Brewing

The first bottle!
I opened the first bottle from my first batch last night. It had carbonated okay. The smell was absolutely great -- good hopping. The taste was a bit malty -- perhaps slightly sweeter than I would like, but good nonetheless. There was a slight aftertaste -- perhaps from squeezing the grain bag in the beginning as a couple of folks indicated in comments they made here in the blog. All-in-all, I am pretty satisfied with it as my first batch.

Just a quick update. I plan to taste test the first batch this coming Saturday (August 20). To prepare for the occasion, I commissioned the glassware and a bottle opener pictured below:


Well, no, I guess I didn't really commission the Bell's Beer items. I bought them from the Kalamazoo Brewing Company in Michigan (http://www.bellsbeer.com/), but they seemed right for the opening of the first batch. I liked them enough that I ordered a half dozen regular pint glasses for use in the future. Please note that that isn't my brew shown in the picture. It is my normal Miller Lite that I buy, and yes, I do like to pour beer with a lot of head.

As an aside, I boiled another batch using the same recipe as the first batch last night. No new pictures since it was the same process I documented earlier. I did have one malfunction, though. The nylon bag that I use to contain the hops during the boil had a seam let go and there was a lot of hops sediment in the wort when I was done. It might actually produce a nice result since some people do not use a bag for their hops, but just pour them into the wort during the boil. Time will tell. I pitched the yeast in this morning after the wort had cooled down to about 79 F. Bottling of this batch is scheduled for two weeks out.

Looking at the catalog of the supplier I have been favoring, Midwest Homebrewing and Winemaking Supplies (http://www.midwestsupplies.com/), I decided to try the "California Steam" recipe. I think that I mentioned earlier that I prefer lagers and pilsner styles of beer, but that they require fermenting at cool temperatures (about 40 F). "California Steam," however, is a lager brewed at room temperature, so it may very easily become my recipe of choice in the future. It is supposed to be similar to Anchor Steam brewed in San Francisco. I have heard a lot of praises about Anchor Steam, although I have never had the pleasure of drinking one, but, to paraphrase the American humorist Will Rodgers, "I never met a beer I didn't like."

Well, time to refill the "boot" a few times to make sure that it works properly before the "grand opening."

Wednesday, August 3, was declared bottling day at the Bell brewery! It started with getting the bottles sterilized. I used to immerse them in a solution of chlorine bleach and then rinsed them to do this, but I found that another way to sterilize them is to place them in an electric dishwasher and run it without any soap. The drying cycle is hot enough to sterilize them according to instructions in the recipe kit. So, after washing all the breakfast dishes, I emptied the dishwasher and placed all of the bottles in it with the neck down onto the wire posts in the dishwasher basket and ran them through a cycle.

Next, I disolved five ounces of priming sugar in about 2 cups of water and boiled it for a few minutes, covered it and let that cool. I took about 24 bottle caps and placed them into a pot of boiling water as well and let it cool as well. The bucket that I would bottle from was sterilized with a solution of chlorine bleach and rinsed.

The best news is that I measured the specific gravity of the beer. To do this, I used what is called a "Wine Thief" which is a tube about an inch in diameter that is pressed into the bottom of the carboy to open a valve and the beer fills it. When lifted, the valve closes and you can raise it to view the reading on a hydrometer placed in it. After taking the reading, the tip of the "Wine Thief" is pressed against the inside of the carboy neck to open the valve and return the beer "stolen" from it. The reading was about 1.00 (the initial reading was 1.038). This means that my beer will be about 5 % alcohol by volume. That's about what I was shooting for, so from that perspective it is looking good.

Next siphons were sterilized and rinsed and the beer was siphoned into the bucket from the carboy after the priming sugar was been dumped into the bucket.

After the beer was transferred into the bottling bucket, it was lifted up to the counter top and the siphon tube was attached to the spigot on the bucket and a small plastic bottle filler (also sterilized) was attached to the other end. The bottle filler has a valve similar to the "Wine Thief" so that when pressed against the bottom of a bottle, beer will flow through it to fill the bottle. When the level of the beer almost reaches the top of the bottle, the filler is lifted to stop the flow. When the filler is removed from the bottle, the level of the beer in it drops about an inch or so which my readings say is the ideal fill level. That probably is to allow the carbon dioxide produced by the yeast fermenting on the priming sugar to have some room for compression.

