Home Brewed Blog

Batch Two Tasting

By Mike | February 23, 2008

I’m a bit overdue on posting the results of batch number two. I haven’t done it yet mostly because I’m lazy, but also because I wasn’t entirely happy with the results. I think it has more to do with the style that I was brewing that anything I did wrong, but it is still a little frustrating to invest all that time in something without being satisfied by the end product.

I made a Fuggles IPA, named because if uses Fuggles hops. Now I love IPAs, but I don’t think I care for Fuggles hops. I didn’t know how much a difference hops could make, but this experience certainly enlightened me.

Normally I would assume that I had done something wrong or that my beer had been contaminated or something, but I received a number of beer sampler packs for Christmas, and one of the varieties was a Fuggles IPA which tasted similar to what I brewed.

As much as I’ve prepared you for the most awful tasting concoction a brewer can produce, it isn’t that bad. Its just different. I expect a some bitterness coupled with a citrusy aroma in my IPAs. The only word I can thing of to describe this is tangy. Its like an earthy, organic type taste that is completely unexpected and a bit off-putting. It only really lasts for the first sip or two though. After that, either you must get used to it because it starts to taste normal.

All in all I would consider this batch to a failure. I’m happy with how everything went, procedurally, and I definitely learned a lot and improved there, but the end result is something that I’m not excited to share with my friends. And I’m hesitant to share it, not because I have limited quantities, and the more I give away means the less I get, I’m hesitant to share it because I’m not proud of the product.

Oh well. Pretty soon it will be time for batch number three.

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Batch Two Bottled

By Mike | January 14, 2008

My second batch is bottled and just about ready to go. Things went a lot more smoothly this time around since I knew more what I was doing, but it still seemed to take forever.

I need to remember to change up the order that I do things next time. I first sanitized everything, all the bottles and tubes and then boiled the extra malt extract for carbonation. What I keep forgetting is that after boiling it takes a while to cool down, so if I was to do that part first I could sanitize everything while it is cooling.

I went with mostly 12oz bottles this time since it wasn’t as much of a hassle as I thought it would be.

I also got to try out a bunch of new toys that I got for Christmas such as the faucet bottle washer, the bottle tree and the drill attachment power carboy cleaner. All made things much easier this time around.

I still need to work out a better system for cleaning all of the bottles, but other than that I think I have the bottling part down.

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Batch Number Two

By Mike | January 6, 2008

Its been quite a while since I brewed my first batch, and since my last post. Part of that is because I’m lazy, the other part is that I’ve been busy and haven’t had the time I thought it would take to get my next batch going. I took some vacation time around the Christmas holidays which solved that problem and batch number two is currently fermenting happily in my basement.

Last time wanted to keep things simple and got a pre-hopped malt extract. This time I wanted to do the hopping myself and so I went with one of the kits from Midwest supplies. Its basically just the ingredients you need to make a particular style of beer, which is nice for us beginners because we don’t have to experiment and potentially waste time and money (and Beer!) with bad choices.

I went with the Fuggles IPA kit because I’m really into IPAs these days. Fuggles is the type of hops used in this recipe. Thus the name. Incidentally, I got a microbrew sampler pack for Christmas and one of the beers was a fuggles IPA. It tasted very much like the hops I used smelled. I assumed that was just how hops smell, but I could definitely taste the type of hop in that beer. To be honest I didn’t really care for it, so hopefully mine turns out better.

Things went much smother this time around since I knew more what to expect, but there were a few items that concerned me nonetheless.

To start off, I soaked the specialty grains at about 150 degrees for half an hour. I’m not quite sure this worked as expected. They provided a bag to put the grains in, but it was a little more porous than I expected, so a lot of debris made it into the wort. I think most of it got filtered out, but I’m concerned that too much made it into the beer. I’ll have to see.

