Band-aid Beer

I made it to another homebrewers meeting. I wasn't sure I wanted to go as I had just dropped of my friend at the airport the other day and we had had a very busy 5 weeks running around to various events. In the end, I did go with a friend and had a chance to try a variety of beers. I brought my new batch of Duval and an old bottle of my Oatmeal Porter. Seems I am getting a reputation as a good brewer at these events as people are starting to ask which ones are my beer. This is nice and heartening. I did have a chance to try a contaminated beer that the guy had dubbed "the band-aid beer" due to the fact that it smelled and tasted like an old plastic band-aid. More it was the smell and taste of plastic that stood out. I probably shouldn't have tried it but out of curiosity I did give it a small taste. I hope I never have to taste something like that again. It was rather foul and I should have known better. Good thing there was plenty of other stuff to drink so I could remove the taste from my mouth. The night turned out to be a much later night then I expected and I am still trying to catch up on sleep and house chores. I don't think I did any cleaning over the last few weeks. Just a wipe here and there as needed but nothing more. I miss my company though, it is very quiet here now.

The beer is on again

I put a couple of batches in the last couple of months, but nothing serious. I was mostly just using up the ingredients I had bought a long time ago and that I knew to still be good. I went out to the beer store the other day and picked up the ingredients to make 3 Belgian style beers and I started one of the batches today. This beer is a clone brew from the book "beers cloned". I chose the Vlaskop because the description sounded good. I am hoping this beer and the other two I chose will turn out good. I opted to make three beers that are similar in style so I could reuse the yeast cake from each batch into the next batch. Saves money and the yeast is better able to make the bigger beers when primed on a smaller beer. I just don't quite have enough space to ferment three beers in secondary. Belgian style beers seems to require a longer time in secondary to really age the beer well. I might have to syphon out the third beer off the yeast, wash the bottle then but the beer back in the same bottle. Oh well.

A homebrewers meeting

I was invited my a fellow homebrewer to a meeting of local DC homebrewers. I had been to another event of homebrewers but not this particular group. This group is younger and seem to still be mostly in the entry phase of homebrewing which is cool. This time I opted to bring some mead as I still have a large amount slowly aging away. It is actually still in secondary as I wait for it to stop actively fermenting. I hope to bottle it soon. I did put some in a bottle and brought that with me. Not beer, but it was homemade. Everyone loved it. Many of the people who tried it had never had mead before and it was well received by everyone. This was really nice to hear. It is a little disconcerting to get so much praise from people but it is nice as well. It was really odd that I was the only female in the room. Oh well. I had a really good time and it is nice to meet fellow homebrewers in the area. I have been getting back into the homebrewing swing of things so these meetings are really nice to go to.

On a good note, my other appointment with the doctor just proved I am still normal. I did have to drink some foul stuff but all is well. I think at this point the diet change is helping but time will tell. I've only been on it for one week.

Out to drink beer

I was invited out to drink some homebrew at a DC Hombrewers Meeting. I didn't know there was one in the area but apparently they are relatively new, plus I don't follow that much stuff in the area. I think I am in a bit of a rut actually. I found a few things I liked and I haven't moved on to other things since. But I was invited along and decided to go and see what it was all about. Since I haven't brewed in a while, I grabbed some old bottles I had in the fridge and hoped they were still good. Turns out they were about 2 years old. And they were still good. I love homebrew. Ages very well in the bottle. The beer I brought with me was a large bottle of a honey wit and a bottle of jalapeno IPA beer. Seems both beers were a hit which was great. I really like the honey white beer and haven't made it in a long time mostly since it is a whole grain beer and requires a lot of work, and makes a big mess. I tend to now only make small batches of it to keep the mess and work down. But that means each bottle is precious as I only have a few. I parted with one, just so I could bring something to the event. I am glad it was well received.

Mead

I started a batch of mead last year around this time hoping I would have something by Christmas. Fast forward one year and I still have the mead sitting in the secondary fermentation vessel as it just takes that long to age and develop. I think I will pick up a new hydrometer to replace the one I somehow broke, and take a final reading. I hope it is somewhere near the reading it should be as I want to bottle it and move the carboy out of the kitchen. I knew mead would take a while but this is a long time. Apparently this is still a very young mead too. I have read that it can take up to five years for a mead to really mature fully. I am hoping that is not the case with mine. I was actually thinking of putting on another mead but I might wait a year and hope this is only a four year mead.

TGIF!

It has been a busy two days. I have been trying to get the new receptionist trained but unfortunately she is very slow to catch on to using a Mac computer and understanding when to use an internet base password and when to use the computer program password. There have been a few other interesting problems that have been making us wonder what her mental capacity is.

