A Night of Beersearch

Sadly, I realize, I have not paid much attention to this blog in recent months.  There have been a lot of brew-happenings on my end, and I might update them later.  But this is a pressing matter.

When one chooses to make beer, every aspect of beer from grain to glass must be examined and studied thoroughly.  I have been to many a beerfest and had a few nights indulging in many varieties of beer, but all of the notes made were mental.  Last night I put together for myself a collection of 10 beers, drank them all, and made detailed observations about them along the way, using the ASTMO model (appearance, smell, taste, mouthfeel, and overall impression).  Each beer was poured into a Chimay goblet, which was super appropriate for the first beer, and still a fine choice for the others.  I resisted from using numbers because numbers lie, and you also usually have to grade it against a style as well as "overall greatness", my quest for great beers runs independent of styles.

Saving a Beer

I recently made a beer for an upcoming competition -- Philly Beer Scene's Best Homebrew Shop competition.

The first round requires one to make a session beer, defined by them as 4.5% abv or lower (it's important they say this as everyone seems to have a different definition).  Stylistically there really isn't that much there aside from light lagers and British beers (the entire island developing different session styles because of the way beer was taxed).  Not willing to reinvent Bud Light and hating beers with that "English" character, I decided to try my hand at a Scottish ale.  In order to try and minimize the English-ness of the beer, I used an American yeast instead of a British one (and fermented it cool at that, to minimize the flavor impact there too) and substituted the English hops (Scotland, unable to grow its own hops, relies mostly upon England) with an Austrian hop related to the English varieties.

It still had that "Englishness" pervading through it.  It was laughing at me with each sample I took.  I knew I had to save this beer, but how?

Taking inspiration from the Norman invasion of 1066, I decided to assault this brew with some French hops.  I didn't have enough time to dry hop, and that's kind of an English technique anyway.  So instead I made a hop tea, more traditional to German brewing.

I did the tea on thursday and bottled on friday.  The character has been mitigated, it seems, and the crisis may be averted.  I will only know this once the beer is done bottle conditioning, but I have confidence.

Here are some pictures from the event.

1 oz. of hops carefully weighed out

Hops stapled shut into a coffee filter to act as a tea bag.  I didn't account for water absorption, and it eventually burst, but almost all of the hop material stayed out of the tea itself.

Wort, made from DME, for the tea to take place in.

Once the wort got up to 170 degrees fahrenheit, I pulled it off the heat, put the hops in, and let it steep for about 10 minutes.  You need to use wort for this (but only a very weak one) in order to change the chemical structure of the water, most importantly the pH.  If I did this in just water, it would probably taste of grass.  Also, it is important I never let this get to a boil, otherwise the alpha acids in the hops will start to isomerize, making the tea bitter instead of "hoppy".  I was considering doing this at the actual bottling phase, but the idea of using DME to bottle makes me a little uneasy -- this is the absolute end of the road for the yeast so I just want to give it some easy sugar to make for a quicker and more complete refermentation.  I know the use of "speise" is traditional in Germany, but I'll probably keep that experiment in my pocket for another day -- and save some of the pre-boil wort to use for it to keep it more consistent.

-- Knuttel

Rye-se To See You

My first attempt at actual brewing produced a rye beer, so I decided to go back into this well to create my next session beer (I've decided it's probably a good policy to have a session beer on hand, something you can drink a few of without getting obliterated).  I've used rye in other beers since then (being a favorite grain of mine), but both Lycanthropic Lager and Sasquatch Stout (oh god, the alliteration) don't have hugely significant amounts of it.

You see, rye can be a difficult grain to brew with.  It is husk-less, like wheat, and is high in beta-glucans.  Both of these can create an especially sticky mash that is especially susceptible to getting stuck.  Both Lycanthropic Lager and Sasquatch Stout have low enough proportions that this isn't a huge issue, but this beer's grist was made up of about 40% rye, definitely enough to jam some stuff up.

To tackle this issue, I used a mash schedule I found in Brewing With Wheat that's designed for whit beers (malted wheat has a decent amount of beta-glucans, with flaked wheat and unmalted having even more) that called for a protein rest and two saccharification rests.  I also added a pound of rice hulls just to be sure (compensating for the lack of hulls in rye).  The downside to the mash is it can be complicated to pull off, changing temperatures by adding hot water at specific intervals.  The downside to the rice hulls is it can hold sugars back during the sparging process, bringing down efficiency.

