Berliner-weiss

This is the first of what I am sure will be many post about our berliner-weiss.  Berliner-weiss is a sour wheat beer that some people add syrup to after it is poured into a glass.  I am assuming that glass in the picture above, the green beer is apple syrup and the red is raspberry syrup.  I have tried both along with vanilla, all are yummy.

Sour beers are becoming more popular in the US.   I think part of this is because many of the microbreweries want a challenge, I will get in to this latter on.    The other reason for the rise of the sour beers is that, they are apparently more appealing to women.  I can kinda see where that is coming from.  Too many american breweries are obsessed with hops.   Even traditional styles that should have little to no hops,  are crammed with hops.  As a generalizations, most women don't like IPAs or other hoppy beers.

The reason why sours are fun is because they are a challenge.  For sour beers, both yeast and a bacteria fermenting sugars to alcohol. The reason why sour beers have a higher alcohol content is because, bacteria can use sugars that yeast can not and bacteria can thrive in a high alcohol enviroment.  The other issue is the same bacteria that you use for souring a beer is the same bacteria that can spoil your beer.  That is why some breweries do not make sour beers or the bacteria fermentation takes place off site.

Usually for sour beers there are two separate fermentations, first yeast then bacteria.  The yeast will have a long fermentation time of a month, and then bacteria will then ferment the beer for three months.   For a berliner-weiss both fermentations take place at the same time, so the total fermentation time is two to three weeks, which is a lot better than four months.

The picture about is the starter for our bacteria, Lactobacillus acidophilus.  The yeast can out compete the bacteria for sugars, it is because that there needs to be more bacteria than yeast at the beginning of the fermentation.  We made a starter mixture of apple juice, honey and 'brewers nutrients'.    L. acidophilus is the same bacteria found in yogurt.  It's perfectly happy growing at high temperatures which is nice because it excludes other things from growing in the bottle. Placing the slow cooker on warm kept the culture at 100-120F.  The bacteria culture grew for a week before we started brewing.

The bacteria bottle was cooled to 80F and then the yeast was added.  After three hours the bacteria/yeast mixture was added to the fermenter.  Three hours after that there was a ton of activity.   I think the yeast fermentation should be done in a week and a half, which leave a few days for the bacteria to ferment on it's own.  We will test the beer in two weeks. 

The Reinheitsgebot loophole

We've had a busy month or so, but we're back on track.  We took about a two week break from brewing and haven't had much time to update the website.  But on to the thing we care about most...beer.

Our Hefeweizen turned out pretty amazingly.  We took the Speise and boiled it once it had melted from being in the freezer and used it to prime the beer.  We also named the beer Loophole beer based on the reason wheat beers even existed in spite of the Reinheitsgebot.  I discovered the loophole when researching about the history of Hefeweizen to give me an idea what to name it, and just for general edification.  This website is where I found a majority of my information: http://www.beerboozebites.com/2008/12/13/a-brief-history-of-hefeweizen/

In honor of the naming, we also used the coat of arms of the Dukes involved with the loophole in question:

What I find so interesting is that the Reinheitsgebot only had three ingredients it allowed for; Barley, Water, and Hops.  Yeast was not known about at that time so they did not include it until years later.  But the Wheat was allowed through select breweries as the Dukes of Wittlesbach were extremely fond of Weissbier.  The original Reinheitsgebot was actually created for two reasons that I've ever learned of.  One reason was economical in order to ensure that not all grains were used for the creation of beer, and plenty were used for food in order to help regulate cost.  The second reason was to stop the use of certain preservatives that some breweries were experimenting with to help their cost and, from what I've been able to gather from a few sources, caused some bad side effects.

As a side note, if you can find any beers by Dr. Fritz Briem I highly recommend buying them.  He is apparently a professor at the University of Munich and made a series of beers based on old German recipes which are either uncommon nowadays or just not made at all.  Because of him I finally was able to try a Berliner Weiss (a beer we are currently brewing and I will have a special post for), and a beer called Grut Beer which uses many spices and is a recipe from before the Reinheitsgebot.

Bitter Brit aka don't photo bomb our friends

The Biter Brit batch was a copy cat of 21st Amendment  Bitter American:

For beers that that should have a lighter color an flavor the mash should be placed in the pot once the water has reached temperature.  We start our boil with placing the mash in the pot and then increasing the temperature for the brewing. Our beer did not exactly match 21st Amendment because we boiled that mash longer, but that is ok.  The additional flavors from having a longer boil balanced the bitterness of the hops.   

