Adventures of a Beginning Homebrewer

Back in March I decided I wanted to brew myself something special for my birthday in October. I absolutely love barley wines, so I decided I would make Ol’ 76er, a barley wine named after the year I was born… Yeah, I know... I am pretty dang old. This beer was going to have a pretty big alcohol content, so it needed a bunch of yeast. I have never made a beer with this much yeast, and I was in for a surprise!

I made my wort, pitch a boat load of yeast into it, and sealed up my primary fermenter. After that it should have been just a matter of waiting… 7 months of waiting. But things didn’t go quite as smooth as I had expected. The massive amount of yeast going crazy in the fermenter caused a massive blowout! This has never happened to me before. It looked like a grizzly beer murder scene.

 

 

 

I cleaned up the mess and resealed the fermenter just to have krausen coming back through the airlock in a matter of 5 minutes. Ugh! I pulled a bit of a MacGyver and sawed the end of an airlock off so that one end would fit in the lid of the primary and one end would fit in a long tube. I then put the other end of the tube in my brew kettle with a bunch of water to create an airlock on a bigger scale. I know you can buy things like this, but I didn’t have time for a trip to the brewing supply store as I needed to get my beer sealed and hopefully safe again.

 

 

Now I am preparing to brew an imperial stout for this year’s Merry Cherry Christmas Stout. I will need to use a bunch of yeast again (although this time I am using a starter. More on that in the next post), but I don’t want the same results as I had with Ol’ 76er.

The answer, as suggested by a staff member at Northern Brewer, Fermcap! Fermcap is an anti-foaming agent that can be added to your brew so that the krausen doesn’t get out of hand. It keeps things nice and calm in the fermenter while not affecting the yeast, fermentation, or flavors. After fermentation is complete it settles to the bottom of the bucket and is left behind when racking the beer to the secondary fermenter. As an added bonus, Fermcap can also be used during the boil to eliminate boil over.

 

 

 

Hopefully my barley wine is still good after being exposed and opened for a bit. It doesn’t look infected. We will find out next month when I drink one. One thing I do know is that this isn’t going to be a problem for the imperial stout I am brewing now!

Anybody have a beer horror story like Ol’ 76er?

Adventures of a Beginning Home Brewer

The Christmas Beer Miracle and the Gift of Easier Bottling

To me, the most tedious part of brewing is bottling. You have to sanitize bottles, the bottling bucket, all its parts, the siphon, the caps… And that is just the first step. Then you have to boil the priming sugar, rack the beer, fill the bottles, and cap each one of them individually.

The boil process in the beginning takes a bit longer, but that is inactive time while the stove does the work. In bottling it is all you, all the time. But there is some hope. You can make the process go by a bit faster. The trick? It’s all in the bottles.

When I made my first beer, my Ragin’ Red, I stupidly sanitized, filled, and capped 48 12 oz. beer bottles. It took forever! I did the same thing for my second beer. Then came the Christmas Beer Miracle and my home brewing life was changed forever.

When I brewed my first Merry Cherry Christmas Stout I had an idea. I wanted to have a beer with all of my friends and family for Christmas. Obviously this is impossible with the hustle and bustle of the holidays. My solution was to give everyone a Merry Cherry Christmas Stout that we would all crack open at exactly 5:00 pm CST on Christmas day so that no matter the distance between us, we would all have a beer together for Christmas. This is known in my circle as the Christmas Beer Miracle!

I decided it would be a nice touch to use 22 oz bottles so that everyone could not only have a beer together no matter where we all were, but also everyone could share the Christmas Beer Miracle with someone special they were actually spending the holidays with in person. That is when I realized the math.

 

(22 oz Merry Cherry Christmas Stout bottle vs 12 oz Ragin' Red Ale bottle)

Here is the deal; bottles come in all shapes and sizes. You can sanitize, fill, and cap about 48 12 oz. bottles, about 24 22 oz. bottles, or heck, you could even just fill a few half gallon jugs I suppose. I use nothing but 22 oz. bottles now. I basically cut my bottling work in half by only needing to sanitize, fill, and cap half as many bottles!

One quick tip: I have noticed that sometimes the bigger bottles may need a little extra bottle conditioning time to get the desired amount of carbonation. But we are just talking a couple days if it is needed.

 
Let’s face it; if your beer is tasty there is no one who will complain about their bottle having an extra 10 oz. in it!

Adventures of a Home Brewer

Don't Fruit the Beer? Forget That!

 

Remember those Man Law commercials for Miller Lite? One was “Don’t fruit the beer!” I broke that law yesterday. Send the beer police if you need to, but if anyone should be arrested it’s the brewers of Miller Lite for trying to make us think carbonated water is beer.

Yesterday I started making my annual Merry Cherry Christmas Stout. I make this every year in order to facilitate the Christmas Beer Miracle… I will explain that a bit closer to Christmas.

Merry Cherry Christmas Stout was the first beer that I brewed with other types of additives. When I brewed my first one it was just a recipe kit from the beer supply store. It was a cherry stout that used cherry extract during bottling. It was good, but I knew I could do better.

Year two I decided to step things up. I wanted that cherry to really sing! So, I decided to, “fruit the beer,” and add some actual cherries in addition to the extract. I did a bunch of searching for info on beer forums and Yahoo! as I had no clue where to start. Here is what I learned.

The biggest thing in brewing is that anything that goes in the bucket needs to be sanitary. This applies to fruit as well. You can’t just grab a bunch of cherries from the produce section of your local grocery store and chuck them in there. You will more than likely infect your beer… I did that once with a nut brown and it is a headache.

Some home brewers on forums indicated that you should put the berries in with your beer at the secondary fermentation stage. This seems illogical to me on two fronts. One, you have to boil the berries separately to basically sterilize them. Some people are fine with throwing frozen berries straight into the secondary, but I am not willing to gamble on 5 gallons of beer getting infected. And two, you will lose some of the clarity of your beer, which is kind of the whole point of secondary fermentation.

So what do I do? I throw them in the boil. I am not saying its the end all correct way, but its how I do it. And it works! I mash up the berries to release more of the juices and then just chuck ‘em in during the last 15 minutes or so of the boil. This makes them sterile, saves me a whole separate boil later on, and helps my beer keep its clarity as I don’t bring the cherries along for the party when I rack the beer into the secondary fermenter.

 (Cherries in the Boil)

With most fruits you will want to use approximately one pound of fruit for each gallon of beer you are making. I have played with that a bit for my Merry Cherry Christmas Stout though because I still like to throw that extract in during bottling for a final kick. I try to make this beer palatable to my friends and family who are not into thick dark beers. The extra cherry taste and sweetness helps to accomplish this. No complaints yet!

Here is another tip; use frozen fruit. Using frozen fruit works the best because the freezing process breaks down the fruit. This helps release the juices into your beer to give you more of the fruit flavor. I found this tip online when I first decided to use cherries in my stout. Admittedly I have never used fresh fruit, so I can’t swear by this. But, it makes sense to me and I am happy with the end result. Why fix what ain’t broke, right?

Anybody else out there ever break this unjust man law and, “fruit the beer?” If so, leave a comment below with any tips you might have for the rest of us!