Second Draft Brewing

Winter Solstice -- tasting

2013-12-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

After three weeks of bottle conditioning, it was time to taste Winter Solstice. I chilled a couple of bottles in the fridge for a couple of hours, then poured into mugs.

Poured a velvety black with a moderate amount of off-white foam. Good head retention. Excellent coffee and chocolate aroma, both subtle but unmistakable.

Between the huge hop additions, the roasted barley, and the coffee and cocoa flavors, the taste is very bitter, but with a rich mouthfeel and malty sweetness to balance it out. Expected notes of dark chocolate and coffee -- it's rich and earthy. I don't detect the vanilla bean so much, but it could be the sort of thing that mostly serves to underline the predominant flavors. Despite the high ABV, it goes down smooth.

This came out great. I'm thrilled with it. I had bought some Founder's Breakfast Stout a week or so before trying Winter Solstice, and I honestly think they're comparable. I'll be proud to give some of it away as Christmas gifts... but I did end up buying four-pack holders this time.

Sorry, suckers!

Winter Solstice - bottling

2013-11-26T09:00:00.000-05:00

When I ran out of time, I decided to name the imperial chocolate coffee stout "Winter Solstice." The darkest of beers for the darkest of days.

Ultimately I opted against oaking. No regrets. After four weeks in the secondary, it was time to bottle.

First, I needed to make some coffee, which I would blend with the beer in the bottling bucket. In a sanitized bowl, I mixed 4 oz coarsely ground dark roast coffee with 32 oz bottled water, then covered. Let that sit for a couple of days, then strained through a sanitized strainer into a sanitized pitcher. The yield was less than 32 oz, more like 24 oz, but it smelled great, and cold-brewing would eliminate the tannin flavor of hot brewing.

Boiled my bottle caps for 10 minutes. Boiled 3/4 cup corn sugar in 1 pint of water for 10 minutes. Strained the caps through a sanitized colander. Brought the sugar solution down to temperature, then added it to the bottling bucket. Added the coffee.

Brought the carboy upstairs. Cocoa powder remnants ringed the container right above the surface of the beer, which was a deep black color with dark brown bubbles on top. There was a ton of sediment on the bottom, probably a combination of expired yeast and more cocoa powder.

Racked the beer into the bottling bucket. No splashing. Ultimately yielded about 4 1/2 gallons, which was a little lower than I expected given that I was adding the coffee. But still about in line with what I usually get.

Bottled. Uneventful. Got 49 bottles plus a tick more that I sampled rather than capping. No splashing, no problems with sediment. All went well.

Final gravity was 1.022. Again on target. That's a high number in general, but expected for the style, and so I was happy.

Sampled it. Tastes great. A deep, rich chocolate aroma girded by an unmistakable coffee scent. Velvety mouthfeel. Not sweet at all, very bitter, but the predominant flavor is of cocoa with the coffee as an accent. Really, really good. Looking forward to sampling a finished bottle in a couple of weeks. Probably should give it three weeks before trying one, but may not be able to wait that long.

Next I'll need to make some labels. It will be a shame to give so much of this away. Maybe we'll do four-packs this year. It's a high-gravity beer, after all.

Imperial Chocolate Coffee Stout, part 2

2013-11-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

I still haven't come up with a name.

Also, apparently I never hit the "publish" button on this post. It was supposed to go up on October 31. So that's fun.

Because I was traveling, I left the beer in the primary fermenter for two solid weeks. Visible activity in the fermentation lock had stopped after about four days, but that's no guarantee of activity or inactivity. The only way to know for sure is to measure, but since my hydrometer had been broken and I had not been able to take an initial gravity reading, there will always be some mystery about this beer.

Got my equipment ready for racking. After primary fermentation is done, the next step is to condition the beer for about a month with some additional ingredients. Once my equipment was sanitized and ready to go, I added 8 oz cocoa powder and one vanilla bean, split length-wise, to the carboy.

Adding powdered cocoa is one of those things that winds up being much messier and more complicated than you'd expect. Dumping it in through the carboy's narrow opening wouldn't have worked, and spooning it would have taken forever. I decided to use a modular kitchen funnel, which presented its own problem. The piece that was narrow enough to fit inside the carboy was too small, so I had to hit it in order to very slowly shake the powder through. The bigger one was so big that it could only sit atop the lip of the carboy, which was better for throughput but did result in my spilling cocoa powder all over the outside of the carboy. No big deal, just messy.

Siphoned the beer from the bucket to the carboy. No issues. Quiet, no splashing.

Took a sample with my new hydrometer. Specific gravity was 1.022, which was on target. Again, I don't know if the original gravity was also on target, but this is encouraging. At the very least, I feel confident that the yeast starter worked, and I will plan to do that again.

Early results are good. It looks fantastic, a deep and opaque black. Mixed with the cocoa powder, the beer in the carboy has a dark-brown foam on top. It looks like a cup of hot cocoa. And it tastes great, too. Malty and sweet with a rich mouthfeel, and an unmistakable chocolate character. If indeed the alcohol content is as high as it's supposed to be, it lacks the burn -- it's very smooth.

The recipe includes an optional step to oak the beer. I bought oak chips with the intention of doing so, but I think I've changed my mind. There's already so much going on. Part of the reason I initially planned to oak it was because of a "more=better" philosophy more than a genuine desire for an oaky flavor. So I think I'll skip -- but I reserve the right to change my mind.

Either way, this bad boy needs to do its thing for about four weeks before bottling. Long wait!

Imperial Chocolate Coffee Stout

2013-10-28T09:00:00.000-04:00

We're caught up! Onto the current brew.

Secret Santa Stout was only my second homebrew, but it was definitely the best I have made. It's my kind of beer -- boozy, malty, with some added flavors -- and it came out well. I gave away half of it for Christmas presents, and blasted through another dozen that I brought to a ski getaway with friends. Even though it's the best beer I've made, it's the one I drank the least. That has always bugged me.

That's why, after three consecutive brews that all disappointed in one way or another, I'm going back to the well. This Christmas, I'm making another big-ass stout. Haven't thought of a name yet, so for now, we'll just call it the Imperial Chocolate Coffee Stout.

Ingredients:

5 lbs light dried malt extract
3 lbs wheat dried malt extract
2 lbs chocolate malt
1 lb roasted barley
1 lb dextrine malt
1 lb CaraMunich malt
1 lb Special B malt
4 oz Kent golding hops
1 oz Galena hops
4 oz ground coffee
8 oz baking chocolate
8 oz cocoa powder
1 vanilla bean
1 oz French oak
Irish ale yeast

Wow! That is a crap-ton of ingredients. Incredibly malty, which is to be expected, but also the hoppiest beer I've ever made (it would have to be, if any hop character is going to break through all those sugars). There's just so much going on here. I'm very much looking forward to seeing how it turns out, but also wary that it's a bit more complicated than I'm used to. Every step has a couple of considerations that I don't usually need to worry about.

Before brewing, I took the time to make a yeast starter. Partly, this is because I got burned when making my Belgian strong ale earlier in the year. Also, the yeast package that came with the kit specifically says that it's good for starting gravities of up to 1.060, but the recipe calls for a starting gravity of 1.090-1.095.

Here's what I don't understand. Underpitching is apparently endemic among beginning and intermediate homebrewers. When you're buying a recipe kit, the vendor has all the information they need to provide you with an appropriate amount of yeast. Why don't they? You could argue that the customer should know better, but they don't, so why not help out? Price it into the kit. No one would complain about that.