Now about the label.  Our friend Monica was in Europe for work.  While she was in London she took a selfie in front of Big Ben.  When she posted her picture on facebook a couple of her friends started making fun of the obviously upset British gentleman in the background.   Since she was going to be out here so we named a beer in her honor.

The Speise must flow

I wanted to wait a bit before doing this post as the American Bitter brew was a little more involved time wise than most brews.  This is because while the brew itself was very basic, a week later we had to do a technique called "dry hopping".  Dry hopping is actually extremely easy and only means you threw hops into the fermenter after it had been fermenting for a bit.  Specifically, we still used hops during the brew, but a week later we took two of the hops packets, listed below, and put those in a nylon mesh bag to place into the fermenter.  We've never done this before so we did a bit of reading ahead of time to make sure we did it right.  The act of placing it is obviously not difficult, but we wanted to make sure we got the timing down, as well as determining whether we should move to a 2nd fermenter yet.  We have determined that we will be moving it to a 2nd fermenter next weekend.  The ingredients for this brew were:

Grains:

1lb Munich

8oz Crystal 15L

8oz Crystal 40L

Hops:

1oz Cascade (Bittering Hops boiled for 90 minutes)

1oz Liberty (Flavoring Hops boiled the last 15 minutes)

1oz Cascade (Aroma Hops boiled the last 1 minute)

1oz Cascade and 1oz Willamette (Both hops added to fermenter after 7 days.  Transfer after 3-7 days of Dry Hopping)

We have also bottled our Porter, which we have now labeled Night Porter.  The label we made is down below using an image I really liked that someone drew of a zombie doorman.

Now, the thing I have been most excited about, we finally brewed a traditional German Hefeweizen.  The guy at the homebrewing shop was about to sell us a kit which was not traditional at all and used extract even.  Fortunately, Kristi knew to get the grains specifically.  The guy at the shop knew exactly what we needed and helped Kristi put together the grains bag filled with traditional Bavarian Wheat.  Now, a traditional Hefeweizen is apparently 50% wheat and 50% barley, these seemed to be indicated by the 6lb White Wheat and the 4lb 2-Row.  For the hops we used German hops (named such), and we used a large bag for the grains again.  This time we used clips to keep the bag leveled high enough so the bottom of the bag did not touch the bottom of the pot, thereby burning it and causing it to rip open like had happened to us previously.  This worked out well and when we took the grains out it was not too much of a hassle, and we placed the hops in when it returned to a boil.  Here is where things actually differ from your average brew.

When I was researching a traditional German Hefeweizen, I wanted to make sure we used a traditional priming sugar.  What I discovered was something called Speise.  Speise, German for food, is the sweet wort from the brew itself.  What we did was, after taking the grains out and before turning the heat back on and placing the hops in, we drained out the appropriate volume of liquid using a hose attached at the base of the pot.  This container is now being stored in our freezer (once it cooled off enough that it wouldn't burst from the temperature difference).  The reason to use Speise, and one of the reasons I was so interested in using it, is that you are using the brew itself before the sugars were converted into alcohol (not to mention before adding hops) and you are not changing the flavor profile of your beer by using the same sugars that made it in the first place.  To calculate how much Speise you should keep, we found this equation: (12*number of gallons)/((Specific Gravity - 1)*1000).  Now, generally speaking, we always use 5 gallons so our numerator will be 60.  We were not clear which Specific Gravity they wanted, but they seemed to indicate the wort itself, however that would be difficult with how hot it was and we wanted to know how much to take at that given moment so I looked up the average expected Specific Gravity and found it is 1.046.  With these numbers we ended up with 1.3 quarts of Speise drained.

Pecan Ale

While I was working in Atlanta last summer I discover Southern Pecan Ale.  It's an english style nut ale with pecans.  I brought some home in my suitcase and it was a big hit with many of my friends. The brewery, Lazy Magnolia, does not distribute outside the south.

