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.