Anyway, I filched a half-cup of the dried malt extract and boiled it for 10 minutes in 2 cups of water. Separately, I sanitized a half-gallon glass jug. When the boil was done, I cooled it to 70 degrees and added it to the jug. Then I poured in my liquid yeast. (The yeast, by the way, was a Wyeast smack pack, which I had never used before. Definitely more fun than a packet of dry yeast or a vial of liquid.)

I covered the jug with a sanitized piece of aluminum foil. There was some debate on Homebrewtalk about whether to use an airlock or the sanitized foil, but the consensus seemed to be the foil, so that's what I did. For the next 24 hours, I swirled it repeatedly and observed some fermentation activity. After 24 hours, I put it in the fridge. The morning of the brew, I took the jug out of the fridge to let it come up to room temperature.

Crushed all 6 pounds of the grains and tied them into 2 large muslin bags. Brought 2 gallons of water up to 170 degrees, then added the grains. Attempted to hold the temperature at 170 for 45 minutes, with moderate success. I had to keep adjusting the temperature and moving it on and off the burner. On an electric stove, this isn't easy. Still more successful than the last time I tried this.

Separately, brought a half-gallon of water to 170 degrees, then put into a pitcher. Placed a strainer over a pot, then added the grain bags one at a time and sparged with the water from the pitcher, thus answering one of the first questions I ever asked in this blog. Added the sparged liquor to the brewpot.

Only later did I realize that I had essentially done a "mini-mash," which is a slight step up in complexity from your usual extract brewing. Considering that I've been using specialty grains from the start, it was hardly a leap, but it felt like progress all the same. Of course, in reading about mini-mashes, it doesn't sound like I really did it the way you're supposed to, but I followed the directions that came with the kit, so I did my best!

Brought the pot to a boil, then removed from heat and added the dried extracts and Galena hops. Boiled 50 minutes. Added baker's chocolate and 2 oz of the Kent golding hops. Boiled 9 more minutes. Added the remaining 2 oz of the Kent, boiled for one minute and removed from heat.

This wort REALLY wanted to boil over. I tend to perch over my pot for the entire boil anyway, but this time it was necessary. Came very close a couple of times, but in the end, everything remained in place.

Moved the pot to a sink full of ice water, and added 2 gallons of refrigerated spring water to the fermenter. (By now, I don't need to mention that I sanitized my equipment beforehand, do I?)

Strained the wort on its way into the fermenter. The amount of sediment was ridiculous. I had to use two wire strainers and a rubber spatula, and it still took about 10 minutes to get all the wort into the bucket. (This is where the spray bottle of Star San really comes in handy -- when I realized I needed the additional equipment, I just sprayed it down.)

Aerated the wort with my power drill. Used a sanitized baster to squirt some of the wort into the jug of yeast in order to acclimate it, then pitched the yeast. Judging purely by visuals, the amount of yeast slurry seemed significantly increased from what had come out of the package initially, so I'm optimistic that it will do the job.

Unfortunately, my hydrometer is broken, which I did not realize until I tried to use it. The end has chipped off, so I was unable to take a reading. It sank straight to the bottom of the sample. In a way, it's freeing. In another way, I probably should get a new hydrometer.

Put the lid on, attached the fermentation lock, and brought it down to the basement. Fermentation activity was observed within about 8 hours, which I take as another sign that the yeast starter is working. Within 24 hours, the lock was bubbling more ferociously than I've ever seen. After 48 hours, it had slowed a bit but was still bubbling away. And unlike with Secret Santa Stout, no blowouts yet.

That was that. Once again, the recipe says to rack after 3-5 days, but because of my schedule I am actually going to give it 2 weeks. At that point I'll transfer it to the secondary along with some more flavorings to condition... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Backlog: Vlad the Impale-aler

2013-10-24T09:00:00.000-04:00

Vlad the Impale-aler

After those first horrible weeks of parenthood were over, I wanted to get back on the brewing horse. I've spent so much time on brews that have funky ingredients, high gravities, and so forth, that this time I wanted to do something more straightforward. Hops and barley only! I wanted to focus on my technique. The time seemed right to make a pale ale.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 lbs caramel malt
6 oz dark crystal malt
3.3 lb liquid gold malt extract
3 lb light dried malt extract
1 oz Magnum hops (pellets)
1 oz Ahtanum hops (pellets)
1 oz Cascade hops (whole)
1 tsp Irish moss
English ale yeast

For this brew, I ordered from a different supplier, Midwest Supplies. This is noteworthy for a couple reasons, one of which I'll get to later, but one thing I liked was that they pre-cracked the grains for me. Beer and Wine Hobby doesn't do that for whatever reason, and I always end up using a rolling pin and worrying simultaneously that I have cracked them too much and not enough.

Anyway, bagged the grains and added to the pot. Tried to keep a consistent steeping temperature of 155 degrees F for 30 minutes, but with my electric stove it kept running more to 170.

Added malt extracts and brought to a boil. Added Magnum hops and boiled for 45 minutes. Added Ahtanum hops and Irish moss, and boiled 15 minutes more.

Strained the wort once again, which left much more sediment in the strainer this time. I actually had to stop and clean it out, which I hadn't had to do before. But I took that as a good reason to be straining!

One thing I did differently this time was take more effort to aerate the wort when pitching my yeast. This isn't something I've focused on before; all I've done is stir with a spoon, which is difficult and probably ineffective. This time, though, I brought the power tools. We had once purchased a drill-driven paint mixer from Home Depot that we never ended up using. So I cleaned and sanitized it, attached it to the drill, and let 'er rip. After a minute or two, the wort had built up a big head of airy foam. I'll be honest with you: this is the best idea I've ever had.

Starting gravity was 1.050, about on target.

Ten days later the gravity had hit 1.015, which was on target, but this time I actually did have a good reason to rack it to a secondary. I was dry-hopping, which is what those whole Cascade hops were for. Unfortunately, when I opened the bag, they smelled a little off. A little cheesy. And they looked kind of dry, not brown but not the green color they probably should have been. Faced with the choice to use them or throw them out, I decided to use them.

I kept them in for four days. I have read that a good technique for dry-hopping is to put your hops in a bag with a weight, as they will be more effective immersed in the beer. I did not do this. The hops floated on top of the beer, some of them not even making contact with it. Maybe this was for the best, considering that they seemed off.

Bottling was uneventful, and the beer was actually ready to drink about a week later. The dry hopping was subtle, so even though there's a little bit of the cheesy sensation it is more of a hop flavor and aroma -- better than I feared it would be, anyway.

The beer is good, too. Very bitter, in the intended style. It's a dark brown color, a little murky and not what you would expect from a traditional English pale ale, but apparently more in line with an American-style pale ale. Again, not the best beer I've ever made, but mostly a success.

Postscript: about two months after I bought this kit, a bunch of fraudulent charges showed up on my debit card. Somebody was attempting to buy hundreds of dollars' worth of money orders from Western Union. My bank notified me and I immediately cancelled the card, but I had to file disputes against two of the transactions because they had gone through. Hilariously, after my bank reversed one of them, Western Union then filed a claim against me, as though I were trying to rip them off. The reason my bank allowed them to do it was because whoever made the transaction had used my address, which is usually a sign that it's legit.

