Stacey's Brew Blog
Brewing and drinking beer
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Author Archive
Beer 2 – Bottling and Delivery
Better late than never…
Final corrected gravity: 1.02
So while transferring from the primary to the bottling bucket I forgot to close the spout on the bottling bucket so I lost almost a gallon of beer to the floor. Not fun but not the end of the world. Cleaned up pretty easy with a big towel… that I put in the laundry and forgot about, encouraging the growth of lots and lots of mold. It washed out so it’s all ok but Jackie will make fun of me for the rest of time.
After the spill it all went into bottles without incident and was given this label:
After a week or 2 it was delivered to Lee.
Hooray beer!
Stacey
Beer 2 – Ferment
The air lock took longer than I thought it would to start bubbling but now it’s going 3-4 bubbles a second.
Fermenting away,
Stacey
Beer 2 – Brew day (night)
hindsight
Not much to report, the brew went pretty smoothly. Scott and Sarah K came over to lend a hand. Ended up taking a while to clean the kitchen so we didn’t start the brew until almost 1AM. They had to go not long after the grains finished steeping so I ended up maintaining the boil alone for most of it. After the brew was over I woke up Jackie to hold the the brew pot in the bathtub while I finished preparing the fermenting bucket.
Note: Buy a good manual can opener. The cheep one from 7-11 was worse than the electric that I ended up using again.
1.072 original measured gravity at 75F + .0015 to compinsate temp = original gravity of 1.0735
bubble bubble boil…,
Stacey
Beer 2 – Prep Day
I did all the big preliminary work to do my next brew last night. My fermenting bucket still had the smell of my last beer in it but it’s all clean now. All that’s left for tonight is cleaning the brew pot and sterilizing everything.
I think I may switch the roles of my buckets this time around just to keep the wear on them even. They both have spigots but only one has a thermometer stuck to it, we’ll see how it goes.
Scrub a dub dub,
Stacey
Beer 2 – Pre Prep day
Jackie’s boss loved my first beer and ordered a full batch. I got the last of the kit I used at my local shop (Thanks for the assist Andy) and may brew as soon as this weekend.
See you on brew day,
Stacey
Beer 1 – Approaching the end
Only 2 beers left, one for Andy and one for Damien.
Jackies brewing next probably some sort of IPA.Beer 1 – "Heady Potent Seductive"
Notes:
So, having done a bit of math according to my hydrometer and my best remembrances of temperatures my beer is roughly 6.5% alcohol but the way it goes straight to your head I’m pretty sure it’s a decent amount higher. The recipe says it should be 8-9%.
My thoughts:
Beginning at the end, An extremely mild bitterness in the after taste. Preceded by a deep leafy herbal flavor. As it hit’s the tongue it is very lite and with a lot of carbonation that brings the aroma right up your nose. Jackie can describe this better than I can, check out what she thinks.
Jackie’s thoughts/ review:
Hey all. So I just tried Stacey’s first beer. I poured it into a fancy 13 oz glass, super gentle because Stace mentioned it had a lot of carbonation – turns out he just shook his. : ) The head on mine is very thin, mostly white with yellow hints, visible bubbles. Very strong aroma of molasses with a hint of licorice. Taste is at first almost minty, a bit like cola. Moxie, maybe? Mouthfeel is not as heavy as I expected – the color is so dark I was expecting a stout-type heaviness, but it’s actually pretty light in texture. Really sparkly carbonation. Lingering aftertaste of orange zest, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Overall it’s really pretty good, very complex. Not the type of beer I generally go for, but definately well done, especially for a first brew! : )
Beer 1 – IT'S BEER!!
The beer has been in bottles for about a week, which is apparently enough to carbonate it. I cracked one open last night (it’s early I know) and it was pretty good. I’ll write up a full description in a week or so when my beer is the first of the evening and not the 4th.
Hoping my bottles don’t explode
Stacey
Beer 1 – Bottling
Bottling day has arrived! So, I filled the bottling bucket with water and mixed in sanitizing solution and used the bottling wand and hose to fill the bottles with sanitizing solution. I boiled my 5 oz of priming sugar in 2 cups (1 Pint) of water for 5 min.. poured the still hot (a little worried about that) priming sugar in my now empty bottling bucket and used the Alton Brown inspired spigot to drain the fermenter into the bottling bucket. I let the first bit flow into a pint glass to check for excess sediment. Once that was done I sanitized my hydrometer and took a final gravity reading of 1.022 a bit high for the recipe but it should be OK.
In the end I was able to fill:
2 750 ml bottles
3 20 oz Bottles
and 32 12 oz bottles
I tasted the beer at this point it is very different from the wort, it’s smooth and sweet it also has sort of an elixir flavor like Moxie.
Onward to carbon nation,
Stacey
Beer 1 – Fermentation
The airlock has basicly stopped bubbling, I’m still gonna let it sit for another week to let as much sediment stttle as possible.
Wort worth waiting for,
Stacey
