First impressions

The first person (besides me) drank some of my beer. Regarding Brett's Beard Bitter, my friend Jeremy says "It's pretty good. Mild bitter taste. Easy drinking."

That's cool with me. It's about what I was going for! New Steel Pale Ale should be getting about ready to bottle!

My birthday!

When I got home from school, Kat had a couple presents for me! 

Toblerone!

Bacardi Oakheart!

Logan gave me a t-shirt, and a subscription to Rider magazine.  He also made me a "Super Dad" card and a wooden helicopter from a kit, which he is still going to paint for me!

Shirt Logan got me

Lexie also got me a tshirt, and a subscription to Cycle magazine.

Shirt from Lexie (glows in the dark!)

Kat got me a tshirt also, a subscription to PC World, and has ordered some brewing equipment for me!

Kat "popped" on an American Pickers shirt!

Wort Chiller from Kat--cools your brewed beer quickly!

 Then, Kathy and the kids took me out to dinner for my birthday at Outback!  It has literally years since I've been to Outback.  It was sooooooo good!

Mmmmm....Bloomin' Onion!

I finished out the day with some Brett's Beard Bitter Ale, which has turned out rather nicely!

Brett's Beard Bitter

New Steel Pale Ale: racked to secondary

Isn't it pretty???

A word about bottles

 

In order to brew beer, you need ingredients, and equipment.  In order to bottle and store your beer, you need either kegging equipment, or bottles.  I live in an apartment with a wonderful woman, two awesome kids, and a defective dog.  I do not have room in our single refrigerator, nor access to a second refrigerator.  This limits me (generally) to using ale yeast instead of lager, and using bottles instead of kegs.  I have no problem with using bottles, but I have asked several people to save them for me.  There are generally two types of bottles commonly available.  The twist-off, and the pop-top.  If you have to use a bottle opener on your bottles and the glass has a rounded lip, that's the only kind that can be used for re-filling.  The capper mechanism will not work with twist-offs.  It will break them.  Some of the reliable brewers such as Samuel Adams, Schafley, and Sheltowee made by Bluegrass Brewing, as well as most import beers use "the good kind" of bottles.  My advice is to drink good beer: and save me your rinsed-out bottles!

Dry hopping New Steel Pale Ale

I talked to the bloke at "My Old Kentucky Homebrew" today about dry hopping.  I did not do anything wrong last time and he seemed to think that a little bit of hop debris in the sediment of my bottles was nothing at all to get uptight about.  He said if it was bothering me, I might try racking my beer a third time before bottling...

This time I chose an ounce of Mount Hood for my dry hops.  I was thinking Cascade, but then I figured "Why should I use all hops beginning with the letter C?"  I added the pellets to the sanitized secondary fermenter and then proceeded to siphon all my beer from the primary over.  I am always amazed how much yeasty gunk is left over in the trub.  When I put a little water into the primary to rinse it out, my hand was partially over the opening when I dumped it out.  It gave me a flashback to those days in the mid seventies...warm Papier-mâché. It was not really what I could describe as pleasant.

Here's another reason I hate Insight...

These guys just act like they own the place.  We have people struggling to find a place to park some days and here this guy pulls up and just sucks up like eight spots.  It really irritates me.

Microeconomics

The libation for this evening will be Samuel Adams Rustic Saison.  I am supposed to be studying for a 40+ question test tomorrow in Microeconomics...and I truly DID do some studying for it, but now it's after 9pm, and I am not mentally up for it any longer.

You know I finished my assignment for Web Design first.  That's pretty-much a given. :)

So now, we have a couple beers, drift off to slumber, and hit the Micro book early in the morning.  That is a figure of speech...I do not hit the Microeconomics book.  The instructor, Mr. Huntley, tests from lecture, not from the text.  Thank goodness I take good notes.  Now, what was all that about supply and demand?

Caramel ale?

This stuff looks like Brachs caramels! Both are the same color, but my beer is big and round instead of small and square. Hey, I wonder if I could make caramel apples with it! Seriously, I could not wait to try a small sample so I had a swallow of the overflow. Yeasty and flat as it was, I suspect I have a good and very hoppy brew working in progress. I cleaned out a couple Sam Adams tonight; still saving bottles for New Steel. I'd appreciate it if you did the same.

New Steel Initial Fermentation

The initial fermentation is as vigorous as last time. I lost around six cups of beer overnight and it made a slight mess as the foam escaped the overflow container. This Safale yeast is pretty good stuff if you don't want to worry about stuck fermentations. I'm going to try and keep track of how much beer I lose, not that it's a worry. I can make it up when I bottle with a little extra water in with my bottling sugar. It appears a bit darker than what I had hoped but as long at it tastes good, I'll be fine. Kat said "your beer needs to learn some manners!" this morning while she was in the kitchen making us waffles for breakfast. The beer going into the overflow sounds a bit like passing gas (which it should, because it is...).