Well, after a few phone calls I was satisfied that the problem was resolved (and props to Bank of America, who gets a lot of bad press but was a pleasure to deal with as they handled it quickly), but I thought I would never know what had happened. Then one day I got a letter from Midwest Supplies saying that they were the ones who had allowed my information to be compromised. They were sorry, but seemed to be laboring under the misapprehension that a $20 coupon was enough to buy forgiveness.

Fat chance.

Backlog: St. Sebastian's Belgian Ale

2013-10-21T09:00:00.000-04:00

St. Sebastian's Belgian Ale

I got started on my next beer toward the end of January, for an important reason. My wife and I were expecting our first child at the beginning of March, and I wanted to brew something to celebrate. We had already settled on naming him "Sebastian" (although we were keeping that a secret), and it seemed like a name that would fit perfectly on a Belgian ale. So that's what I decided to do.

Ingredients:

9.9 lbs light malt extract
1/2 oz kent golding hops
3/4 oz styrian golding hops
1/2 lb dark Belgian candy sugar
1 tbsp coriander seeds
Belgian ale yeast

This was another easy brew. Without specialty grains to steep, it was fast and simple -- although a few things went wrong, which I'll get to.

Boiled 2 gallons water, added malt extract, candy sugar, Kent golding hops, and coriander seeds (un-crushed). Boiled for 60 minutes.

At 60 minutes, removed from heat and added Styrian golding hops to steep for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, began process of cooling wort and combining with cold water in fermenter.

This time, I did strain the wort on its way into the fermenter, and I was glad I did. It caught a lot of leftovers from the boil, and the resulting beer would be much clearer than past batches.

Okay, so two things happened here that weren't great. The first is that, somehow, I ended up with too much wort. I guess the boil didn't evaporate as much as I should have expected, or I poured too much water into the fermenter. Whatever the reason, it was full to almost 6 gallons instead of the expected 5 gallons. When my starting gravity came in a bit low, 1.060 to the expected 1.070, I figured that was the reason why.

The other thing that I was concerned about was the yeast. I got dry yeast this time around, and noticed that the expiration date on the package was about six months earlier. I was a little concerned but forged ahead anyway.

Two weeks later I racked to a secondary fermenter, which I don't think was strictly necessary for this beer. It smelled terrific, though -- hints of banana and citrus, definitely in line with what I would expect for the style. The gravity read higher than target, 1.020, but given the style and the starting gravity, I figured it just needed more time.

10 days later, the gravity hadn't changed. Still 1.020.

4 days after that, same thing. Apparently it was done, despite the recipe target being 1.014-1.010. I went ahead and bottled.

A month later, we had a son, but the beer still wasn't ready. It was severely undercarbonated. If I was lucky it would form a bit of a head upon pouring, but there was no retention. It disappeared within seconds. The beer tasted great, with estery notes of banana and tropical fruit, and low bitterness. But the lack of carbonation and unfermented sugars left something to be desired.

I'm not sure what to blame, exactly. The yeast was past its expiration date. I had not made a starter, either. There was almost 20% too much water in the wort. And my basement floor in wintertime was probably cooler than the recommended temperature for a Belgian strain. Probably it was all of these things working in concert. It was a shame, because with full fermentation this might have been the best beer yet.

A few months later, it had actually improved a bit, so impatience may also have been to blame. Even so, months later I can't help but feel like this was a frustrating miss.

Backlog: Rudolph's Red-Nosed Ale

2013-10-17T09:00:00.000-04:00

Yep, it's been almost two years since I wrote in this blog. I've made a few more beers since then! I've done some things right and some things wrong, and learned a lot.

I've just started work on an elaborate beer for Christmas that I thought I would chronicle here. More on that later. First, a few posts about the beers I've made since the last post.

Rudolph's Red-Nosed Ale

This was my beer for Christmas 2012. It was the first I had made since the previous holiday's Secret Santa Stout. As usual, I wanted to try something different than I had done before, so I decided to do a more traditional spiced ale.

Ingredients:

6.6 lbs light malt syrup
2 lbs raw honey
1/2 lb crystal malt
2 oz chocolate malt
2 oz cascade hop pellets
1/2 oz hallertau hop pellets
1/2 oz water crystals
1 tsp Irish moss
1 oz spice blend (orange/cinnamon/allspice/clove)
Belgian strong ale yeast

For my third brew, this was not a challenging recipe. I crushed the grains and placed them in a muslin bag, then steeped them in 2 gallons of water for 5 minutes at close to boiling. Removed the grains.

Added malt syrup, cascade hops, and honey. Boiled for 30 minutes.

Added water crystal, Irish moss, and hallertau hops. Boiled 15 minutes more.

Pitched my yeast at about 70 degrees. Starting gravity was 1.050.

Tied the spice blend into a small muslin bag and added to the fermenter, then sealed it up and let it do its thing.

I was a little disappointed by the spices. This was a recipe kit from Beer and Wine Hobby, where I do most of my shopping, and the spices came pre-measured but they seemed freeze-dried or otherwise not as fresh as they might have been. I wish I had taken the time and effort to get fresh spices and measure them myself. Hard to beat the convenience, though.

After a week, I transferred to a secondary fermenter and got a gravity of 1.014, which was a bit above target. The more I read, the more it sounds like most homebrewers don't bother with two-stage fermentation unless there is a really compelling reason, such as a heavy beer that needs time to condition with added flavorings. Certainly it didn't seem to be necessary here, but that was what the recipe said. I also removed the spice sack at this time.

Two weeks later, I read a gravity of 1.010, which was right on target, and bottled. No issues.

Tasted my first one on 12/16/12. Had good carbonation and great head retention. More of a bitter hop flavor than I expected, almost astringent. I had never bothered straining my wort before, but after this beer I decided to do so going forward. I suspected that the hop residue was having a negative effect on the flavor. There also seemed to be some visible sediment in the beer that I could not attribute to expended yeast.

Overall the beer was crisp and drinkable. I attributed that character to the honey. The spices weren't assertive, mostly making their presence known in the aroma.

This beer was okay. Technically, it was well executed. I wasn't ashamed to give much of it away at Christmastime, and I drank through the rest pretty quickly. But I didn't love it. It didn't really sing. Decent, though. Good enough that I got started on my next one soon thereafter.

One other thing to mention: this was my first experience using Star San as a sanitizer, and I'll never go back. It is far easier and more convenient than using a bleach solution. Over time I've improved my technique. Generally I'll mix up a 5-gal batch in my fermenter at the start of brewing, sanitize everything I need to, and then fill a spray bottle with the fresh solution. The spray bottle comes in handy for any incidental sanitization needs over the course of the brew. I also make another full batch in the secondary, if applicable, and repeat the process for that equipment. There's no need to rinse, and it only takes a few minutes. Star San is the best.

Secret Santa Stout: The labels

2011-12-19T09:00:00.000-05:00

One last thing before we put a bow on Secret Santa Stout. It needs a label.

We had a funny idea to take a picture of me in a Santa costume, putting my finger to my lips in a "Shhhh..." gesture. We took the picture in front of the Christmas tree for extra effect. Then I bought a set of Avery shipping labels and we printed it out. Wasn't too difficult overall, although my wife did all the work. Maybe it was really hard, I don't know. That's why I outsource these things.

Anyway, that's the story of Secret Santa Stout. It's an excellent beer, and I'm happy to have been able to share it with you. That does it for this series of blog posts, but we'll be back whenever the next batch starts up.

Merry Christmas!

Secret Santa Stout: Tasting!

2011-12-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

As it happened, my good friend Bob was over on the day that Secret Santa Stout was ready to taste. I chilled two bottles in the fridge for a couple of hours, and then poured them, as you see above. The carbonation was dead on.