The results were awesome.  The sparge ran cleanly (though I only had the valve open half-way, just to be sure) and my efficiency actually exceeded my past efficiencies in my newer, larger mash tun.

I hopped it with French Strisselspalt hops, which had a nice sweet smell to them, definitely unique among hops.  The alpha-acid on them is ridiculously low, so it should only be bitter enough so that the beer doesn't taste like sugar.  The beta-acids were surprisingly high, so it should retain a stronger aroma.  I'm using a kolsch yeast to ferment it, so it will be closer to the cleaner tasting American rye beers, as opposed to the German roggenbiers, which use the weizen yeasts and thus have the distinctive clove and banana flavors.

Knuttelbrau Is Received

I recently entered some of my awesome Knuttelbrau into a homebrew competition -- malt madness to be exact.  The judging occurred on Sept 24, and I got my results back today.  I entered Lycanthropic Lager as both a Schwarzbier and a Robust Porter.  You can usually enter one beer into several categories, but not several beers into one category.  I linked the descriptions so I don't have to describe them, but I created the beer with a somewhat Schwarzbier-ish intention, but thought it might have too much flavor and aroma hops to actually work as a textbook example.

Without further ado...
Scwarzbier -- 34.5
review 1
Aroma 8/12: light roast, light coffee, munich
Appearance 3/3: off white low head, very dark
Flavor 12/20: light roast, munich taste, grainy a little, light on dryness, some lingering hop bitterness, low in chocolate bitterness
Mouthfeel 5/5: crisp, moderate carbonation
Overall Impression 6/10: I would bring more of the chocolate bitterness out of it and tone down on the burnt
33/50
review 2
Aroma 10/12: Moderate roasted aroma, clean yeast profile, strong munich malt
Appearance 1/3: dark brown, slightly hazy with somewhat persistent head
Flavor 13/20: some burnt roast flavor with moderate chocolate roast and moderately low munich malt. dry finish
Mouthfeel 5/5: medium lite body with moderate high carbonation. nice smooth finish with no astringency
Overall Impression 7/10: nice example of style except for burntness and bitterness of malt. everything on point except for burnt profile
36/50

Robust Porter -- 31.5
review 1
Aroma 5/12: citrus hop/hop/ and hop
Appearance 3/3: very dark brown  light tan head   clear
Flavor 10/20: floral and citrus hop. moderate bitterness. mild chocolate moderate roast. did i mention hops
Mouthfeel 4/5: medium body. medium/high carbonation. hop bite
Overall Impression 8/10: while i really enjoyed this beer it would have done better as a black IPA. wish i could score this higher
30/50
review 2
Aroma 8/12: deep rich malty character is present. a hint of chocolate aroma present
Appearance 3/3: deep brown color with light tan head that is persistent. some lacing present
Flavor 12/20: Hop bitterness dominates this beer.  while i like this characteristic it is not to category. maltness and dark roasty character took a back seat to the bitterness. getting hints of chocolate and toffee as well.
Mouthfeel 3/5: Medium body with a hint of creaminess. slight astringency is not out of character for this category
Overall Impression 7/10: overall i think this is a very nice beer! the largest distracting character of this beer is the hop bitterness
33/50

What to take away -- I was not expecting the hoppiness to be more of an issue to the porter group than the schwarzbier group.  That being said, it only had an intented IBU of like 28.  1 oz of low-medium AA hops for the hour boil, another oz for 10 minutes, and dry hopped with an ounce of cascade -- if hop character is picked up, it's not for its bitterness.  The porter group must've just gotten a hop bomb before mine and had trouble getting the taste out of their mouth.  I don't see that as anything IPA-ish like the one judge said.  The grainy-ness commented on by the schwarzbier group was highly intended.  I could easily fix that by switching the pale malt to pilsner malt and drop the rye malt all together -- but then it wouldn't be lycanthropic lager.  I definitely do agree on the toning down the burntness though -- I'll switch from using Carafa III to Carafa I, same proportions.  I am also going to try and ferment this colder (though still at ale temps using a lager yeast) and make a starter.  Hopping shalln't change.  The dry hop character mellows out a bit during the lagering phase, as does the rye malt, but both are still there.  I may also substitute some of the pale malt for munich malt or something on those lines.  I will keep the decoction mash (the munich malt was picked up by both the schwarzbier judges, and I can't help but think this has at least something to do with it) but may mess with the scheduling a little bit to try and get better clarity.  I am glad for this feedback because I am looking to make this one of my beers to have on hand -- the other being spider-man, of which I currently have a lot.

