Bottling Day!

My work schedule getting rearranged thanks to the holidays prevented me from getting this up in a timely manner, but here we go...

Bottling happened on November 30th, and as far as I can tell, went pretty perfectly. I was on my own, so photos and videos were less accessible... what? I was busy! But here's the one I did grab. Apologies for the bit of sideways time...:

After boiling the sugar and racking into the bottling bucket, I began the long, repetitive process of getting beer into the bottles, and capping them. It takes a good long while to fill and cap 48 beers by hand...

The first bottle!

And then, about an hour later...

The entire haul

I should also mention that the entire bottling process was made entirely possible by the local homebrew shop, which I visited for the first time the day before I bottled. It was necessary, because I didn't have the foresight to collect bottles, so I had to buy some. They have EVERYTHING I need. I also picked up caps, dextrose for bottling, and a couple other essentials. This place is going to keep me from having to buy supplies online. If you are looking to do brewing in the Boston area, check out the Modern Homebrew Emporium in North Cambridge. They're very awesome.

Brew 1, Day 8: Into the glass!

One more week, then we bottle!

Switched the beer over to the glass carboy for a little secondary fermentation action. This is not a particularly exciting stage, but it gets the beer away from all the dead yeast and sediment, which makes it taste better. Therefore, it is a terribly important stage. Cause good-tasting beer is kinda the whole point, right?

It looks more like cider at the moment, but I took the lid off of the bucket after I'd racked everything over to the carboy, and the lovely, delicious smell of hops hit me full on. I'm excited.

The one thing that sucks - that glass carboy is sort of a giant pain in the ass to clean and sanitize. My kit came with a brush... but it's not nearly long enough. I'll have to find a better one.

Sometime this week, likely after Thanksgiving festivities, I'll have to get to the homebrew store in Davis Square to get some bottles and crowns. Next Monday, into the bottles it goes!

This is all the crap that was left in the bucket. Smelled good, though.

Brew 1, Day 6: Temperature Woes

So far, so good… I think. I was a little concerned earlier in the week, because I’ve had a slightly difficult time keeping the temperature consistent – I never thought that I’d have such an issue keeping my apartment cool enough in mid- to- late-November, but there it is. The fermometer strip on the side of my bucket is running pretty warm, most of the time sitting just at the edge of the “Ale” range (right around 75 degrees).

The problem is the only decent place to set up camp in my apartment is in the kitchen, where the cat is most of the time locked out, so she can’t harass anything. But it’s a kitchen, so it does tend to heat up from time to time, and when we close everything up for the night (kitchen door, door to the balcony, etc.), the temperature starts to creep up. I don’t have a basement or a spare fridge or anything, so I kinda just have to risk it. I guess this brew will give me a good idea if it works or not.

If it turns out well, I’ll keep doing what I’m doing… if not I might have to improvise. We have a closet by the front door that seems to stay a little cooler than the rest of the apartment… I might need to find a thermometer and get an actual gauge of that. It might be a good place for future fermentations.

Since we have the balcony, I was sort of hoping that in the spring and fall I might be able to stick the bucket or carboy out on the balcony, but I don’t think the temperature would be consistent enough. Stupid New England - Mid-sixties in late November, with the possibility of low forties in early May.

Moving everything over to the glass carboy on Monday for fermentation week 2, and then likely ordering another kit to start up. I need to get up to the homebrew store in Cambridge to pick up some bottles, so I’ll likely take a look around there too. I’m thinking something akin to a winter warmer/spiced ale to get me through February.

Also, a buddy of mine posted this on Twitter: Paste Magazine put together a list of the top 25 American breweries of the decade. It’s a good list, and I don’t necessarily disagree with anyone on there. I just feel like they definitely left a few off, namely Harpoon. Maybe that’s just the Boston pride in me. I'd also throw Smuttynose on there if I had my way. They definitely nailed the top two, though: Allagash & Dogfish Head. Any time I can get my hands on a 60 or 90-min IPA draft, I’m a happy camper, and I would drink nothing but Allagash White and be the most content man on the planet.

Brew 1, Day 1: American Wheat Beer

Finally got this thing started... took long enough (which is no one's fault but my own), but I'm up and running! We did the actual brewing today, so in about a month, I should have a delicious batch of American wheat beer!

First up, the background:

The Equipment

The girl bought me a full 2-stage equipment kit for my birthday. There are a ton of different types of kits with all different kinds of equipment, but as far as I can tell, this is a really good middle-of-the-road kit; it's got everything you need to do a two-stage fermentation, which you don't need for all brews, but as I've read it does make every brew better. The only thing it didn't come with is bottles and crowns, but I've got about two weeks to get off my butt and pick those up!

That kit combined with a nice big stock pot from the girl's parents got me on my way. I ran into a bunch of delays, mostly based around timing or an overflowing sink in my kitchen, but today the stars aligned, and we got brewing!

