When I got home today, I found that Dan’s beer was well underway. The fermentation has certainly started and I grabbed a quick video of it.
The bubbling is the air escaping from the fermenter due to fermentation. It is nothing too exciting but I figured I would post it anyway.
If you are wondering why it is in the shower / bath tub, it is to make cleanup easy should something go wrong. If I were to put an airlock on the fermenter instead of the blow off tube, and the air lock clogged, it would literally blow the airlock off with such force that the beer would easily hit the ceiling. It is insane.
This morning I woke up at about 8:30 to begin brewing a beer for Dan and some friends. I have brewed this one before and it came out great so they wanted me to use this one for theirs as well. It is a Caramel Vanilla Creme Ale. The vanilla flavors come from 6 ounces of vanilla extract (in a 5 gallon batch of beer) and the caramel flavors come from a roasted grain that is being used in the brew which carries a caramelish flavor to it. The creaminess comes from lactose (a sugar derived from milk) which will be added to the beer to give it a smooth silky taste to it.
This will be another great beer and should be ready in about 5 to 6 weeks. At least one of those weeks we will be on our cruise LOL.
Patience boys!
For my own record, the Original Gravity was 1.050 (1.053 expected).
OHHH NNOOOO!!!! Last night while having some friends over my first keg has been floated I floated my first keg before i finished my first batch of beer…how sad! And the worst part is I barely had any of it I have had a number of people over recently who have taken to that beer quite well – even those that typically drink Bud Lightish beers.
RIP Vanilla Caramel Creme Ale – I am sure I will brew you again. I have another beer that I have started which is currently fermenting away and I will be starting the beer that will replace this Vanilla Caramel Creme Ale hopefully sometime this week.
On Friday (January 23rd) afternoon I kegged my first beer. It is carbonating and because of my choice of carbonation method, it will be about 2 weeks before it is completed ready to be consumed. There are ways to reduce this amount of time to under a few hours, but since I want the beer to age properly anyway, I decided to just let it sit and carbonate / age the long way.
Shortly I will have a post up with the kegerator project from start to finish as well as some pictures of it. It was a fun project! I just need to replace some items and clean up some tubing and such. Just not enough time to get it all done
The last part for my kegerator is on its way today!!! I will have it put together tomorrow most likely. Now all I need is the beer.
I have one beer that will get kegged either sometime this week or on the weekend. This one really should be left alone for another 2 weeks, but I may have to sneak a taste anyway. The other beer is in its 2nd week fermenting and will not be kegged for another week and a half. And after that it should age another 3 weeks at least as well.
Maybe I will throw a small gathering to try out the kegerator. Serving all my alcoholic friends my homebrew would be too expensive
On Christmas Eve I began the brewing process of my latest beer a Caramel Vanilla Creme Ale. This beer gets its name from the type of grains used as well as the 5 oz of pure vanilla extract (NOT imitation!). This will be my first beer to be kegged. The kegerator will be completed before this one is done fermenting out. I can’t wait!!!
So after all of the waiting for my beer to be ready to drink, it was finally time… time to throw a party and give everyone a sample!We had invited all of our friends and family (the younger members that is J ) to come over to our house to enjoy it.The turnout was great.We had about 25 – 30 people there and everyone had a great time.
Alisha went nuts decorating the house and making food for everyone to munch on.She had some meatball appetizers as well as the famous buffalo cheese dip that we stole from Titi Geni (for all of you whities, it is aunt in Spanish not a boob :crackup: ).We also had ingredients for s’mores by the fire pit.The rule for the party was that everyone had to bring a RANDOM six pack (or more) of beer to share and another for themselves ( if they would drink more than six beers).This meant that everyone would be able to try 6 different beers that night plus a sample of my homebrew.This worked out GREAT.I really expected to see a bunch of Bud Light (AMBER!!! – I know we talked about it ha ha ha) and Michelob Ultra, but it turned out perfect.There was everything from malt beverages, to brown ales, to IPA’s, to Pale Ales, to stouts!Every single bit of the shelving in the fridge was entirely dedicated to the beers that people brought… actually we could not even fit it all.We still had to put some in coolers outside.
The fire pit was going, the music was playing, and people had a great time.To sample the homebrew, I brought out all of my beer glasses and poured a sample into each.We gave a quick congrats to Phil and Krystle on their engagement, to me and Alisha on our baby on the way, and of course to the homebrew.
