After brewing a batch of beer a week for the past five weeks I am taking a little rest for a week or two. I would like the beers I do have in the fermentors to get bottled and get myself geared up for the swamp cooler that I am going to use during my fermentation. The beer, so far, is drinkable. With that being said I do have so much more to learn and do before the beer will come out to a level that I feel comfortable with so I can share the beer with others. My technique and procedures have been improving but I can always get better.
So far they are overly "malty" on taste and texture and probably due to how warm they are fermenting. As of now they just sit in the basement with ambient temperature at 66 F, which means they are fermenting at 71-74 F and that is about 10 degrees too warm, and this where the swamp cooler will come in.
So far it has been just the extract brews so we will see in a couple weeks if the all grain beers turn out the same.
Taking a break from brewing will give me time to plan on what else I am going to brew and get a schedule down too. I'm still going to work on the stout but a brown ale is something I will be working on. I want to make a nut brown ale with honey and possibly cinnamon but I think I am getting away from natural beer flavors with adding too many flavors. If I work on the wild rice beer as a third recipe and brew every other week I should have a nice schedule that will give the beer time to develop before I do anything else to that recipe. If I get really ambitious I could on a forth and do an IPA. Normally not a fan of IPA but would be nice to have one just to change from the dark beers.
Today I am bottling my German Blonde and bottling my first batch of stout on Monday. If I get tired of not brewing I will brew the stout again on Tuesday.
Happy Hump Day!
April 17, 2013
April 3, 2013
The first batch of all grain and my first recipe.
Oh the lessons we learn! This is one of the many reasons why I love homebrewing so much. I learned a lot brewing my first all grain brew yesterday and with learning comes improvement. I'll quickly break down the day's event:
First of all, I don't have all of the equipment that I need. Well, I do, but they are just pots and strainers that I borrowed. It was interesting in my rush to find what I needed but I did find everything that I needed so it eventually worked out.
Being that I am using the BIAB (brew in a bag) method I did not know that the straining bag I bought was in fact a BAG! I thought it was just a giant piece of cloth that awkwardly "fit" inside the kettle. Nothing is foolproof.
I didn't use all my sparge water and I was way under my finish amount.
My efficiency number was incredibly low. This is probably due to not using the straining bag properly and not using my sparge correctly.
With the issues I had yesterday the beer should still turn out just fine, just not at 100% quality, and being my own recipe I am so far pleased with the result. We will see once it is done fermenting in a few days how it turns out but I have mostly high hopes. Now I know I need to use the bag correctly and use my sparge water correctly and this should increase the efficiency and quality of my beer.
And just like that I learned from my mistakes! Every venture comes with the risk of underachievement to failure but if we cannot see where we faulted then we will never change what we are doing. Homebrewing is such a high reward hobby and the risk of underachieving decreases with every brewday but you have to keep brewing. I know I will.
OH! If you haven't noticed, stout won the poll. Okay, stout and wild rice ale tied at two votes a piece but being the brewmaster I went with stout. Mistakes are well hidden, I do have flavors of stouts I want to shoot for later, and wild rice ale is a relativly new concept in brewing so it outside my comfort zone for now.
Northern Brewer just came out with more one gallon recipe kits and I just might pick some up. Other future plans include tinkering my stout recipe, adding aromatic malts to the stout, and possibly a porter.
Happy brewing!
First of all, I don't have all of the equipment that I need. Well, I do, but they are just pots and strainers that I borrowed. It was interesting in my rush to find what I needed but I did find everything that I needed so it eventually worked out.
Being that I am using the BIAB (brew in a bag) method I did not know that the straining bag I bought was in fact a BAG! I thought it was just a giant piece of cloth that awkwardly "fit" inside the kettle. Nothing is foolproof.
I didn't use all my sparge water and I was way under my finish amount.
My efficiency number was incredibly low. This is probably due to not using the straining bag properly and not using my sparge correctly.
With the issues I had yesterday the beer should still turn out just fine, just not at 100% quality, and being my own recipe I am so far pleased with the result. We will see once it is done fermenting in a few days how it turns out but I have mostly high hopes. Now I know I need to use the bag correctly and use my sparge water correctly and this should increase the efficiency and quality of my beer.
And just like that I learned from my mistakes! Every venture comes with the risk of underachievement to failure but if we cannot see where we faulted then we will never change what we are doing. Homebrewing is such a high reward hobby and the risk of underachieving decreases with every brewday but you have to keep brewing. I know I will.
OH! If you haven't noticed, stout won the poll. Okay, stout and wild rice ale tied at two votes a piece but being the brewmaster I went with stout. Mistakes are well hidden, I do have flavors of stouts I want to shoot for later, and wild rice ale is a relativly new concept in brewing so it outside my comfort zone for now.
Northern Brewer just came out with more one gallon recipe kits and I just might pick some up. Other future plans include tinkering my stout recipe, adding aromatic malts to the stout, and possibly a porter.
Happy brewing!
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