The brain pan is here!

I ordered two of these jello molds free, just pay shipping and handling! They came today. Now one is in the fridge chilling with some nummy brains!

Hops have sank...

The hops have dropped mainly to the bottom of my secondary fermenter. The yeast has slowed a bit, but I will bottle next weekend if fermentation is complete. You might ask how I know when its done. That is an important question, because if you bottle your beer too soon, the pressure can become too great and the bottles can explode. You remember me telling you about the hydrometer and how it takes readings? Well, if you take the readings 2-3 days in a row and they don't change, then you can be pretty sure that fermentation is complete. When fermentation is done, then we bottle. Let me know if you want to try some...

Extra Special Bitter

When I took my specific gravity at 38 (or more properly 1.038) I had forgotten to adjust for the temperature, which I estimate at that point being around 80 degrees. Since the hydrometer measures accurately at 60, my true original gravity would have been closer to 1.044. Hopped extract I started with as a base gives an IBU (international bittering unit) of 19.00 in a batch. I added Sterling leaf hops for 30 minutes and Liberty hop pellets dry. I found a handy ipod app to calculate the total IBU's and they turned out to be 33.83. According to the homebrewer's bible (aka The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing) my beer-or perhaps more correctly the beer style I am attempting to create-is an English Extra Special Bitter and seems to be as the brits might say "spot on". The bible says an ESB "may be brewed from specific gravities between 1.043 and 1.049" and have bitterness 20-35 IBU. I can't wait to try some...

Kolsch beer

The last time I had this style of beer, my best friend Patrick Hays brought it back from Cologne, Germany for me.

Cool!

Star Wars Pringles!

If they had R2D2 I would have bought them!

Beer Label

What is a fine hand-crafted brew without a label to tell you the name of the tasty beer you're drinking?  Something to give it some definition and tell where it came from.  Something that details the quality, freshness, and perhaps the alcohol content...  Well, I am gonna make some stickers on the cheap for in case I wanna send a couple beers out to friends.  I realize I can't label every single brew I make separately, so what we have is a 'generic' brewery label, with spots to write the name and important data with a sharpie.  How brilliant am I?  Ok, don't answer that...

Dry hopping...

When I racked the beer to my secondary fermenter, I added one ounce of Liberty hop pellets.  This is known as "dry hopping".  I can agree with the folks at Jasper's Homebrewing and Winemaking that it doesn't look too pretty.  They say "...the green surface layer of hop sludge will resemble slimy, algae-covered swamp water.  If this doesn't make you want to grab a beer, what will?"

It should sink to the bottom after a while, but right now it doesn't look like something you'd want in your mouth. Today is the 4th day of fermentation.

No effort

Absolutely was no effort made to make this "spicy chicken puck" actually seem like it came from a chicken. Geeze!

Coolest thing at Peddlers Mall 9/24/11

Motorbike Santa!

Racking to secondary fermenter

Katbwas such a good pitch-in helper tonight on racking to the secondary. She is an awesome babe! We left behind a lot of the excess yeast, and added 1 ounce of Liberty hops to the carboy. She was really into learning and helping me out. Such an awesome girl!

Happily dancing fermentation lock

It makes me happy to watch the little bubbles in the fermentation lock. The cheerful little burbling is easy to forget that its the feces of small animals. Ale yeasts (or Saccharomyces cerevisiae), being all single-celled as they are, are not like us. They dance around all day eating sugar. Where does it go? Like any animal, they have a digestive system. They make little tinkles called alcohol, and little doodies called CO2. There's your science for today, kids!

Probably ready to rack

Once your beer is no longer spewing foam out of the top of your fermenter, its time to rack it to your secondary fermenter. This keeps your beer away from prolonged contact with the resins and extra yeast that can give it an off-flavor. I made my first batch a long time ago and only had a single fermenter. I thought that the beer was incredibly bitter, but that was before I was more versed in different beer styles and probably had some unrealistic expectations of what an amber was supposed to taste like. I remember in my mind thinking at that time "this doesn't taste like Killians Red!". Hah! I also remember about a year later trying a $8 beer at Sportstime Pizza and thinking "oh hell! THIS TASTES JUST LIKE THE FIRST BATCH OF BEER I EVER MADE!". I will come home and rack the beer tonight. I have this thing today i've volunteered to do for Logans class. Its called Junior Achievement 'Biztown'. I have to be there an hour before the kids for training...

36 hour initial fermentation?

I have never had my initial fermentation progress this quickly before. It seems odd that the yeast has started to settle in the bottom and I can actually replace the hose with a fermentation lock after less than 48 hours. This stage gemerally takes 2-3 days. Here you can see the yeast at the bottom of my carboy, forming a layer of sediment. It will have a similar but much thinner layer in the bottom of each bottle.

Brew settling down just a notch

Kat, the kids and I watched Xmen First Class tonight. Just before dinner I changed out the two-liter bottle that was holding the waste from the initial stage of fermentation. That's the foamy stuff that contains excess hop resins, yeast, and tannins. After dinner and the movie I checked on the brew. Kat remarked "No more liquid is coming out. Is it ok?" Despite her lack of taste for this brewed ambrosia, she shows a keen interest in the sciency goings on of the fermentation process. After all, this is what may keep us valuable to a survival community after the zombie apocylpse. Who would ever think to let the guy who knows how to make beer get his brain eaten?!?!? Anyway I assured her that all was well, and I hooked up a fermentation lock to show that our little yeast friends (she thinks of them as similar to sea monkeys) are in there working, eating sugar and pooing CO2. The fermentation lock was "going to town" as they say. Regardless, I will rack the beer to the secondary fermenter either tomorrow evening, or sometime Saturday. As Papizan says "Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew.". I've been forced to rely upon the brewed goodness of one microbrewery or another for the time being, but I shall heed Charlie's advice in spirit.