I found the following copy cat recipe online:

Pale Ale Malt 8.5 lbs

Caramel Malt 1.5 lbs

Carapils Malt 0.5 lbs

Wheat Malt    0.5 lbs

Belgian Special B 0.5

Rosted Pecan 10 oz

Willamette hops 1 oz 1/2 for bittering 30 min 1/2 aroma 1 min 

White labs english ale yeast

This was an all grain recipe which we have not done before.  All of that adds up to 12 lbs of grains. The bag that held all of the grains burned during the boil.  We lost over a gallon of water in the grain bag.   

Fermentation was very active to the point that a few times the lid popped off.   

Tasting the ale while bottling I could taste some of the pecan but not as much as I wanted.  I found two recipes on line.  One said the to include the pecans in the mash, while  the other had a 60 min boil. 

We used dark corn syrup for the priming sugar for bottling because it is one of the main ingredients in pecan pie.

The Pecan ale was named Drunken Squirrel, because that is the best we could come up with.  Here is the label.

Here is the recipe that will be used next time 

Pale Ale Malt  7.5 lbs

Caramel Malt 1.5 lbs

Carapils Malt 0.5 lbs

Wheat Malt    0.5 lbs

Belgian Special B 1.5

Rosted Pecan 20 oz (Boil along with the bittering hops)

Target hops 1 oz 1/2 30 min for bittering 1/2 aroma 1 min

White labs english ale yeast

Lazy Magnolia has Southern gentleman which is basically the pecan nut ale aged in oak bourbon barrels.  So we might try using oak bourbon cubes. 

The beginnings of Porters

We've finally decided to start with a Porter which I have been looking forward to doing for a while now.  Unfortunately, they did not have the basic ingredients for your standard Porter so we had to use a copycat from Heretic Brewing called Shallow Grave.  We'll see how it turns out though.

For those that might be curious as to the reason I title this post "The beginnings of Porters", it's because Porters actually come in different types.  Now, a Porter itself is an Ale, which means it is top fermentation, but a strong Porter is what is commonly known as a Stout.  Then from there you have Imperial Stouts and so on.  So I wanted to try to understand what exactly divides up the different variants so when I start doing more custom brews I can determine what I'll need and why.

While brewing we ran into a snag, however.  When I quickly turned off the temperature once it hit boiling, in order to allow the wort to calm down and not boil over, I didn't realize the flame had not relit like it normally does.  Because of this we lost a lot of heat and had to rush to get the heat back up and fast.  Now, the only real thing we can do to help facilitate this with our setup is putting the lid on and hoping it traps enough heat within.

We did eventually get the heat up and we tried to boil it for longer to make up for the lost time, but it will be hard to know until we get further in the fermentation process.  At this time it has been a week since we brewed and the yeast has been going crazy, so we're hoping that is a good sign.  If worse comes to worse I just remember a story I was told once by someone whose son had taken up homebrewing.  They had brewed a Stout and it had turned out bad, so no one drank it, but they forgot about it for a year then figured what they hey and popped them open.  What they found was that the extra time in the bottle had mellowed out the bad taste and given it a more chocolatey taste which everyone enjoyed.  So just remember, when in doubt, just wait longer.

Extremely delayed post

Man, time flew and I didn't realize I never posted about the Red Kolsch.  Honestly there wasn't much to tell as it's exactly like the Kolsch with some of the malts we saw in the Irish Red.  That being said, we found the Wheat beer was ready way ahead of schedule.

The Wheat seemed to zoom through the fermentation and bottling process and just finish fermenting early.  Because it was fermented in warm temperatures that apparently gives it a banana note, whereas cold would give clove notes.  It's very refreshing and we called it our Scarecrow Wheat.

If we haven't mentioned before, we have been naming all of our beers.  I've convinced Kristi to eventually post about our naming and pictures of the labels.  So hopefully she'll post that soon.  Kristi has said she plans on posting her recipe for the Pecan beer we brewed tonight based on a beer she tried from a microbrew in Mississippi, though she had it while in Georgia.  Because this was Kristi's pick and she was really excited about it she wanted to be the one to post about it so I'll leave that up to her.  But I will note we had to get a large nylon mesh bag for holding all the grains.  Apparently if you use pure grains you then aren't using malt extract, but it's a lot more difficult to handle for brewing as we found.  I'll let Kristi fill you all in on that.

