January 2008 Archives

Paulbeer isn't just for home brews?

Nope. Starting in the near future, I'll be reviewing a new beer a couple nights per week. I'd like to stay off of the liver transplant list, so I will be limiting my reviews to 2 or 3 per week.

So the mini kegs arrived, are they in use yet?

Sadly, no they aren’t. I stink.

Work has been consuming most of my time lately, so my brews are still sitting in the carboys. I need to bottle/keg the dry-hopped batch soon. I don't want it to get "funky".

I know using work as an excuse is pretty lame. It's only partially true. I've just been lazy as shit the past few weeks. I want to bottle that stuff soon because I'm dying to try it out.

Maybe tomorrow night.

Short porch tonight...I'm a little tired. 

Have I mentioned that I hate bottling?

Probably.

After spending the night out last night wining beering and dining, I came home and found myself wide awake. Not only was I wide awake, but I felt the need to be productive. I took 3 cases of empty bottles and soaked them in hot soapy water so the labels would peel off somewhat nicely. I let them sit overnight covered so the soapy solution and heat would penetrate the paper and glue. When I checked them this morning, they were ready to be cleaned. I then spent the rest of the morning scrubbing bottles. Fun.

Why still mess with these damn bottles?

 

I’d like to bottle half of each brew and then keg the rest. I like the bottles for the portable and convenience factors, so I guess that’s somewhat of a fair tradeoff. According to UPS tracking: Mini keg kit should arrive tomorrow, NICE! Unfortunately, neither of the Paulbeers will be ready in time for Superbowl Sunday. :( That sucks.

 

Hey, nice labels!

 

As you can see, my fiancée has become quite the Anne Geddes. I have been employing her (annoying her is more like it) to take the photos that you see here on my blog. Some of them were taken by me, but those are the not so good ones. I’m getting my own DSLR camera soon and I’ll be taking the photos myself but until then, it’s all her. Thanks :)

 

I’ve been trying to come up with a label design for my homebrews, mostly for the bottles that I hand out to friends. I decided to use the header from my blog and make that the focal point. I didn't want the label to be too busy so I thought I'd just stick with the logo and a generic font for the type of beer. It needs a little work still, but I think it came out okay.

 

I think for the next version I'll make the logo smaller this way you do not see the drastic wrap around. A border around the edges might also work.

 

We shall see.

The mini keg system I bought last week didn't arrive yet. So instead of kegging the lazy ass wheat ale, I decided to rack and dry hop my amber ale.

This is the first time I used hop leaves instead of just pellets. One thing I noticed while siphoning the beer into the carboy is that the hop leaves kept clogging my siphon. There were a lot of air bubbles in the hose, but that's not what really bothered me. Every time this thing got clogged, I had to pop the bottom off to unclog it. I am worried about contamination so I’m not sure I’ll be using the hop leaves anymore. We’ll see how the beer turns out. Check out the pics.

One of my favorites is the close up of the carboy with the hops floating on top. I dry hopped with 1 ounce of Hallertau. One other thing to note: add more water to the wort next time. I used 3 gallons and I think I'll add another half gallon. If you look at the pictures of the two carboys side by side, you can see a difference in measurement.

I had hoped to have this ready for Superbowl weekend but I'm not sure that will happen. On the plus side, the wheat ale should be ready by then! I should receive the mini keg system tomorrow or Tuesday. I’ll post some pics of it then.

I have a tendency to be a little lazy at times…

I bought a recipe of the month kit from Beer-wine.com last summer and I finally made it two months ago. Why did it take so long? The answer: because I Again, why did it take so long?

The recipe cameJhad to crush a pound of wheat. with 1 pound of wheat, 2 pounds of dried malt extract, and 1 quart of Briess Bavarian Wheat LME. It also included some Tettnanger hop pellets, Irish moss (which they forgot to include), 10 packets of “real” lemon juice, and ¾ of a cup of priming sugar.

That is the brew right before I racked it. It looked a little dark in the primary, so I got a little nervous. Once I start to siphon it out, I could see the real color and all was good. That's much better looking, isn't it? I thought so as well! Looks good. More laziness...

I hate sanitizing bottles. I thought I'd get a jump on bottle-duty by sanitizing a case of bottles in the dishwasher. I've used my d/w before for sanitizing bottles and it works great. It has a special sanitizing setting where it uses hi-temp water and very hi heat to dry and kill bacteria. Only one small problem...Jet Dry. Yep. Beer bottles do not like Jet Dry (or any other rinse agents for that matter). Rinse agents kill the head when you pour the beer. Oh the beer stays fully carbonated, but you get no head. And no head we all know what it's like to not get any head...when we pour beer. John Palmer explains why in his book. If you don't already have it, get 'How to Brew'. This is one of the best brewing books available. He does a great job at explaining everything you need to know. It even has pictures of what things should look like and it has some recipes in it. Well worth the money.