Houston, we have liftoff!

The original fermentation is pretty explosive!

My first batch of beer has begun to ferment. You can see the initial vigorous activity of the brewing yeast. This batch was supposed to be an English Bitter, but I always seem to fiddle with the recipe a bit which changes it somewhat. I actually thought I was getting light dry malt at the shop, but when I got home realized it was amber, so this ale may be a bit darker than what the hopped Muntons extract originally intended. Also, I am working with a 6 gallon system instead of a 5 gallon, which necessitates a little 'monkeying' with the recipe. Since I was adding more unhopped malt, I decided to add the extra Sterling hops, which have no specific relation here to Sterling beer.  According to Rebel Brewer, Sterling is "Herbal, spicy with a hint of floral and citrus perceived to be similar to a Saaz and Mt Hood combination. Finding favor as a Saaz replacement."  "Saaz is a very traditional aroma hop that has been grown in the Czech Republic for centuries. It is classified as one of the four true Noble varieties. Alpha acids are low (around 3 to 4.5% AAU) and its primary use is for its distinct mild spice aroma and mild flavor. The saaz aroma can be described best as spicy, clean, classic and noble (a term that you just have to taste to understand, really.)  Saaz hops are the defining element for the classic Pilsner Urquell and Budìjovice Budweiser beers, and are a welcome addition to any light lager, pale ale, and even the wit style." So sayeth Brew365.  I am hoping it will add a little extra hoppiness to the brew, since I added extra unhopped malt and a little dextrose (aka corn sugar).

The Sterling Hops bag

What hops look like out of the bag.

Pitched Safale s-04

Quiet---almost TOO quiet...

I pitched my yeast at 10:30pm on 9/21. It is Safale s-04 dry ale yeast. "English ale yeast for the production of a large range of ales.". Meh, its from bloody France. :(  Note how after pitching, the beer looks cloudy up top from the yeast which have not made it yet to the bottom which is a little darker.  The old coke bottle will be used to catch any of the expelled beer, yeast, and hop resins.  You can't reuse or drink this (well you could drink it, but it won't be very good), so it will be discarded later.

Brewing beer again after 10+ years...

I have started to come to the conclusion that I just might be a cheap-ass. The reason? Well, I love deals, sales, and coupons. I ride a motorcycle partly because 50mpg is better than 25mpg any day. I also started to drink some cheap beer to save a buck. While I quite enjoy the occasional PBR, I don't like Coors, Keystone, Bud, Miller, etc. very much. It just frankly gets a little old. As an old Czech Proverb goes "A fine beer may be judged with only one sip, but it's better to be thoroughly sure." I was judging fairly well, just not finding anything fine. Then, last week, I went to visit a good friend of mine, Marty. He owns a nice restaurant in Crestwood Kentucky called Bistro 42. We were partaking of some of his fine pasta when he came over to the table, with a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in hand.
 
"You still drink beer?" he asked and served me one of the best bottles of beer I'd had in many weeks. I explained that I had been doing what any responsible adult beer drinking male would do in these financially trying times--I had been cutting a few costs, namely by buying the lower end brewed beverages on sale rather than splurging on the good stuff. Note that, being both sane male adults, neither of us spent any brain cells on the atrocious thought--something about forsaking beer altogether. After all, as I explained--we are both fairly sane. So, with the taste of this fine pale ale still upon my palate, subconsiously I had apparently already decided to get the old homebrewing equipment ship shape and buy some malt extract and adjuncts of various sorts. Today was the day I decided to brew. I got everything cleaned and sanitized. I started about 2.5-3 gallons of Louisville filtered Ohio River water heating to a boil in my kettle. After a bit when I could see some steam escaping, I added a can of Munton's IPA Bitter hopped malt extract to the almost-boil.

The brewpot in progress

Shortly, I included 1.5 pounds "sparkling amber" unhopped extract, a half pound of corn sugar, and after all this dissolved, I began to steep an ounce of Sterling leaf hops (7.0 % alpha acid bittering) in a boiling bag. I let this come to a boil, which took a good 30 minutes. I am always notably paranoid at this point. Once you have had to clean up the sticky nightmare associated with a boil-over, you will never want to produce that specific experiment ever again! I let it continue for another 45 minutes or so while getting some cold water (about 3 gallons) into my primary fermenter, stirring carefully between every other quart or so. I poured the batch of wort into my primary. I'm letting it cool below 80 degrees F to pitch my yeast. That should be very soon. After I rack it to the secondary, I plan to dry-hop with some Liberty hops (5.0 % alpha acid bittering).

Unpitched wort.

My specific gravity measured at 38.  I'll let y'all know how it goes.  Oh, and save me your pop-top beer bottles if you will.

Coolest item 9/13/11

Coolest thing at the Peddlers Mall this week: remote control floating drink cooler for the pool! No more "honey, grab me a beer!"

Autobots, roll out!

Coolest BK toy in a long time!