After that I added the malt extract, and the bittering hops. They warned you to take the pot off the burner while adding the extract to prevent scorching, and while I did that I don’t think I mixed it up enough because when I eventually emptied the pot I noticed some scorching on the bottom. Hopefully my beer won’t taste like burning, as Ralph Wigum would say.

I boiled the bittering hops for 45 minutes, then added the flavoring hops for 30 minutes and the aroma hops for two. I closely watched the boiling wort this time around so that I didn’t have a repeat of the boiling over fiasco from last time.

Cooling the wort went much smoother this time around. I stuck some of my water jugs in the freezer so that they were colder when adding to the wort. And since it is winter and quite cold out, I could just put a lid on the the brew kettle and stick it out side to cool. And that was it. It cooled down pretty quickly, and I added the yeast, and let it go.

The next morning nothing was happening and the thermometer on the carboy read about 63 degrees, not the recommend 70 so I moved it over closer to the radiator. Sure enough a few hours later the temperature was up closer to 70 and there were happy little bubble raising from within. And so now I’m back to waiting. Oh, and for the record my initial gravity was 1.052.

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Hop Shortage

By Mike | November 17, 2007

Haven’t posted for a while, and that’s because I’m a lazy slacker. I think I’m going to start brewing my next batch around Christmas time. Meanwhile, I came across this disturbing information. It may be old news to some of you buy apparently there is a shortage on hops.

I’m not sure how this will affect me, or how much prices will go up, but the article speculates an $8 microbrew six pack going up to $11. That’s not cool.

It probably won’t change my brewing any since I haven’t gotten to the specialty hops stage yet, but its still probably going to raise the costs of a new batch a bit.

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The Tasting

By Mike | August 15, 2007

Today is the day we’ve all been waiting for. Well maybe not you so much, but it is the day I’ve been waiting for. Today is the day I finally get to taste my first brew.

And it was great. I’m not quite down with proper beer tasting jargon just yet, but it tasted like beer and that’s all I was hoping for. It was defiantly on the sweeter side as I don’t think the pre-hopped extract I got was very hoppy, something I’ll change next time, but other then that it was perfect. It was a little more red, and not quite as dark as in the pictures, but it was a nice deep color.

I was a little worried that it would be flat. Its been hot here during the past week and I was a little worried the temperature wasn’t quite right for yeast to survive after I bottled it, but it was fine.

Now I have two things left to worry about. How many of my remaining beers should I share with family and friends as and what should I brew next.

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Lessons I Learned

By Mike | August 12, 2007

Now that my first brewing experiment is all but completed, here are a few of the lessons that I learned.

Watch your boiling wort. - I allowed the wort to boil over in the very first stage of the process, which caused quite a mess. It could have been avoided if I had just been paying attention.
Get a hydrometer flask. - My beginner’s brew kit came with a hydrometer, but no flask to use with it. If you purchase a hydrometer, make sure you have a flask or graduated cylinder.
Buy lots of ice. - It takes quite a while for the wort to cool after your initial boil. You can either wait hours for the temperature to drop to a point where you can add the yeast, or you can buy a lot of ice to prepare an ice bath to help cool it. Or buy a wort cooler or other equipment, but have some cooling plan in place.
Buy a cleansing/sanitizing product. - I had heard of no-rinse cleansing products, but thought it would be better to use chlorine bleach as the book suggested. It is a huge pain to use bleach because I have after using it I feel like I have to rinse the object out many times. With a no rinse cleanser, I would still probably rinse off what ever it was I was sanitizing, but I wouldn’t have to worry about rinsing over and over.
Get a bottle washer. - The book recommended purchasing a bottle washer to make cleaning and sanitizing easier. My kit came with a bottle brush which I assumed was the same thing. Yeah, not so much. A bottle washer hooks onto your faucet and shoots jets of water into your bottle or carboy, which is way easier than washing by hand.
Don’t Worry - As they say. . . Relax, Don’t Worry, Have a Home Brew. I had plenty of things not go as well as I planned or expected, yet in the end, everything turned out OK.