I have another competition on saturday, where I entered my bier de garde that was created on the brewday from hell (though tastes very lovely).  Looking forward to more feedback, and if I'm lucky, prizes.

-- Knuttel

The White House Brews Its Own Beer

It's nice to have something in common with the white house besides "places where someone has choked on a pretzel".  It doesn't matter that it wasn't an accident, or that he totally got what was coming to him, or that no ambulance was called and it might be considered manslaughter in some states.  Now I can just say the beer thing! 

Knuttelbrau sees the lager picture

See what I did there?  Eh?

Anyways, yes, I have brewed my first lager.  It is dubbed "Dr. Knuttel's Lycanthropic Lager" (though I am neither a Doctor or a Lycanthrope).

Lagers, unfairly, have gotten a bad rap due to the saturation of the market (especially in the America) of the so-called Macro-lager -- a lighter take on the pilsner beers of Bohemia and, to a lesser extent, southern Germany.  America has its Budweiser, its Miller, its Coors -- and chances are wherever you are in the country, it would not be difficult to find at least two of the three, if not all of them.  Elsewhere there are still Molsons, Labatts, Heinekens, Stella Artoises, Mooseheads, Amstels -- but they're all pretty much variants on this macro-lager style.

Symptom of the Brew-niverse and other beer-ings

I bottled my saison earlier today (Saisons dans l'abime).

My previous dealings with gushers were caused by one of two things -- too much priming sugar or not enough sanitation.

I decided to focus on the sanitation issue.  I made sure everything was cleaned twice, and I also sanitized my previously untouched bottle caps (I guess I thought they were too small to make a difference).

Beer Updates

First things first

I have completed construction of my first wort chiller!

For those who do not know, a wort chiller is a device that is used to rapidly decrease the temperature of boiling wort so one may pitch the yeast into it, thus beginning the fermentation process of beer.  This is done for two reasons -- 1) Beginning the fermentation and sealing the tank earlier prevents other unwanted organisms (bacteria and such) from also taking hold in your sweet sweet wort juice. 2) Bringing the temperature down faster helps improve clarity.  Before I had the wort chiller, I used ice in various forms (but always barriered, you cannot let foreign water into your beer).  The first all-grain brew, if anyone remembers, used the snow that was still on the ground, except we ended up losing a lot to evaporation and had to re-add bottled water to bring it back up (and somehow we only ended like.1 off target gravity).

Knuttelbrau goes public

Ah, so it has been a week or two since I last wrote in this (I really don't know why, either) but what better way to get back into the swing of things than to talk about beer.  What's better than beer?  Nothing.  Nothing is better than beer.

So, this past weekend was Blue and White.  We tailgate every year, so what better venue to show the fruits of my homebrewing labor?

I brought down roughly 2 cases of "Spider-man" and the third case was approximately split between "Doppeldecker" and "Heart of the Sun-Ryes".

"Spider-man" is an American Amber Ale.  It is brownish (amber) in color, has a sweet bready malt backbone and a strong but not too assertive hop character.

"Doppeldecker" is a doppelbock.  I realize it looks like I bucked the tradition of ending doppelbocks with "-ator" but the full title has it, I assure you.  At 8% ABV it can knock you on your ass.  Due to the decocted mash, the malt is front and center in flavor and it has good head retention.

"Heart of the Sun-Ryes" is a roggenbier.  It will be changed in future iterations due somewhat to the impossibility (both physically and willingly) of me repeating the exact circumstances of it being created and due to its overwhelming thickness (70% of the mash was flaked).  The flavor is very good though, coming mostly from the rye and wheat.

Flavors were overall commended.  I did well there.

The issues were bottles foaming or fizzing too much (one even ended up being a bottle rocket) and clarity.  The foaming is rather inconsistent though.

Foaming could be by either over-carbing in the bottling process.  I bottle condition my beers, carefully measure the right amount of sugar and mix it totally in the bottling bucket before filling the bottles, so I don't think it's that.  The other cause is not sanitizing enough, and I think this could be the issue.  I guess I'll find out after my next batch.

