Backyard Brewing Co.

Beer News, Reviews, and Homebrew Adventures straight out of Music City var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-12751604-2']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

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This makes me happy

[backyardbrewingco-blog]

and I still love beer...

Two years, a college degree, a few more homebrews, 45 exploding Mango IPAs, and a gig with Amazon in Nashville, TN have brought me to this point. I was looking back at my homebrew blog days and left off right before the triumphant sampling of Bathroom Floor Ale, it turned out to be pretty good in the eyes of family and friends and made me want to keep brewing. So I have, and I definitely still love beer. As I moved down to TN I've started making more batches with my buddies in our Backyard (hence the name) and want to rally the crew for a little more beer magic in Nashville. To me, beer is definitely more than a brown bottle with a pop top and some fizzy yellow liquid and I think that is why I always try to share it with those around me. I hope I can keep this site up as a way of also sharing beer with you. So while it it not quite 5 yet here in Nashville I hope it is when you are reading this and you are enjoying a brew. Cheers!

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Patiently Waiting...

Not the 50 Cent song but rather waiting for the initial batch of beer a.k.a Bathroom Floor Ale to be ready to drink, now that it's been bottled for about a week and a half. It should ready by this weekend and hopefully we'll be able to have some friends and family over to enjoy the initial batch with us. If you'd like to join let me know.

Now that this one is almost ready it's time to start brewing the next batch and order the ingredients. Since we went with a pretty standard ale the first time around, I would like to try something a little different. I am thinking an IPA or a Porter. What do you think we should go for? Reply on tumblr or hit me up on twitter: @tylerprichard I am leaning one way but will make whatever gets the most votes this time around. Let me know.

Cheers!

[backyardbrewingco-blog]

Bottling Beer in the Bathroom

Last sunday marked the two weeks we needed to let our brew ferment for the right amount of time. So that means it is time to get the bottle washers out and the capper and start bottling the first batch of beer. 

We started off by prying the lid off the fermenter (5 gallon bucket) and taking a hydrometer reading to make sure the final gravity was right where we needed it to be. 

Luckily, it was. Not quite sure what I would have done if it wasn't. Another thing we had to make sure was that everything that came in contact with our beer including the bottles were sanitized. From there we started to prepare our priming sugars, these would reactive the yeast once they were in the bottles to produce the carbonation we needed for our beer.

Once we mixed our beer (above) and the priming sugars in the bottling bucket and added the spigot we were ready to start bottling. We decided to bottle in the spare bathroom. Definitely a good call.

After mixing the sugars and attaching the bottling hose we started bottling. Pretty easy process since it just is putting a hose in a bottle until its full and then putting a cap on it. Only problem is we had a serious leak going and probably lost around 4-5 beers on the bathroom floor.

Because of this we might need to call this first brew Bathroom Floor Ale in honor of the fallen soldiers that are now all over my dad's bathroom floor. Despite it being a little bit of a fail at first, some f bombs being thrown around, and a serious need for a beer I got through the bottling process with 45 full beers that should be nice and carbonated and ready to be shared in about 2 weeks. Let me know if you want in on this tasting party and there will be a few Bathroom floor ales for you.

Hey, Budweiser spills more beer per batch than I'll probably brew in my entire life.

The first and only batch of Bathroom Floor Ale. Hope it tastes better than it sounds.

Cheers!

[backyardbrewingco-blog]

Gentlemen, start your engines: The First Brew

Last sunday, we broke out the brew kettle, the fermenter, and enough cleaning supplies to clean up even the dirtiest of CSI crime scenes. We ripped open the Midwest Supplies Autumn Amber Ale kit and watched a pretty corny DVD to try and get the gist of what we were supposed to be doing. While we felt like there were some things missing in the instructions we decided to go for it anyway.

The first part of the process was steeping the grains, or making a bean bag with little grain seeds and heating them up so that you can turn the starch of the grain into sugar. The reason for this is the grain imparts flavors in the beer and leaves behind sugars, which the yeast turns into CO2 and alcohol and we all know how much beer drinkers love alcohol. 

Grains before they enter our makeshift mash.

And we wait...

After steeping the grain we added the malt extract. This isn't usually done in the normal brewing process but since this is a starter kit, they probably figured this would be able to cover up any mistakes we already made. For this step we pretty much poured a maple syrupy looking concotion into our kettle and stirred it in until it was completely dissolved.

So far so good.

We then added our hops, which in this case were small little pellets. Smelled about the same and couldn't tell you about taste quite yet. Before we added the hop pellets we had a sweet wort, once the hops are added the beer is called hopped wort. Wort is young beer or beer before fermentation, without alcohol or CO2. We didn't taste it out of fear but often times tasting the wort will give you a good indication of what your beer is going to taste like after fermentation.

Our hop pellets, looks like rabbit food.

After adding in the hops we had to cool down the wort and add the yeast. Once the components were all mixed together and the soon to be brew was cooled to the point where the yeast could start doing work and making some alcohol, we poured the beer into our very sanitized plastic bucket. This is going to act as our fermenter, where the beer hangs out while the yeast works. Unfortunately, we only have one fermenter so it may decrease the quality of beer by a little. Now that we have our beer in the fermenter, all we can do is wait. In 2 weeks we'll be bottling and a couple weeks after that we'll be enjoying the first brew. Still working on a name for it. Stay tuned...

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"The mouth of a perfectly happy man is filled with beer."

Egyptian Proverb

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Welcome to the big show...

After a few under aged beer tastings, a collection of beer presents for Christmas, a short run of Brewmasters TV shows, and a Joy of Home Brewing book by the God Father Charlie P, I have decided to try my hand at a little home brewing. We ordered a kit and some ingredients earlier this week and are hoping to get knee deep in hops and barley later today. This will be your source to the good and bad of this experiment and what I hope will be a long journey of fizzy beverages.

Stay tuned...