48 bottles of the English Brown Ale
While unrelated to the post, the movie “Bottle Shock” is awesome. So check it out sometime. Moving along, I’m sorry for the lack of posting. things have been busy around here, but you don’t care about my excuses. You just want posts, I know. So I’m going to meet you needs, kind of. I’ll probably be on a more limited posting schedule for the next six weeks due to real life issues; sadly, you shouldn’t expect more than two or three posts a week during this period.
Yesterday Sam and I set out to tackle the task of bottling the English Brown Ale; naturally this started with lots and lots of cleaning. Cleaning bottles, cleaning caps, cleaning hoses, cleaning cleaning cleaning. Not sure if you’ve noticed a trend with this brewing stuff, but cleaning is pretty high priority. Next, while I was still working on cleaning all those bottles, Sam got the primer ready.
If you don’t have a method of force-carbonating your beer (read: a kegging system with CO2) then you need to do it the old fashioned way: create fermentation in the bottle. Called bottle conditioning, this is done by dissolving some fermentable (sugar, malt, etc) in to some water, and adding it in to your bottling bucket. Next, siphon the beer in to your bottling bucket with minimal splashing, bubbling, etc. as to not get oxygen in the beer. So now the yeast is going to have a little (very little) more sugar once it gets in the bottle, and will release CO2. Eventually the pressure will make the CO2 mix with the beer, carbonating it. Hooray for science!
Using the drill to stir up CO2
Then attach a bottling wand, which is essentially a plastic tube with a spring-loaded stopper at the end that only releases beer when depressed, to the spigot of the bottling bucket. Open the spigot, grab your first bottle, and start bottling. Our assembly line was me sitting on the floor of the bathroom with the bottling bucket on the counter. Next to me was the caps, and next to them was Sam with the capper. I’d fill the bottle, pass to her, and she’d cap and put in the box. We got pretty good, and knocked out 48 bottles in less than a half hour once we were up to speed. Now we just wait 2-4 weeks and let the magic of fermentation happen, and we’ll (hopefully) have some awesome English Brown Ale.
Next I needed to add clarifying agents to the wine. Over the past couple of days, I verified that the SG wasn’t dropping any more (it stabilized at 0.993) and so it was time to clarify. Adding some clarifying chemicals isn’t all; for them to do their job effectively you need to drive off all the CO2 from the wine. This took forever in the carboy, and I ended up having to transfer it back to the bucket to get it to clear the CO2. So that’s sitting around in the bucket for another couple weeks while the chemicals drag all the particulates down to the bottom.
Also, I started two more beers today. Sam really wanted an IPA, and demanded that I start one. Being a husband that enjoys sleeping in the bed and not on the floor, I agreed. I’m using the American IPA kit from The Brew Hut. I also started a Hefeweizen for my class; by the time we’re done in six weeks, the Hefe should be ready. However, when I was at The Brew Hut they only had the hops I wanted in 2oz bags, and I just needed 1oz for the Hefe. Now, luckily you can keep hops in the freezer until you need to use them. Of course, I didn’t do that. I tossed the extra in to the IPA, since Sam likes her IPA’s to have killer levels of hops. So the Hefe has 1oz of hops, all used as bittering hops. Where as the IPA has 2.5oz of bittering, and 2oz of flavor hops. I think the difference is pretty clear here. However, I should note that the hops I bought were my first experience with whole hops, rather than hop pellets. Really, there didn’t seem to be much difference either way.
U-Boat Hefeweizen from Dry Dock Brewing
Drink of the Day
Dry Dock Brewing doesn’t bottle their beers. This is a sad and terrible thing, but I understand. They’re a small brewery, and they can only do so much. However, thankfully, you can get a growler (64oz jug) if you stop by their place. It will start to go flat after a weekend, but with the quality of their beers I doubt it will stay in your fridge that long anyway. The photo illustrates a “sloppy” pour to generate head; I wanted to highlight the impressive head retention of their U-Boat Hefeweizen. In the glass on the right you can see the beautiful golden color, not impeded by a poor pour.
This beer smells like summer. Bananas, flowers, and maybe a little like the beach. Really, though, the banana aroma and flavor is pretty strong in this hefe. It blends well with the small amount of bitterness present, and the creamy body. It finishes strong and refreshing, and really does well on the tongue. Sam and I both enjoyed this beer this weekend, and will take the empty growler back again for some more sometime. Maybe next weekend while she’s gone I’ll fill it with their Baltic Porter… mhmm….
