I went to bottle up my latest batch (English Brown Ale) thinking that I had plenty of bottles - I have 11 of the 1L flip top bottles that I bought from NotLarry, plus I had a case of 12 22 oz. bottles from before, and then another 12 of the 1L flip top bottles in a box. Well, as it turns out I'm short 5 of the 22 oz. bottles (somebody didn't return the empty after I gave them some free homebrew!) and the unopened box of flip top bottles I had didn't come with the tops!

I had to improvise - there was a nearly empty 2L bottle of Black Cherry Soda in the fridge, so I emptied it out, washed it out, and it was barely able to hold the leftover that I had in the bottling bucket.

I decided to bottle instead of keg this batch since I plan on giving some out at Christmas.

Name : English Brown Ale
Recipe:
3.3 lbs. Plain Amber Malt Extract
2 Lbs. Plain Amber Dry Malt Extract
8 oz. Crushed Crystal Malt 60L
1 oz. Willamette Hops (Bittering, 60 min)
1/2 oz. Willamette Hops (Finishing, 5 min)
11g Nottingham Yeast
(Above ingredients are the contents of a Brewer's Best English Brown Ale kit)

Brew Date: 21 Nov 2009
Bottling Date: 13 Dec 2009
Drinking Date: Christmas!

Starting Gravity: 1.040
Final Gravity: 1.009
ABV: 4.1%
Calories: 131.5
Carbs: 12.9

(Calculations from Mr. Good Beer)


This time I'm fermenting down in cellar of the house, rather than inside. This is 100% closed off from sunlight and since it is underground on 3 sides is stays a pretty constant temperature in the mid 50s.

I also finally got to use the banjo burner that my parents gave me for Christmas last year. The nice thing is that it easily cut 45 minutes off of the time it takes to brew a batch of beer, because it heats up the kettle very quickly! The downside is that the black paint on the diffuser bubbled off as soon as I started using it and left a sooty, black residue all over the bottom of my brew kettle. I don't know what the manufacturer was thinking, because I didn't even have the thing turned up full blast. I guess people don't think everything through when designing a product. Hopefully it's caked/burned off enough to not force me to get out the brillo pads again after the next batch.

So I decided to try out one of the techniques listed in the brew recipe book that my sister bought me for Christmas this past year. Instead of just letting my Apfelwein mature in the normal fashion I decided to give is a blackberry flavor. Here's how to do it:

1. Make your Apfelwein the way you normally would - 5 gallons of cider + 2 pounds of corn sugar + 1 packet of Montrachet yeast go into a fermenter for 6 weeks.
2. When you get ready to rack to secondary, take 2-3 bags of frozen blackberries and heat them in 120F water (just enough to cover the top) for 20 minutes to loosen up the enzymes and sugar.
3. Don't drain the berries! Put the whole pan full of stewed fruit in the bottom of the secondary before you add anything else.
4. Rack your batch from primary to secondary (this means siphon it, basically) and let it ferment/age for 2 more weeks.
5. Rack to bottles or kegs and let it age like you normally would.

Now a note about the aging - I'm anxious to see how this plays out, because my sample from the day I racked it to the kegs the batch was much more mellow than a typical Apfelwein would be at this point. It looks and tastes very much like White Zinfandel wine, but with a lot more kick to it. The blackberry flavor is very subtle and hopefully it will come out more as it ages.

This is just a place holder to keep track of how many batches I've made. I lost the piece of paper I made my notes on. :(

However, it was a standard batch of Brewer's Best Red Ale. I kegged it up on 21 Feb 2009 and it came out really well, though a bit darker in color than I anticipated. It's brown in color, but more red ale in taste than the traditional brown ales that I've been making.

I have been meaning to make another batch of cider and another of beer since PhreakNIC, but simply haven't had the time to gather up all of the required ingredients and then to make them. I finally decided to go ahead and do the cider by itself, but since it was already too late to have any by Christmas, I thought it would be nice to start a batch on Winter's Solstice. Four years ago today I was standing on the rocks of Stonehenge, watching the sun come up between the pillars. It was cold as could be and I nearly froze my everything off. It's cold here in Tennessee, too, but inside the house it's kept just under 70 F. To help make this a Winter Solstice batch I'm employing evaporative cooling - I have the fermenter sitting in the bathtub with about 2" of cold water in the bottom and a wet towel wrapped around the carboy. The bottom of the towel is in the water, so it will continue to wick the moisture up and keep the temperature of the fermenter cooler than the ambient temperature. This hack is also known as an Arizona Air Conditioner.
Winter Solstice is the first day of winter, the longest night of the year, and a time that I have always enjoyed, even before my trip to England. Those are the things I'll associate with this batch of cider, as well. I hope to listen to the Paul Winter Consort concert on NPR tonight, which I try to do every year.