First glass of BBB

I tried my first glass of Brett's Beard Bitter. Although it was not completely cleared yet it still had a great flavor to it. I hope the New Steel Pale Ale turns out much lighter and hoppier. I did use lighter extracts and more hops. It might have an IBU closer to an India Pale Ale though.

Hops taking a soak

New Steel Pale Ale?

Here's a picture of the brewpot just starting to return to a boil.  I love the smell of hops.  Something you might ask is "If you just got done making a batch which is still bottle conditioning and not even ready to drink, why are you already making another batch of beer?"

That's a pretty good question.  Obviously, it's a matter of variety.  Those of us who truly enjoy beer, are not happy with a Pabst Blue Ribbon, and nothing else.  Frequently we enjoy those premium styles brewed by the smaller non-commercial breweries.  Well, last night, in lieu of having any of my recently brewed Brett's Beard Bitter, and seeing as how I had run out of ready to drink brewed beverage, I picked up a variety pack of Sam Adams at Sam's club.  It has four bottles each of six different summer styles of beer.  That runs you right at $26.50 with tax.  This brings us to my other reason (besides variety) for brewing another batch.  That makes it about $1.10 per bottle.  If you get something nice at your liquor store or well stocked grocery, it's likely to cost you $9-12 for a six pack of good brew including tax.  That's $1.50 - $2 for a bottle.  This is low to middling beer.  If you like some really nice imported stuff, you pay $4-8 or more for a bottle.  That Belgian lambic is really nice stuff, but you need to treat it like champagne on my budget!  A typical batch of better homebrew will run you around $25 with some extract, specialty grains, and boiling and finishing hops.  That makes me six and a half gallons of tasty brewed beverage, which is all said and done about 65 bottles of beer.  That costs me under $0.40 per bottle of beer.  And Uncle Sam doesn't tax me on the back end either.

A lot of it is about taking something that is generally only available for you to buy from a large brewing company, and doing it yourself.  Its something to be able to take a little pride in, in a world where sometimes pride is often hard to come by.  So if you're a beer drinker and ever in my neck of the woods, plan to stay for a little while so you can enjoy a bottle with me.

Next Beer...shooting for a Pale Ale

     
I started with some Munton's hopped light liquid malt extract, added some DME extra light, a little corn sugar, and the  the Columbus and Citra hops.  I'm hoping the one hour boil will bring out all the bitterness of the hops, and the liquid hopped extract will only add to it.   I am boiling this batch in the new brewpot that Kat got for me.  I plan to add another ounce of hops in a couple days to the secondary fermenter for some additional finishing.  This time, I am going to employ some sort of hop bag so I don't have so much hanging around in the secondary.  Since my beloved was kind enough to buy me this new pot, I may dub this beer "New Steel Pale Ale".  So far, it's been boiling for about thirty minutes.  To get a fairly precise measurement of how much cold water to leave in the fermenter, I decided to fill the entire carboy with water and pour from there into the brewpot.  I had forgotten the amount of other ingredients would take up space as well, so I will have to top off...something I don't usually like to do.  I'm going to continue a rolling boil for another thirty minutes, then sparge it into my carboy, topping off with cold tap water if necessary.  After the last batch, when I was at "My Old Kentucky Homebrew" shop, I picked up a couple stick-on thermometers for my carboys.  This will let me know more accurately when the wort has cooled enough to pitch my yeast.  As last time, I am again using the Safale yeast.  It fermented fairly quickly and vigorously.

New Brewpot

This is a present from Kat!  She totally rocks!  It's a new brew pot.  My old enamel pot is getting pretty dinged up, has a few chips, plus it is really wide and short.  The problem with that is it takes longer to heat up on the burner.  This one is more narrow and tall, plus since it is steel, the heat may distribute better.  It needs a lid, so I am on the lookout, but this is a really nice upgrade from the old pot, and a really nice gift.  Also note in the background (right) the candy jar (full of dog treats) and the cookie jar (holding dog food).

Corona Bottles

the handy Corona bottle

You wouldn't think that Corona bottles would be ideal for homebrewing, would you?  First of all, they are clear.  Every homebrewer knows that if you expose bottle-conditioned beer to bright sunlight it can skunk the beer.  That's why the majority of beer bottles are made from either green or brown glass.


