Bottling batch 1, brewing batch 2
We had a bottling party on Friday, the beer got bottled and fun was had. We had Aaron spraying sanitizer into the bottles, me filling them, and Nick capping or corking them. Elena put cages on the corked 750ml bottles. In total we bottled 38 12 oz bottles and 8 750ml. Way more than I expected. There wasn’t a lot of sediment at the bottom of the bottling bucket and we were able to get most of it in the bottles without the need for a diptube.
Cleaning up the next day made me understand why so many prefer the fermentation buckets to the carboy. The sediment left behind by the krausen was a pain to scrub out of the carboy and rinsing the soap out was time consuming. One thing I need to do is find a better way to dry my piping, if anyone has a good system I’d love to hear about it. I hang them from a wire in our kitchen and it takes them forever to dry.
On Sunday Aaron returned and we worked up a batch of Northern Brewer’s American Wheat Beer. I changed the recipe based on some of the comments on the NB site and added a pound of honey and some coriander to the wort. I added the honey with the LME and the coriander with my last hop addition. I ended up with an OG of about 1.050, .01 higher than my target due to the added fermentables. We ran into an issue where there wasn’t enough room in the pot to add all of the LME at once so we let some of the liquid boil off and then cut the heat to stir in the additional syrup. I added time to the boil to account for the time we spent adding and stirring. I also added my hops to a grain bag that was submerged in the wort rather than directly into the pot itself. This definitely helped speed cleanup, and there was very little residue at the bottom of the brew pot when we went to add it to our primary. The wort chilled much more quickly this time as I wasn’t afraid to give it some gentle stirring. I tried my hand at a whirlpool, but decided that since there was so little sediment that I would just funnel the beer into primary rather than siphoning.
Come pitching time and the smack-pack hadn’t expanded like you’d expect. I had forgotten to remove the yeast from the fridge on Saturday to let it come up to pitching temp and popped the nutrient pouch on Sunday morning just a few hours before I intended on pitching. Not an optimal situation. When I cut open the pouch there was an odd smell, but I threw it into my wort anyway. It’s been about 16 hours now, and there’s no activity. I’m going to give it 72 hours to give me some action and then I’ll head down to Maryland Homebrew and grab another pouch. I’ll also be grabbing a 1/2 gallon glass carboy jug thing with airlock to make starters from now on and some backup dried yeast to keep in the fridge. Consider that lesson learned. I also think this will be the last liquid yeast I order from Northern Brewer. It’s a lot to ask of the little guys to stay viable and healthy on the hot trip from MN.
I remarked to Aaron about halfway through our boil that I was surprised how much I was noticing this time around. During my first brew I was so worried about what I was doing and fumbling with the equipment that I really didn’t see a lot of what was going on around me.
Photos courtesy of Elena.
hydrometer reading #1
So this isn’t actually the first hydrometer reading I’ve taken, but I didn’t bother to document the last one at all and I didn’t recall what the reading was. Regardless, I pulled a sample of beer from my carboy and was happy to discover that the hydrometer was reading about 1.005. I took the temperature of the beer so I could properly adjust my results and ended up with an adjusted gravity of 1.008. If I started at 1.038 and ended up at 1.008, I should be looking at an approximate ABV of 3.93 (1.038 – 1.008)*131
I’m planning on bottling this weekend and hoping I can get some friends over to help. I ordered a wheat beer kit that I’ll boil and get going this weekend in an effort to build a good “pipeline” of homebrew. Having a lot of beer in storage will help me move to the longer fermenting, bigger beers. I’m also hoping to add a second carboy to get two beers going at once, or to have the ability to rack to a secondary.
The wheat is a test for the beer that will follow it which will be Northern Brewer’s Smashing Pumpkin ale. Both kits use the same yeast and I’m worried about my ability to maintain fermentation temps. So we’ll see how it goes with the cheaper wheat beer kit.
Patience…
The yeast are hard at working turning the sugar I so kindly supplied them into CO2 and Alcohol. I expected the bubbling to be much more violent so I went ahead and swapped the blowoff tube out for the airlock. The krausen is getting thinner and thinner, which I suppose means that the yeast is flocculating (clumping together and sinking)
In other news, I think I might have gotten unofficial permission to get another carboy to start an IPA…
Brew Day #1: Petite Saison d’Ete
Whew. Brewday (night?) was last night and I have to say that overall it went more smoothly than I anticipated. The kit’s instructions were clear and where they were a little fuzzy I had already done the research to have a general idea of what they meant. It took a lot longer than I planned to bring the water to certain temperatures, and our small stove made it difficult at times to tune in the boil. Our pot was a lot smaller than I thought, and had about 2 inches of headroom for foam. We’ll be getting a bigger one before I do the next batch.
My target OG was 1.041. If I measured correctly my actual OG was 1.038.
The recipe:
- .5 lbs Belgian Caravienne
- 3.15 lbs Pilsen malt syrup
- 1 lb Pilson DME
- 1lb Wheat DME
- 1oz Kent Goldings (60min)
- .25oz Styrian Goldings (10min)
- .25oz Saaz (10min)
- .75oz Styrian Goldings (2min)
- .75oz Saaz (2min)
- Yeast: Wyeast 3711 French Saison
View the full datasheet from Northern Brewer
When I checked on the primary this morning it was gently bubbling away. I have it in our root cellar (awkwardly accessible through a not-so-hidden trapdoor in our hallway) where it’s in a makeshift swamp cooler. The ambient temperature down there is about 75 degrees which is towards the high end of optimal yeast temp, so I’ve got a box fan set up to blow across the water to aid in evaporation. I initially put a tshirt over the carboy, but was worried about the possibility of mildew as the root cellar has little to no air circulation. If things are running hot when I get home tonight I may reconsider, but I filled my malt syrup container with water, froze it overnight, and dropped it in the swamp cooler this morning so I’m hoping that keeps things under control while I’m at work.
these photos taken by my fantastic wife who kept exclaiming ”THAT’S SO MUCH BEER!”
