writing this afternoon, then head over to the neighbors house to socialize.

Writing a resume and looking at 7bbl brewing systems

I feel torn about my life goals (note the plural).

On the one hand I'm determined to finish my dissertation whether or not I really want to continue on as a traditional academic or not. I just feel if I'm in for a penny I might as well be in for the nearly 90, 000, as it currently stands. Don't get me wrong I love teaching, I even like my students for the most part, and I find teaching does in some ways feed parts of my soul...the parts that demand a high fiber, low caloric and no processed sugars diet. Beer and wine making on the other hand are definitely my fats, carbs, juicy fruits and roasted veggies diet. I believe I need both in order to survive and be happy but both in moderation and a few at excess at least twice a month.

So currently I'm sitting at Fuel Cafe writing out a resume to take to the job fair tomorrow morning. I'm also waiting for my friend Levi to have coffee and give him the cabbage I have so he can make Kimchi. Let me first say that the day started out a little sketchy withthe clouds and the coolness and I initially dressed for warm weather but almost changed at the last minute. Glad I maintained my faith that the sun would come out TODAY. I think a hoodie and jeans would have been absolutely miserable for me.