Learning How to Homebrew

Diving headfirst into the wonderful world of brewing beer; discovering and appeasing to my own beer tastes.

[smelldemhops]

Dual Ales Bottling

The bottling actually happened a few weeks ago, on April 25, but I got caught up in some things and just now remembered to post about it.

The colors on both ales turned out to be quite interesting.

The red one is my mystery ale, and the darker one is the red ale.

I ran into a suction problem while racking the mystery ale. It turned out that the seal between the racking cane and the tubing wasn't airtight for some reason, which resulted in me having to restart suction every 30 seconds. It was incredibly annoying. For the red ale, I changed ends of the tubing and it went more seamlessly. I just can't have a perfect bottling!

That being said, I cannot wait for conditioning to finish up so I can finally taste the two in their full glory. Only a week left!

For my next brew I'm going to go fruity now that the weather is approaching that of summer. I've been reading about it, and it seems that I will have to utilize a secondary fermenter, meaning I will have to wait a few weeks between my brews. The methodology seems to involve putting in pureed fruit in the secondary fermenter to get the full fruit flavor. Should be fun!

I'm not sure which fruit I'm going to use yet, but most likely some berries. I'm leaning fairly hard towards strawberries and blueberries. Perhaps I'll do a mix of the two.

[smelldemhops]

Stout Opening

My stout spent three weeks in conditioning. It came out less stout, and more brown ale. In fact, it's more of a brown ale than my actual brown ale. Which I don't mind at all. I knew fairly soon after bottling the stout that I was lacking in grain during the brew and that it wasn't going to come out as full bodied as a stout should. The lesson learned here is to use more grain, and more oatmeal. So I will definitely be revisiting the stout again.

On the bright side, it was quite nicely carbonated. No explosions, no excess foam. Very problem free beer it was.

My red ale and mystery brew are coming to the end of their fermentation. Their FG reading was 1.010 and 1.012, respectively. I think I will bottle them up a bit later this week.

The mystery brew did not turn out as hoppy as I thought it would. In fact, it's pretty mildly hoppy. Best of all, it's not terrible! I look forward to trying it after conditioning.

[smelldemhops]

Brew Day #4½

I was able to brew my mystery ale the day after my Red Ale brew. The yeast survived!

The mash looked very light, so I figured it'd be a very light beer. Which wouldn't be too unexpected, since I don't have any dark grains in there.

But then things took a darker turn.

All in all, my mystery ale turned out to be just a tad lighter than my amber ale.

Here they are set up for fermentation. The mystery brew is on the left.

I'm verrryy curious about how the final result will turn out.

I feel like I might have gotten a little hop happy with the mystery ale. I used Citra, Cascade, and Kent Golding Hops. I put in a tinge of Kent Golding at the 20 minute mark, and then put in a mix of Citra and Cascade every 5 minutes until the end of the boil (boil time ~60 minutes). The ale might turn out hoppy and floral as a result. Either way, I think I'll get a nice lesson in hopping from this!

And here's proof that my yeast survived just nicely:

[smelldemhops]

Brew Day #4

Brewing has commenced once again!

My original plan was to brew the Red Ale and my mystery ale in quick succession and have them both fermenting at the same time. However due to unforseen circumstances I had to postpone the brewing of my mystery ale to tomorrow. I do hope my yeast survives until then!

The mash:

I am proud to say that this time around I didn't need my handy list of directions. I was pretty confident with what I was doing. The only things I had on my little beer cheat sheet were the mash and sparge temperatures and the hop addition times.

The wort:

The brew went almost seamlessly. I somehow managed to mess up the order of my hop addition though. I put in the Cascade hops before the Styrian Golding (substituting for Willamette). At the 1 minute mark I put in the Golding with a bit of Cascades to try to remedy the situation. I guess we'll see how it turns out, though I do not anticipate the results being disastrous, since there's only a 15 minute interval, and the Cascades won't have added too much bitterness and/or off flavoring in that time.

Ready for fermentation:

I filled up my fermenter a bit more this time around, simply so that I will have headroom for gravity measurements. I'm always afraid I won't have enough for my 10 bottles, and indeed there have been several times where I've only ended up with 9. When brewing 1 gallon batches, every drop counts! I do expect to have a bit of a mess on my hands due to this, however that's why I have the blow off hose in place. Might as well make full use of it. Plus, having the wort at a higher level will make it much easier to clean off all those particles that like to stick around after the fermentation is over.

In other news, I've cracked open my blonde ale (sadly only one more bottle of it left) and it is quite great. It aged quite nicely! At this point it is fully carbonated and looking beautiful.