The clarity issue is due to not cooling my beer very rapidly and not letting the yeast fall from suspension.  I could solve this by using a wort chiller (under construction) to cool it down faster and a bright tank in secondary fermentation to let more yeast fall from suspension.  I don't really care about the clarity of the rye beer, I kind of want it to be cloudy like a hefeweissen, but the other two definitely need to be clearer (murky brown doesn't exactly have an appealing look).

So that's where I am at.  I am currently making a wort chiller to fix the cooling issue, and may be in the market for a glass carboy to use as a bright tank.  My next brew will either be an attempt at re-doing/fixing the rye beer or doing a saison or something else I've been working on.

-- Knuttel

New Brew -- Spider-man

So monday I decided to make another batch of beer (full batch + this time -- 6 gallons).

I decided to make it in the style of an American Amber Ale.

The history of the style is rather contrived if you ask me -- coming not as a result of supply, but rather business need.  It has its roots in the brewpubs and microbreweries of the west coast.  A lot of them had very dark beers and very light beers, but not many in between -- maybe a pale ale crept its way darkly up to the lower shades of amber, but that was it.  In order to create an appealing trinity of beer colors they created the amber ale.  Never the less, I like amber colored beers, and I kind of wanted to do something simpler and straightforward than my last two.

Knuttellian Beer News, March 4, 2011

Yeah, so I'm gonna just start filing these under regular beer news.

My first all-grain batch is done and bottle conditioned

Yeah, the lighting sucks, it's more of a yellowish, it definitely does not look like chocolate milk

And yesterday I brewed a Doppelbock (was considering making it a series called "I'll be bock")

Look at that sweet ass decoction

But the truth of the matter is, at the moment now I could have any number of beers going, and blogging about one at a time, well that could get choo choo choosy.

Besides who wants to hear about what music I play every day to my beers?  My collection is immense, it could be anything.

And for anyone who was curious, here is I guess my base of operations ... my closet

Perhaps coming soon, a picture of my second base of operations ... my basement.

--Knuttel

Knuttel Makes Real Beer: Day 9, bottling

So I haven't really been playing my beer music since I started taking gravity readings.  All the movement just kinda makes it inconvenient to keep putting the speakers back and such.

Regardless, today, Presidents day 2011, was bottling day.

I determined it was bottling day by confirming that fermentation was done by taking gravity readings on 3 consecutive days.  If it is the same, this means it is done.  If there is a change, then fermentation may have went dormant for a day or two then restarted.  If bottling is done before fermentation is complete, then you end up with a bottle bomb -- a bottle filled with so much air and pressure that it can explode into many pieces, sending glass shrapnel, upon opening.

During one of the gravity readings I snapped a picture of a sample on my phone, but presentation gets an F-, so the picture is not getting put up.

I have also determined, using gravity readings from before fermentation and after, that the beer is around 5% abv.

It definitely has a distinct rye smell, very "spicy".  Perhaps I shall name it "Heart of the Sun-Ryes" after the Yes! song of the similar name.

I produced 31(.5) bottles, before I started picking up sediment and other unsavory things.

Next up will likely be an idea for a doppelbock I have.  Man, I can't wait till spring is actually really here, so I can try out  making a saison.

-- Knuttel

Knuttel Makes Real Beer: One week hence

So it's been a few days since I last put any updates about my beer.

I took some gravity readings today, to make sure its all good and fermented, and if I get the same numbers tomorrow and Monday, then bottling is a go.

So beer music, well it's been a few days, so my memory may be a bit foggy on the matter.  Today I played it Pink Floyd's Echoes.  Yesterday I gave it the Beatles' Revolver and Radiohead's the Bends.  The day before that I think I gave it The Sword's Age of Winters.  I don't know what else.  I think i played three albums one day, but that might have been earlier in the week.  whatevs.

T minus beer = soon.

-- Knuttel

P.S. totally taking suggestions for my next brew

Knuttel Makes Real Beer: Day 4

So the beer is definitely fermenting.  I didn't feel like peering through the side walls to see how much krausen is forming.  Earlier today, it was bubbling at about 1 large bubble every 7 seconds.  Yes, it is going very well.