I took out my new kayak out yesterday on the Thursday night paddle. It has been getting dark much sooner lately and it is now standard fair to have a headlamp on. I did have a stylus light with me which really came in handy as we almost ran into some rocks. Good catch on my part as I would not have been too happy ramming my new kayak into some rocks.

Today was a TGIF Happy Hour event. The beer in the kegs are starting to go down but turn out has been a little low. I haven't been getting much in the tip department so I have been wondering if I should keep doing this or slowly let it die down. I have been working with someone else in trying to set up a beer tasting event that seems like it would be more interesting and likely the tips generated would be better and definitely pay off each beer batch. It would likely happen less often meaning less effort on my part freeing me to get other things done. I could also make smaller batches which requires less effort to do too.

TGIF Happy Hour

Turn out for yesterday s Happy Hour event was really good. Apparently the students are back on campus and several of the old timers have been eagerly awaiting the first TGIF. I even had the department chair come and drop off a tip although he couldn't stay long. I was a little disappointed that the amber ale didn't carbonate. I decided to chill then carbonate and apparently that doesn't work. The trick is to chill, carbonate then chill further. I didn't do the chill further step so it was a little flat. I think I will stick with what worked best and that was to carbonate when warm then chill the beer. Since I over pressurize the keg, the carbonation has time to dissolve into solution as the beer chills. The soda was also flat, but something else was wrong with the soda. There were things floating in the soda as I was dispensing. I guess I didn't do a good job cleaning the keg so I had to toss the whole batch. That is a first for me, good thing it wasn't a beer. I picked up some cleaner and will give it a good soaking soon.

I was supposed to go backpacking this weekend but everyone pretty much bailed and I was left with two people willing to go. I called it off so now I am trying to help set up a last minute kayaking event in its place. Plus I could use more wet exit practice.

Beer and 'yaking

A group of us went down to Phick Bay and paddled around before stopping for a quick lunch. Too bad the tide was out as it would have been nice to get further up into the salt flats. We did see some osprey and other birds. I think we might have been able to get further back if we had followed the shore line but the guy who was leading didn't think that was a viable route. He also thought that splitting up th elaunch into two groups was a good idea so three of us ended up sitting there waiting with no idea how long the other group was progressing in getting their rentals. He just sat in his kayak being anti-social while I chatted with the other girl. It was a shame to have the split launch. At least we could have chatted together as a group while we were waiting for the rental office to open.

I put some beer on today. I moved one batch into secondary and started an Oatmeal Porter. The weather was hot and humid and making beer was not a good idea but the yeast cake was ready for another batch so I just bit the bullet and did it. I did make quite the mess though. I definitely don't have the right equipment for doing all-grain batches of beer. My feet are tired and everything was covered in sticky sugar syrup. I managed to get the dishes washed up but I will have to clean the floor and rugs tomorrow. I am now relaxing to the chill of the AC in the bedroom. The weather is cooling down but I am so hot from watching boiling wort that I ended up turning on the AC and chilling the bedroom for later relaxing. I think the next batch will not be anytime soon. I did pick up a birch beer soda kit for people who don't drink, so I will prepare that for the next TGIF which I think will be in about 2 weeks.

An easy IPA

I put on a batch of beer today. While the weather was much cooler than it has been in a while, I didn't want to spend over an hour watching a pot boil then mess up a ton of equipment to cool and move wort around. So I pulled out the cans of hopped malt I had bought on a whim (they were on sale) and diluted them in some water and brought it to a boil. I added a small amount of left over hops I had from another recipe. I combined the hot wort with more water then let the whole mess cool in the carboy before pitching in some yeast. I was a little disappointed to find out that one of my expensive yeast packs had somehow expanded on its own in my fridge but luckily I had a backup package of dried yeast. I am going to run two batches back to back on the same yeast cake. So next week I will be making a Porter. I hope the weather cooperates with me.

Come September, I will be starting up the beer TGIF's again. There has been some demand now that classes have started, but since I haven't brewed in a while, my stocks are a little low. I have two spicy beers and very little of the non-spicy beer and one empty keg. The next TGIF will be in three weeks and the IPA will be ready by then. Carbonating in kegs makes things a lot faster. The Porter will be ready shortly after that, then I need to think about what I want to make next.

TGIF

I went out last night with a few friends to a weekly Thursday night happy hour. I didn't know that many people in the group so I didn't stay long. Also, with the loud music, it was hard to talk to people. I did chat with my boyfriend. He was in the hospital after getting a love tap from a car. He was sore but otherwise physically fine. He was really pissed with the driver, the police had been useless and he was madder than hell when I called.