I'm working on a recipe for our next beer to brew that is going to be mine.  This was the beer I was talking about using local ingredients, and I think I'm going to try to make a California Lager as you apparently can brew it like an ale, it just needs to store for a long time (hence lager).

Question about kits and how I learned to love Cider

First off, we were at a party last night and a friend was asking about the kits we keep referring to.  While there are kits that contain all the equipment you need from companies like the Brooklyn Brewing Company, the kits we are usually referring to only contain the ingredients meant for that style of beer.  What happens is we go to the homebrewing store and tell them what style of beer we are hoping to make, and they go and find the appropriate "kit" which is a plastic baggy filled with all of the ingredients anyone making a classic style of that beer would use and prepackage it.

In that same store it is possible to get however much you want of any grain, hops, or yeast, but the kits are meant to make it easier for you so you don't have to do all that work for the same effect.  That being said, we are planning out our first experimental recipe in which I have been looking up where to get local barley and hops.  Our plan is to make a beer using 100% local ingredients, though we're still figuring out what sort of beer style it will be.

Now, last week we brewed an American Wheat beer.  We specify that because Hefeweizen requires specific breed of wheat and yeast apparently to be considered a true Hefeweizen.  The wheat was very strange as it was ONLY the wheat and some hops.  The wheat itself is unlike the barley we've used in the past as the wheat is crushed into a powder which we dumped into the water directly.  We put hops in for bittering but there were no aroma hops to add so it was a very simple brew.  After placing it in the fermenter, a few days later, we discovered the yeast was having high production of CO2 so Kristi had to do damage control for the beer to ensure the sanitizer didn't get blasted out of the plug and cause the beer to get infected.

This week we transferred the wheat beer to a secondary fermenter, but we also bottled our Cider.  I did my usual tasting for both beers.  The wheat was interesting and Kristi and I are excited to see what it's like in a few weeks after it's been bottled for a bit.  The Cider, however, blew me away.  I'm not generally a fan of Ciders, mainly because they're generally very sweet and I'm not fond of most sweet things.  What Kristi did to convince me to make this Cider was to inform me that a traditional English Cider is more dry than sweet, so I was interested to see what it was like.  The Cider has been fermenting for a few weeks now and it's already tasting great, with a hint of tart that I find pleasing.  I can only imagine what it's going to taste like when it's all done.  The most important detail is that it should be completely ready by the end of May when friends from out of town show up.  Most of those friends don't like beer, but love cider so we think this should be popular.  Tomorrow we look to brew a Red Kolsch, and as I've never had one before I'm interested to see how that turns out.

Edit: Forgot to mention we used local honey instead of sugar for bottling the cider.  We think it will give an interesting after taste as we've found using honey doesn't make what you brewed sweeter, but gives it an interesting character instead.

Learning with Cider

This is a rather brief post as Ciders apparently don't have much to them.  Kristi spoke to some of the guys at the homebrewing store and they informed her that for a cider you really only need to get Frozen concentrate apple juice as it won't make a difference.  She got 6 containers and put it into the pot, and we put the normal amount of water in.  As a note, we usually put in 6 gallons to account for evaporation, but with ciders you aren't quite boiling so we ended up with too much cider at the end but we're making due.  We heated the cider to 185 degrees Fahrenheit for 45 minutes.  Once we were done we cooled it down and put it into the fermentor with the yeast.

That's it, that's all there is to a cider.  The major part is that it takes FOREVER to ferment.  So much so that Kristi and I were getting worried it wasn't quite working as we didn't see much activity.  I stopped by the homebrewing shop and they said it's a slow fermentation and gave me some nutrients to use to help the yeast feed more as they don't get much out of a cider apparently.  It should take a few months of fermenting and then bottling and fermenting that in the bottle for a few months more.  I'm still trying to get a straight answer about how long it takes as Kristi was told quick fermentation in the fermentor and months in the bottles, and someone else told me months in the fermentor and months more in the bottle.  So we'll see, but it probably won't be as good as we were hoping for since we were having this confusion.  Still, those that enjoy ciders will likely still enjoy them, but I'm going to keep some to the side to ferment longer as I really prefer a dry cider.

Long Break, Quick Update

We've been rather busy lately so it's been hard to get around to actually updating the blog.  At this point Kristi has already brewed her 1gal Belgian Ale, added the Orange zest (the outer part of an orange peel) and we've now bottled the Belgian Ale AND Irish Red both.  We've learned a lot from previous experiences and made some improvements.

