Dry Hopping the Belgian IPA / Planting the Hop Crop

Biere de Table

I finally got around to dry hopping the Belgian IPA after about two weeks of fermentation and a week of cold crashing. I first pushed the beer through a new 5 micron filter from Northern Brewer and then through an older 1 micron filter into a keg with the 2 ounces of Centennial dry hops. I've started to find that (new filters especially) leave an unpleasant flavor in the filtered beer, and I think this was the case for the IPA. I hope this flavor will drop out or that the dry hops will cover the flavor, but I'm worried the beer won't quite recover. I'll have to either buy different filters from now on or forgo filtering all together. The more I've brewed recently, I've found that kegging/filtering produces a worse beer than simply bottling so I'll have to figure out how I want to condition my beers in the future.

2 ounces of Centennial for dry hopping

The 5 micron filter covered in yeast after filtering the IPA

I also finally had the chance to plant my hop rhizomes. After planting the Columbus rhizome I received a while ago in a pot, and almost killing it repeatedly, I hope that it'll take in the mound of soil I prepared for it. It seems like there are a few new roots that'll take to the backyard planting. I planted the Organic Cascade and Northern Brewer rhizomes I received last week as well. The rhizomes seemed incredibly weak, and the Northern Brewer rhizome seemed completely dead and decomposed. I planted both, so I'll have to see what comes from these three rhizomes. I'm hoping that whatever is alive in these rhizomes takes hold and gets going soon. If I get any yield from these rhizomes, I'll be brewing with these hops sometime in August or September, which could make for some great fall and winter beers.

The organic cascade (top) and the northern brewer (bottom) rhizomes

Bottled Biere de Table and Biere de Garde

Filling the Biere de Garde

After a month and a half of fermentation and conditioning for the Biere de Table and a month of fermentation and conditioning for the Biere de Garde, both beers have been bottled. For the Biere de Table, I bottled in bomber bottles with 4 oz. of cane sugar. This should produce roughly 3.0 volumes of CO2, a bit more than I typically carbonate my beers to. Since it's a Belgian Ale, I'm thinking the additional carbonation should work well with the style.

The Biere de Garde should be even more carbonated as I added 7 oz. of corn sugar, which should result in about 4 volumes of CO2. I chose to bottle for the first time using Belgian 750 mL bottles using a cork and cage to seal the bottle. The heavier glass and cork should resist the force of the carbonation and allow for this beer to be heavily carbonated. It's a fairly strong beer at about 7.7% ABV with a final gravity of 1.010, and the additional carbonation should help to thin out the perception of the final beer, leaving it light and aromatic. The beer that was left un-bottled tasted great. A nice balance from the rye malt, the oats, and the cascade hops really comes through. It should be a great beer for summer.

A bottle of Biere de Garde being filled

The Belgian IPA was also transferred into a keg to cold crash the yeast after two weeks of fermentation. Fermentation ran very warm; it started at 68 F, ramped up to 80 F, then up to 85 F and even 90 and 95 F at one point. These high fermentation temps helped to impart some strong estery and phenolic flavors that I think will play well off of the citrusy and spicy Centennial hops. Once most of the yeast has been cold crashed to the bottom of the keg, I'll filter out the yeast and transfer the beer into another keg and onto the 2 oz. of Centennial for dry hopping.

The Biere de Table in the background (capped)
and the Biere de Garde in the foreground (corked and caged)

Water Test

After about three quarters of a year of tinkering with various salts to enhance either the malt or the hop flavors in finished beers and at least 2 years of using 5.2 pH stabilizer to find the correct mash pH, I finally have the exact values of six of the key ions in my water that are central to brewing. 

Calcium, bicarbonate, chloride, sodium, magnesium, and sulfate are the ions that play the biggest part in brewing water chemistry. Thanks to John Palmer's How to Brew, I knew to look for these values when I looked into testing my well water. The results of the test are below:

As I had expected, I found that our well water is incredibly soft. However, without these values I would have had little knowledge of our water's capacity to buffer the mash. Using John Palmer's nomograph I was able to utilize my level of water hardness (determined by mg/l [ppm] levels of calcium and magnesium) in comparison with my water alkalinity ("alkalinity as CaCO3") (determined by mg/l levels of alkalinity) to find the amount of residual alkalinity as CaCO3 when mashing. This value indicates the mash pH of a beer mashed using only a light base malt, which would have little ability to acidify. If I was to mash pure pilsner malt for instance, my mash pH would come out to ~5.7, a pH that is slightly higher than the desired range of 5.2-5.5. 

In order to find a mash composition that would produce a mash within the correct range, the nomograph also provides a beer color scale. This scale indicates the color of the beer you should be brewing, based on your water's buffering characteristics, and assumes you are not using either acid nor salts to alter the chemistry in any way. Based on this color scale, I should be able to take my unaltered tap water and mash a beer of ~7-13 SRM (yellow to light orange) without the use  of acid or salts. Now I'll be able to adjust my water profile to brew any beer that is either lighter or darker than this SRM range and still be able to find the correct pH range.

In addition, the mg/l values of calcium, chloride, sulfate, and bicarbonate will help me to accurately alter my water's profile to more closely model the water used when brewing various styles. Due to my water's extremely soft profile, I should be fine brewing a Czech pilsner if I ever feel the need to. Knowing these values will also allow me to "Burtonize" water when brewing an English Bitter or to build up levels of carbonate when brewing Irish  Dry Stouts.

It looks like according to these numbers, my most recent brew, the American IPA, should have been spot on as far as mash pH is concerned. I added a small amount of calcium sulfate and hit about 5.4 pH. I will have to continue measuring mash pH using the pH meters I purchased a while ago and see how accurate the nomograph method is with respect to predicting mash pH, but I hope that it at least gets me in the ballpark.

The English Pale Ale with American hops finally kicked about a week ago so I'm currently trying to cold crash the German Kolsch that I've had in a keg for a while now. There still seems to be quite a bit of yeast/sediment that is hindering the flavor of the beer, so I hope with a bit of time in the kegerator at about 35-40 F the sediment will slowly fall to the bottom of the beer. The Scottish Wee Heavy and the Barleywine are both bottled and are conditioning, and the Biere de Table and Biere de Garde have finished fermentation and are conditioning in a keg and carboy respectively. 

The Belgian IPA is just about wrapping up fermentation after a week and a half of fermentation starting at 68 F, up to 80 and 85 F after a few days, and even up to 90 F at one point. Unfortunately I can't maintain such a high temperature at 90 F, so the temperature eventually fell and is about 80-85 F. The IPA should go into a keg in the next few days to cold crash the yeast, then through a 5 micron filter into another keg, and dry hopped for about 7-10 days.