Today I hosted another TGIF homebrew happy hour and again not many people showed up. I am going to wait a few weeks before the next one. At that point the semester should be staring and there will be fresh faces. I will also but up some flyers and try to drum up more people. The more the merrier. The few of us brainstormed some ideas to improve on the event. Someone suggested talking about science but that was blown out of the water right away. This is more social than work. But the food idea is worth trying. I think cake and beer might work.

Although turn out was low for the TGIF, we stayed until 7:00 and I got home late. I have all my hiking stuff piled up and it is a matter of pulling out the frozen water bottle and packing tomorrow morning. I am sitting down and knitting more baby caps while watching more Stargate. I have modified the design of the pattern I am using and have made a watermelon coloured cap. It is so much cuter than the other caps I have made so far, so I am making more so I can sell them. I will have to post a good pic when I take one. Everyone at work really liked them.

TGIF, Yay!

A few people from work gathered together last night after work. I normally host Jounal Pub with my home brew but after that a few of us stayed together and went downtown to enjoy sake and sushi. I thought that was going to be it, but we actually continued on to Brickskeller's for specialty beers. It was quite a night. I don't think I got home until quite late. Thankfully I got a lift and didn't have to play bus roulette.

Brickskeller's is a great place. They have a beer list that reads like a book of fine print. They have a huge selection of beers, ciders and meads from around the world. It is a good place to try out a style as chances are they have several variations on that style. I tried a Cherry Lambic. It was okay, a little pricey, but I didn't realize how much past illness would affect my taste buds. It reminded me a little of cough syrup at first. The sourness of the Lambic style helped prevent a full blown cough syrup memory from emerging but that first swallow was interesting. I moved onto a Woodchuck Cider from England. Quite good, a little dry but very tasty.

This week has passed very slowly. I don't remember anything standing out this week. I go to work, I putz around then I go home and watch Stargate. I have a small pile of baby caps to show that I have done something. At least I have some kayaking to do this weekend and I think I will try to catch the Bruce Willis movie.

Journal Pub

We had a real nice group of people show up this time. I decided I didn't like the fact that the mailing list was only sent to grad students while encouraging everyone to come. So since I managed to get my hands on the list, I sent out a mass mailing and told everyone who was interested that they had to opt into the list. That helped whittle down the 600 address list and also made sure that only people who are interested will continue receiving the email. I also sent the email out to the two major departments which should account for most of the people in the area. The turn out was good especially since there were other parties that day.

Today was the day I unveiled the Holy Moly IPA. This was a little too bitter for my tastes but everyone who tried it seemed to like it. It also turned out much darker than I expected, especially since IPA are supposed to be Pale. I will likely be bringing out the Jalepeno IPA next week as I noticed that one of the kegs was low and it will be ready. I will need to pick up another tap but that can wait. So I have to empty the last little bit from the keg into bottles then get the JIPA in and get the keg back down to the school. Since there is construction on my street with no day parking, this could be tricky if I don't want to loose my parking on a side street. Maybe I will just wait until the weekend.

Thank goodness its Friday

For some reason this week has passed exceedingly slowly and yet I alsmost can't believe its Friday. My boyfriend was out of commission for two days with back pain. It is slowly getting better and he is back at work but I felt a little bad leaving him alone at my place with nothing to do. He said the sleep did him good. I think the cat really liked the company. I do feel bad for the cat as I don't make it home very much anymore and I will be out camping this weekend.

I am organizing my first backpacking trip of the year. I was added to the meetup group as an assistant organizer so I have the power to add my own event. I have three other people who are interested in going. I set it up as an easy hike. Just in to a nearby shelter, spend the night then back out. This gives me a chance to break in my feet to my sandals and test several pieces of gear at once. I have a backpack and bivy to test as well as soft shell rain coat and pants.

The fermentation on the second batch of beer went faster than the first batch, which is what I was hoping for. So I am hoping that tonight I can get the third batch on and set up for a hike. I am hoping to find time to run to the beer store as the chocolate extract finally came in for my chocolate stout. I also finally ordered my beer brewing books. I ended up getting Brewing Great Beers and Radical Brewing. Both looked very good and I can't wait to really start reading them. I am not sure where I am going to find the time for that but I am sure I can squeeze it in somewhere.