The Ingredients

The stuff that beers are made of...

I wanted to keep it nice and simple until I got the hang of the process, so for my first (and probably my second... and maybe my third) batches, I went with a malt extract ingredient kit. These are available at any home brew shop, and on dozens of brewing supply shops online. On a recommendation from the girl's uncle, I went with a kit from Northern Brewer, specifically the American Wheat Beer. It looked pretty straightforward, not complicated, and it's a type I do so thoroughly enjoy! It comes with:

• 6 pounds of wheat malt extract
• 1 oz. Willamette hops pellets
• 1 oz Cascade hops pellets
• 1 packet of Safale US-05 dry yeast

... meaning, of course, everything you need but water. Let's do it!

The Boil

The stockpot I'm using is huge, and dwarfs my stove top. I was a little worried about stability, but it didn't seem to be an issue. 2 1/2 gallons of water in, and set to boil. It took the better part of half an hour, just cause it's so big. Then, in went the extract...

Mmm... gooey...

The brew post-extract

After that, it took another 10 minutes to get back up to a boil, at which point the Willamette hops went in. Another 45 minutes, and in went the Cascade hops.

Wort boiling away, doing it's hoppy thing

15 minutes later, it was smelling hoppy and ready to cool. I don't have an immersion chiller or anything like that, so I went the low-tech route: cold water. I had a little ice which I threw into the first cold bath, but it didn't last long. We probably changed out the water eight or ten times over the course of an hour to get it to a proper, cool temperature.

Ahh, a nice cold bath...

Once the wort was cooled, another 3 gallons of water into the extremely sanitary bucket. We poured the wort on top of that, and topped it off to an even five gallons.

Foamy... sorta like beer?

Then, the first real confirming test of the batch: the original gravity. The ingredient kit stated that it should have a specific gravity of 1.040... and we nailed it, dead on! That was comforting, because it's the first real test you have to tell you if you really messed something up. So far, so good, it seems...

A good hydrometer reading means a happy homebrewer!

After the good hydrometer reading, we pitched the yeast. Nothing too complicated here. Just a nice packet of yeast sprinkled on top. I didn't do anything too involved like rehydration, so the packet went straight into the wort.

The secret ingredient! ... it's yeast...

After that, we attached the lid and the airlock, sealed it up, and now... it's back to the waiting game...

All the crap left in the bottom of the brewpot... gross, but with a purpose!

Next up, I'm looking for some bubbles in the airlock within the next couple days, which means that we're fermenting! And then in a week, we move it all over to a glass carboy for stage 2!

The Journey Begins...

Hi. I'm about to start a new hobby. Wanna come?

For the past couple years, since I graduated college, I feel that I've done very little outside of work. I like my job, so that's not a terrible as it might sound, but I work a lot of afternoon-to-night shifts at odd hours, so it makes it hard to get out and do a ton. Lately, especially, I feel like I've gotten into something of a rut where I get up late, play video games for an hour, go to work, come home, go to bed. Because of when my time off is (mornings until about 1 PM, most days), it's not really conducive to going out or seeing people. And I'm getting bored. And cranky.

OK, there's a good chance I was cranky before I got into this rut, but it certainly hasn't helped. So I've been casually looking around for something else fun to do that will get me off the couch a little bit and give me something new to look into. And hey, if I can share it with some like-minded friends and family, even better!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my girlfriend and I figured out awhile back that we transformed into beer snobs. The term isn't really fair, and doesn't completely fit, but it's the closest thing I can think of. We both like good beer. I can't drink a lot of the mass-produced domestic swill that most people my age down (Buds, Millers, Coors, etc). If you like them, there's nothing wrong with them, they're just not my cup of tea (or mug of beer, I guess). I've certainly had them, but after having the good stuff from Harpoon, Dogfish Head, Smuttynose and a number of other fantastic, smaller breweries, I can't imagine any reason to drink the other stuff other than price. And I'm talking dollar drafts. But again, to each his own.

Last month, as a fun weekend thang, the girl and I headed to Harpoon's Boston brewery for a tour and tasting. That was fun, and tasty, but the tour was not exactly in-depth. And I wanna know the in-depth stuff. It's a version of cooking where the chemistry really comes out in force, and if you can get an understanding of what you're doing, you can really tweak the final product in every possible way. It sounded like fun, and I realized shortly thereafter that I had (hopefully) found my new hobby.

I turn 25 next week, and I made the girl blissfully happy by actually telling her what I wanted for my birthday for once. All I wanted was the tools. And since the box was sitting rather conspicuously in the lobby of our building, I opened them up this morning. She wins!

So the brewing adventure begins likely the Monday after next, since I've still got a couple things I need to pick up, and next week is gonna be a busy one. This blog was created with the best possible intent: to document the process in whatever form it takes: successes, discoveries, failures and disasters. Expect pictures, videos and rants of all kinds. I'm looking forward to it.