Beer & Me

It may seem that I’m a relentless homebrewer based on the fact that a mere two days after I bottled my stout I started another beer. But don’t assume anything yet. We’re only two brews into this second homebrewing phase of my life so my enthusiasm may peter out soon.

Anyway, today’s brew: I ordered the extract German alt kit from Northern Brewer a few weeks ago and today was it’s day of reckoning.

The brewing went OK – no major hitches. Well, none until I was cleaning up. The kits come in these substantial little cardboard boxes. When I picked this one up to throw it in the recycling stack in the garage I noticed that it seemed a little heavy. I opened it up and there was a pound of dried malt extract.

By now I had already boiled the wort. The carboy was full and cooling in a bathtub full of cold water. I couldn’t re-boil it; that would screw up the hopping schedule. So after cursing to myself and staring at that damned plastic bag full of brown powder for about 20 seconds I decided to just dump it straight in.

If you’ve ever dealt with DME you know that it’s very fine and likes to clump. The barest amount of moisture will make it form into solid little rocks. And that’s exactly what it did when I dumped it the carboy – it formed three or four dozen little malt balls in the wort which, eventually, drifted to the bottom.

Once the wort was cooled down sufficiently I pitched the yeast as usual. Will this affect the brew? I have know idea but it will be interesting to watch.

Yesterday I mentioned a mead that I bottled alongside my stout. Let me tell you about that mead.

When I got the beer.about.com gig I was really a bit surprised. I expected that another more qualified writer would land it. But I got it and I couldn’t have been happier. I had to work really hard to earn and keep the position and consequently my homebrewing exploits fell to the wayside.

Fast forward two years to now and I’m finally getting back into homebrewing. When I decided to start brewing again around a month ago I began cleaning the dusty heap of homebrew equipment that had sat neglected for two years. Among all of that I discovered a carboy full of mead. It didn’t have a cap or plug of any sort; it was just sitting there open to the world - or really the nasty air of my basement.

But I smelled it then, after it smelled OK, I tasted it and it seemed to be in good shape.

I have no memory of this mead - when I put it down or why it didn’t have a plug and airlock. But there it was. So as I brewed my stout I also tended to this mead. I transferred it twice to a clean carboy so to clean it a bit and I think it’s going to be really quite good.

I bottled it yesterday; even added some priming sugar in the hope that it will have some yeast left and will carbonate like any other homebrewed beer. I’ll report back when it’s aged a bit.

I bottled my stout today. My wife had to work – her job requires the odd Saturday – so as soon as she had gone I got busy. I started by lugging the five gallon carboy up from the basement to the kitchen. Actually there were two. I also bottled a mead that I don’t think that I’ve mentioned here before. Anyway, I brought both up and sat them on the counter. I always start with this step because it agitates the beer and I want to give it time to settle down before it goes in the bottles.

So, I left the two carboys on the counter and took my time gathering and cleaning everything for my bottling. Plenty of time, right? But when I turned to the stout to start siphoning when *bloop* the airlock bubbled! Three weeks and the damn thing thinks that it’s supposed to still be fermenting!

I stood there staring at trying to decide if I should give it another week. I have no idea how long it took – a few minutes at least - but it bubbled again. It was definitely working and not just burping from the ride upstairs

I bottled anyway. I decided that it’s got to very close to finishing and bottling at this point isn’t that different from krausening, right? I did add priming sugar but only about half of the usual amount. The possible outcomes I’m looking for here, setting aside for the moment the chance of exploding bottles, is super-fizzy, average carbonation or near still.

That’s right; Danger IS my middle name!

I like beer. That’s obvious to anyone who’s even taken a cursory glance at this or either of the other two beer blogs that I maintain. I like everything about beer – how it tastes, how it looks in a glass, how it works so well as an ingredient in almost every dish I make, how it’s made and how much fun it is to make at home.

My wife can take or leave it. If it weren’t for me being around the house she would probably go months at a time without having one. The idea is shocking to me.