Holy Moly IPA

I put on a new batch of beer about 1 week ago. The experiment of the week was that I was going to move the 1st beer to secondary then put a new batch of beer on the old beers yeast cake. The idea behind this is to reuse yeast (the Wyeast I am using is rather expensive) but the main reason for doing this is that the yeast that is left behind is already primed and at its most active. By putting another beer on top of this activated yeast, the fermentation time should be less. I moved the Holy Moly IPA on Sunday and brewed a quick extraction beer, meaning a shorter boil time and no grains to slow me down. The second beer is another jalepeno beer since everyone at Journal Pub has been requesting more. The fermentation on the second beer seems to be finishing up and it has only been three days. The beer is still a little cloudy but another day or two and it will be ready for secondary. I am then going to rack another beer onto the yeast cake and see if I can get a third beer out of the same yeast. It may not have been a good idea to brew a spicy beer between two non-spicy beers. I am also not sure what the yeast can handle in terms of spice. But so far so good. Since I am actually getting a few bucks from the Journal Pub, I might as well make the drinkers happy. It isn't much but it covers ingredients.

I got news that the chocolate extract is in and available so I will be picking that up shortly and will see how the stout tastes as a chocolate. I will also pick up the remaining ingredients for making a mead and will put that on when a fermentor becomes available. The next batch will then be the cranberry honey white that I have had on the back burner for awhile. I have all the ingredients but I am waiting for space and a fermentor.

A nice long weekend

So Friday was a holiday. I worked anyways so I could take Monday off. My parents came down to visit with me. They arrived Friday night and left this morning. It felt like all we did was shop but we did spend lots of time together and in the evenings we sat and talked. Only because I have no TV but it was good quality time together. My boyfriend got back Sunday night and we all had a chance to get together Sunday for supper and Monday after work he came over for supper again. They seemed happy that I found someone that they liked. I was also saved from another night on the floor. My camping air mattress is comfortable but to a point. If I can avoid the floor, I am happier. Also, it keeps the cat out of my face.

I brought home some of the kegs and my father had a chance to taste two of the three beers I had on tap. I also bottled some for my brother to try later. Hopefully the bottle didn't cause a loss of too much carbonation. I had to chill the bottles and drop the pressure in the keg enough to dispense without causing too much foaming up. I think I am slowly getting the hang of working the kegs. I put another batch of beer on, more like an IPA. I have one empty keg available so I should look into another tap then I am set. I have ingredients for another two batches of IPA style beers that I will run back to back on the same yeast cake. They I will be moving on to a cranberry honey white and a mead. I have the honey and I have the yeast, all I am waiting for is a fermentor to become free for a long term fermentation.

Journal Pub

It used to be that every Friday was Journal Pub. Rather than getting together to discuss journals (ie journal club) the students and staff would get together Friday to just chat. For some reason the guy who was taking care of Journal Pub stopped doing it. At first, we just did one on our own with a few people in our lab, then a few more. Then I meet my boyfriend, but still no journal pub. So I contacted the guy who was setting them up and told him I had beer. Well that got a response. So we had a Journal Pub tonight with the homebrew. Everyone enoyed the beer very much. The surprise was that the few people who tried it, really liked the jalepeno beer. I had four different types of beer, a stout, a belgian ale, a maple brown and the spicy beer. The first three were in kegs while the last one was in bottles (I actually only brought in two bottles because a little goes a long way). Good thing I also brought the carbon dioxide tank in too as for some reason one of the kegs had lost pressure over the week. We also had drank enough to drop the pressure in one keg such that dispensing was slowing down. Can't have that now.

In the end the Journal Pub was a great success and I collected some money from the tip jar. This is a nice feature that was already in place but allowed me to get a few bucks for ingredients for the next batch and possibly that homebrew book I've had my eye on. So now it is time to plan the next batch. I am thinking of an IPA just for something fast and simple that has universal appeal. It also means that I can go from nothing to beer in about 2-3 weeks and keep the beer flowing. Then I can move on to a cranberry honey white, something that will be an amalgamation of two other recipes.

The beer is kegged and chilling

So I found out yesterday why the beer I had previously kegged and attempted to carbonate naturally then pressure carbonate was still flat. I was getting really great head on the beer but underneath the beer was still flat. Apparently the beer needs to be cold in order for it to retain the carbonation. So where am I going to find a large empty fridge to stor two kegs in? Why at work of course. We have a large deli like fridge in the smaller lab that no one uses. I ended up bringing the Three Pistoles and the Maple Nut Brown to work on sunday before going to the movies in an attempt to chill them and see if they were ready. So today was the big day and lo and behold, the beer was carbonated and quite drinkable. I actually grabbed everyone fromthe lab and we went down for a mini-tasting. They liked the beers so it is time for a party.