For bottling the Irish Red in particular we used two fermenters, moving from a first to a second after some time, then for bottling we moved to the bottling bucket which has a spigot at the bottom.  One of the differences this time around is that Kristi found out about a "bottling wand" and got us one.  Basically, it's a wand you attach to a tube which is attached to the spigot but it does not let any beer out until it presses against a surface.  This is useful because it means we can place it in the bottles directly at the bottom, it makes it so it doesn't really foam at all, we get a consistent amount with every bottle because of stopping when it reaches the top, and it speeds up the process since we don't have to turn the spigot on or off or have anyone pumping.

This made the bottling process so much easier to the point that having a third person no longer feels necessary.  Kristi was able to pump out the filled bottles while I capped them and placed them to the side.  We've found it does a better job of keeping a lot of the useless dead yeast out of the bottles as well, though we ensured keeping some live yeast so it could continue to ferment properly in the bottle.  Which brings me to the next point.

We found with the Kolsch's that we had an inconsistency in the amount of final carbonation that had occurred.  Much of this had to do with how we mixed the sugar in before the bottling process, which we corrected with the Irish Reds by slowly pouring it in as we filled the bucket with beer.  This meant some Kolsch's were very carbonated by the end, and some were not very carbonated.  Fortunately, it seems time has solved that problem for the rest of the Kolsch's after we put them aside for a few weeks before having more.  Now the bottles seem to be better fermented.  But back to the Irish Red and Belgian Ale bottlings.

When we were bottling the Irish Red I tried a taste in my tasting glass and found that it had a strange, yet pleasing, oak taste.  According to Kristi, that oak taste is actually a specific trait to the Irish yeast we had used and is commonly used by homebrewers for just that reason.  I'm keeping it in mind for an experiment I may do in the future.  As for the Belgian Ale, when tasting I found the zest was extremely strong in it, but Kristi has learned that fermenting beers with fruit and ciders both require some aging in the bottle to mellow out the flavors.  Because of this we are waiting about a month after bottling the Belgian Ale to actually try it, but this is also good to know as tonight we plan on brewing our first cider.  I'll try to post an update tomorrow as to the process for Ciders, but what I will tell you is that you keep it in the fermenter for about a week before bottling it.  We've been told it's best to keep it in there for months so we are hoping to have it ready by late May when we expect to see a bunch of friends from out of town.  Wish us luck.

We are both huge Game of Thrones fan.  I love this t-shirt:

Personally I think it should be an ice bock and not a winter ale.

Irish Red in time for St. Patrick's Day

On Thursday, Kristi and I brewed our Irish Red beer in the hopes that we could have it ready before St. Patrick's Day.  For the most part, the brewing process was exactly the same as the Kolsch but with some minor differences.  This time, there were 5 different grains to add to the beer with there being a net total of grains being more than the amount of grains we used for the Kolsch.  The grains used were:

1 lb Crystal 120L

8 oz Abbey

8 oz Caramunich

2 oz Black Roasted

2 oz Special B

The Black Roasted in particular were very dark and I suspect had a lot to do with the near instant darkening of the brew as it warmed up with the grains within.  The hops were, of course, different as we used Northern Brewer hops for bittering and Willamette hops for aroma, still boiling aroma hops for only a minute.

I think we are getting the brewing down better as we actually saw a good wort develop at one point into the brewing.  This was a bit exciting for me (Kristi was out getting some more supplies so she missed it) as we never really got a good look at the wort with the Kolsch.  We then chilled it in an ice bath in the sink (though we are looking into making our own wort chiller so we don't have to worry about carrying a steaming hot 5 gallons of liquid).  We then placed the beer into the fermenter when we were done.

Kristi wanted to try doing a starter batch for the yeast (her background is in Biology so this was easy for her, but I imagine this should be rather simple to anyone that reads the basics of how this works).  What Kristi did was take about a gallon of the beer and place it in our small carboy and placed the yeast into this container and sealed it and the fermenter.  She let the yeast do its job and the next day she place that batch into the fermenter.  The reason she did this was for several reasons.  One, the beer in the fermenter was still very hot and we were worried the yeast had been out too long and not enough yeast would survive to do its job properly.  Two, the smaller volume means there would be "faster communication between the yeast" as Kristi put it.  What this means I'm still not entirely certain, but essentially the yeast grows faster when it has a more dense population.  Because of this, the smaller carboy means a whole lot more yeast to introduce to the fermenter when we added it the next night.  At this time it wasn't showing a whole lot of activity, but we were also informed we may have to wait until next week before we see a great deal more activity.

