A face-lift, a scary moment, and success

First of all I would like to thank Sara for the updated layout and blog counter. The two of you should have much more fun reading it now.

Well a lot has happened since I blogged last. I met a fellow brewer who lives in Iowa City on a brewing forum (homebrewtalk.com). He had some extra brewing stuff he didn't use any more so he gave it to me. Thanks a lot Mick.

Now I have:

an extra fermenting bucket

a bottling bucket. This is to mix the beer with priming sugar before you bottle it. The priming sugar is what the yeast eat to carbonate the beer in the bottles. It's just a 5 gal bucket with a spigot

a wort chiller. A coiled copper hose that attaches to the faucet so you that when you put into your hot wort the cold tap water cools the wort down faster

a hydrometer for testing the gravity (how much sugar is in the beer). You have a starting gravity and as the yeast eats the sugar and makes alcohol the gravity goes down.

A caper for capping beer bottles

2 racking canes. Bent plastic tubes that are bent on one end so you can siphon the beer out without sucking up the yeast and other junk at the bottom.

A bottling wand. It's this nifty thing that you stick in the bottle that fills it from the bottom. This stops air from getting mixed into the beer and when you pull the wand out it leaves the perfect amount of room at the top of the beer.

2 airlocks. These are filled with water and put into the fermenter lid to let CO2 out but not let O2 in.

And a 5 gallon pot for brewing the wort.

Now I'm in business. I shouldn't need to buy any more brewing equipment for a while, unless I want more.

Well I decided that since I had a second fermenter that I should probably put something in it. I asked Sara what kind of beer she wanted. I figured that she would be much more willing to let me spend the money, make a mess in the kitchen, and have brewing stuff all over the apartment if she enjoyed the final product. She asked for hard cider. Great I thought. I've done all this research on making beer. I don't know anything about cider. Well I went to my new favorite website (homebrewtalk.com) and did some research. I found a recipe I liked. It's called Graff. It's cider but it has malt and hops in it too and used regular ale yeast. Sounds good to me. I got a couple gallons of apple juice, some Nottingham yeast, and a pound of malt extract. I had some left over saaz hops from my last beer so I used them. I boiled the hops and extract with some water. I put the apple juice in the freezer ahead of time to make it good and cold and used it to cool the wort. After the wort was cool enough I poured it into the bucket and pitched the yeast. I put the lid and airlock on and let the little yeastie beasties do their thing.

Now this is the scary part...4 days later and nothing had happened yet. Now it's important for the yeast to get going quickly and fornicate their little brains out so they take over and not let any bacteria or wild yeast get going in there. If the bacteria gets a head start it can ruin the beer. Who knows if anything started growing during those 4 days. I had an extra packet of yeast (this one was Safbrew S-33) so I pitched it hoped it would work. The next day it was fermenting away. I wont know if it's infected until I try it after its done fermenting. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I figured I did something wrong. It was only my second batch after all. The only think I could think of was that the wort was too hot and I killed the yeast but I used a thermometer so that shouldn't have been it. Of course a couple of days ago I found out that there was a whole batch of Nottingham yeast that was recalled because there was an unusual amount of packets that didn't work. I don't know if my packet was one of them but I can only assume that was it. I sure hope my beer turns out ok. I probably wont use this brand of yeast in the future.

Well yesterday I checked my Apfelwein. Up until now it was all cloudy from the yeast floating around. This time the wine was clear. According to the recipe that means it's ready to bottle. I'll probably do that in the next couple days. Of course I can't wait that long so I got a jug out to taste it. I sanitized the new siphon hose I got today and used it to take out a couple sips worth. Success!! It's actually pretty good. Very dry, a little hint of apple, and very boozy. The apple flavor is supposed to get stronger and the boozyness is supposed to mellow out as it ages. It's only going to get better from here on. I couldn't be happier.

My ale still has a little less than a week to go and it's tasting pretty good. I'm especially proud of this since I made the recipe from scratch. I'm sure it wont be the best beer in the world but it will give me something to keep tweaking. Who knows, maybe I'll come up with something fantastic.

New Beer!!!

So I had an unexpected day off yesterday (hope you feel better soon Sara) so I decided to bottle and brew a couple days early. My first batch tastes pretty good. It's quietly sitting in my closet getting carbonated. A couple weeks and I can start tasting it, although a couple more after that will make it better.

Now the important part. My next beer. I call it Boston Way Brown Ale (v1.0). It was going to be Boston Way Amber Ale but it turned out way darker than I thought it would.

My recipe (Mr. Beer sized batch):

2 lbs Sparkling Amber Dry Malt Extract

1 cub brown sugar

1 lb Crystal 60L grain

.5 oz Saaz Hops

.5 oz Willamette Hops

1 packet Fermentus S-33 Yeast

3 gallons spring water from hyvee

I steeped the grain for 30 minutes at around 160 degrees in a gallon of spring water

Then added 1 lb DME and the Willamette and boiled for 45 minutes

Added half the saaz and the rest of the DME boiled another 10

added the rest of the saaz and boiled another 5

Then I added water to fill the fermenter (around a gallon and a half) and added the yeast.

The little yeast bastards had a crazy orgy and produced a bunch of foam pretty quick. It'll be awesome (I hope).

Things I learned.

If you pour the DME in all at once it will cause big ugly sticky sweet chunks. They will eventually break down though.

When you boil water for an hour some of it will evaporate so if your planning on making two gallons of beer you need more than two gallons of water so buy more water if your using bottled water.

A pound of crystal 60L grain steeped for half an hour in a little over 2 gallons of beer will make pretty dark beer.

A snowbank will cool your wort down pretty quick so don't leave it out there for too long.

Well now it's the waiting game again. In two weeks or so I'll bottle whats in the fermenter and start a new batch.

Late update

Well a week came and went. I tried my beer. It was pretty good. It actually tasted like beer!!!! Yay. I resisted the urge to bottle it right away. All my research has told me to let it ferment for at least 2 weeks before you bottle it. Well I work every day until Thursday so that makes it easy. Thursday is bottle and brew day!!! I'm going to bottle whats in my fermenter and brew my next batch. I couldn't be more excited. I'm still tweaking my next recipe but I think I've got it figured out. It should be a fairly hoppy brown/amber ale. I'm shooting for amber but I have no idea what I'm doing so...we'll see.

I've also found a recipe for Apfelwein. It's a strong and dry German apple cider/wine. I will be able to make it separate from my beer so I'll have a batch of that going too. It will take around 6 months before its done though so I wont have much to say about it for a while.

Well I'll have to let everyone (that means you Sara) know how brew day goes and I'll post my final recipe then.