I am thinking of having a keg party on Friday to share the wealth. I am trying to decide if I want to have a slightly bigger party here at work, or a smaller more selective one at my place. Since I don't really have a sofa, here at work might be a bit better. I also still have the Chocolate Stout waiting in the wings for the chocolate extract. Apparently only a few of the Whole Foods in the area actually carries the stuff and none of them are nearby and the only one I did find didn't have the extract on Sunday. So I will try to go during the week so I can have that beer ready for the keg party on Friday too. I figure that if I have three kegs of beer at the party and a relatively small number of people, I will still have beer left over for later. The alternative would be to bring the beer as a stout and get the chocolate later and repressurize the keg after addition of the extract. More painful but doable. I could also add the extract into the bottles and bottle the pressurized beer into the extract for bottled Chocolate Stout. Decisions, decisions with only a few days to decide. Oh well, I am sure everything will work out.

Hiking was a bust

I was actually up and at the meeting point for the hiking this morning but I couldn't find any of the other hikers. I did find the photography meetup and a backpacking meetup (which maybe I should have asked them for more info before running off, looked like an interesting group) but alas, I did not find the dayhike group. I decided to go snowshoeing instead as a last push on the snowshoes, but alas, there was no snow to be had. So in the end, I went to the beer store for supplies for the nest batch and then I went and joined the movie meetup.

I decided that the next batch of beer was going to be a honey cranberry white. The hoeny white turned out nice if a little strong and the tentative tastings of the cranberry white seemed promising. So I decided to combine the two recipes into one 5 gallon recipe. I also found a cranberry concentrate syrup that I will use to flavour the beer along with cranberries. I can't wait to get this batch going to see how it turns out. While this is still not my own recipe, I find that I am now experimenting more and getting further from the recipes I have found online. I am looking into getting the book "Designing Great Beers" so that I can branch off completely on my own and try to come up with something unique that I like.

Trois Pistoles

beer
Originally uploaded by Canadian Loonie.

I took this picture some time ago and only just uploaded it. This is from one of the first batches of beer I made. The beer is in the primary fermentation and as you can see, there is a lot of fermentation activity as judged by the active foaming action. It is interesting to also see that the sedement in the beer hasn't settled out at this point but instead is moving around due to the vigorous fermentation. IT was fun to watch, almost hypnotic.

How to make beer, pt 3

Now if the first two methods didn't sound challenging enough, the third way to brew is to use grains either as the whole sugar bill or in combination with DME. The grains will be soaked at about 155F (68C) for between 30-90 minutes and the temperature may be stepped up too. The grains are then strained out of the water so that a wort is left. The grains can be rinsed with warm or hot water to rinse out more sugars. The resulting wort will either be augmented with DME or not, but at this point the wort will be boiled as in part 2 for 60 minutes with hops and various other ingredients. Again, many brewers will do a full boil as they will have collected quite a lot of water from rinsing the grains. The wort will be cooled and the yeast pitched. Again the fermenting will go from 2 weeks to 2 months. A good way to determine if the fermentation is complete is to check the sugar level of the beer. The final gravity will be compared to the original gravity and if the difference is acceptable then the beer can be bottled or kegged. The difference between those two gravities will also allow the brewer to determine the alcohol content of the beer. The bigger the difference the more alcohol. Most brewers will have a hydrometer which they will float in a sample of beer. This will determine the gravity based on sugar content. Then the sample will be tasted. All along the process it is possible to taste the beer or the grains to get an idea of what flavour each ingredient will impart on the beer.

Bottling beer requires that the beer be moved off any sediment into a clean bucket, then some corn sugar, DME or honey (actually any number of sweet things) will be added. The beer is mixed gently to incorporate the sugar but without incorporating too much air. The beer is then siphoned into the bottles. The sugar will give the yeast that one last little kick which will cause them to carbonate the beer. Carbonation can also be done in the keg but one of the beauties of using a keg is that you can chill the keg then pressurize it in 2 days thus having drinkable beer sooner without all the capping. The draw back is that you don't have bottled beer to share, it is all on tap. It is possible to bottle beer after the fact but care has to be taken to not lose the carbonation from the beer. Bottles are pre-chilled then cold beer is placed in clod bottles and capped immediately.

Now if all of this sounds fun the best way to get started is to look for a local homebrew store and they will help you get started. The most basic equipment list would include a fermenting bucket, a top and regulator for the bucket, tubing to siphon with, the bottling tube, and a store beer kit. The store beer kit is something that is guaranteed to work and if there are any problems the store owner can help. One of the biggest problems people have is either not cleaning things correctly, or they are not waiting long enough for the beer to age. Young beer can be a little sharper then new brewers expect and they think the beer hasn't turned out. Waiting a few more weeks to allow it to bottle age helps with that. And remember the brewers mantra: relax, don't worry, have a homebrew!