But she patiently tolerates how much beer has invaded our home. I have a lot of beer in the house. I receive quite a lot of it from breweries for tasting and review. I take my time with these reviews and at anytime there is anywhere from a six-pack to a case’s worth of beer waiting for my tasting. One half of a shelf in our refrigerator is devoted to beer as is one whole cabinet in our kitchen.

And that’s just the commercial beer. I have two to three hundred bottles stored in my homebrewing room in the basement. Yes, a room devoted to homebrewing – I ferment beer and store my equipment there. All those bottles, variously full of beer or waiting to be so are on shelves and on the floor.

And that’s just in the house. A good quarter or more of the available storage space in our garage is devoted to my all-grain brewing equipment. That’s a big wooden stand that I built with two gas burners, a cooler that I converted into a mash tun, innumerable pots, a keg that I cut the top off of, propane tanks and miscellany.

And not once has my wife ever complained, implied inconvenience or even looked askance at my various beer messes. I have a wonderful wife!

So I got up this morning determined to transfer the stout to secondary…more correctly, I got up this morning determined not to not to transfer.

More importantly I was able to taste the stout and everything seems to be just right with it. The recipe says that its a Dry Irish Stout (isn’t that redundant?) and all characteristics seems to be pointing in that direction.

Conclusion: Using fourteen month old hops and yeast both of which have been carelessly stored at room temperature will not necessarily ruin the beer. I would not recommend it but if it happens it doesn’t necessarily mean that the ingredients are worthless.

I almost wish that I had done this deliberately and could say that this is the successful end to an experiment.

Day One.

Nothing else kills a nice homebrew like procrastination. Once I brewed an incredibly promising IPA that went south when I let it set in the primary fermentor for around a month. In that time some of the trub that had fallen to the floor of the fermentor dissolved into the wort - I think - and gave the beer a really nasty smell and taste.

So today was when I was planning to transfer what I’ve come to jokingly call my Alt Stout. But it’s also a holiday and my wife will be home all day. We have what she calls a galley kitchen, that is it’s long and narrow, and that makes it really quite inconvenient for two people to be in doing anything for any amount of time. So when I want to do homebrew stuff it’s really best to wait for the house to be empty.

I’m telling myself that I’m only waiting one extra day and how much damage can happen in that time? I brewed seven days ago so eight days in the primary won’t hurt anything too much will it? Let’s hope not!

That is unless I find some excuse to procrastinate again tomorrow.

Well, I did as promised and the fermentation is going like gangbusters. Somewhere between 8 to 10 hours after I pitched a bit less than a tablespoon of baker’s yeast the tube coming out of my carboy was bubbling and spitting up bits of krausen.

Unfortunately it smells very wrong. It’s obviously been a while since I brewed given that this was a forgotten 14 month-old kit that I pulled out of a heap in my basement so I may have forgotten what a good fermentation smells like. This one has a distinct cidery/sour aspect that makes me think some nasty bacteria sneaked in.

It would be no surprise if it did given how I abused this wort. First it sat for four days with no apparent fermentation going on. Next sometime at the end of day two I began frantically peeking in at it. Third I rather unceremoniously dumbed in some white stuff I pulled out of the same heap in a little zip lock baggy with the label “yeast nutrient” on it and eight hours later I dumped some bakers yeast in it that had sat in my refrigerator for a couple of months. The chances for infection during this series of events are too numerous to count.

Oh well, now that the homebrewer in me is reawakened I’ll brew some beautiful beers soon enough. I got two more kits in today from Northern Brewer - and Alt and a Mild. And I might even be able to get away with calling this current brew a Flanders stout.

Cleaning the basement the other day I found an old partial grain Irish Stout homebrew kit from Northern Brewer that, if memory serves, I’d bought 14 months or so ago and completely forgotten about! So for giggles and grins I smacked the pack and to my mild surprise it was completely inflated within about four days so I went ahead and brewed. Everything seemed to go ok. Even the hops pellets impossibly seemed alright.

But now, three days later fermentation hasn’t begun. This morning I dumped about a teaspoon of yeast nutrient in but if it doesn’t get going by this evening I’m going to add baker’s yeast. I know “they” say that you’re not supposed to do that but I’ve always wanted to try and as I have no other yeast in the house right now I figure why not?

I’ll report back here with the results.