The gear has arrived.
It actually got here a day early, but FedEx tried to deliver it to me at 4:45 and I was still at work. This caused me some fretting and paranoia since the shipment included a kit that had a pouch of yeast. So yesterday I left after lunch to work from home and await its arrival. It got here around 6 and I tore open the smallest of the four boxes, assuming that was the extract kit. I was right. The yeast was packaged in a padded envelope and the guys at Northern Brewer had thrown in a gel pack to keep things cool. Needless to say that by now the gelpack was warm to the touch. I rushed the yeast to the ‘fridge and set upon opening the rest of my boxes and admiring my new equipment.
Honestly, it was totally overwhelming. There was a ton of stuff that wasn’t really labeled in a way that made sense to me. I hadn’t ever seen a lot of the contraptions before so it was a while before I felt like I had a handle on what was going on. Once I figured out which bits were what I packed up all the things I wasn’t going to need until I bottled and put them away. That cut down on a lot of the clutter and made me feel better.
When I was ordering supplies I decided that I wanted to bottle in 750ml belgian-style bottles like the ones we get from Brewer’s Art. That seemed straight forward enough: buy the bottles, buy the corks, buy the cages that keep the corks from popping off and injuring someone. Right. All of those supplies are associated on the Northern Brewer site so within a couple of clicks I had everything I thought I needed. Only yesterday when I had a cork and a bottle in my hand did I think to myself “how the hell am I going to get this in that?” I pulled out our handy rubber mallet and discovered there wasn’t any way it was going to work. I did a little more research online and found that you need an official corker to get the darned things in. Fortunately that $70 purchase can be put off for a while as we’ll need something to put in the bottles before we cork them… If anyone from Northern Brewer happens to be reading this, I’d suggest adding a note to the cork page about getting a corker.
When Elena arrived home from her DC Food Bloggers meeting we decided that we’d brew as soon as possible… which is tonight!
I’m a little paranoid that I’m going to forget a step and mess everything up, but I think we’ll manage to muddle through and come out of it with some malty food to sustain the yeast for the next few weeks and let them do their thing.
Maker’s Mark 46
After exhausting days at work, Elena and I decided that there was just no way in hell we were going to be able to come up with dinner so we headed to our favorite chimichanga destination: Holy Frijoles. The chimichangas seriously taste like deliciousness wrapped in a deep-fried puff pastry. If they could improve the quality of service (fucking hipsters…) the place would be top-notch. Anyway, one of the perks of venturing out to Hampden is that the best liquor store in Baltimore happens to be around the corner. We decided to go grab one of The Brewer’s Art Green Peppercorn Tripels and I snuck a peak down the bourbon aisle when SWMBO wasn’t looking.
Lo and behold, I spy the bottle I’ve been asking about at every liquor store I enter:
I’m clearly not the only one who has been waiting as there are only two bottles left on the shelf. I nab one and we pick up our beer and go.
Getting home, I tore into the signature wax seal and poured myself a finger or two. What follows are my tasting notes:
Makers Mark 46
Bourbon, Kentucky US
Nose: rich grains with notes of vanilla and … cherry?
Taste: the 46 sneaks into your mouth very subtly (hence the sneaking). It starts with a very creamy mouthfeel with a strong vanilla-y, sweet, grainy flavor. Over time, the oak they added to the barrels starts to speak up and the spicy notes associated with the wood start to come through. I haven’t been drinking much whiskey in the last few months and the alcohol “burn” wasn’t too intense. It didn’t make itself too apparent and didn’t stick around long enough to be unwelcome.
Overall one of the better bourbon’s I’ve had the pleasure to drink. The oak reminded me of the Macallan 15yo fine oak that I had a few months back and greatly enjoyed. I think the Maker’s Mark original will still be my go-to guy for tasty mixed drinks (old fashioned, manhattan), and 46 will take it’s place for drinking neat.
Hello World.
Quite the descriptive, unambiguous blog title, eh? The short story is that I was looking into adding yet another sub-domain to my portfolio to house my journey into the world of homebrewing, but decided to get a new domain and make a go at a “real” blog.
The long story is that I’m taking on a new hobby. To this point, I’ve really only ever considered video games to be my hobby, but with the blessing and encouragement of my amazing wife, I’m going to be brewing our own beer. Everything I’ve been reading about the subject emphasizes how important it is to keep records of what you do, so I thought: what better way to do that than a blog?
I’d be lying to you if I told you that’s all you’re going to find here. I have problems staying on subject–hence the “stuff” in “Beer & Stuff.” I have a fondness for whiskey (especially a good scotch) so you may find some tasting notes or thoughts on the scotch world here from time to time.
So why home brewing? Well, it’s not all that out of character for us, who are on a quest to grow all our own produce and bake most of our own bread products. Apparently Elena’s next big venture is going to be making cheeses and yogurts at home. Mine will be to brew our own beer.
I’ve ordered a starter kit from Northern Brewer along with an extract kit to get myself acquainted with the process and equipment. Eventually, I’d like to move to partial or full mash and then to formulating my own recipes, but we’ve got a lot of ground to cover between here and there. (hence my tentative title for the blog which was “the beer newb”)