LOL I am such a looser!

I have found that I enjoy homebrewing and smoking meat on the same level. Therefore, I feel as though I have found the perfect way to spend a Saturday and I think all of you will agree. Early on a Saturday, prepare a pork loin or your favorite meat for smoking, and once it is on the smoker, begin a beer brewing. When you put the beer in the fermenter, the meat should be almost ready so you prepare any sides you are to eat with the meat at this point.
Now, I understand that sometimes the meat will take way longer than the beer. So, in the meantime you have to take a lot of breaks to get a fresh beer out of the fridge. If you have a brew that needs to be bottled, you can also do this during at this point.
I have found that sanitizing takes a while so sip slow and brew carefully and this will build a hearty appetite for the meat you smoke.
One more thing, while I blogged this, I discovered that a black and tan made from Guiness or your fav. stout and Ed Wort's Apfelwein make's one heck of a black and tan!

It's finally time to bottle!
Remember
Read your instruction manual
This blog is just jokes and tips, and my self absorbed diary that I'm so sure you want to waste your time reading!


After 3 weeks in the primary and much worry, my first batch of beer seems to be coming along fine. I made a stout, added 2lbs of sugar to the recipe at boil, then added 2 quarts apple juice to the 3 gallons of wort and rest water when starting my primary. Wise members in the f-o-r-u-m encouraged me to WAIT - BE PATIENT for my fermentation to be done. I wanted the guys to come over on a Sunday and bottle together. It had been in the primary for two weeks but was still bubbling. They told me to wait. Hydrometer readings were off, and it was still bubbling. Can't rush it. Instead we watched football.

I waited days. I made sandwiches. I waited some more. I called the guys at my LHBS who were great, because they are very familiar with the recipe kit they sold me. They were able to tell me an estimated FG to look for so as to know when I could go to bottle. Finally after three long weeks in the primary it was ready. I realize I'm lucky to have a local home brew shop that I can easily access. Sorry if you don't. But the f-o-r-u-m-s here can help too.

How it went down
I started the day by putting my bottles in the dishwasher and running it without soap. The soap leaves a residue that will kill the head of a beer. Hopefully the water only wash will work. My dishwasher has a water and heat based sanitation cycle so I figure that's good. It then also works great as a bottle tree. I also put my caps in a camping mesh bag. I hope the dishwasher heat didn't melt the silicone in the cap which keeps the seal. Seems fine so far. When that was done I really started. I put on a crock pot full of meatballs.

Next I started to scrub clean my bottling gear. I use sodium percarbonate as the abbrasive. Rinsed lots. Then use iodophor to sanitize. Again sanitation time was long and reminiscent of some of my least favorite jobs in my illustrious career, but hell I had meatballs that were almost ready. Meatballs, bottles and gear was all ready. Put on some music. I played Canned Heat's Boogie House Tapes 1969-1999 Volume 2. Slow, dark, deep and blues-y. In that dimly lit juke joint sort of way. Like my beer.

Siphoning
Never stole gas, so this was probably the first time I made a siphon. Big day. Not hard, using gravity. It stopped a couple times. Some get concerned about sanitation at this point but what can you do. I sucked on the tube and let her rip. The siphon was going into the bottling bucket and I poured out some into a glass.

Here you get to taste the stuff.
I tasted the flat warm liquid. It had been sitting around for 3 weeks. It was my first batch ever and I had made some questionable modifications to the recipe. It had sat there, in my laundry room, 5 feet from the catbox, for 3 weeks. And... it wasn't bad.

The 2.5 oz of pure vanilla extract added at siphoning, tasted like way too much flavoring, but it wasn't completely messed up from the apple juice which I was worried about. I also added about 1/2 cup o' whisky, but that flavor didn't come through. Apparently I drank more whiskey with my apple cider over the holidays than I thought, and I just didn't have enough on hand to add. Let's hear it for planning. The uncarbonated beer did have a bit of a bite in the finish. Maybe the alcohol from the extra 2lbs sugar, or the apple juice turned cider. It was sweet and thin. Maybe 3 gallons of wort just ain't enough to make a full flavored beer when you have to add water to make 5 gallons? But hell! It's beer! Maybe it will age well.

