Update

Haven’t put anything on this site in a while; too busy experimenting with my life to blog about it.  Just to follow up on old stuff because random people were asking:

All of my beer brewing batches belong on fail blog.  Nothing drinkable yet.  I actually only ended up doing 3 batches.  I partially blame it on the small scale, but mostly of my own carelessness.  However, I did do enough to get a chef buddy to look into hitting up CCHBS, and now I get to try his homebrews without doing any work myself, FTMFW.

I keep telling myself I’ll get back into this once things are settled (and I have some extra cash).  Plus I have the perfect place to put a kegerator.

Also, I wanted to note that Brooklyn Brew Shop finally put their instructions online, so you can find them here: http://brooklynbrewshop.com/instructions

Home Brewing Day 13 – Domestic Dubbel

Pretty sure my 2nd batch is f*’d.  Here’s what it looks like in the carboy after 11 days.

Brown liquid on top, Tan sediment on bottom

A bunch of tan stuff (which was the original color of the beer) has sunk to the bottom, leaving a darker liquid on top.  I don’t know if I should stir this up.  I also sat down with the carboy for a few minutes looking for bubbling and I didn’t see any.  When I pitched the yeast at the beginning, there was plenty of bubbling, but on day 2 and on, it was pretty minimal.

Home Brewing Day 17 – Chocolate Maple Porter, Day 1 – Domestic Dubbel

My first batch of home-brew got bottled, so I might as well move onto the next batch.  I went back to Culver City Home Brewing Supply to pick up the ingredients for a brew based on their “Double Trouble Belgian Dubble” Trappist Ale, which I selected after enjoying La Trappe Quadrupel (Koningshoeven) at Wurstküche last week.  Their recipes generally use extract, but since I already had experience using all-grain, I continued with the trend, and CCHBS was happy to oblige with an all-grain recipe pared down to produce 1 gallon.

Recipe
1 lbs 9.5 oz Pale Malt (2.0 SRM)
5.8 oz Munich Malt (dark) (9.0 SRM)
0.7 oz Aromatic Malt (26.0 SRM)
0.7 oz Biscuit Malt (23.0 SRM)
0.7 oz Special B Malt (180.0 SRM)
1/10 bottle Belgian Dark Candi Syrup

Hops
0.13 oz Perle (6.5%) – 60 mins.
0.05 oz Styrian Goldings (4.0%) – 0 mins.

Wyeast 3787 Trappist Ale High Gravity

I also picked up a bottle of Iodaphor, a large strainer, and a case of flip-top bottles, while I was there.  If you started with the Brooklyn Brew Shop kit as I did, I suggest picking up these things as well.  I also picked up a 5 ½ gallon stock pot from Super Home Mart, as I start to gather some tools to eventually make 5 gallons at a time.

The brewing process went a lot smoother the second time around.  However, I still made some major slip-ups.  I think the boil was too aggressive, and I ended up with only a ½ gallon of wort.  I forgot to add the second batch of hops at the end of the boil; and I only remembered to add them after I had already begun to cool the wort down, so they didn’t dissolve all the way.

Another two weeks and we’ll see how the first batch of Chocolate Maple Porter comes out.

Wurstküche

Home Brewing, Day 9 – Culver City Home Brewing Supply Co

To get a little more info on home brewing, I attended a class at the Culver City Home Brewing Supply.  Not only did I pick up some good tips for the beer I’m already brewing, but I also found an informative and useful resource for my future home brewing endeavors.

Concerning the Brooklyn Brew Shop kit that I’m using, here are a few more important notes that I picked up at the class (I’m working off memory here, so I probably forgot a lot of good tips):

- When cooling the wort down before pitching the yeast, keep the wort covered with either the pot lid or aluminum foil.  Although it will take longer to cool, a covered pot will prevent bacteria from getting to the wort.

- Skim the foam from the wort.  The teacher at CCHB said that it’s pretty important, but it isn’t even mentioned on my BBS instructions.

- Use cheap vodka in the fermentation lock – it’s tasteless and will kill bacteria as well as small fruit flies.

- Place your carboy (glass jug) in a shallow pan or bucket of water so the beer is less susceptible to fluctuations in temperature.

As far as the class itself went, I thought it was pretty cool and extremely helpful if you’re looking to get into home brewing, or even if you would just like to learn about beer, its history, and how it’s made.  It’s only $5 for a beginner’s 3-hour class.  Wear comfortable shoes because you’ll be on your feet the whole time.  If the next few batches I brew work out, I’ll come back here to upgrade.

Home Brewing, Day 1 – Brooklyn Brew Shop Kit

After a failed attempt with the Mr. Beer kit, I started looking for different home brewing kits (not to say that the failure was due to the kit, but just out of curiousity’s sake).  I came across the Brooklyn Brew Shop and their attractive kit – their slogan is “We sell beer kits that don’t look like kits.”  In fact, it looks more like a chemistry experiment, which is really what all this is.  The proprietors have a picture of themselves on the front of the website, giving off that mom-and-pop vibe, which I’m more than happy to support.

The instructions are generally pretty thorough when it comes to the brewing process, but I feel they gloss over a few important things.  I’ve made a couple notes on the process that I think are serious omissions on their behalf, and made my first brewing attempt a more difficult task than it should have been.

- This is a 2-man job.  So before you start, lure someone over with a bottle of Grolsch.

- You need 2 stockpots, 1 of which can hold at least 2 gallons of liquid, and the other, at least 1 gallon.

- The strainer should be very fine, and also be able to hold a lot.  It should also be able to rest at the lid of your stockpot.

- A large funnel with a built-in strainer is ideal for filling the jug.

- Some of the ingredients in the kit (the yeast and the fuggle hops) need to be refrigerated when you receive it.  This was stated on the instructions, but I didn’t notice this until they had already been sitting out for weeks, including during the heat wave we experienced last week due to the fires.  If this batch doesn’t come out right, I think that could be a major reason.

Regarding the store itself, the package arrived about a week after ordering it and in solid condition.  Although the kit comes with instructions, I found it strange that they don’t provide the instructions online as a PDF.  When I e-mailed them asking for an online copy of the instructions, they never responded.

The benefit of using something like Mr. Beer is that it’s a widely-known kit and there is a large online community that supports it.  I haven’t found any reviews of this kit, advice from other users, or received tips from Brooklyn Brew Shop.  That kind of support would push something like this to another level, although to their credit, if you live in New York, you can probably visit their shop at the flea market and get all sorts of useful knowledge.