I'll be straight with you: this beer is awesome.

It poured black, with a toasted brown colored head, and a cascading effect like that of Guinness. The first thing I noticed was a subtle but unmistakable scent of vanilla, giving way to a malty sweetness that was underlined, not overpowered, by the oaked bourbon. The finish was roasty and coffee-like. This beer has a decent amount of hops and no small amount of alcohol, but neither of those flavors stands out. It's all about the interplay of the malts, with the vanilla, oak, and bourbon flavors highlighting it all.

I'm very happy with how Secret Santa Stout turned out. This is a big step up from my first batch, which I credit equally to the recipe and to the experience that I had under my belt. My sanitation was more thorough this time around, no curveballs caught me unaware, and I had the patience to let the fermentation run its course. I'd still call myself a novice, for sure, but this has bolstered my confidence in a big way. I am already starting to think about what I'll do next.

But I have some unfinished business first. Since Secret Santa Stout is a Christmas gift, I can't just hand off some plain old bottles. I need to make labels!

Secret Santa Stout: Bottling

2011-12-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

Bottling was so uneventful that I almost forgot to write about it! Which is not to say that nothing happened. It's just that bottling is a tedious process, with none of the joy and discover of the boil or the fermentation.

First, I boiled 3/4 cup of corn sugar in 1 pint of water, and let it cool to room temperature. I put this syrup in my cleaned and sanitized bottling bucket (which had doubled, earlier, as my primary fermenter). Then the anti-fun began. We siphoned the beer from the secondary fermenter into the bottling bucket. I have an auto-siphon, a nifty little device that aims to take the guesswork out of the process. It's easy: you stick it into your beer, pump the insert once or twice, and then watch it go. All you really have to do is keep track of the end of your siphon hose, making sure it stays in place and doesn't splash.

This worked pretty well (splashed a little), but it seemed to be taking even longer than usual. Eventually I noticed that a massive air bubble was stuck in the siphon hose. It was about a foot long, and a thin stream of beer was trying its damndest to circumnavigate it. I gave the auto-siphon another pump and the bubble cleared, which sped up the flow by about three times, but also splashed vigorously.

When you read about homebrewing, the importance of sanitation is the number-one thing they warn you about, but not a distant number two is the important of not aerating your beer after you pitch the yeast. Oxidation in your beer is the same chemical process as oxidation of metal, better known as rust. It's best to avoid that. So I was a little bummed at the splashing but it didn't seem bad.

Once the beer had been transferred to the bottling bucket and mixed with the sugar syrup, it was time to bottle. Here again I have an invaluable tool, a bottle filler, which attaches to the end of the siphon hose. It has a spring-loaded gadget at the end which holds the beer in the tube until you press it against the bottom of the bottle, at which time it gently starts the flow. As I learned, though, you need to start your siphoning with the bottle filler open, or else you build up a huge air bubble, which leads to more splashing.

Overall it went well. Due to technical difficulties, two of my bottles ended up being aerated pretty badly -- I marked those caps with an X. (The rest I marked "S3," on my wife's suggestion.) And I ended up with 47 full bottles and one about halfway full, which was just about the target yield -- and a far cry from the 8-Bit Ale, when I had to dump half the batch thanks to a snafu with my bottles.

Between sanitizing, bottling, and cleaning up, the entire process took about an hour and a half. Not bad at all, although, again, much less enjoyable than most of the other parts of the process. And it led to the worst part of all: waiting for the carbonation to be done. I would have to wait about two weeks to drink my first Secret Santa Stout.

Secret Santa Stout: Fermentation, stage 2

2011-12-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

Here's what I don't think I understand about sanitization. Because I had never used my carboy before, I gave it a good overnight soaking in a bleach solution, and stuck my siphon tube in there for good measure. Of course, it wasn't full all the way to the top, and I only realized afterward that I probably should have done that. A good couple of inches of the glass were sitting there, unsanitized, and only made contact with the bleach solution with a little swirling and brushing. Now, I understand that the point of sanitizing your equipment is to reduce the number of potential contaminants to an insignificant level, and that it will never be 100%, but it seems to me like even reaching 90% is a lofty goal for the homebrewer.

No matter. Last time I was grabbing unsanitized equipment and plunging it straight into the wort, and everything came out all right.

At any rate, I sanitized my carboy, my stopper, my siphon hose, and my auto-siphon, and prepared to rack my beer. At this point I added the boubon-soaked oak chips and two vanilla beans, cut in half lengthwise. I had planned to put all of these things in a muslin bag so I wouldn't have to worry about filtering them out, but there was no way we could have fit it through the carboy's narrow opening. Instead, I added the wood chips and the beans loose. I am not too worried about the filtering process. My siphon has a small filter that wouldn't be able to hack very small particles, but won't have a problem with wood chips.

Rather than lug my primary upstairs, rack it in the kitchen, and then lug my secondary back downstairs, I decided to do it all in the basement. I brought in a small table and set my bucket on it. What's good about the bucket is how tightly it seals; what's bad about the bucket is how hard it is to unseal. Somehow, I ended up cracking the lid when I pulled it off. I'll need a new one for my next brew.

The brew looked as expected inside the bucket. There was a thick ring of cocoa-like krausen around the perimeter of the bucket a few inches about the surface of the liquid, but the fermenting beer itself looked calm, though cloudy. It smelled terrific -- sweet and coffee-like. It looked good, too, a glossy black color.

We siphoned it into the carboy without incident. There was a tiny bit of splashing at the end, when it ran dry inside the primary, but otherwise the process was quiet. A half-inch-thick layer of caramel-colored yeast sediment remained at the bottom of the bucket. That's always fun to clean out.

I also took a hydrometer reading, and found that the fermentation is mostly done. The starting gravity was 1.080, and at this stage measured 1.028. With a target gravity of 1.020-1.026, it was nearly there. But it needed time not only to ferment, but to steep in the wood and vanilla. I didn't want to oak it for too long -- I've read that can backfire -- so as soon as I got consistent hydrometer readings I planned to bottle it

More important, though, it tasted great! I was surprised. My 8-Bit Ale has tasted decent at the same point in the process, but this was delicious: already complex, roasty and malty, with a strongly alcoholic tang. I could only imagine what it would taste like with proper time to condition, let alone the new flavors I'd be introducing.

With a little over a month to go until Christmas, I was feeling good about the future of Secret Santa Stout.

Secret Santa Stout: Fermentation, stage 1

2011-12-07T09:00:00.000-05:00

For my first homebrew, I did a single-stage fermentation. I am doing a two-stage fermentation this time, for a couple of reasons. One is that the recipe demands it: the second stage involves steeping some more ingredients in the beer. Another is that I'd like to give this brew a little more time to ferment, and I'd like to get it away from the yeast cake for that. Lastly, I have a whole carboy I've never used. Isn't that reason enough?

The first stage was expected to take 3-5 days, until the most vigorous fermentation had subsided and the krausen had fallen to the bottom of the bucket. After 24 hours, all was going well. The beer was bubbling away, belching a bubble through the fermentation lock every few seconds.

After 48 hours, this had happened:

Apparently I had a blow-out -- fortunately, a minor one.

Asking around on the internet, I found that this isn't a rare occurrence for a stout, because there are so many sugars for the yeasts to feast on. And it wasn't disastrous by any means, although I worried what it had done to the efficacy of the airlock. I had no choice but to rinse, sanitize, and hastily re-attach the lock. It was still bubbling away, so I hoped for the best. I was surprised that such a large bucket didn't have enough headroom for this beer, but it's a lesson learned. Next time I will use a blow-off tube.