While getting supplies, Kristi also found out it is best to get a second fermenter to transfer to at one point as it helps with minimizing how much dead yeast you have in your batch.  So at this point we have two fermenters and a bottling bucket to switch between, all before we get to the actual bottling process.  The bottling bucket has a spigot at the bottom so that all we have to do is turn it on and keep the container as unexposed as possible to oxidation and anything falling into our batch.

Tonight we will be finally starting our Belgian Blonde Kristi got for her birthday to make and that should make enough for the carboy itself, so we will not need to worry about doubling up on equipment.  Kristi and I are hoping to use this as an opportunity to play with adding other flavorings to the beer and we'll add more on that when we get to that point.  As the brewing process will not likely be that involved we will probably skip it this time.

Taking time to thank other Breweries for their bottles

So, while Kristi and I prepare for our brewing tonight I thought I would post about our bottling of the Kolsch beer.  While preparing for bottling we found it is considered better if you transfer the beer to another bucket for bottling.  From what we could tell this was done to minimize the amount of dead yeast you might be transferring to the bottles.  Fortunately, we already had a giant bucket that we were using for sanitizing items so it was mostly cleaned anyways and Kristi finished cleaning it up.  We then moved the beer from the fermenter to the bottling bucket, but keeping in mind that the instructions pointed out how important time was as a factor as we wanted to keep its exposure to oxygen down to a minimum.

Before we could start the bottling process, however, we needed to prepare the corn sugar we were using to add carbonation to the beer.  You may recall in a previous post that we were using sugar pellets before for carbonation, but this batch had a pouch of corn sugar instead.  In this case, we had to prepare the sugar ahead of time by boiling it in 2 cups of water for 5 minutes.  Kristi pointed out we should wait until the water is boiling before adding the sugar so as to ensure we do not accidentally caremelize the sugar and therefor make it useless.  After we were done preparing it and we transferred enough beer from the fermenter to the bottling bucket until it filled about 2 inches from the bottom, at which point we mixed in the sugar mixture, then continued filling up more.  The reason for this sugar is that it creates a second fermentation in the bottle with what yeast is still alive, breaking down more sugars into alcohol, but the byproduct to fermentation is CO2, which is where we get our carbonation from.  I have been finding it interesting every time we observe some part of the process and consider how they must have brewed beer long ago to gain any of these traits.  I imagine they kept the fermenting beer in a closed container and it naturally became carbonated and they didn't understand why.  In any case, we moved on from this point to getting ready for the bottling itself.

We started bottling by pumping all of the beer into the bottles and found placing the tube all the way in worked best as that meant it would continue pumping more beer in within and keep foaming down to a minimum.  We tried to move quickly to keep the oxidation to a minimum, but we quickly discovered as we neared the end of our bottles that we didn't have nearly enough bottles to hold the 5 gallons of beer.  Our solution was to use the many growlers and bottles we had kept from other breweries, though mostly Speakeasy, in order to make up the difference.  So Kristi quickly rinsed them out and used sanitizer on them so that we could use them.  This ended up saving the day, but we also had to move quickly to cap all the beers we had bottled.  This is where having a third person would really come in handy, especially considering a Kolsch especially doesn't do well with oxidation.

For those who are not aware, a Kolsch is typically served in a smaller glass than you traditionally find with other German beers.  The exact reasons as to why this is are not clear to Kristi or myself, but we suspect it has to do with the use of lager yeast in an ale process, which means yeast that generally works best in colder temperatures being exposed to warmer temperatures and therefore something involving the yeast may be more unstable and susceptible to breaking down.  Hopefully I can find some information on the subject, but so far I have not.  Now we just have to wait about 2 weeks until we can try the beer and see how it went.

First batch of IPA a success

While at a friend's house for a celebration, we took out our bottles of IPA for everyone to try.  Everyone opened them up and tried them (I put mine in a glass because I can be a bit of a snob at times).  We had previously apologized to everyone for our IPA as we expected it to be bad the first time around, but much to our surprise everyone liked it.

