Rise of the Beer Baron Pt. 4: Cheese Please!

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   That is my Dad, William Matthews Sr. (yes I am a Jr.).  He went by Bill (actually so did I until 2006 when I changed to Will to end the suffering of being called "Little Bill" despite the fact I was a good 6 inches taller). My Dad passed away June 2011.  He didn't leave me empty handed.  I learned to cook from him, how to speak in public, how to camp, how not to hold a hammer, but I never had that "Clark and Rusty" moment with my Father.

You see I never saw my Dad drink, except for twice in his entire life, and one of those was on his death bed.  Not that my Dad had anything against alcohol.  Some say his sobriety stemmed from his chronic ill health, others say it was a lesson learned from his reckless youth.  Who knows it was probably a little of both, or it was neither.  It was one of those secrets that died with him.

But he did play a major role in my passion for craft beer.  It all started with the high prices of cheese back in 2005.  Our favorite cheese shop was Bass Lake Cheese factory:

Now my Dad and I could easily drop a hundred dollars in cheese factories, but the problem was we were noticing that we were getting less and less cheese for that money, and the shop was getting a little too trinkety.  So we started to venture out to look for new places.  One place we discovered was a little cheese shop in Pine Island.  Their cheese was great, and reasonably priced.  But there was something else about this shop.  It doubled as a homebrew, and winemaking shop.  My Dad and I looked at the equipment and we toyed around with the idea of homebrewing.  We talked about it, but it didn't go much further than that.  The idea stuck to the back of my mind, and I guess it did my Dad's too because for Christmas...

 My very own Mr. Beer Kit!  From here on out I was a homebrewer....

To Be Continued!

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 Homebrewer: Life Moves Fast!

Life Moves Fast!

 

Things have been pretty crazy lately. The summer seems to be whizzing by. Between trips to the cabin, out of town trips for my band, and BBQs with family and friends, trying to find a tiny bit of time to just breathe can be a daunting task for me. Something somewhere was going to end up suffering because of me spreading myself too thin… I am almost ashamed to admit it, but it is the homebrewing that has suffered.  

 

Towards the middle of June I brewed up a wheat beer. I had plans of making a raspberry rhubarb wheat, I guess I still do, but with the hectic pace that this summer has kept it has sat in the primary fermenter since June.  

 

I have thought about whether it is still good. It has been sealed this whole time, so contamination shouldn’t be a problem. But, can a homebrew be left sitting in the primary fermenter on the yeast and other sludge for this long? I don’t know… but I figured the internet does!

 

I perused the homebrew forums to find an answer. What I discovered is that EVERYONE has an answer…. Correction; EVERYONE has a different answer. Some say that leaving the brew on the sludge for too long will give it off flavors. Some say that leaving it in contact with the plastic bucket too long will give it off flavors. Some say that you can leave it in the primary for a couple months with absolutely no issues or off flavors. Hmmmm…. 

 

So here is what I have learned from my research: Absolutely nothing! However; with such conflicting answers I am not going to just dump 5 gallons of beer down the drain. I like beer way too much to just pitch it. It is at least worth a shot, right?  

 

Tonight the beer is going into the secondary fermenter to clear up a bit. Then I will bottle it in a couple weeks. Then after a bit of time for bottle conditioning I WILL know the answer. Hopefully the end result is an ice cold delicious fruity wheat beer! 

 

Has anybody else let their home brew timeline get away from them? I would love to read your results in the comment section below…. And stay tuned for my results.