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Bottled

By Mike | August 6, 2007

Today was the day that I bottled my first batch of beer. All things considered it went a lot smoother than I expected, and other than underestimating the time requirements I think everything went more or less to plan.

Step one today was to sanitize the bottles and equipment. This is the most time consuming and tedious part of the whole process. It takes quite a while to clean each and rinse each bottle. I’m glad I went with the 22oz bottles instead of the 12. That’s about half as many things that I need to clean.

I had been storing my bottles on top of my refrigerator in the basement, and my cat seems to think that makes a great hideout. She was none too pleased when I had to reclaim the bottles to clean and sanitize them. Yeah that’s right This blog is less than six months old and already I’ve resorted to posting pictures of my cat. That’s how I roll.

Once everything was sanitized it was start bottling. First I had to boil the bottle caps, to make sure they were not contaminated. I also boiled a cup and a quarter of malt extract with a pint of water. I added the malt extract to my bottling container. This new malt will provide sugars and nutrients for the now dormant yeast once its in the bottle. This will serve to carbonate the beer as its in the bottle.

Now its time to siphon the beer from the fermenter to the bottling container. This will allow us to extract the beer without all of the sediment that has settled to the bottom. I was a little concerned about the siphoning process, since I had never done it before, but I had this auto-siphon contraption that came with my kit, and it worked perfectly. You just put it in the fermenter, and pump it once or twice and before you know it your siphon is going.

Now that the beer has been separated from the sediment we can start filling the bottles, which was surprisingly easy.

Even the capping process, which I figured would be complicated was simple. Just put the cap in the capper, push down and you’re done.

So now I have 24 bottles of beer waiting in my basement for me to drink them. After about a week the yeast should have finished off the last of the malt and the beer should be ready to drink. All I have to do is wait. To quote Tom Petty… “The Waaaaiiting is the hardest part.”

[Edit***] Oh yeah. I forgot to mention, the final hydrometer reading was 1.011.

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Hydrometer Reading

By Mike | August 2, 2007

The fermentation is nearly complete. There is significantly less activity in the fermentation container and noticeable layer of sediment at the bottom. According to the book its time to take a few readings with the hydrometer and if it stays unchanged for a few days it is time to bottle. I’m hoping to be able to bottle this Sunday. The reading was 1.012, and I sampled the product after taking the reading. It tasted like beer. Warm flat beer but still beer. I’m a little concerned about the logistics of the whole bottling process, but I’ll worry about that Sunday. Or wait. I’m not supposed to worry. I’m supposed to have a home brew.

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1st Brewing Attempt Play by Play

By Mike | July 23, 2007

My first attempt at home brewing is now officially underway. There are happy little bubbles throughout my fermenter as the yeast fulfills its most noblest of duties, converting that sticky brown liquid into sweet sweet beer.

So how did go you ask? It was much more complicated than I expected, but all-in all I think it went fairly well.

The first obstacle I encountered is that I have a rather small kitchen. There isn’t nearly as much space as one would like for moving gallons of liquid around and organizing all of the various equipment that I need. 5 Gallon carboys and buckets don’t fit in my kitchen sink, so all washing/sanitizing of equipment had to be done in the basement.

I should also point out that I’m using the uber simple beginner’s approach as recommended in The Complete Joy of Homebrewing Third Edition. I figure its better to just do the basics at first so I can get my first batch out of the way with as few complications as possible. I can get to the fancy stuff later. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend following my approach, but perhaps some of the things I did wrong will help you if you too are a beginning brewer.

So I’m using a pre-hopped extract, with no other fancy grains, or finishing hops or flavors or anything like that. The first step is to boil the malt extract with two gallons of water and a pound of light dried malt extract. You are supposed to soak the can in hot water to loosen it up a bit so it comes out of the can more easily. If you’ve never seen a can of malt extract before it has the consistency of honey.

