Osama Designs Better Way to Brew Beer!
Any Australian home brewer who has tried making a proper larger, knows that the weather down here can get just a little bit too warm. Indeed, many supposed lagers that you find in kit beers are actually brewed using ale yeasts. What you really need is a liquid lager yeast in order to get that clean larger flavour, and for most lager yeasts, the optimal fermentation temperature is around 8-10 degrees Celsius (except for Californian lager yeast which can handle 16-18 degrees Celsius).
A few of the Ale yeasts also prefer lower (although not quite as low) temperature, but perhaps more importantly, we home brewers don't need the temperature of the wort fluctuating all over the place. Now if you are the kind of home brewer who can enjoy your Coopers Ale kit brewed in the shed between 28-36 degrees Celsius, with the suggested 1k of sucrose, then this next piece of advice isn't for you. Indeed, you may just have a Jihad called on your ass if you like your beer so cheap and nasty.
Osama bin Lehey (Copyright Greg Lehey 2006)
Pictured above is the evil genius who has devised a means of keeping your wort at a nice stable temperature. Of course, the solution involves a *nix operating system, derided by Microsoftphiles as being a form of communism, so I guess Osama is turning on Rambo now in order to keep his brew tasting good.
Home Brew temperature control rig (Copyright Greg Lehey 2006)
In short, Osama bin Lehey has rigged up a bar fridge and light to an old 486 running some software he's written on FreeBSD. When the wort/fridge gets too cold, the light turns on and the fridge motor turns off. When the wort/fridge gets too warm, the light turns off and the fridge motor turns on.
I'll have to build myself one of these rigs when I can find somewhere to put it. Maybe at my brothers. Then I'll be able to use the European Wyeast liquid lager yeasts that I've always wanted to use. To get a guide on how to build one of these rigs, and to download the source code to the software, cruise on over to the instructions on Osama bin Lehey's brewing log, here.
Incidentally, I've used the above pictures from Greg Lehey's blog WITH PERMISSION. I've seen a bit of this of late, with some of the puerile blog-warring that's going on; people flogging pictures of each other on the web without permission to use another's IP. It's also relevant to Greg Lehey's Osama pics; you can see how he's had his IP rights violated over here.
Update: Thanks to Greg for pointing out the larger-lager typo/spellcheck error... thing.
posted by Bruce @ 9:31 AM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
That is a nice set up for brewing good beer simple and effective .
I must make one of these. I've got an old fridge, although I don't think the 40l fermenter will fit into it.
I've actually got reasonable (although not in the Trummer Pils class) results by fermenting outside in the winter using SafLager yeast, but temerature control would make a huge difference. Interestingly, I used to get better results in Tranmere than I do now that I've moved to Athelstone.
It's always been an objective of mine to some day make a full mash pils using the Wyest Czech pils yeast and adhearing to the Bavarian purity law (sound a bit racist doesn't it lol.) Temperature control would be ideal in achieving this (and Grumpy's seems to have the right malt/grains for it.)
Greg has a brewing log on his website at:
http://www.lemis.com/grog/brewing/
I've been talking to Greg about lower temp beers, and he has been able to maintain stable temps down to 1 degree C. He pointed me to his brewing log, where he had an interesting mishap; at 12C (i think) a lager yeast didn't start to ferment and led to his first/only infected wort. Greg tried it again and started things off at 14C (i think) then programmed things to drop after a couple of days. The ammended approach worked.
Can't remember exactly which log entry this was under, but you can see how the temperature control would be immensely helpful.
When I eventually make the pils, I'll be fermenting at 8C (most of the time). Will have to give thought to a higher starting temp for a couple of days.
There seems to be a beer-*nix-OS axis going. Some of the Gnome (linux GUI) crowd have been having release drinks at the Oostende (love that Rochefort trappiste beer.) I imagine Greg would have quite a bit of beer-cred given his tenure in Germany as well.
I'm thiking perhaps there should be a linux/unix-hoembrewing club doing meets at Oostende and at Grumpy's. ;-)
Cheers
Bruce
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