10 Jul 2009
Recently I started brewing beer with a couple of friends/beer enthusiasts here in town. Our first brew, an Arrogant Bastard clone, didn’t turn out so well – color was there, smell was there, even taste was pretty close – but we failed at the carbonation process. After bottling we immediately chilled it and wondered why, after a week and a half later it had no carbonation, when we should’ve let it sit at room temperature for the week or so first. We talked to a guy at our local brew store who said the yeast should revive itself if we pulled it out of the fridge and let it sit for another week or so. So that’s what we’ve done and hopefully all will be well. In the meantime, I’ve got three six packs and two bombers sitting on my kitchen counter.
Not to be put down we decided to keep going with it, learning from our mistakes, and so last night we began our second beer, a hefeweizen. We’re mimicking a Paulaner with a bit more fruitiness. The hops smelled incredible, almost like kiwis and bananas. We used the appropriate ammount of water this time, so it won’t be too watery and we’ll be sure and let it carbonate properly in two weeks when we bottle.
This was a really easy beer to make, supplies only costing $30. Only one type of hops and totalling only 2.15 ounces, and only nine pounds of grains/malt. We boiled last night and tossed in the yeast this morning. Two weeks should leave us with a tasty weizen. I can’t wait.
Up next is my choice – a Dogfish Head 90min IPA clone. It’ll be an expensive one, but being that it’ll be our third attempt, it should turn out pretty well. The 90min IPA is one of my favorite beers so having a fridge stuffed with it will certainly make me a happy camper for quite some time. And talk about a good beer, this thing calls for a total of 18.5 pounds of grains/malts and three different hops (Amarillo, Simcoe, and Warrior) totalling 5.15 oz. My mouth watered typing that.
For those of you who don’t quite follow, grains are used for aroma, color, and taste. Darker grains produce darker beers whereas lighter grains produce lighter beers. Malts (or grain sugars) are needed for alcohol production. The yeast will eat the sugars and convert them to alcohols. Hops add to flavor, but are mainly for aroma and bitterness. And in my opinion, the more hops the better.
Stay tuned!
07 Jul 2009
About one week ago we bottled our first home brew, an Arrogant Bastard clone and since then it’s been chilling (literally) in my fridge, eyeing me and teasing me each time I open it. I had to stick it in the back and hide it as best I could with the Schlitz “High Gravity” deuce and the remaining Leinenkugel’s from Melissa’s visit.
At the time of bottling we had purchased a bomber of the real Arrogant Bastard to compare color, smell, and taste. Taste, of course, can’t really be determined until after the carbonation process completes, which is about ten days from bottling.
That day is tomorrow and oh man, I can’t wait.
02 Jul 2009
For those of you who don’t yet know, my boss and I have decided to take on home brewing. He’s done it before, but this was my first time. Being a lover of beer, it’s definitely something I’d like to make a permanent hobby. It’s really not expensive. The only hard part is waiting for it to be ready.
Our first brew, we decided to make an Arrogant Bastard Ale clone. Stone Brewing company is one of my favorite craft breweries and always produces very nicely done beers, and the recipe we found really wasn’t that difficult so we decided to start there.
The whole process takes about 4 weeks. That’s from start to pop the cap and enjoy.
Begin with boiling the malt and water for a total of 90 minutes. Throw in hops at 30 minutes in, then again at 90 minutes in.
Much of the water will evaporate leaving a semi-thick sugary molasses behind.
At 90 minutes turn off the heat and toss in the remaining hops. Let sit and cool for about 30 minutes.
Once the mixture cools down enough to handle, you want to transfer it to the fermentation tank. In doing so, you must strain out the loose grains, hops and other impurities.
Once you get it into the fermentation tank and it cools to room temperature, you add the yeast. Yeast is temperature sensitive so it needs to be room temperature. The yeast will literally eat the sugars producing alcohol. This, along with the type of hops you choose and grains are what give the beer its flavor.
Let the yeast do it’s thing for about 14 days. You’ll know when it’s done because there’ll be all the sludge at the bottom of the tank and no more bubbling.
Two weeks later, fermentation has stopped and we’re left with our beer minus carbonation. We need to transfer the beer to another tank. In our case we had to syphon it to get the pour started.
Transferring beer to new tank.
Before the new tank of beer gets too full, you need to boil another cup of malt and add it to the new tank. These sugars will eventually carbonate the beer once bottled.
As the 5 gallons of beer is transferring we decided to rinse out the bottles which were sitting in sanitizing solution for an hour. We also sanitized the caps.
Our cleaned and empty bottles. We had collected about 70 of them.
Of course we had to sample it, even without carbonation. We got the color pretty good. We’re excited to taste the final product in about a week.
This was our inspiration. We bought a bottle to compare.
The final product!
This was a great experience and something I definitely enjoy doing and wish to continue. There’s definitely an art to it and it’s nice to be able to taste the fruits of your labor, even if it does take a month. The wait, I’m sure, will be worth it.
We’d be happy to ship bottles if you want to try it. We’ll be brewing once a month with new beers. Next up is a traditional German wheat similar to Paulaner.
More to come!