I will definitely miss it. In my near future I'll be drinking dark beers, since I still have a good amount of my Brown Ale left over, and I have the Stout conditioning right now. I must absolutely revisit light ales. My mystery ale should be on the light side, though. I don't have any dark grain in there.

[smelldemhops]

Brown Ale Grand Opening

The brown ale has been opened and sampled. And the results are good!

It didn't explode in a great foamy boom like the blonde ale did, which made me quite happy indeed. And it has a nice head.

The taste is is very chocolate-coffee, a tinge of smoky. The body is a bit on the light side, which was a bit of surprise, since it doesn't seem like it would be a light bodied beer. And the taste would benefit from a slightly fuller body, but overall I must say I'm pretty happy with it. I didn't have the highest hopes for it, as when I initially sampled it during bottling, it tasted very much like watered down coffee, and the FG was on the high side (1.020). However, I think it came around! It's not perfect, but that just gives me more incentive to experiment with it. Definitely will revisit brown ale in the near future, but with my own twist on the ingredients. What that twist might be, I don't yet know. Perhaps some unmalted grains, like oats, to get a fuller body. I'm thinking it could have also benefited from a dash of caramel pils.

[smelldemhops]

Kvass

The kvass results are in!

It's pretty good. It's also quite boozy. I wish I could measure the ABV of this..but I'm not aware of a method to do that (I'm not sure the gravity method would apply to kvass).

I may have over fermented it a bit, since the alcohol does seem noticeable, both in taste and feeling. If I had to guess I'd have to say it's around 5-6%, which is way too much for kvass. While this isn't a bad thing in itself, it does take away from the taste a bit.

It did carbonate quite nicely though. It most certainly will not be a displeasure to drink.

But next brewing cycle I will certainly modify my methods.

[smelldemhops]

An informative video concerning selling your homebrew. Note: it is illegal to sell it unless you apply for proper licensing

Original webpage

[smelldemhops]

Fermentation

Fermentation is in full swing on both the beer and kvass fronts.

The beer:

The kvass:

Please excuse the blurry/dark shots. Taking pictures of fermentation is no easy feat!

[smelldemhops]

Brew Day #3

The long awaited brew day has finally commenced!

The grain just went in, and is looking delicious already:

I keep feeling the need to check over brewing instructions, out of paranoia that I'll miss something and ruin my beer. A lot of time passes between brews (2-3 weeks) and I just feel like I forget everything! But I guess after a dozen brews, I should be good to go.

The wort at the start of the boil:

It's looking a bit light, more like a brown ale than a stout. But since this is my first stout, I really don't know any better. We'll see what happens in a couple of weeks!

The liquid yeast experience was interesting. Opening the vial (after shaking well as instructed) was similar to opening a bottle of soda, with CO2 bubbling out of the vial, and a bit of the yeast escaping. Apparently you are supposed to open exactly like you would open a soda bottle - slowly and carefully, letting CO2 out little by little to prevent a yeast explosion. Fermentation has not started, which makes me a little bit nervous, but I'll give it some time before I start being fully nervous.

In kvass news, the bread has been dried and submerged in boiling water, waiting to cool.

I thought it would only take a few hours for it to completely cool, but it actually seems like it'll take the full night, or even longer. Even 3 hours later, the pot and water are still quite hot. I was planning on getting fermentation going tonight, but I guess I will have to wait until tomorrow. I do hope the yeast survives until then.

[smelldemhops]

Brew shopping

I swung over by the Whole Foods Beer Room to see if I can get the supplies I'm missing to start my brewing, namely another 1 gallon fermenter and airlock, and/or Irish ale yeast. Unfortunately the smallest fermenters were 3 gallons, which is too large for my current operations, and out of my budget anyway. They did have the Irish ale yeast, at least, as well as 59 cent airlocks I haven't yet used liquid yeast, and frankly I'm a tad uncomfortable with the fact that it seems to be more fragile than dry yeast (keep it in the fridge until 3-6 hours before use, best by date is only a few months from now, and every time I move the tube around, it's sloshing around, which makes me fear for its life). Dry yeast seems a lot less cantankerous in terms of keeping. Also it's cheaper($3-4 vs. $7).

More on the Beer Room - it seems that they have a pretty good selection of hops and yeasts, so while their grain variety is a bit lacking, they're a perfectly good place for hops and yeast.