Today's beerlist was made of Lady Gaga's The Fame (still the best album of modern pop history), The Jimi Hendrix Experience's Axis: Bold As Love, and later Helmet's Betty, though because that one was playing off my phone, the tracks went in alphabetical order instead of tracklisting.  Yeah, some of the albums on my phone are tricky like that.  It's just a little weird cos instead of having "Wilma's Rainbow" near the beginning, it's the last song.  I always forget about their noise rock cover of the jazz standard "Beautiful Love",  good ol Dizzy Gillespie.  I realize Meantime might have their super-recognizable track, "Unsung", but I think Betty is overall a better album.  Arrgh, this is a beer post, not a music post...

-- Knuttel

Knuttel Makes Real Beer: Day 3

So yeah, basically just more maintenance today, make sure everything is still fermenting and at the right temperatures -- which it totally is.  Played Blur's 13 album for my beer.  Forgot I listened to that album so many damn times that parts of the end are practically burned off.

I know this doesn't have much to do with 13 or my beer, but damnit, this song has been stuck in my head...




So epic and so brutal.

-- Knuttel

Knuttel Makes Real Beer: Day 2

So I spent pretty much all of Saturday making "real" beer.  What do I mean by that?  I mean I did an all-grain brew, where I extract the wort from the grains myself through use of a mash tun, as opposed to buying pre-made malt extract.

I bought the ingredients on Friday, and began Saturday with a tour of a certain Philadelphia brewery.  My accomplice and I quickly grabbed some cheesesteaks and then escaped back out to the suburbs to brew some beer.

I didn't really do anything fancy, so instead I'll just say where we ran into complications.

-- We didn't have enough water (more on this later, but we only accounted for water lost in the actual boil)

-- The mash tun had to be cajoled into working properly.
  First, we needed 3.5 gallons to sit in the container, as opposed to the 2.5 we originally had heated up for it.  Next, we were doing a batch sparge process, and, well the water didn't want to pass through once we got to a certain point -- and this was not for a lack of water, there was a definite inch sitting on top of everything.  So first we tried fixing this by mixing with something long enough to reach the bottom (in this case, a hockey stick).  That opened things up for a little, but then it was back to nothing as usual.  So then we decided just to press everything through a strainer and fill everything up that way.  We full intend to use the mash tun to its full extent next time around, but it needs modifications.  Also in this stage is where we failed to account for water lost to grain absorption.  An additional gallon of water was added to our planned 6 (the amount we were going to boil).

-- We had a minor boilover (it was minor, but messy).  Resolution, be more vigilant and don't underestimate how early it could start boiling.

-- We did a 90 minute boil as opposed to the 60 minute boil most people use.  My intent was to get more use out of the hops, but again, I failed to account for additional water I would lose during this stage (and you really need the water to boil hard).  Not to mention, the fact that the wort was split amongst one giant dutch oven and two smaller pots means I was dealing with a whole lot more surface area (even more evaporation).  From now on I will do only 60 minute boils, especially with the apparatus I have.

-- COOLDOWN
  Luckily we still have snow, otherwise I don't even know how we'd attempt a wort chill.  Even so, we started by simply placing the open containers in holes we made in the snow, checking periodically to make sure the pot sides were still making contact with snow and to check the temperatures.  Well, two things, first off, leaving the lids open just let everything evaporate off even more.  Secondly, the snow (the coldness) was only surrounding the substance on the bottom and sides.  We fixed this by dumping the remaining small pot (yes, by now we were down to one small pot) into the large dutch oven (and, oh yeah, all of this had lost enough that I could fit it all in the dutch oven), closed the lid, and covering the whole thing with snow.  About an hour after we had started cooling the wort (longer than one should take) we had the wort down to room temperature and were able to transfer it to the fermenting container.  We only lost about a gallon, gallon and a half during cooling.  An alternative cooling process will have to be found, with both the inefficiency of the one I used and the snow (hopefully) going away soon.

-- Yeast
  The yeast was taken out from the refrigerator too early, and was also shaken pretty fully waaaaay too early, so I had to put it in a glass with some sugar to make sure it wouldn't die on me.  No yeast = no alcohol.  This was just carelessness on my part.

-- In order to adjust for the gratuitous water loss (we had only 3 gallons of wort ready to ferment post-cooling) I had to add I think like 12 water bottles to the whole mixture.  I think it brought us around 4 gallons in the end.  Considering we were aiming for 5 gallons, we didn't have much of an option.  Oddly enough we ended around our target gravity (sugar density), so there's that.

