Brew Haus

Your two weeks are up, the specific gravity is perfect, right on the numbers.  Time to bottle.  Get out the sanitizer, bottles, capper, priming tank, ect, ect.  Home brew is work, but it is so much fun.  Exciting.  Don't forget...Rewarding. 

Bottling is fun.  Filling. Capping.  Putting the fruits of your labor into cases and then storing in a warm dark place.  Bottling also signals Job Done, all that there is left to do is wait, and then pop a top, pour, repeat. 

It is a simple process, once you have your beer fermented and you check the specific gravity, to see that fermentation is complete, you add sugar to the priming tank.  The sugar is a small amount that will activate the yeast again to produce CO2 to carbonate the beer.  This is what is known as "bottle conditioned".

I use 22oz bottles to cut back on a little of the labor, and since this is a pouring beer a 22 works out great.  I like to drink out of 12s, but pouring beers are nice in the 22s.  There is sediment in the bottom of bottle conditioned beers, and the constant tipping of the beer stirs up the sediment, so therefore pouring is cleaner.

Anyway, getting way to technical.  The Amber that I brewed is amazing (by my biased opinion) after all, all I did was follow directions, so I think I can say amazing and not be egotistical.  All patting oneself on the back aside I would like this beer even if I had no hand in it.  I like it so much I will be brewing it next, that is right after I get finished with my Honey Wheat.  That's right, got the kit in today along with a secondary fermenter.  So I will get the Amber in the mail and a week after I brew the Wheat I will transfer it to the secondary fermenter and brew the Amber and place it in the primary fermenter.  Bottle the Wheat and the Amber goes into the secondary.  Rinse and Repeat.

I think I might have a Brewing problem?  Hello, my name is Glenn Duh and I am a Brew-a-holic.

Early Christmas

Ask my wife, I'm a child.  I'm a child with ADHD...want to go ride bikes?  I can't wait, can't wait in line, can't wait for packages to show up, can't wait for my beer to be done.  So I did it.  I opened one three days early, and the world as we know it is still here. 

I am officially or technically supposed to open it on Monday, but I had to see how my baby was doing.  I grabbed one of the three 12oz beers that I have and I reached for the bottle opener.  The cap came off and the carbonation brought the beer to life.  I took a sniff of the longneck, and it smelled... smelled like beer... good beer.  I poured said beer into my favorite glassware and the perfect head crowned the beer like frothy royalty. 

First sip was a little scary, all that time, energy, THE WAITING was over and for what?  Great beer (by my standards) and brewed by my own hands, with my ability to follow directions and a recipe (thank you Mrs. Miller 4th grade who said I would never amount to anything).

I brewed Beer

Amber is the color

Just a quick little update on the Bell Lap Brewing.

I bottled my Amber Ale on Monday and it will be ready to consume in two weeks, so sometime after Dec 6th.  So far so good, I tasted the beer before bottling just to see if it had gone South and turned nasty on me.  It did not.  It has good flavor and is nice and hoppy, but flat at the moment.  I added priming sugar and began the bottling process.  I purchased a case of 22oz bottles that way I had less bottles to deal with.  I am still working on my 12oz collection.  Silly me I bought some Boulevard and it is twist-off.  I need to check a little better next time, oh well, it is good beer.  One of the best micros that is somewhat close (KC), in my opinion for what it is worth.

If my amber is drinkable I am going to dub it One to Go Amber Ale, technically it is someone else's recipe so not sure if I have naming rights?  Lawyers?  Still working on a good name for the IPA.  Some ideas...Bridging the Gap IPA,  Soloing IPA,  Going Rouge IPA, I Sat in Gum IPA.  Anyway probably putting the cart before the horse.

Some day I will publish great works, and brew great libations.  -Gotta have dreams, Right?

-Who's got next round?

Waiting, Wanting

Tomorrow will be week number 1 of my brewing experience.  I'm working real hard doing nothing.  I have one more week before I test the final gravity and go to bottle.  It has been killing me to wait not knowing how this is going to turn out.  I want it in the bottle ready to pop a cap.