This rearranges my plans yet again, since I have all I need for the stout, but no second fermenter for my amber/mystery ale dual brew. Thus, the stout will have to be first. I was actually looking forward to experimenting, but at this point I just want to get brewing! It has most certainly been too long. It feels very strange not having a fermenter to check on. My blonde ale supply is down to just 5 bottles, and the brown ale is nowhere near being done. On the plus side, I've accumulated even more bottles and at this point almost have enough to have three brews conditioning simultaneously.

[smelldemhops]

Brewing Plans

I finally went ingredient shopping at my favorite store. It was long overdue. I bought ingredients for three brews, as planned: an amber ale, a stout, and an "experimental let's see what happens" ale. The stout, which I originally planned to brew first, will have to wait - the store was out of Irish ale yeast. I will have to brew the amber and experimental ales first.

I've decided that I'm going to brew the two ales either on the same day, or within a few days of each other. The motivation for this is my strong desire to use up as many ingredients as I can, and while I can store hops in the freezer for a while, I cannot do the same with yeast. And thus far, I haven't thought of alternate ways of using up my leftover yeast. I really do hate tossing out 2/3 of a packet each time I brew. So the plan is to brew two ales, and kvass. However, to do that I'd need a second fermenter, which turns out is a ~$10 upgrade. I would have gotten it on this past trip, but I simply did not have the capacity to carry the entire haul (I did have six pounds of grain as it was). Thus I must make another trip to get the Irish ale yeast, and the second jug. No problem! I've discovered a nice bar with a good beer selection in the area, so all is good.

On the blonde side of things, the blonde ale seems to be close to getting done. Still abundant foaming at uncapping, but the ale is coming out carbonated now, and the foaming doesn't occur right away, giving me time to pour out most of it into a glass, achieving a fairly clear, nice looking ale.

A definite improvement over its foggy, foamy state a week+ ago.

This experience has taught me two things: First that I must let the beer stay longer in primary fermentation. No doubt half of the problem I'm having is caused by incomplete fermentation that is trying to finish in the bottles, causing a much longer wait time on conditioning. The second is that conditioning must also wait, because the minimum conditioning time should be 21 days at 70F.

Very soon I will have brewing habits down such that fermentation is fully finished, yeast remains at the bottom of the fermenter and not suspended in the beer, and conditioning is completed, leaving my beer looking nice and clear.

For my mystery brew I purchased four grains: white wheat malt as the base, and honey, caramel, and amber malts for the flavor and color. I'm going for a sweet, caramel, perhaps fruity beer. Not at all confident in the results, but that's what experimentation is all about. Before I embark on this though, I plan to do some reading about hops.

On a side note, it's pretty hard to believe I've only done three brews thus far, and only got to drink two of them. It feels like I've been at this for a while!

[smelldemhops]

Checking up on the blonde

It's been 21 days at this point since I've bottled the blonde ale, and it's gotten better. Still a tad bit explosive coming out of the bottle, but less so. I think another week and it should be good to go. The taste has also changed, where its gotten more citrus-ey, and less bitter. I definitely like the change. I'm looking forward to tasting it in a week. And I'll also have to repeat this blonde, perhaps mixing some more hops in there, for a sweeter, frutier blonde ale. Perhaps that will be my third, experimental brew.

I've decided on a recipe for my stout. I'm going a dry Irish stout, one akin to Guinness. I don't want a strong beer, such as an imperial stout, simply because it'll take a while fermenting and conditioning. I'm just not one for patience when my brewing hobby is young, and I have still much to learn.

This red ale has also captured my attention. It just sounds delicious. I am quite a big fan of caramel flavors. So perhaps that will be my second brew. I should decide on my game plan soon, so I can go ingredient shopping. I'm just itching to make a new brew. And I've decided to use my leftover yeast for kvass.

[smelldemhops]

Bottling Day

I bottled my brown ale today. I'm...a little less than impressed. The ale tastes predominantly like chocolate and coffee, not so much beer. Perhaps I overdid it on the chocolate malt? I'm hoping a nice long conditioning session makes it better.

This bottling did not go without mishaps. While I was very careful not to shake up the carboy and resuspend all that yeast, I did wind up spilling a good amount of beer while siphoning. I couldn't get the suction going for a while, and when I did I wasn't prepared for the torrent of beer. And while the spill wasn't all that bad (perhaps a couple of fluid ounces), every bit counts when your brew size is only a gallon. As a result I wound up with a little under 9 and a half bottles. I redistributed the 10th half bottle among the full bottles and went with 9. So now my conditioning box looks like this (red for blonde ale, blue for brown ale):

For the first time I'm not ready to start my next brew; I don't have ingredients. Since my favorite brew shop isn't in the most convenient location, I haven't really had time to get more stuff. So I'm thinking instead of making biweekly trips over there, next time I go, I'll buy ingredients for three brews. The problem with that is I'm not entirely sure what I want to brew yet, and the trip to the shop is on hold until I make the decision.