Ah, time for a break. Mmmmmm beer and meatballs. F' it. I'm already fat from the holidays...



1 part tomato sauce, 1 part barbecue sauce, 2 splashes A1 sauce, 1 splash coke.

Next Capping!
My awesome wife who bought me my kit, made a big batch of chicken and rice soup the same day. Good times in the kitchen. Beer. Meatballs. Music. My girl. Chicken soup for the soul.. 'er whatever.

I had collected and bought a variety of 12oz, 22oz and some growlers. Bottling was fun. Maybe it's closer to drinking a beer than boiling up some wort, so I like it.

Dude... my friends and I could put all that down in one camping trip. Better plan up my next batch.
~ blog post coming up next ~
ODIN's BREW 5 Making a batch with a 32quart pot and tons of hops. Pliny the Elder Clone

Beginner Tips 2 -- Bottling

• You're ready to bottle after hydrometer tests taken over the course of 2 or 3 days are the same. Any change in the reading over time means there's still action. Use the recipe's FG to reference as well. I modified my recipe and the guys at my LHBS helped me figure out what my modified FG should be. Mash bills, different sugar's alcohol% stuff...There's lots to learn!!!
  
• Make a batch of meatballs before you start so you can munch along the way.
  
• I put my syruped priming sugar in my bottling bucket, then started my siphon to insure an even mixing, without undue aeration of the beer. I also added my liquid flavors this way while the siphoning was going on.
  
• Save a glass of the flat beer so you can taste it a bit.
  
• Dishwashing detergent residue kills head. I washed my bottles on the 'sanitation cycle of my dishwasher without using detergent. Hopefully this works.

p.s.

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Hey, reader.

If you're reading this, you probably clicked on a link in my sig at homebrewtalk.com.

I'm consolidating my blogging to my 'other' blog at http://morrisonblogback.blogspot.com/ Please have a look there!

Thanks

jds

I’ve decided to begin documenting my brews in order to help come up with a consistent process that gives me reliable beer. Hence, this is the log of my first documented brew, helpfully called Brew 1. Brew 1 is a kit, produced by Brewcraft, claiming to be a Little Creatures Pale Ale clone. Whether or not it is will be a question for another day, but the main reason I purchased this kit was to move away from the beginner’s Kit & Kilo, which I felt did not provide the complex flavours I was looking for in a beer.

The Brewcraft kit seems to be fairly comprehensive, at least to a new brewer like myself. Supplied in the kit were a standard Black Rock Pilsner Blonde can of goo, a kilo of Brewcraft’s Lager Enhancer Brew Blend #15 (a blend of Dextrose, Dried Malt Extract, and Corn Syrup), 250g of Brewcraft Wheat Unhopped Spraymalt, 12g of Willamette hops and 12g of Cascade hops. This was definitely a step up in complexity from a Kit & Kilo, and I was a little nervous before the brew began, but reading the (rather simplified, unfortunately) directions a couple of times made me confident I knew what I was doing.

To start with, I dumped my previous brew. (Oh noes, why would he do such a thing, doesn’t he know you never give up on a brew!?) It’d been 16 days in the fermenter, and the SG was still sky-high, up around 1.035. The beer was incredibly sweet, with rancid aftertones and it smelt like Vegemite. It’d been bubbling furiously the whole time. Let’s face it, something that shouldn’t have been in that bucket made it in there.