I got a lot of thanks and compliments about the house and the party all night long.I am glad people enjoyed it and were able to try beers they normally would have been skeptical about or just never thought to try.We had a great time and we look forward to having you over again.
Sunday was no less busy than Saturday was.Man, what a busy weekend this had turned out to be.Because something is wrong with me, I cannot sleep in and woke up early again on Sunday.I decided to head downstairs and bottle up the beer that I brewed 3 weeks ago.This took about 2 hours or so (took longer than I had expected because it was my first time).I now have 45 bottles of lovely brown ale homebrew sitting in Envy’s room carbonating.I am supposed to wait about 2 before I can place them in the refrigerator but I am sure I will sneak one before then to give it a taste.This time is supposed to give them time to clear and carbonate properly.I cannot wait to taste one that is done carbonating and is nice and cold!The worst part about home brewing is the time it takes to drink them!
After bottling my beer, I grabbed the landscape lighting and headed outside to set them up.Damn did I under-estimate this job.I had no idea what I was getting myself into!We were placing one light on the left of the door, one on the door, and another one on the right side of the door.Since they are hardwired I had to run the cable underneath the sidewalk that is heading to the front door.Since my neighbor had done it I figured this would be fairly easy.Yeah … I was wrong.I tried digging two holes and spraying water in there to soften the dirt… didn’t work… By this time I was shoulder deep in the mud puddle that I had made and decided that I needed to head out to Home Depot.Looking like I dove in a watering hole I bought a PVC pipe and adapters to make the PVC pipe a “hose” by adding an adapter to attach the hose and a nozzle on the other end to direct the water.Since I took the Prelude to pick this up, I had to have the pipe sticking out of the sunroof of the car.It was interesting for sure.After about another hour or two of fighting with this contraption, I finally reached the other side and finished up the wiring and set it all up.
Once I showered and ate some food I made a deal with Alisha that I would go with her to make the curtain rods if I could brew my next batch of beer before we headed off to bed.We then got ready and headed out to buy the rods.Once we got home we had to “sew” the curtains to the extra fabric that we bought so that we could hang them in the living room.Alisha was SOOO happy with the results of our work.It really did come out great!Take a peek at the before and after.
After cleaning up the mess we made getting the curtains hung, I began to brew my next beer. It is going to be a Chocolate Espresso Russian Imperial Stout!I cannot wait for this one to be done.I hope it turns out as great as it sounds.After brewing and adding to the fermenter until midnight I pitched the yeast and we headed off to bed.
It was an excellent weekend and we really got a lot of stuff done.The house looks great!
I have been really interested in beer lately as you should know already. I have joined the Taco Mac Passport Club (with the intent of racking up some serious beer), started my own beer blog, and now started brewing my own beer. My first beer is going to be a Brown Ale similar to that of a Newcastle.
This morning I woke up to start the brewing process (which is outlined on my beer blog). I cooked up the ingredients (which Alisha LOVED as the smell took over the house :crackup: ), and then transferred them the pots to the carboy (a 5 gallon glass container) with the water and yeast to start the fermentation process.
This morning the fermentation was fully obvious as the blow off was bubbling like crazy and the krausan was reaching the top of the carboy. Unfortuantely, it will be another week or so before I can bottle it and then another week to two weeks before I can drink it. We will have to throw a party when it is ready to share my beer with everyone.
I have been thinking for a while that I need a way to start keeping track of the beers that I try so that I know which ones I liked and which ones were terrible. In addition, Dan and some of my friends have been commenting lately that they are wanting to expand their beer drinking habits from the awful Bud Light and its other terrible equivalents. This has led me into starting a new blog site to do just that. The links to reach the site are on my blogroll on the right side or you can click either of the links below.
I plan to post blogs about the different beers that I try and rate them according to my own personal scale. I don’t care what others think about it… it is what I think about it. I encourage all of you other beer drinkers to take a look at the site and let me know what you think of my reviews and maybe even give me suggestions on what beers I should try next by dropping comments on my posts. If you feel like being a hell of a guy / gal you can offer to even take me out for a drink to taste your recommendation.
Take a moment to visit the site and add it to your favorites / RSS feeds. I look forward to adding to it quite frequently and hope that it gives you all some ideas. I would love to convert all of my cheap beer drinking friends to a beer worth a damn
“Life is too short to drink cheap beer” As seen at McGuires Pub in Destin FL
I floated my first keg before i finished my first batch of beer…how sad! And the worst part is I barely had any of it 