I did soak it for a bit, but obviously not long enough as I spent about 10 minutes holding the can upside down to drain the remaining contents.

From there it has to boil for 45 minutes. This kills any bacteria that may have gotten into your mixture. It took a lot longer to get it to a boil than I anticipated. I had planned to start sanitizing the rest of my equipment while the pot was boiling, but it was taking so long to reach that point I started early.

It must have gone from almost boiling to boiling over in a matter of seconds. I was checking on the progress every few minutes, but as I was heading up the stairs for the fifth or sixth time I could smell something was wrong. It was like a burnt sugary smell, and sure enough the pot had boiled over spilling the incredibly sticky contents all over the stove, and floor both of which by wife pointed out she had just cleaned.

Guess I should have paid more attention.

After the boil you have to get the temperature down to around 70-75 degrees Fahrenheit. I poured a gallon of cold water into the wort which brought it down to 120 or so. I then soaked the pot in some ice water which dropped it another few degrees, but I didn’t have a lot of ice, and I couldn’t completely seal my sink, so the ice slowly melted and drained from the container.

You’re supposed to get the wort into the carboy as soon as possible to minimize the chance for contamination, so I decided to pour it into the carboy then. First I added two gallons of cold water to the carboy. Then the wort. I was worried about spilling since I wasn’t sure how well I could control the pour and I wasn’t sure how quickly the liquid would go through the filter and funnel. It actually went fine right up until the carboy was full and started overflowing over the top. The book said that I would be adding a little more water after this process so I couldn’t imagine that I would have overflowed the carboy at this point, but I did.

At this point I took a sample to use for a hydrometer reading. Its supposed to be a simple process, just float the hydrometer in the liquid and take a reading of where the upper meniscus reaches. Sounds easy enough, but getting the hydrometer to float in that cylinder without touching the wall, and with it facing me so I could take a reading was rather difficult. Finally I got an reading as accurate as I could which was 1.035. According to the book that was in the expected range, so that that was somewhat of a relief.

Now the temperature was at 90 degrees and I had no way to get it down any further. And my wife was getting impatient as I told her I would have been done an hour ago and we were do to go shopping and to a movie. I ended up having to go to the store to buy bags of ice to make another deeper ice bath in the basement. Finally, after another 20 minutes or so I got the temperature down to 75 degrees which was the in the range of temperatures recommended for the yeast.

I added the yeast, stuck in the blow off tube and headed out the door.

According the the label on the yeast I should start seeing activity within 5-15 hours, so when we got back from the movie some eight hours later, I was hoping to see some action, but there was nothing. I was a little concerned the next morning when there was still no sign of life, some 20 hours after I dropped the yeast in.

Had I done something wrong? Did I kill the yeast? The extract came with a packet of dried yeast but the book says you don’t usually have good luck with those so I didn’t use it. Maybe I should try it since the first bottle obviously wasn’t working. Can you do that? Do I have to scrap this batch and start over? Where had I gone wrong?

Fortunately, when I got home from work I could see bubbles starting to float up to the top of the carboy and by the time I went to bed there was bunch of froth bubbling at the top and working its way up the blow off tube.

So here we are. No I’m waiting for the fermentation to subside before moving on to the next step. Needless to say, I’m very excited.

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First Attempt Underway

By Mike | July 22, 2007

I’ll try to post more details tomorrow, but I am official in the process of brewing beer. Things didn’t go nearly as smoothly as I expected, and I’m not currently seeing any fermentation related activity which is cause for concern, but hopefully by the morning things will be happening. Its been a long weekend and like I said I’ll try to post a more detailed play-by-play of the whole experience tomorrow evening.

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Batch Two Tasting

Batch Two Bottled

Batch Number Two

Hop Shortage

The Tasting

Lessons I Learned

Bottled

Hydrometer Reading

1st Brewing Attempt Play by Play

First Attempt Underway