The best part about this episode was realizing how much less stressed out I am this time around. Had this happened with my first batch, I would have sworn, stomped around the room, and possibly dumped it. This time, I just shrugged and figured I would roll with it. The more that I read about homebrewing, the more I get the impression that things mostly go right, even when they don't. You read a lot of experienced homebrewers who talk about the importance of doing everything right, and freely admit all the times they've done things wrong and lived to tell the tale.

Was the blow-out suboptimal? Sure. Was it a disaster? I'm betting not. It certainly wouldn't stop me from moving onto the second stage of fermentation.

Secret Santa Stout: Pitching the yeast

2011-12-05T09:00:00.000-05:00

You may remember that in my first brew, I had an issue with my wort cooling down too fast, which other homebrewers on the internet told me was a problem they would kill to have. But it was odd all the same. My wort cooled to 58 degrees in a matter of minutes, which is sub-optimal for yeast, but ultimately not a problem.

Rather than doing anything different this time, I went with the assumption that I had, in fact, done something wrong the last time. I repeated the same steps, hoping for a different result, which I understand is the mark of sanity. (Did I get that wrong?) When the boil was done, I put the pot in a sink full of cool, but not cold, water, and stirred it occasionally to try to let more heat escape. The water in the sink heated up almost immediately, which was not a surprise but was fun all the same.

In the meantime, I added 3.5 gallons of cold water to my primary fermenter, a 7.8-gallon bucket. When the temperature of the wort was down to about 140 degrees, I poured it into the bucket as well and stirred both to aerate and to cool the mixture. Within a few minutes, I had a reading of about 75 degrees. Perfect. I also had a liquid yeast this time, instead of the dry yeast I had last time, so instead of activating it, I simply had to shake the vial and then dump it into the wort.

Next, it was time for the first specific gravity reading. I have trouble with this, because the liquid in the flask is always frothy, and I can't see the line on the hydrometer. After a few minutes, we ascertained an initial reading of 1.076, at 72-degrees. That equates roughly to a reading of 1.080 at 60 degrees, which is what the hydrometer is keyed to, and dead on target for the recipe. If you recall how all this went the last time, you'll agree that things were going much more smoothly for Santa.

I closed the lid on the bucket, attached a fermentation lock, and set it in the basement. Nothing to do but sit back and let those yeasts do their work. And if you're thinking that all of this seems a little too good to be true -- you're right!

Secret Santa Stout: The boil

2011-12-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

Let me say first that having a successful brew under my belt made a huge difference in my attitude toward the second one. When I started brewing 8-Bit Ale, I was so keyed up that I couldn't even focus. I don't know why; it's just how I am. I was so desperate for everything to go right that I was ensuring that it wouldn't. Having had that experience, I approached Secret Santa Stout with a comparatively Buddha-like calmness.

This recipe doesn't ask for anything more advanced, technique-wise, than the last one. It just has a lot more ingredients. The whole thing starts with the steeping of some grains. The included grains -- chocolate malt, Munich malt, and roasted barley -- needed to be cracked before use. I poured them, little by little, into a large plastic freezer bag, and then attacked them with a rolling pin. Charlie Papazian recommends not pulverizing the grains. You're just looking to breach the husks. It was hard to tell how I did on this score, because there were plenty of fine particles left over, but no reason to sweat it.

When all of them were cracked, I tied them into a (very heavy) muslin bag. I poured the flaked oats into another muslin bag and tied it off. Then I filled my brew pot with two gallons of water and added the grains. I turned on the heat, and brought it up to temperature. I never did replace the broken thermometer from the last time, so I'm still using a meat thermometer to measure the temperature of my water. I'm not sure how accurate the reading is, since it only goes a few inches into the water, but I tried to stir the water around the bags occasionally in order to evenly distribute the water. When the reading reached 150 degrees F, I turned off the heat, covered the pot, and steeped for 30 minutes.

After that, I was supposed to add the malt extracts and the Galena hops, but we realized we needed some things at the grocery store -- in particular, a replacement thermometer. See, our digital thermometer went bonkers, giving readings in both Fahrenheit and Celsius, and refusing to turn off. In attempting to open up the battery compartment, we ended up breaking the whole thing. So it was off to the store. I removed the grains from the pot first, but let the tea sit on the stove, covered, for another 30 minutes or so until we got back.

At that point, I added the malt and the boiling hops. Unlike last time, I used a dry malt extract instead of a syrup. Dry was definitely easier to work with, since I didn't have all the prep work of soaking it in hot water and then spooning it out. But it did form big, sticky clumps in the water that took a few minutes of heating to dissolve. I have no idea how dry extracts compare to syrups in terms of the finished product, but as a lazy homebrewer I will say that I definitely prefer the powdered version.

As before, I'm using pre-measured hop pellets, not whole hops. Not much to say there. You just cut open the plastic package and dump them in. Couldn't be easier. After boiling with the Galena hops for 45 minutes, I added the Golding hops for the final 15 minutes. Although I chose this recipe for its maltiness, I was surprised to realize that it's actually much hoppier than the amber ale I brewed last winter. Doubly so, in fact -- 3 ounces, compared to 1.5! That's part of the reason I'm so excited about the recipe. There's a lot more going on.

After an uneventful boil, the step was one that had caused me much frustration the last time: cooling the wort and pitching the yeast. Would I have learned my lesson?

Secret Santa Stout: The ingredients

2011-11-30T09:00:00.000-05:00

Deciding to brew Secret Santa Stout was the result of a not-terribly-scientific survey of dark, high-gravity beers. After brewing an amber ale for my inaugural batch, I knew I wanted to go darker for the second. I've always been a fan of maltier beers, so it made sense to try a porter or a stout. I also wanted to add fresh ingredients this time, whether in the boil or in the fermenter, so I thought about flavors like coffee, chocolate, and vanilla -- or maybe even something daring like cinammon or hot pepper. Ultimately, caution won out, and I stuck with a kit, but one that includes most of what I'm looking for.

Secret Santa Stout is made from the "bourbon vanilla oak stout" kit from Beer and Wine Hobby. The kit includes:

2 lb flaked oats
1 lb chocolate malt
1 lb roasted barley
2 lb Munich malt
3 lb light dry malt extract
3 lb dark dry malt extract
2 lb amber dry malt extract
2 oz Galena hop pellets
1 oz Golding hop pellets
4 oz French oak chips
English ale yeast

Despite being an extract kit, the shipment includes 6 pounds of grains for steeping, which is important. I'm not philosophically opposed to the ease of extracts. I can't see myself ever going to all-grain brewing, or even a partial mash that would require a lauter-tun. That all sounds too much like work to me. But I do want to introduce quality ingredients wherever I can. Two of the key ingredients in the kit's name, the bourbon and the vanilla, are not included, and that's part of what attracted me to the recipe. Anything fresh that I can add will make a big difference.

The recipe required a little prep work prior to the boil. The first thing I had to do was soak the wood chips in bourbon. I put them in a small, airtight container, and poured Knob Creek bourbon to cover (about 300 ml). The wood is to soak for a week. Even after a few days, it's already absorbed a decent amount of liquid. At first the chips were completely submerged, and now the top layer is visibly above the bourbon's surface. This pleases me.