The beer was not too hoppy, but as the kit we had used previously from the Brooklyn Brewing Company did not have a clarifier tablet so the beer came out unfiltered.  I am not aware if this is always how you unfilter a beer or whether most brewing companies use a different process and it's something Kristi and I will need to look into.

Next up we're looking into making an Irish Red in preparation for St. Patrick's Day in our 5 gal fermenter, but Kristi wanted to use the 1 gal carboy to ferment a Belgian with her own recipe.  Now, the Belgian is actually using a kit that was given to her for her birthday, but she is planning on adding other ingredients to use it to experiment with diverging from the norm.  We'll probably be starting this on Sunday, but next Tuesday we start bottling our Kolsch and may be able to brew our Irish Red that very night as well.

Second Post, First Mistake

We used the Kolsch kit from More Beer this time around.  Inside we had German Pilsner grains and malts, Perle Hops for bittering, and Saaz Hops for aroma.  I won't go into detail about the other ingredients as you can find those ingredients in the kits and they will be briefly mentioned in the description I give.  We use a nylong mesh bag to hold the grains and hops so we can keep most of the used up parts out of the mixture.

First we took our recently cleaned 7.5 gallon (roughly 28.4L) Pot, with temperature gauge and valve, and filled it with 6 gallons of water.  We use 6 gallons for a 5 gallon brew as much of the water will boil away throughout the brewing process.  We set the water to boil with the grains in a reusable nylon mesh bag so it would reach 170 degrees Fahrenheit in 30 minutes.  We had the temperature too low so it took longer than 30 minutes, but apparently that's fine as being done in under 30 minutes is what you do not want to do.  Once we hit 170 we took the grains out and let the brew heat to a boil.

Once we reached boiling point we started mixing in the malts and extracts.  Once this mixture started foaming up we turned down the temperature to allow the foam to settle, at which point we turned the heat back on to return to a boil.  Once we returned to a boil we added in the Perle hops for bittering using the nylon mesh bag again and kept it in the boil for 60 minutes.  Five minutes before the boil ended we put in a clarifier tablet.  This clarifier tablet is made from seaweed and works by bonding with the denser elements of the brew so it causes them to sink to the bottom, thereby making the whole thing clearer.

Once 60 minutes are up we take the Perle Hops out and switch them for the Saaz Hops for one minute.  These Hops are intended for adding a Hops aroma to the beer.  Once this finished we turned the heat off and set the pot into an ice bath in our sink.  Eventually we plan on buying a chiller which is more convenient because it means not having to carry a steaming hot giant pot filled with 5 gallons of brew to a sink.

Now, many of you may have noticed the title of this post, and still some may have noticed we never mentioned yeast in this process.  Those who know anything about brewing know that yeast is an integral ingredient as that's what breaks down the sugars and converts them to alcohol.  As it turns out, when we got our kit, we were apparently expected to purchase yeast in addition.  Now, the guy that helped us was very helpful and unfortunately this got missed in the process.  I would have gone the next day to quickly pick up yeast from the store but I was at work before and after they closed.  I was able to go earlier today and pick up the yeast, and while it is not advisable, we are expecting the brew to turn out fine as we placed the liquid yeast in today.

The brew is now fermenting in our downstairs storage and we'll be checking it out in two weeks from today to give it some time to properly ferment.  We'll have an updated post on the bottling process when that comes around.  Until then, we'll be trying our IPA from our first batch of beer this weekend.  We'll post about the results and will likely be apologizing to our friends we'll be trying it with.  Here's to next time.  Brew you later.

First post, second batch

We're finally starting our Kolsch brew today and this is the 2nd batch of beer we've ever made.  The first was using the Brooklyn Brewing Company IPA set we got for our wedding.  For the Kolsch we're using a package of ingredients we got from the homebrewing store nearby and I'm liking this setup a lot better. 

With this batch we're using our new cooking pot for brewing that Kristi's parents got her for her birthday. Next week we get to try the IPA we bottled as it should be done carbonating by then.

So far this is an exciting experience and we're hoping to see where this leads.  My hope is to try as many styles throughout the year and eventually get a good enough hang on how to brew that we can start coming up with our own recipes.