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.

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.