The wood will be used later in the fermenting process to approximate aging the beer in a bourbon casket. First, though, comes the boil.

I'll have a brew Christmas

2011-11-28T09:00:00.000-05:00

It is time. After ten months of not brewing, I am once again heeding the call. Homebrew batch 2 has begun.

Frankly, I'm surprised it's taken this long. For all that I bitched and moaned during the brewing of my first beer, it came out pretty well in the end. In fact, just last week I drank the remaining two bottles, which had been aging for over six months. It's true what they say: good things do come to those who wait. The extra time in the cellar had rounded out the ale's flavors, and taken a bit of the sour bite off the finish. For a first effort, it was damn good.

Now I want to do even better. With the holidays coming up, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to brew something bigger and more complex. After considering a few different recipes, I've settled on a bourbon vanilla oak stout, with the ingredients from Beer and Wine Hobby. Not to spoil the surprise, but if you're a relative of mine and not a recovering alcoholic, you'll have a little something special in your stocking this year. I've even selected a Christmas-themed name for my brew: Secret Santa Stout.

I haven't gone overboard: Secret Santa Stout is still an extract brew, just with a few additional steps. I'm steeping a lot more grains this time, going to a two-stage fermentation, and adding some additional flavoring during the fermentation. It's a moderate step up from my first recipe, which feels appropriate given my experience. Just like last time, I'll be chronicling the process in this blog. Expect more dizzying highs and abyssal lows, more self-doubt and misguided confidence, and, above all, more temper tantrums.

8-Bit Ale debrief

2011-02-02T09:00:00.002-05:00

My first homebrewing project is complete. I've had a few of my 8-Bit Ales by now. Though I look forward to having more, I'd like to let a few of them continue to condition in their bottles over the next few months. I also want to give some away. More and more, I wish I hadn't had to dump so much of it. But that's water, or maybe beer, under the bridge.

What did I learn from this whole process? For one thing, I learned that Charlie Papazian was right. Relax. Don't worry. Have a homebrew. Lots of things went wrong, and I overreacted to every one of them. Somehow, when it was all over with, I still had good beer to drink. Next time, I swear I will be more willing to go with the flow.

It'll help that I now have the answers to so many of the elementary questions that concerned me at the beginning. I'm confident about how to sanitize my equipment. I won't stress my hydrometer readings, or my wort temperatures, quite as much. I know what kinds of caps I need for my bottles. (Okay, I am still a little mad about that one.) I can concentrate on the recipe.

At times, I doubted that I would ever undertake another homebrew, but now I can't imagine not doing so. There's a sense of pride that comes from sipping a delicious beer of your own design, and a sense of fulfillment that comes from having crates full of them in your basement. The next one will still be a malt extract brew, but I'd like to get a little bit more ambitious with the recipe. I'm thinking a porter sounds tasty.

That wraps it up for now. Whenever I start homebrew batch #2, I'll be sure to chronicle it right here. And the next batch will be even better, because a Second Draft is always an improvement.

Beer!

2011-01-31T09:00:00.003-05:00

Judgment day. 11 days after bottling, it was time to crack open my first 8-Bit Ale. I worried. Of course I worried. What might have gone wrong in the interim? None of the bottles had exploded, which was a positive sign that meant the beer hadn't over-carbonated -- but it could also have meant that the beer under-carbonated! Nope, I can't stop worrying for a second.

But I was encouraged by the first pour.

The ale built up a nice head: white, foamy, substantial. And it didn't dominate the glass. Within a few minutes, it had receded a bit, and held that form until I started drinking it.

In appearance, the beer was as promised, an amber ale. Slightly hazy and golden, it appeared free of sediment and rich in color.

I spent a few minutes peering into my mug, holding it up to the light, and smelling it. But there's no substitute for the real thing. Time for the first sip.

And it was... good! Not mind-blowing. But good. It's drier and more bitter than I had expected, and, if I'm using the term right, bready. Drinkable and refreshing, I'd compare it to Brooklyn Summer Ale. I wish the finish had a little more body. Overall, though, I'm happy with how it came out.

Now I really wish I hadn't had to throw half of it away.

Capsized

2011-01-26T09:00:00.003-05:00

Look, I know I get frustrated about small things. Instead of stepping back and acting rational when something doesn't work right, I drop F-bombs. Patience is not one of my virtues. Still, it's gotten me this far.

Despite all that had happened in the course of homebrewing, when I probably overreacted to some things that may not have really gone wrong, here I was, bottling away, thinking that soon I'd have an enormous quantity of beer to drink that I had made myself.

Well, I'm not sure what happened, exactly, and if it's anybody's fault, it's the fault of the folks at Beer and Wine Hobby in Woburn, MA, whom I previously described as "fine."

Remember how my homebrewing kit was a gift? When I opened it, I remember my in-laws mentioning something about a mix-up with the bottles. As a result, Beer and Wine Hobby had replaced a box of 12-ounce bottles with a box of 22-ounce bottles for no charge. Fine with me, considering that I didn't have to pay for any of it in the first place, and I will always drink 22 ounces of beer over 12 ounces if given the choice.

First, I filled and capped my smaller bottles. This worked great. It took me a few seconds to realize that the bottle capper took a little more force than I'd expected, but within minutes my 12-ounce bottles were capped and looking superb.

When I placed a cap on my first 22-ounce bottle, I realized something was wrong. It didn't fit. It didn't come close to fitting.

So I got angry. My saint of a wife started looking things up on the internet. She discovered that you can actually cap a 22-ounce bottle with these caps and this capper, but it requires reversing some plates on the capper. We couldn't find any instructions for doing this, save for a cheery "It's an easy adjustment!"

It was not an easy adjustment. It took ten minutes of improvising a chisel out of a flathead screwdriver and hammering away at it. Maybe this doesn't sound like a big deal to you, but when I use any kind of tool it's about as dangerous as Nicolas Cage running around with that glass ball of nerve gas in The Rock. You don't want to be anywhere near me.

Only after making the easy adjustment did we realize that the real problem was that these were Belgian bottles, and required corks. Do you think the fine folks at Beer and Wine Hobby in Woburn, MA, supplied corks with their upgraded replacement bottles? No. No they did not. I had several useless caps, and a dozen 22-ounce bottles of beer with nothing to seal them.

I ended up dumping half my beer down the drain. Maybe there could have been some way to improvise a seal on these bottles, but it was getting late and I was getting disheartened. I wondered -- not for the first time, nor the last -- whether homebrewing was worth it.

There would only be one way to answer that question. I had 24 bottles of 8-Bit Ale left. After bottling, they needed to sit for 10-14 days. Nothing to do, once again, but wait.

Keep it bottled up

2011-01-24T09:00:00.005-05:00

The next day, I took another hydrometer reading. This time, it read 1.014, which was almost what I wanted to see before bottling. There were two other factors to consider:

Starting gravity had been high enough that my delta was already bigger than the recipe called for.
If I didn't bottle that day, I wasn't sure when I'd have a chance to.

Time to bottle!

I sanitized my bottles in the dishwasher, because my dishwasher does have a sanitize setting, and I read on the internet that you can do that. Also, the thought of sanitizing them all by hand made me want to run to the liquor store.

The downside was that this actually took a lot longer than I expected, something like an hour and a half. As soon as I starting running the dishwasher, I set about hand-sanitizing all the other components I would need. And then the Patriots-Jets game was on. I ended up leaving everything out for a couple of hours, worrying the whole time whether they were attracting wild yeasts.