I have decided to brew an IPA as soon as I bottle next week I will start the brewing process for my next batch.  Plus, if the first batch goes South I will have a back-up waiting in the wings.  I went to the Liquor store last night to get a sixer of Pale Ale and have some bottles to recycle for my beer.  I assumed all micro brews used non-twist off caps, yeah they don't, and I just so happened to get ones that twist off and I can't use them.

The beer was good, can't complain there.  Hood River, Oregon's own Full Sail Pale Ale.  It is a nicely hopped Pale with what drinks like an alcohol content on the lower side for Pale Ales.  Even though it clocks in at 5.4% it does not overwhelm the flavor.   It is not overly hopped, but just the right amount and a nice woodsy flavor, not on the minty or floral side.  Not that I don't like minty or floral.  I would say for a Pale Ale it is an uncomplicated straight forward double or triple hopped Ale, with a flavor that begs for you to enjoy more than one in a siting.  Bet you just can't have one.  So, all of this makes up for the fact that the bottles are twist off.

If you like Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale, check out Full Sail and be prepared to add a new favorite to the "will buy again" list.  If for some reason you find that you cannot enjoy, let me know and I will send a disposal unit to your doorstep free of charge.

Day One

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.  If everything goes as planned I will, in 28 days, drink my first beer created by me.  That is a long time to wait in this instant gratification world that we live in.  Drive-thru this, instant that, zap it, micro-wave it, give it to me yesterday.  I can't stand to wait, I have to have it now.

It's killing me that water takes so long to boil.  Do you know how long it takes to boil 4 gallons of water?  I don't, but I am starting to understand.  Yes, that is just the initial boil to get the water boiling, then it takes a full hour to boil the "wort" or un-fermented beer.  I have some time to kill.  Time to check the pot again.

The malt pouch and the first of the hops have been added.  Now just more time, more waiting, all the while thinking that I might screw something up and destroy all of this time that I am putting into this little bottled bundle of joy.  Just checked and I am half-way through my boil.

Fast forward a little and I have chilled the wort and I transferred it into the fermentation tank.  Now the real waiting comes.  In two weeks I will check the specific gravity of my beer to see if fermentation is done.  If it is, then I will get to transfer it to the priming tank and we will go for bottle.

I was a little worried about the mess of brewing, but the smell was more of a concern.  Thought the wife would freak out and kick me to the curb.  The hops smell great and the house smells better than cooking bacon, I know I love bacon to.  Man do those hops smell good.  Hey, this aint Bud Light.  This process did take a little longer than I expected, but now I know what I am in for the next brew cycle.

Beer of Failure

Alright,  here is the deal.  I decided to do something that I have wanted to do for about 13years, but just have not been able to pull the trigger.  I'm not getting any younger, and that whole thing about getting wiser -that's a myth, and I decided that this is as good a time as any.  I purchased a home brew kit.

I love a good beer.  I like to cook and I can follow a recipe, that has to be a no-brainer.  Right?  Just boil some water, throw in some grains, a little yeast, some sugar, voila... you've got beer.  How cool will it be to drink beer that you made with your own hands?  I mean we are not talking scratch here, but pretty darn close.  My only fear, and I do emphasise FEAR, is that I go through the process and wait the time and pop open a wonderful hand crafted 22oz of joy and it is total crap.  Talk about a complete nightmare... "so there I am getting it on with this perfect female body and... but with the head of Abraham Lincoln. With the hat and the beard, everything."  -Tony from  Dazed and Confused  Yeah, kinda like that.

The fear of failure has kept me from attaining a dream of mine for 13 years, and now when the kit arrives I will have about 4-5weeks of nervous anticipation, anticipation of the probability of failure.  Oh the horror, to put in that kind of time and energy only to have something just turn into undrinkable swill.  I don't know if I can stand it.  Well, on the bright side of life, if the stars align and everything just happens to go "right", I will have beer.  My beer.  Beer created by my ability to follow directions and boil water.  Well at least this process will give me something else to post about.  Besides, you cannot fail unless you try.