The description below is my very first experience with home brewing of beer. While the ultimate result was less than satisfying, it was a great deal of fun and an extremely valuable learning experience. I have a great deal of gratitude for Vic for opening up his home, his heart, and his home brewery to me so that I could dive into my first home brewing experience! Also, I learned a great deal that has already proven itself to be quite useful in my endeavors following this one!
November 24, 2011
My foray into beer brewing began with my dear friend Vic and my boyfriend Tony! On Thanksgiving Day of 2011, we showed up a bit early to the party in order to brew. Unfortunately, I took virtually no pictures (very unusual of me – I have no idea what I was thinking!) and very few notes, so this article is purely from my corruptible memory bank with a bit of consultation with other more or less equally corruptible memory banks. Also, Vic was able to supply a few pictures, which are what is included.
Vic provided a selection of 3 brew kits he had available. I decided to use the kit for Thomas Cooper's Australian Bitter.
A little note on Cooper’s Brewery itself: Cooper’s Brewery is Australia’s only remaining family-owned brewery. This brewery was founded by Thomas Cooper in 1862. This brewery is also the largest producer of home brew kits in the world – and aren’t we grateful to them!
We started out boiling water in a very large metal pot on the kitchen stove. While that grew to a boil, we sanitized the equipment using an iodine solution and water at 200 p.p.m.
We then dissolved the syrupy contents (malt extract) of the can into the boiling water. We also slowly added about a cup and a half of sugar to the boil. Once that had all dissolved appropriately, we poured it into a five gallon carboy. We topped it up with water, checking the temperature along the way. Once we reached a temperature of about 75 degrees F., we pitched a 7-gram packet of dry yeast into the mix. While at this point, Washington State considers it beer, I would not recommend pouring off your first pint!
The waiting begins. Departing Vic’s the following day, we loaded the carboy with its precious contents into the car and drove it home to house it in the basement. Protected from light, we let it ferment away for 2 weeks at room temperature ranging from 64°F to 69°F. A thermostatically controlled heater was used to ensure the temperature did not drop below this range.
December 8, 2011
With busy and conflicting schedules, December 8th, 2011 ended up being bottling day. We filled the kitchen sink with water and half a capful of Five Star Acid Sanitizer. We submerged over 40 16 –ounce to 22-ounce bottles into the sink (this was done in several batches as we certainly don’t have that big of a sink in our kitchen!) to sanitize the bottles. Then we rinsed every bottle with hot water and set them to dry on a bottle tree. Once dry, we added about a ¼ teaspoon of priming sugar to each bottle. The bottles were now ready to be filled.
Using a bottle-filler that functioned as a sort of siphon device, we filled 33 16-ounce to 22-ounce bottles. For some reason, we had quite a bit of trouble with the siphon. Poor Tony had to suction out the beer with his mouth to get rid of air pockets. An extension tube was used to do this so as not to risk contamination of the filling tube. This was a rather messy enterprise with lots of swearing and devising (by Tony!), but once we finally got it to function properly, the bottling finished up rather smoothly. We filled each bottle to the bottom of the neck, making sure to give plenty of room for the secondary fermentation process. If you do not give enough room for this process, you can end up with caps popping off of bottles long before you are ready for a pint!
The next step was capping. We purchased a small capping machine for the job. While the machine only capped one bottle at a time, it was fairly easy to use and went smoothly. Once the capping was complete, we set the bottles of beer on a shelf in the basement to give them time to go through the secondary fermentation within the bottles. Again, the temperature of the room at this time of year floats around in the 60s degrees Farenheit, so it is a reasonably good room in which to allow the secondary fermentation to take place. We plan to open a bottle and try the beer on New Year’s Eve. This will give the beer 23 days to mature in the bottles.
December 17, 2011
Tony decided to open a bottle and try the beer 9 days into the bottle fermentation process. He described it as a bit yeasty, very thin on flavor. He tried it at basement temperature. Rereading the directions at this point, we did discover that there was some additional light malt extract that was supposed to be added to the wort during the boiling process. Of course, this was not added, and instead white sugar was added. The additional wort probably would have given the beer a bit more body and more complex flavor. The addition of the white sugar probably just increased the alcohol content without having much effect on the body of the beer or the flavor (aside from the strong alcohol taste that was added). Lesson learned from this: follow directions!
December 25, 2011
I decided to open a bottle and try the beer 17 days into the bottle fermentation process. I don’t believe there is much point in waiting until New Year’s Eve to open more bottles. I believe this beer has improved as much as it is going to improve. I put it in the fridge and allowed the beer to cool considerably (based on Tony’s comments from his previous tasting). The beer comes across as relatively light and crisp. It does have a bit of a malt presence in the mouthfeel, but you taste the malt a bit more in the after taste. The main flavor I get is a bit of a sharp astringency. I get the feeling this is a relatively high alcohol beer (no hydrometer readings were taken throughout the process, so I don’t actually know what the alcohol content is).
Basically, not a great beer. It is light and crisp and seems like it would be refreshing on a hot day, but it leaves a bit of an astringent after-taste as well. It sort of reminds me of Heineken – not a good association at all.
December 31, 2011
After testing the beer out on several people and having virtually no takers, we decided to empty out the bottles so we would have them ready for our next brew. Tony decided he wanted to try it one more time, and concluded the drain was the best place to put it. I had a few sips and concluded that it had become virtually carbonated water as the carbonation drowned out even the slight malt flavor it previously possessed – sigh.
No comments:
Post a Comment