There's been a lot of talk about Joe Strummer lately. Since I'm a fan of the Clash, I'm dedicating this entry to their late front man.

I know I probably shouldn't have, but I cracked open one of the wheat ales tonight. I was looking forward to it all day! (Does that mean I have a problem?)

I opened the bottle and heard the sound of gases being released. So far so good.

I slowly poured the beer into one of my Peroni glasses that I received for Christmas. Nice color, nice thick head. That's about all that was nice. It has an after taste that sort of sneaks up on you. Not my favorite. I think I was a little premature in opening this beer, at least I hope that's all. It will really suck if this beer...sucks.

Well at least it looks good!

I'll revisit this beer in a month or so. In the mean time, here are some pics. Enjoy!

The past few days have been pretty productive, as far as beer related activities go. Late last week, I bottled my wheat ale and last night I bottled my amber ale.

The mini kegs take about 4 weeks or so to carbonate compared to the 1 to 2 weeks for bottles. They are pretty easy to clean and fill. If they condition as good as a bottle, I'll be very pleased.

Since you need different amounts of priming sugar for mini kegs and bottles, I had to transfer the beer twice. Thanks to Google calculator, I was able to easily determine the proper amount of priming sugar per batch.

Priming Sugar Measurements

1 x 5L mini keg - 1 1/3 tablespoons (or 4 teaspoons) of priming sugar.
3.5 gallons for bottling - 8.5 tablespoons of priming sugar. (It was actually 8.4 but I rounded up)

I've done some research and found that the average amount of priming sugar for a 5 gallon batch for mini kegging is 1/3 of a cup. For bottles, I typically use 3/4 of a cup. Keep in mind this is for priming sugar. If you use DME or LME, your measurements will be different.

The color of the beer is a deep amber. The lower left tile in the mosaic shows just how dark it really is. The lower right pic looks like I'm siphoning oil out of a can. I should name it 10W-40 :) As the beer was transferring into the bucket, you could see the oils from the hops mixing in with the beer.

The aroma was very nice. Noticeable amounts of hops without any grassy undertones. I was a little concerned about that since I let it dry hop for longer than I originally planned.

Bottling was a breeze last night. I was able to fill 32 x 12 ounce bottles and have enough left over to fill the hydrometer tube. The fact that I didn't use enough water accounts for the deep amber color and the lesser than normal amount of beer. Oh well, I'm happy with the way it is turning out. I sampled a small amount and I think it will be very good.

We'll know in a week or so!

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. 

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 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.

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!

GO PATS!!!

Be back soon…