As I filled the bottles, I capped them. The caps are placed on top of the bottle. If you note, the crimped sides are flared out.

The capper is a plastic, two handled device which has metal clamps which first grip the bottle below the bumped out knob on the neck of the bottle. Then, further pressure down on the handles will bring a cup shaped anvil down to press the crimped edges on the bottle cap down into the small groove at the top of the bottle.

After crimping:

I filled twenty four 22 ounce bottles and one pint glass (I had to taste it and see the color).

The taste is slightly bitter, though not unpleasent. It is slightly darker than Pilsner Urquell and is just a bit cloudy, but it has a nice hoppy aroma. Of course it isn't carbonated yet since the priming sugar ferments in the bottles to provide that. All in all, I think it will be a decent batch. After all the bottles were boxed up to age for two to four weeks, all of the equipment was rinsed and scrubbed. There was a small layer of sediment on the bottom of the carboy, perhaps a quarter inch deep which had to be scrubbed with a brush designed to get down into the bottom of a carboy. Everything was dried and will be ready for my next batch which I will probably boil sometime next week. I will update the blog in a couple weeks to let you know how the beer finally comes out after it ages and is chilled.

I watched the secondary fermentation tank for a while and am not seeing any signs of fermentation. I hope this only means that the sugar was all converted last week in the primary. I may check the specific gravity later today or tomorrow morning if I do not see any carbon dioxide bubbling off.

Today I siphoned the beer from the primary brew keg into a glass carboy for the secondary fermentation. I actually started last night by sterilizing the carboy. I filled it with a dilute solution of chlorine bleach and let it sit all night with the solution in it. This morning, I emptied it and then rinsed it twice before letting it drain for a while. I had a couple cups of coffee and then proceeded to sterilize the racking equipment (siphon, etc.), the stopper and airlock for use with the carboy. After all of this was done, I pried the top off of the primary keg. I mean pry too -- even with a tool I purchased to get the top off, it was difficult. When I got it off, the smell was fabulous! I think I can now state that it is actually beer in there! Looking into the keg, there is a lot of sediment from the yeast. The beer is fairly dark in color. I then placed the carboy on the floor beneath the keg and and inserted the racking tube. The one I bought has a manual priming pump to get the siphon started, so I placed the soft plastic siphon tube down into the carboy and pump started the siphoning process. It took a bit over five minutes for the beer to transfer from the primary keg to the carboy. While it siphoned, I moved the end of the siphon around so that it would splash air into the beer for further fermentation [later update -- do not splash the beer at this point -- you do not want to introduce oxygen into it now -- only at the very beginning to get the yeast started]. When it was done, there was about a half inch left in the primary keg, but it was mostly sediment from the yeast you wouldn't want to transfer. The racking tube has a device that fits on its end that keeps you from drawing from the very bottom so you won't get the sediment.



After the carboy was filled, I lifted it up to the table and stoppered it with the airlock in place. I then rinsed and wiped down the primary keg and cleaned all of the siphoning equipment. Next Friday or Saturday, I will start monitoring the specific gravity to see if the brewing has stopped, after which it will be time to bottle the beer.

Not a lot going on in the brew keg to see lately. The fermentation appears to be slowing, so I hope that means that most of the sugar has been processed by the yeast. The airlock started to bubble on Monday, the day after I had pitched the yeast in. The airlock bubbled about once every two seconds or so for most of Tuesday and Wednesday. Today, Thursday, it has slowed to once every eight seconds or so. I did manage to catch a bubble coming through the airlock with my camera though as you can see in the picture at the left. I plan to siphon the beer into a carboy for the second fermentation on Sunday.

Sorry to be so slow to write my progress report. Friday everything arrived that I had been waiting for (see my earlier post). Saturday afternoon, I lined up everything for the boil of my wort (wort is what will become the beer after the yeast works on it). I set up a small basin in the kitchen sink with a solution of chlorine bleach to sterilize everything and took my fermentation tank (a large 6 1/2 gallon plastic bucket) to the bathroom and filled it with a solution of chlorine bleach to sterilize it as well.

The utensils used in the boil need not be sterilized because the high temperature of the boiling wort will kill any stray bacteria or yeast that comes it's way (probably a very good thing since I also make my own bread in the kitchen).I decided that the tap water from Raleigh probably wasn't the best for brewing beer and used a water filtration pitcher I have to filter the water for starters.