I definitely want to try a stout for my next brew. For the one after that, perhaps an amber ale. But the one after that, I'm just not sure about. Perhaps I should make an experimental batch to use up my leftover hops. I should do some beer research.

[smelldemhops]

Change of plans

As mentioned in my previous post, it seems that my conditioning isn't long enough. Up to today, I've been planning to have a constant supply of beer by brewing every two weeks, such that by the time one batch finishes conditioning, another batch will finish fermenting and be ready for bottling. However, with the discovery that my beer could benefit from a lot more conditioning, that plan has changed a bit. I suppose I could continue brewing every two weeks, and have multiple beers conditioning at a time, but I'd need a whole lot more bottles for that. Which at the moment is a problem as it is, since I'm some three bottles short for my brown ale.

[smelldemhops]

The Blonde is Ready!

The blonde ale turned out quite good. Nice, citrus-ey taste, light body, beautiful color. There's a bitter, hoppy aftertaste which isn't to my liking, but I'll know next time to put in less hops at the beginning of the boil.

Also the beer was once again foaming too much! I was sure that the fermentation was finished this time around, measuring the final gravity to match that of the recipe. The foaming is very unfortunate as it mixes up the beer once it's uncapped, and all that yeast at the bottom of the bottle gets re-suspended. I was hoping for a nice clear brew this time around, but I guess it's not to be. The blonde looks quite clear while in the bottle:

but once opened looks like this:

I will be holding my brown ale in the fermenter a bit longer now, to make sure it finishes fermenting for sure.

Edit: upon further research, I've discovered that the massive foaming was due to not long enough bottle conditioning. So I will keep these bottles conditioning for one more week. This also means that I am free to bottle my brown ale.

[smelldemhops]

Mid fermentation/conditioning thoughts

Well I'm in an idle period where I'm waiting for batch #3 to finish fermenting, and batch #2 to finish conditioning. It's very unexciting.

I just checked up on my blonde ale and there's a good half centimeter of yeast at the bottom of each bottle. Also I left a bit more headroom this time around. I do hope that doesn't affect the carbonation. Also there seems to be a small bit of sediment floating around on the top. The ale itself is looking quite clear otherwise. So while all these things are making me all kinds of nervous, I choose to look at them as lessons learned. When it comes around to bottling the currently fermenting brown ale, I will not be touching the fermenter at all. And I will be connecting my hose to the racking cane as far away from the fermenter as possible.

In the meantime I've been doing some reading and thinking about secondary fermentation. The general consensus seems to be that secondary fermentation is a waste of time and resources unless you're brewing a specialty beer that requires it. There are other ways of clarifying you beer, and coming out of a primary fermenter, the beer shouldn't require too much clarification as it is. Most of the yeast should have settled down into the trub by the time it is done.

So amending a previous post of mine, my next upgrade will have to be an increase in brewing volume. Ideally I'd like to upgrade to two gallons. Perhaps three. But that's probably in the distant future, since I will have to resupply my entire brewing operation.

I've decided on my next brew to be a stout. Yesterday I've realized I have missed stouts. So I amended this by having three Guinnesses.

[smelldemhops]

Brew Day #3

Has commenced!

The mash is looking and smelling great already!

Smells like coffee and cereal.

I guess the wort wasn't too happy about being passed through the grain again.

It really does look (and smell) like I'm brewing a huge pot of coffee.

The yeast I used this time made me a bit nervous. The yeast, unlike previous ones I've used, actually required rehydration. You can't pitch it as is. When I rehydrated it, it did not seem as robust as other yeast I've used (Safale US-05). It did not bubble up, or anything. It looked sort of like flour dissolved in water. However, after some 6 hours, fermentation has commenced, so I can rest easy for now.

On the bad news front, my Safale yeast has not survived. I didn't really expect it to, I suppose (after sticking it in the freezer for two weeks), but I had a tinge of hope. I really do hate wasting my supplies. I try to reuse everything I can from the brewing process. I dry my grains to make flour, or to use in bread or granola bars.

So now I have to figure out what to do with my leftover yeast. Hops seem to be doing fine in the freezer, they're still plenty aromatic after two weeks. This time around I put my yeast in the refrigerator. Though my hopes aren't much higher.

Here's the ale right after being jugged.