At the time, I thought that this hours-long hiatus could potentially be the worst thing that could happen during bottling. I was wrong.

Boiling the bottle caps

The next few steps were easy to follow. I boiled my bottle caps for five minutes, then removed them with a skimmer. Next, I dissolved 3/4 cup priming sugar in 8 oz water. Finally, I poured the syrup into my bottling bucket and prepared to siphon.

I don't know how most people siphon, but I got an "Auto-Siphon" with my kit that impressed me as much as any basic technology I can remember since the first time I saw carbon paper. I stuck that thing into my fermentation bucket, gave it a pump, and out came a steady stream of beer. The book and the directions had advised against splashing. I didn't even have to try not to. The siphon was gentle as a summer breeze.

Siphoning from the fermenter (top) to the bottling bucket (bottom)

Once the majority of the wort had been transferred to the bottling bucket, leaving only about a half-inch or so of mostly sediment,* it was onto the next step. Here, again, I owed a big assist to my equipment. I had a bottle filler, which was an implement that attached to one end of the siphon. I inserted it into each bottle, pushed it against the bottom, and watched the bottle fill up with no splashing. When I removed the bottle filler, it barely dripped. Even with what little I still know about homebrewing, I would definitely recommend using one of these things.

My bottles were filled and I was ready to cap them. This should have been the easiest part of the whole process. Instead, this was the part that nearly ruined everything.

*The layer of sediment left behind in the fermentation bucket was something to behold. It was a good centimeter-deep layer of greenish-brown sludge. Lots of unsavory analogies came to mind. Sometimes it's better not to know how the sausage is made.

Rest stop

2011-01-21T09:00:00.001-05:00

One of the hardest lessons to learn about homebrewing has been how much time you spend doing nothing at all. It's strange, because doing nothing is usually where I shine. After the initial boiling, cooling, and yeast-pitching, all I had to do was kick back for about a week and let those yeasts do their work.

And it was agonizing.

I'd put so much mental and physical preparation into the process, and now I found myself twiddling my thumbs. I felt like I should be doing more. So I padded into the basement several times a day, where I would cross my arms and frown at the fermenter like a concerned parent. "You doing okay in there, little guy? Everything all right?"

After about four days the vigorous bubbling in the fermentation lock had subsided. As that was my only visible sign that anything was happening inside the bucket, I found this distressing. Probably, it was a good thing: when the yeasts had run out of fermentable sugars to consume, they'd settle back at the bottom of the bucket, and my beer would be ready for bottling.

At seven days, I could wait no more. I sanitized my hydrometer and my beaker and prepared to take a sample. Although I struggled a bit with the lid, on account of being a weak-ass man, I was encouraged when the unmistakable smell of beer hit my nostrils. Not even skunked, half-empty-Bud-Lite-can-the-morning-after-a-party beer. Real, fresh beer!

It was hard to tell in the dim basement light, but when I brought my sample back upstairs I found that it looked like beer, too -- a dark, golden honey color. A healthy amount of sediment was still suspended in it, but overall I was encouraged.

The hydrometer reading was encouraging, too. The beer's specific gravity was registering at 1.016, without needing to correct for temperature. That was close to the target! The recipe called for a final gravity of 1.008-1.012. Considering that my initial sample had read much higher than what the the recipe called for, this seemed like a good sign. But it also seemed like I wouldn't lose anything by waiting a day and taking another measurement.

Back into the dark, dry basement it went. I would have to wait another day -- but not before tasting the little bit I'd measured.

Looked like beer, smelled like beer, and tasted like beer, too! It wasn't carbonated, which made for a strange mouthfeel, and it did seem a little tart on the finish, but overall I was optimistic. Or, let's say, "hoptimistic."

On second thought, let's not say that.

It's alive!

2011-01-19T09:00:00.000-05:00

I couldn't have been more disheartened by the time I had sealed my fermentation bucket. It seemed like everything had gone wrong. Not only were my temperature and my specific gravity incorrect, but I had also freaked out and used a bunch of unsanitized equipment for reasons I can't even remember at this point. (I did at least run the new stuff under hot water for awhile, so, you know, I'm sure it's fine. I'm sorry, Charlie.)

Anything you read about homebrewing will casually tell you to store your fermenting beer in a dark place at 65-70 degrees. As though there aren't any cheap bastards out there who would shiver all day and night under three layers of blankets rather than turn up the heat and pay a slightly higher oil bill. Not that I know anybody like that.

At any rate, room temperature in my home during the winter months is lower than the recommended temperature for fermenting ale. It's about 60 degrees during the day. So I am probably the only homebrewer in history who has fermented his ale in the basement, because it is warmer than the rest of his house. I'm keeping it in the unfinished side of the basement, near the furnace, which is the warmest and driest part of the house right now -- not to mention the darkest.

After the calamity that had befallen the yeast-pitching portion of the brewing process, I was expecting the worst. I checked on my fermentation bucket a few hours after leaving it in the basement and thought I saw some condensation on the inside of the fermentation lock, but didn't know what to make of it. Probably, I thought, the whole thing is a failure.

The next day, first thing I went downstairs to see if anything was happening. I turned on the light and thought I saw something moving in the lock. I crouched and stared at it. Come on. Show me something.

The bucket burped.

Maybe that's not a correct description of what was happening, but it's what it looked like. The fermentation lock is a small plastic container half-filled with water. As I watched it, it continually belched out bubbles, sometimes violently. Those little yeasts were doing their job -- which, as I understand it, is to eat sugar and crap alcohol. This goop might yet turn into beer!

Of course, I still have to bottle it. And nothing so far has scared me as much as that.

Pitching a fit

2011-01-17T09:00:00.000-05:00

I don't have any pictures of the next phase of the brewing process, when I took the wort off the heat and pitched my yeast. Why? Well, because it, uh, didn't go so well.

Once again, the instructions I had received with my kit didn't sync up with the advice that Charlie Papazian gives in The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. Earlier, I had disregarded the kit's directions in favor of Papazian's, with success. Maybe it was in the spirit of fair play that, this time, I followed the kit instead of Papazian. Big mistake.

The directions with the kit recommended submerging the stock pot in a bathtub full of cold water when it came off the heat, for 10-15 minutes. I didn't have a bathtub handy, so I filled up my sink about halfway with cold water and stuck the pot in there once the wort was finished boiling. In the meantime, I added three gallons of cold water to my fermentation bucket. Papazian recommended pouring the boiling wort directly into the fermenter, but that sounded crazy!

Note to self: Never doubt Charlie Papazian again.

I was impatient. By 9 minutes, I took the stock pot out of the water and poured the wort into the fermenter. Then I added the remaining gallon and a half or so of water. I had previously added my 15g of yeast to 1/2 cup of lukewarm water to activate it, so all I needed was for the wort to reach the target temperature before I could add it. I was excited, not least because I knew that brewers called this part of the process "pitching the yeast" and I was excited to use the lingo.

"Honey!" I called to my wife. "I'm pitching my yeast!"

As soon as I stick my spoon and hand (I have a small spoon) into the wort to stir vigorously, as the directions advised, I knew something was wrong. You are supposed to pitch your yeast when it's at 70-80 degrees Fahrenheit, but this felt much colder than that.

Previously, I had used the thermometer that came with my brewing kit to measure the hot wort right off the stove. It wasn't sanitized afterward. I sighed and figured I at least ought to wipe it off before using it again. I grabbed a piece of paper towel. The second I touched it to the tip of the thermometer, the thing exploded. The little black spheres inside it -- who knows what they were made of -- spilled all over the counter. I had used this thermometer once, for about five seconds, and now it was broken. At least it didn't blow up in my beer, I guess.