PICTURES FROM THE PROCESS

mostly emptied mash tun, with hose being pulled out

trash bag with all of the spent grain

All of our lovely wort, pre-boil

Sooooo, day 2 stuff -- definitely saw bubbles on the air valve this morning, which means it has already started fermentation.  very nice.  Also have already played my beer the entirety of Rush's 2112 album.  Gotta nurture it.  I should also mention I have decided to move the fermentation area from the basement to my closet due to more ideal ale growing conditions.

-- Knuttel

Knuttel Makes Beer: Day Bottling

Yes, so as the title indicates, I have bottled the beer I have been making.

To bottle, on adds the brewed contents into a bottle along with some sort of priming sugar.  What I was following recommended regular white sugar, though some prefer corn syrup, as it gets metabolized by the remaining yeast quicker without changing the flavor as much.  Other options can include anything that has some sort of sugar in it: brown sugar, molasses, maple syrup, honey, etc.

For one batch, I used the recommended white sugar.  For the other batch, I used skittles.

Yes, skittles.  You see, the story goes a long ways back, and it's probably not even really worth repeating at this moment, but damnit, I was determined to make some skittlebrau.  I had to leave them uncrushed, as an attempt at crushing them in a sandwich bag with a food hammer left a broken sandwich bag, not crushed skittles.  Upon trying the same thing with no holding container, skittle pieces flew everywhere; the skittles went into the beer whole.

I'm already looking forward to my next batch, where I will likely make "real" beer.

-- Knuttel

Knuttel Makes Beer: day whatever, Knuttel makes a Mash Tun

Since it's officially been a week of fermenting my first batch(es) of beer, i pulled a sample of each to test them, see if they're ready or not for bottling (since it was from a kit and they gave me no hydrometer, I simply had to taste the beer to see if it tasted like, well, flat beer).  And it wasn't ready yet.  Will probably test it again sometime in the middle of the week.

But I also did some important fact finding and mash tun making today.

That's right, I made my own mash tun; all grain brewing is only a step away.

I used a 5 gallon water cooler.

And a piece of flexible tubing.

Then I drilled holes into the tubing, carving them afterward to make sure they were big enough and clean enough.

And inserted the tubing into the spigot on the inside of the cooler.

You see, a mash tun is supposed to extract the sugars from the grain using hot water, so basically there are two things you need -- an insulated container (in this case, a water cooler), and a filtering mechanism of some kind to separate the sugar water from the grain (in this case, the holed piece of tubing).  I made mine for around 21 bucks, looking around the internet, it's usually been done for like 25-30 bucks.  If you buy a premade one, well that will probably run you a hundred or (more likely) two.

I still have to find a way to close (at least a majority of) the hole on the other end of the tube, but I also still have to clean it, so that will happen.  Regardless, I am just that much closer to creating the vaunted "Knuttelbrau".  Besides, now I can say things like "Sparge the mash" and make total sense.

-- Knuttel

Knuttel Makes Beer: Day 5

So I haven't had the opportunity/time to properly play music for my beer the past two days due to work-related issues, but I assume its all gonna be fine.  Tomorrow I will test to see how close it is to bottling.

Tomorrow I may also attempt construction of what is known as a mash tun.  A mash tun is used to extract the sugars from grains (barley, etc) to make the wort.  If I ever want to do any all-grain kind of brewing, I would need this.  And let's be honest, I do not want to keep making beer from a can.  That is not beer.  It's like making cake from a box.  Technically you just mixed it and put it in the oven (or in beer's case, cooked the wort a lil and set up fermentation).  I just want to take pride in a product that is all mine.

That being said, I believe I may have created a mathematically perfect beer recipe.  It will be the first one I test, but I will only make it in 2.5 gallon format, not the 5 that is deemed standard.  I am also debating whether I should make the heavier (probably very heavy) 6.6 abv version or the about 5 abv version.

Guess I'll figure it out.

-- Knuttel

Knuttel Makes Beer: Day 4

So the waiting game continues.

Today I played my beer Bitches Brew by Miles Davis and Meat is Murder by The Smiths.

I worry sometimes that my basement is too cold for properly fermenting the beer.  I guess I'll find out later.  Maybe I should have left it next to the heater.

-- Knuttel