Preparation Date : 21 Dec 2008
Kegging Date : 1 Feb 2009
Drinking Date : 14 Feb 2009

Name : pn0x0bian Pumpkin Ale
Recipe:
3.3 lbs. Plain Amber Malt Extract
2 Lbs. Plain Amber Dry Malt Extract
8 oz. Crushed Crystal Malt 60L
1 oz. Willamette Hops (Bittering, 60 min)
1/2 oz. Willamette Hops (Finishing, 5 min)
11g Nottingham Yeast
(Above ingredients are the contents of a Brewer's Best English Brown Ale kit)
2 Tbsp. Pumpkin Pie Spice
2 Tbsp. Imitation Vanilla Extract


Brew Date: 7 Sep 2008
Secondary Date: 21 Sep 2008
Kegging Date: 4 Oct 2008
Drinking Date: 10 Oct 2008

Starting Gravity: 1.053
Final Gravity: 1.007
ABV: 6.1%
Calories: 172.2 per 12 oz.
Carbs: 13.4 per 12 oz.

(Calculations from Mr. Good Beer)

Notes:
Tweaked this just a bit from the last batch that I had made. I put a half tablespoon less of Vanilla in it. I also added the pumpkin pie spice into the water before the grains. This seemed to do a much better job of dissolving the spices into the wort and the smell has carried over past fermentation.

Limelight

Recipe:
Brewer's Best American Light Ale
(Sorry, I threw out the directions before getting the exact ingredients)
6 fresh limes (purchase 1 week after you brew!)

Brew Date: 15 Jun 2008
Secondary Date: 22 Jun 2008
Keg Date: 29 Jun 2008

Starting Gravity: 1.039
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.009
Estimate ABV: 3.91%
Estimated Calories/Pint : 175

I decided to make a "lawnmower beer" for summer - something light and low in alcohol content so that I can drink a few while mowing the lawn, or sitting outside watching the grass grow. I decided to go a little south of the border, though, and make a lime flavored beer.

After only 1 week in the primary fermentation stage, I took 6 fresh limes and scraped the zest off of them into the secondary fermenter. I then cut each lime in half, squeezed out as much juice into the secondary as possible, then dropped the lime halves into there as well. Once I had all of the limes, zest and juice in there, I siphoned the wort from the primary to the secondary. This allowed the yeast to wake back up as I started getting bubble on the airlock around every 20-30 seconds.

(From Jan 12)

For Christmas I got a kit to convert my beer fridge into a kegerator. This weekend while I had the house to myself I ran to Lowe's for a 2.5" hole saw, got out the power drill and went to it. It didn't take long at all to do - about 1 hour - and looks as good as a pre-made kegerator. The only drawback is that as I was moving the kegs out of the fridge I noticed how close I am to being out of beer! Fortunately I realized that about 30 minutes before the home brew store in Murfreesboro closed and was able to make it down there in time to pick up one kit. I'll be making an American Nut Brown Ale tomorrow morning, apparently.

(Finally uploaded a picture on Feb 19)

Batch #9 - Apfelwein Me Dine Me

I decided to give another try to Ed Wort's Apfelwein recipe, but with the correct amount of sugar this time (2 lbs). I did make some other alterations, though, which are the addition of:

2 tablespoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

As with the Pumpkin Ale, the cinnamon tended to clump up and stick to the sides, so that is why I have such a high amount in it. My sampling before adding the yeast yielded a very tasty, yet very stout (in terms of sugar) cider. If that taste can hang on through the two months of living in the fermenter then we'll have a tasty batch indeed.

Mixing Date: 9 Feb 2008
Kegging Date: 29 March 2008
Starting Gravity: 1.065
Estimated Final Gravity: 0.992
ABV: 9.57%
Calories/Pint: 283

Final Notes : Since I left this one in the fermenter for so long it really kicked up the ABV. I took both the original and final gravity measurements three times each just to make sure that I was accurate on them. You can really smell the alcohol content when around the stuff, so it's truly that stout. Taste of the batch is very much like a wine, which makes sense because I used Montrachet yeast. There's a very slight taste of apple to it, mainly because so much of the sugars were converted to alcohol. You can also taste a hint of the cinnamon, but I can't detect any of the vanilla. However, it's a very nice batch all around.

Name : Brewer's Best Kit - American Nut Brown Ale
Recipe:
6.6 lbs. Plain Amber Malt Extract
2 Lbs. Plain Amber Dry Malt Extract
4 oz. Crushed Crystal Malt 60L
4 oz. Crushed Chocolate
1 oz. Crushed Black Patent
1 oz. Willamette Hops (Bittering, 55 min)
1 oz. Willamette Hops (Finishing Flavoring, 15 min)
1 oz. Galena Hops (Finishing Aroma, 5 min)
11g Nottingham Yeast

Brew Date: 13 Jan 2008
Secondary Date: 20 Jan 2008
Kegging Date: 3 Feb 2008
Drinking Date: 6 Feb 2008

Starting Gravity: 1.062
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.013
ABV: 6.4%

Notes:
I thought I'd try a different recipe kit, but not too different since I'm still pretty new at this. I think the next batch I'll diversify even further and go for an Irish Stout or a Red Ale.

Holy smokes, I've had a blow out! I went into the closet this morning to discover that there was so much kreuzen (beer foam) that it had popped the airlock off and had spilled out all over the carpet, and some of my wife's clothes. Oops.