I digress. Bottles, I hate sanitizing bottles. I decided to invest in a mini keg system. I don't really have much room in my house for a kegerator and I really do not want to run downstairs every time I want a beer. Mini kegs are small enough to fit in the fridge and the tap-a-keg system fits onto them with an adapter. Beer-wine.com has a Mini keg system available at a reasonable price. Check it out. I should be receiving that soon, I hope. I'd like to try this beer and play with the mini keg tap system. That should be pretty cool.

By the time I was done brewing Saturday night, it was about 12:30AM. I couldn't pitch the yeast yet because the mixture was still way too hot. I left it outside with the lid on for about an hour or so but that didn't help much. I decided to just bring it back in and pitch the yeast in the morning.

I checked the temp again in the morning and saw that it was at 80 degrees. I also did another gravity test to compare it to the initial and I'm glad I did. There was a difference of 7 points between the two tests. The most recent one is just about where I want it to be The target is 1.050, and my actual reading is 1.049.

I think this will turn out just fine. I'm already thinking about what I can do to enhance this beer. I plan on dry hoping with some Hallertau hops. I really do enjoy the aroma that Hallertau hops have. Hmmmn...could there be an all Hallertau brew in the future? Possibly!

GO PATS!!! Just to clear the air: I'm a Chicago Bears fan. <pause for laughter> I really do not like any of the teams in the playoffs except for New England. Not only that, but I'm tired of hearing about the '72 Dolphins. ALRIGHT. WE GET IT. YOU GUYS WERE GOOD.

 

Uhm...hello...beer blog...???

Yes.

The wort is done boiling and has been added to 3 gallons of cold water. My trusty thermometer says 120 degrees. A little too hot for yeast. The current temperature outside is about 40 degrees so guess where my wort is…

 

I need it to cool down to a nice luke warm 75 degrees. I’m going to jumpstart my yeast before I add it to the mix. I’m using a single packet of Nottingham ale yeast.

 

Ok, time to clean up this mess. I took a few pics of the hops and the boiling wort. I’ll be posting them to my Flickr account soon.

 

I’ll finish up posting on this tomorrow. It’s pretty late and I need a fix of ROCKBAND!

 

I just added another helping of hops to the brew. I need to continue to boil for another 15 minutes and then add the final helping of hops. The last helping is a last minute change. Instead of adding 1 ounce of Kent Goldings, I’m going to mix it up with some Hallertau leaf. I have a nice pic I’ll post on Flickr later on.

 

GO PATS!!!

 

Be back soon…

 

I started the brewing process rather late today because of that damn Rockband game. BTW, I’ve gotten much better at it. My future bro-in-law called me earlier to see if I needed a guitarist for my band. Needless to say we played for a couple of hours.

 

Go Pats!!!

 

Prior to brewing, I noticed that my malts were different colors. My amber was rather light and my pale was rather dark. I thought that maybe my brew supply joint mixed up the containers but I remember watching them pour the gooey goodness direct from the barrels and they were labeled. We shall see.

 

50 minutes until I add the next helping of hops.

 

Today's the day that I finally brew this ale I've been talking about. That is if I can peel myself away from ROCKBAND! I bought this game the other night and all I want to do is play. I bought Rockband because of the drum kit, but I soon realized that it is much more difficult to play the drums in Rockband than it is to play in real life. Give it a couple more weeks and I'll be the 360 version of Neil Peart! ;) Check him out.

 

Damn, that boy good!

 

Back to the brewing.

I need to find a new brew pot. I have a 12qt stainless steel stock pot that works well for small batch brewing (about 5 gallons). Once I perfect this ale recipe, I’d like to start making at least 10 gallon batches. Since a 5 gallon batch yields about 2 cases, 10 gallons should give me about 4! (How ‘bout that math?!) I’ll check with my home brew supply connections and see what they have to offer. Well that’s all for now. I need to get started. I’ll be back later with some updates.

I've been working on creating an ale recipe that will hopefully taste like one of my very first ales. The problem with this is the first ale was a kit that is made with cans of hopped malt extract. The varieties of hops used are not listed and I have no idea what the malt mixture is, but I’m determined to recreate this beer.

I've been doing some research on hop varieties and what their characteristics are when added at various times of boil. Since the ale I’m trying to brew is not very bitter, I’m looking to use hops that are low in alpha acids and have a great aroma. I’ve decided to use mainly Kent Goldings with small amounts of Fuggles and Hallertau. I’ll use most of the Hallertau in the dry hopping process.

I paid my local homebrew supply store a visit this weekend to pickup the ingredients I need. Since there is a global hop shortage, the amount of hops I can purchase is limited. I picked up a couple of ounces of Hallertau and Kent Goldings along with some extract and Nottingham ale yeast. The recipe will call for about 5 ounces of hops total, but that’s ok because I have a secret stash. I started to order a couple ounces of miscellaneous hops whenever the need to refresh supplies came about. They are shipped in vacuum sealed packages and they are kept cool.

When’s brew day? Next Saturday! I’ll also be bottling the Belgian wheat that’s been sitting in one of my carboys for a few weeks.

That’s pretty much all I have for now. I’ll be back later this week.