Secondly, it has that damn painted-on label.  No way you're getting that off.  "You say this is your beer, but it looks just like Corona to me..."  Whatever...you know what I mean.  When bottling, I seek to have at least one Corona (or otherwise clear) bottle with my brew in it.  You might ask why...  You see, when you bottle the beer, you mix in between three quarters and one cup of corn sugar, or you can use light DME (dry malt extract) in a bit of water and boil it.  This gives you sterile water with some sugar.  You put this in a 6-10 gallon food grade clean bucket.  Once it's in there, you siphon in your beer.  Although you leave a lot of yeast sediment behind in your fermenter, there will be enough yeast left to eat up this last bit of sugar.  This is what carbonates your beer--it's called bottle conditioning.  Mass-produced beers do not do it like this.  They brew the beer, let it ferment, then pasturize or otherwise filter the hell out of it which removes all the yeasties.  Then they (what I like to think of as) artificially inject carbon dioxide into the beer during the bottling process--just like they do Coke and Pepsi.

ale yeast

So...still you are wondering why the Corona bottle?  Well, dear reader, we have finally arrived.  You see, as the little yeast friends are in there swimming around eating that last bit of sugar, the beer appears cloudy.  When they are finished--either when the pressure is too great from the natural CO2, or all the edible sugars are gone..they go dormant and, just like in your fermenter, they return to the bottom.  It's like after a big meal...all you want to do is go nap.  It is at this point that your beer is crystal clear (or at the very least a lot more noticeably clear) and its ready to chill and drink!  This process usually takes 7-10 days.  Today----is day four.

Shermageddon!

Shirt from harvest homecoming. Photo by Kat!

Bottled the beer...

Brett's Beard has been bottled. I boiled one cup of priming sugar in about two quarts of water on the stove and added this to my beer. Afterwards I bottled the beer in sixty one 12 ounce bottles and one 24 ouncer. I noted there was some sediment from the hop pellets that I dry-hopped with. Nextime I do that, I think I will place them in a mesh hop bag in order to keep it a little more under control. I'm pretty sure a few hop pellet flakes made its way into some of the bottles. I know this will not bother the flavor of the brew but it may look a little odd if it doesnt settle down into the bottom of the bottle. I'm going to try s bottle in a week or so and see how it does.

Kat and the shampoo dude

GLUG...Glug....glug...

Tonight I took another reading of Brett's Beard Bitter and it again read 1.010.  I still see the fermentation lock (pictured here in it's p'shop'd glory) glugging along every so often.  According to the wiki: "The fermentation lock or airlock is a device used in beer brewing and wine making that allows carbon dioxide released by the beer to escape the fermenter, while not allowing air to enter the fermenter, thus avoiding oxidation."  Also, notably, it helps avoid contamination.  Given that it has been the same reading both times, I can (most likely) safely say that the beer is done, and ready to bottle.  I will have to get some more bottles this weekend, as I have not been able to accumulate enough with my own solid efforts.  If it remains FG of 1.010, that should give my beer an overall approximate 3.95% alcohol by weight, or 5.0% alcohol by volume.  According to a web article published by the University of California Long Beach, "As a guideline, typical American beers (lagers) are generally 3.6 to 3.8% by weight (approx. 4.5 to 4.7 by volume)."  It's not overpowering or heavy handed.  It's just about exactly how I wanted it to turn out.  Despite my need to classify and categorize my brews, I am generally quite happy with however they turn out, statistically speaking.  I care much more about the flavor.

Now, if I was a true microbrewery, and had a nice budget to label all my brews individually, I would make a label to do honor to what has been called Brett's "Epic" beard.  Since I cannot, let me do homage with a little photo editing wizardry.  I might print one out for Brett, but the rest of you can do with plain brown bottles, or generic labels.  I present to you, the bottle deco for Brett's Beard Bitter (or an approximation thereof):
This is not a picture of Brett's actual beard, but it was every bit as 'epic' as this one, without being the least bit ostentatious.

Brett's Beard Bitter

Hey, if THE MAN made you shave off your beard, you'd be a little bitter too...just like this ale!

Second hydrometer reading

I took my second hydrometer reading last night. It read clearly 1.010 so I should be pretty good to bottle by this weekend. I drew out a little of the fine amber colored liquid and tested it. The best way I have found to avoid false readings due to bubbles clinging on the side of the hydrometer is to spin it in the beer. The batch still has a small amount of hop pellet muck floating about the top, but most of it has sunk to the bottom. The beer, although currently flat, did taste rather good.

After tasting, I have decided to name it after a good friend. I will call it "Brett Beard Bitter Ale" in memorial to the awesome red beard that Brett was required to eradicate recently due to silly job restrictions.