First, I thought a candy thermometer might make a suitable replacement, but it turns out that those don't measure below 100 degrees F. Next I tried a meat thermometer, which read about 57 F, far lower than the 70-80 it was supposed to be. Was the thermometer accurate? I have no idea. But I had no other way to tell.

On the plus side, 60 degrees F is the appropriate temperature to measure your brew's specific gravity, which was the next step in the process, so even if my yeast was fucked, at least this ought to work. The kit also comes with a hydrometer, which I'm pretty sure I last used in eight-grade science class, and I think I hated it then, too. I filled up a beaker with some of my prenatal beer, dropped in the hydrometer, and spun it to dislodge air bubbles, just as the book said.

The directions said that my beer's specific gravity should have measured 1.035-1.040. It measured 1.050.

That's not a little bit off. That's way off. And I didn't need to correct for temperature, either, because the hydrometer was just about zeroed out.

What happened? What went wrong? I have no idea. Nothing bothers me more than when I think I've followed directions, and things don't work out. Granted, I obviously brought the temperature down too fast, but I wouldn't imagined that would have such an outsized effect.

Now, I worried. Would my yeast activate? Should I wait to bottle my brew until it reaches the final specific gravity that the recipe recommends, or until it drops by the amount that the recipe recommends? Again: they don't tell you this stuff.

I had no other choice. I closed the lid on the bucket, attached the fermentation lock, and put the bucket away. I expected the worst.

Wort, me worry?

2011-01-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

All things being equal, I thought the first part of brewing my 8-Bit Ale went very well. First, I added 1.5 gallons of water to my 20-quart stock pot. (Tap water, as mentioned in the last post.)

Next, I poured the 1 pound of crystal malt into a muslin bag and knotted it. I dropped it into the stock pot and turned on the heat.

I brought the water to a boil, then removed it from the heat and let the malt steep for five minutes. Apparently you can check the temperature during this part of the process to make sure that you're getting everything right, but, again, I decided not to sweat it.

I was a little worried because the bag was only about halfway submerged in the water, and because lots of fine powder had escaped the bag in the transition from the counter to the pot. But before long, a dark toffee color was seeping from the bag into the water, and a rich sweet smell was permeating the air. The most interesting thing that happened during this step was that the grains started to pop under the heat, almost like popcorn.

While this was going on, I filled the sink with warm water and stuck my cans of malt extract in for a few minutes. Papazian had recommended this as a way to make the syrup easier to work with.

He was right! The stuff was incredibly thick. And sweet, too, as I noticed when I sucked a bit of it off my fingertips.

Next, I removed the grains from the pot, and added the syrup, the hop pellets, and the water salts.

The next stage was time-consuming, but easy. I simply boiled the concoction for 45 minutes. (The instructions I got with the kit said to boil for 30 minutes, but Papazian said 45, and in this case I chose to follow his advice. Later, I would learn that I should always follow his advice.)

During this time, I was blown away by the aroma. The dominant scent was a malty sweetness, girded by an earthy grain odor.

I was surprised by how many visible changes the wort went through while I was boiling it. At first, the hop pellets disintegrated and floated on the surface. After a little while, the wort formed a thick greenish coating that looked like pond scum. Then it disappeared, and for the last half or so of the boiling process the wort took on a deep caramel color.

The questions persisted: What does it mean to boil for 45 minutes? Do I want a violent boil, or more of a simmer? They don't tell you this stuff. For the most part I went with a rolling boil, but it was dangerous. At times, the liquid level surged nearly to the top of the pot, and only judicious stirring and alert heat control prevented it from boiling over.

During this time, I asked my wife to watch over the wort while I attended to some sanitization. I needed to clean my fermentation bucket, the lid, and everything else that would come into contact with the wort once it came off the heat. This wasn't too hard, although, again, I worried about the details. My kit came with something called "C-Brite." I had to mix one packet of it with a gallon of water. Seemed easy enough to do this in my fermentation bucket, and then sanitize the smaller equipment right in there. But what was I supposed to do?

I ended up dunking the equipment in the cleaning solution for several seconds, swishing it around to make sure every bit of the surface was sanitized. Then I rinsed it all under cold tap water and laid it out on paper towel. For the bucket itself, I grabbed some more paper towels that I sloshed into the solution, then up and around the walls of the bucket. I only did the top part of the outside, figuring the beer wouldn't and shouldn't come into contact with much of the bucket's exterior. Maybe this will end up poisoning me.

All told, I was happy with the way this part of the process unfolded. Everything seemed to go right. I added the ingredients at the right time; I sanitized everything, maybe even more than I needed to. So far, my first batch of homebrew was shaping up nicely. I could almost taste the 8-Bit Ale.

And that's when everything started to go wrong.

8-Bit Ale brewing begins

2011-01-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

In the days leading up to my first attempt at a homebrew, my time was divided thusly:

40% worrying about technique
20% fantasizing about hops and malt
40% thinking of a name for my beer

On the name, at least, I'm pretty confident. I wanted something related to video games, and something that rolled off the tongue. "8-Bit Ale" fit the bill nicely. Seriously, say it out loud. "8-Bit Ale." Good, right? You want to drink it already.

Of course, the recipe I'd be following is one that thousands of other homebrewers had used. It's the one that comes with the homebrewing kit I got for Christmas, which was furnished by the fine folks at Beer and Wine Hobby in Woburn, MA. The kit included most of the equipment I needed. In reading the recipes, and Charlie Papazian's book, it seemed the major component I was missing was a stock pot big enough to boil my wort. The night before I was set to begin, I picked up a 20-quart stainless steel pot from Target, and got ready to brew.

8-Bit Ale was to be an "amber ale," one of three options included in the deluxe homebrewing kit from Beer and Wine Hobby. The ingredients were as follows:

2 cans malt extract (3.3 lbs each)
1 lb crystal malt
1.5 oz Hallertau hop pellets
.5 oz water salts
15g yeast

To this, I would need to add 5 gallons of water. Thus began a recurring theme in my homebrewing experience: excessive worrying about possibly trivial things. Apparently master brewers take their water seriously, and make sure that the mineral content of the water is just so in each and every brew they make.

I thought about picking up some filtered water from the store, and I considered trying to filter 5 gallons through my Brita pitcher (which would only have taken about six hours or so), before deciding that I had enough to worry about, so I should use tap water. I mean, come on -- I drink my tap water all the time and I haven't turned into the Toxic Avenger yet. Let's just get started.

But, as I said, questions kept coming up. Remember when you were a kid and you were starting at a new school, there were a million things to think about, but the most important thing you were concerned about was where the bathroom was? That's how I felt when I started my batch of 8-Bit Ale. I was fascinated by the interplay of ingredients, by the chemical reactions that I would be orchestrating, and by the control I could finally exert over the beer that I would drink. When it came to the most basic logistical questions. I was terrified.

I wondered things like:

Should I cover the stock pot when it's boiling, or leave it uncovered?
How often should I stir it?
Where will I sanitize my bucket?
If I use the bucket for fermentation, what will I use to bottle?
What the hell is "sparging?"

Just as in school, when you finally had to raise your hand and ask for the damn hall pass, eventually I needed to get started. You learn by doing, not by reading the first chapter of The Complete Joy of Homebrewing over and over.

It was time to get started.