The first step I took was to take my yeast, a packet of Safale S-05, and pour it into a glass of tap water to re-hydrate. I’ve heard on the ******s that this can help the yeast get ready and take hold of a brew nice and quickly. All told it took about half an hour for the yeast to completely dissolve into the water, leaving a nice thick sludge. I think in future I should use a wider based container for this, to let the yeast have a bit more surface contact with the water, as it was sitting in a mound on the surface.

I then cleaned and sterilised my bucket using proper sanitiser rather than the bleach I’d previously been using, figuring that my earlier problems could be traced back to that. The sanitiser I bought is a house branded one sold at my LHBS, so I don’t know much about it, but from the feel it’s an alkali based sanitiser. After cleaning the bucket and gear and letting it sit for half an hour, I rinsed it thoroughly. (Not a no-rinse, sadly)

The next step was half filling my bucket with 10L of cold tap water. Into that, and while stirring vigorously with a whisk (to aerate while I dissolve) I poured the Brew Blend, the Spraymalt, and the finally the can of goo that’d been sitting in hot water for 15 minutes to soften. Finally I topped up the brew using another 8½L of water, as the recipe called for a final volume of 21L. I figured that the can, the 600ml of steeping water for the hops, the roughly 400ml of water the yeast was rehydrating in, and the powdered additions would take it the other 2½L of the way.

While this was going on, I had both bags of hops sitting in some freshly boiled water to steep for 15 minutes. They were giving off quite a nice smell, now this is what I’m looking for in brewing! I’m going to have to start playing with hops, I can see that now! I strained the bags out, and poured the liquid into the brew. After taking a OG reading (another step I’ve been missing previously, and something that’ll definitely come in handy diagnosing future problems) and getting a reading of 1.048, I pitched the yeast.

I have some concerns about this batch, as it’s high summer here in Far North Queensland, and the temperature’s about 32 degrees inside (89.6 degrees in that funny system you Americans use). It’s in a swamp cooler with ice in it though, and the temperature’s already down to 28 (82.4) degrees already. I’m going to try and hold it at 24 (75.2) or lower, but it’s going to depend on my keeping the ice up. I really need a brew-fridge, I think. I’ve started asking around if anyone can find one for me, we’ll see what happens.

Here's a pic of the high-tech brewing setup!

I just know that I might need that laundry sink for something one day, but at the moment...

All in all, it was a fun process, and I look forward to seeing what results I get. And it’ll be interesting to see how far I slide into the madness... By the way, if you guys enjoy reading this blog, please let me know, to keep me motivated to keep it up! I'll still be keeping notes for myself, but I'm thinking the blog could be a bit of fun.

Another article from our blog on improving beer clarity and using fining agents:

==> Fining Agents - Improving Beer Clarity

Cheers,
Brad

Ok, this is for anyone who has done this before. I am in the process of fermenting off an otmeal stout. I am using wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale yeast which calls for temps 64-75F. I am trying temps from 59-61F. Any ideas how this will affect the final flavor?

WTF, over!!!

Well mashing sucked ass. My stopper and valve setup fit real nice on the trial run, but after adding the hot water, it leaked everywhere. I pulled the stopper deeper into the hole in my 50qt cooler and pulled it all the way through. **** is running everywhere, I am being scalded, and I have to plunge my hand in to the mash tun to fix it.

THis happened a few time in varying degrees of suckiness, but I finally got the 6.5 gallons into the pot and I am waiting on it to boil now.

It is below freezing outside, where I am brewing, and as I wach the patio down with water, it freezes and now it like some satanic ice-capade "MX's Brewing on Ice"

Man I need a beer.

Tim

Well Brewing today!!

Things got off to a a rocky start, with a yeast starter for dry yeast. Yes, I know I do not need one, but when you are drinking, what you need to do, and what you do are 2 different things.

Decided to use the "starter" I made, also have some another pack of dry yeast as a back up.

Milled my grain with the old trusty Corona mill, hooked up the drill, so it was a lot faster than last time.

Everything is going well, mash has started and will cjheck the temp at the 1/2 way mark.

Tim