After thoroughly rinsing the fermentation tank, I put 2 1/2 gallons of water in it and another 2 1/2 gallons in my boiling pot (the pot is a 4 gallon stainless steel pot). I put the thermometer in the pot and brought it up to a temperature of 155 degrees (fahrenheit). The first stage of the process is to cook what are called the "specialty grains" by the company that put the recipe kit together. They are to provide both flavor and color to the finished beer. I asked to have mine crushed, so I didn't need to crush them myself before using them. The package had about 10 to 12 ounces of grain in it which I poured into the nylon boiling back I had purchased. This was lowered into the pot of water which was now up to 155 F (I tied the drawstring for the bag to one of the pot handles so I could easily grab them to dunk the bag in and out of the water to keep water flowing around the grain.

This process lasted for one half hour. After squeezing all the water out of the grain that I could, I dumped the grain into the trash and rinsed the bag out for use with the hops in the next step.The next step was to add the malt extract to the pot. Malt extract is a very heavy, sticky syrup that does not pour very well at room temperature, so I had placed the bottle of extract (it came in a 1/2 gallon plastic bottle) in a pot full of very hot water to make it easier to pour while I was cooking the specialty grains earlier. I turned the burner off under the boiling pot so I would not scorch the malt extract on the bottom of the pot as I added it. Having heated it, it poured pretty well and I got as much out of it as I could and then immersed the bottle of extract in the still hot water and got as much of the rest of it out as I could before discarding the bottle.

After stirring the pot to mix the extract into the water, I turned the burner on high to bring it up to boiling temperature (212 F). It took a while to get up to that temperature, but it eventually started a nice rolling boil. There are two one ounce packages of hop pellets with the recipe kit. Both are of the same type. One is called the bittering hops and I put them into the nylon bag and lowered them into the wort for the entire hour long boil. Their purpose is to reduce the sweetness of the beer.

It is necessary to monitor the boil continuously for a couple of reasons. First, you do not want to scorch the malt extract on the bottom of the pot and secondly, it is very easy to have a boil-over if you don't keep it stirred all of the time. I experienced a boil-over in the past and it is a real mess to clean up as sticky as the wort is. So, I cracked open a beer (or two by the time an hour was up) and kept my eye on the pot and stirred it for an hour. At the end of the hour, I added the other package of hops for the last two minutes of boiling. They are the aroma hops and give the beer the smell of hops that is so familiar. After the two minutes, I turned the burner off and removed the nylon bag containing the hops.I was now ready to put the wort into the fermentation tank. You can just pour it from the pot into the tank, but this could get sloppy with spills, so I siphoned it from the pot into the tank. This not only prevents spills, but it reduces the amount of grain and hops debris that end up in the fermentation keg as well. When I had transferred the wort from the pot, the keg was about 3/4 gallon short of being a full five gallons, so I added filtered water to bring it up to the five gallon mark. The wort has to be cooled to room temperature or there abouts before the yeast is added. Since I do not have a wort chiller (an immersion heat exchanger that basically is about 30 feet of copper tubing through which cold water flows), I covered the fermentation keg to keep stray yeast and bacteria away from it and let it sit overnight. Before ending the day, I removed the liquid yeast from the refridgerator to let it get to room temperature as well.Sunday morning, the wort was down to room temperature (I keep my apartment at about 72 degrees with air conditioning -- our summer temperature is usually about 90 F during the afternoons, so air conditioning is almost a necessity). I removed the top from the brew keg and before I opened the bottle of yeast, I took a specific gravity of the wort. It measured 1.038. On another scale, it indicated that the potential alcohol by volume was 5%. When I measure it at the end of fermentation, I should be able to subtact the value it gets to to determine the actual alcohol content. The yeast had been working in the bottle and actually fizzed when I opened it. I poured it into the brew keg and, after sterilizing the top again and inserting the air lock, I put the top onto the brew keg firmly to keep any air from entering from the outside during fermentation.There it sits now -- I looked at it this morning (Monday, a day after adding the yeast) and can see occasional bubbles in the airlock, so the yeast is working. It will sit in the brew keg for about a week at which time I will transfer it to a glass carboy for the second brew. It is now about 4 to 6 weeks before I can start to drink the beer. I guess I will have to buy beer for a few more weeks.