Ed McNalley

Edward McNallyFounder & chairmanBig Rock BreweryCalgary

"Before I started, I hired a brewmaster, Bernd Pieper. He came from Germany, but had also trained in Switzerland and Africa. He wasn't just a theoretical brewmaster; Bernd had actually done it, and that was invaluable. He also had a very good German system of controlling the brewery and production. So, he set up a system we still use today.
"It was actually a director of ours in Zurich who found him and phoned me up one night and said, 'I found a brewmaster.'
"Bernd came to Calgary, we had a meeting and hit it off well, and out he came. He had a solid sense of individualism, loyalty, humour and was extremely hard-working. I wasn't able to pay him very much. We offered him share options, and we trusted each other."

Oatmeal Stout Instructions/Recipe

Trying to make an oatmeal stout today. It has been a bit of a process but things are moving along. Here are the steps I have taken:

1. Cleaned and sanitized everything. **See step 5 for yeast instructions
2. Measured out my 'hack' ingredients. They are as follows:
- 8oz of cracked roasted barley. To crack it I used a glass and lightly crushed it. Didn't want to crush it too much.
- 8oz of flaked barley
- 8oz of quick oats (this is only to make an oatmeal stout)
- I put the 3 above ingredients in a grain bag I bought from the Vineyard in Calgary, then set them in 5.5 litres (this was an accident, it is supposed to be 7.5 - shouldn't make a big difference) of cold water. I brought this up to a temperature of approximately 55 Celsius, let sit for 15 min, then raised to 65 Celsius for another 15, then put it just under a boil for another 15 (recommended by the guy at the Vineyard). The whole process took about an hour.
- After the above, I disposed of what was in the grain bag and cleaned it out, then added the hops.
3. Then I boiled the hops for 20 minutes and discarded what was left in the grain bag.
4. After this I set the pot in cold water to get the mix to room temperature.
5. Earlier in the process it is important to 'crack' the yeast if is store boughten. I am using 'wyeast' and you crack it in the bag and let it expand for 3 hours. I have to wait because I didn't read the back beforehand.
- **I was informed that it is VERY important to sanitized the yeast bag before opening it. Also the type of yeast I am using is 1728 Scottish Ale. The Vineyard was out of 1084 Irish Ale yeast. The guy at Vineyard said they are similar and its not a big deal.
- The bag ballooned after 3 hours.
6. Next I put in the PH Indicator into the primary bucket.
7. Then added the mix I made earlier - now at room temp. and stirred aggressively. Also, because some water boiled away in the previous steps when I poured the mix, I measured how much was left. There were 4 Litres left from the 5.5. I topped it off with 3 litres of water to make 7 litres total.
8. Poured the wort into the primary (I did this aggressively because my book 'How to brew' says that the yeast feeds off the oxygen created when pouring. It says you can repeat for better results.
9. I stirred aggressively for 1 minute.
10. Measured the specific gravity - 1.06 - higher than what the kits says it should be.
11. Finally, I pitched the yeast

In the end it was just under 23 litres. Stay tuned for further details... see pics above.

After 6 days in the primary, my Specific Gravity is 1.022. I am going to transfer on day 7 to get the specific gravity down a bit more. Good experiment to see if it actually does.

First post, first brew

Hey Mo, its Ro and I'm on line. Good idea with the blog. I hope your stout turns out fantastic this weekend.....I will be doing much more drinking than brewing this weekend in Kimberley. There is a BOP (Brew on Premise) in Kimberley that sells brewing supplies, perhaps I will take a field trip and do some research. I guess now would be a good time to summarize the first brew that we made;

1. Red Ale "The brew house kit"
2. Problems during brewing; a) Cold fermenting temp in basement (as low as 16 deg C) b) Suspect sanitization practices such as sucking on syphone hose.
3. Finished poduct; We had a couple of good beers after week 2.5, then we had a few bad ones after week 3. Some tasted over carbonated, some just tasted nasty. I will write more as I sample more of them.

Hey Ro, its Mo. Good post. Thought I would add that in the book 'How to Brew: Everything you need to know to brew beer right the first time' by John J. Palmer, it mentioned that over carbonation can happen can be caused from: 1. Too much priming sugar 2. Bottled too soon (before fermentation was complete) 3. Wild yeast. Any of these are probable. One solution that the book recommended and I tried is to vent and recap all the bottles. I did this to my bottles and am having a beer right now, and it tastes pretty good! Not quite as good as it did at 2.5 weeks but a lot better than my two previous beers from 2 nights ago. As I try them I will let you know how they taste.

Two Brews?

Well, this is a blog for Adam and I to keep all of our brewing stats on. The objective here is to share our brewing details, recipes, methods, ideas, articles, websites, etc. so we can easily refer back to it. I am going to be brewing a stout this weekend and using some of the articles that are mentioned on the blog to 'hack' it or modify it for the better. I will post my the process here in detailed steps. Anyway... guess we will see if we use this blog!

As of now the name of our preliminary company is 'Two Brews'. However, we have been chatting and it may be better to take a landscape or area from the region. A couple ideas that have been thrown out there are 'chinook' and 'foothills' brewing company. Time will prevail on an official name. But, to take a step back, we are going to learn everything we can about beer. Lets BREW!

Brewing sites/articles

Great video, worth watching:
http://vimeo.com/20430535

Also, some good websites/articles to refer to:

Homebrewing forum:
http://www.reddit.com/r/homebrewing

Mash, Sparge, Boil:
http://www.mashspargeboil.com/

From The Vineyard in Calgary. This one is about modifying brew kits.
http://www.thevineyard.ca/making-beer?articleid=90

Good article on modifying beer kits:
http://www.yeastwranglers.ca/LinkClick.aspx?link=Attachments%2FBrewhouseTips.pdf&tabid=191&mid=569

2008 BJCP Style Guidelines
http://www.bjcp.org/2008styles/catdex.php