This afternoon I decided to spend about an hour and half brewing a new cider recipe that I had found. The first cider that I brewed came out terrible due to a wild yeast strain that took over fermentation. I recently brewed another cider which is currently in a keg to age in the garage. Ciders are easy to brew and also very cheap, but unfortunately they need to age for quite some time before they become very enjoyable. Knowing that, I decided to throw another batch together with the intent to age. This particular recipe is kind of a hybrid between beer and cider but is supposed to be very good. It has grains and hops added to it as well as 4 gallons of apple juice to complete the “cider”. I am looking forward to this one and can’t wait to see how it turns out.
After brewing Bobby came over and we headed to dinner at Bucca di Beppo. We had a great time catching up on events from the week as well as enjoying some good food. I will say that I was very shocked by the new pricing. It costs quite a bit more than Maggianos and the food is NOWHERE near as good. That may be my last trip to that place for me. Great atmosphere but those prices are kinda ridiculous even though you are supposed to share.
After dinner we headed to Cold Stone for some ice cream and then to Taco Mac so that Bobby and I could have the limited beer from He’Brew called Jewbilation 13. It is a 13% alcohol beer and is made with 13 hops and 13 grains. It was pretty damn smooth for that kind of alcohol content and was a perfect way to wrap up the night.
notes: The cider (Graff) has an OG of 1.064 (expected an OG of about 1.060).
So I got home after less than 24 hours from pitching the yeast to find this.
The yeast are working so hard so quickly that the beer is being pushed through the blowoff tube and into the bucket LOL. This is a sign of a huge fermentation which is good to see. If I had used an airlock instead of a blow off tube (like many do) it would have clogged it and sent a stream of beer so high that it would easily hit the ceiling and continue to spray like a geyser… fermentations are pretty cool.
On sunday morning I woke up early to head downstairs to brew… well, until I saw this:
RAIN!
Unfortunately it was POURING! Since I have graduated to all grain brewing, I have to brew outside due to 6 or 7 gallons of water that must be brought to a boil. The stove could never do that and finding a pot that would fit on a stove would be nearly impossible. I then decided to redo my brewing space and brought everything into the garage. I kept the garage door open and brewed right at the end of the garage. I was making a winter spiced coffee milk stout based on a recipe that I found online. This method of brewing is literally exactly how breweries brew their beer (except that theirs is all basically automated and they have bigger and more fancy vessels LOL)
The brewing setup
So the process is simple (well…. kinda). You heat water in a beer keg with the top cut out (which then becomes a boil kettle) to an exact temperature and dump it into the cooler (called a mash tun). You then add your crushed grains and let sit for about an hour. You then drain the cooler of the liquid into the boil kettle leaving behind the grains. You then add more water heated to a higher exact temperature to “rinse” the grains. Let that sit for about 10 minutes and then drain the cooler again into the boil kettle. You then boil the liquid and add hops at a set schedule (for bitterness, taste, and smell) as stated in the recipe. You then cool the boiled liquid down as quickly as possible by pumping freezing cold water through copper tubing placed in the boil kettle. After cooling the “beer” you drain the kettle into a fermenter, add yeast, shake away to aerate, and let it ferment out for at least 3 weeks. This process takes about 5 – 6 hours from start to finish – well at least for me it does LOL. Some get it done much quicker, but I need to work on my process to get that time down.
mash tun and mash paddle
So after brewing I took a shower and headed over to my parents house. We had not been over there in a while and we were overdue. We hung out and relaxed, had dinner and headed home.
All in all it was a great day. Can’t wait to taste this one!
My notes: this beer’s efficiency was not quite so great. Expected OG was 1.067 and i ended up with a 1.050. Beersmith’s strike temperature for the mash was dead on. Best to bring water higher, put into the mash tun to cool to strike water temperature. The sparge I think was off. Use 2 quarts per pound of grain next time at 170 instead of the instructed strike temperature. Fermentation took off in less than 24 hours with a huge amount of blowoff. Tested the gravity today (12/3/09) and it was at 1.024. Estimated FG is 1.024 but that is with lactose. I may need to skip the addition …. I roused the yeast today now that it is above the 60’s. Hopefully this kicks fermentation up a little bit if there is anything left in there to ferment.
Last Friday evening Ifinally sent my banana beer to a carboy. A carboy is a glass fermenter / holding container which is air proof. It was quite interesting to see the inside of the fermenter with all of the bananas in there LOL.
Racking the Banana cream ale
After transferring the beer to the carboy it was placed in my kegerator (which has no beers on tap ) to crash cool. During this time any additional yeast and other sediment from the bananas of brewing process falls to the bottom of the carboy. After two days of being in the kegerator I pulled it out, sanitized a keg, racked it to the keg, and began carbonating it with co2.
Fermented Bananas
It will take about two weeks to be fully carbed and actually may need a few more weeks of aging to ensure that there are no off tastes from the recently fermented bananas. Hopefully within a few weeks this thing will be ready and tasting great!
Dont forget to check out our photo gallery for pictures of my banana beer here
On Friday I purchased 5 lbs of bananas to add to my banana beer that I am brewing along with 2 ounces of pure vanilla extract. MMMM
Once home, I sanitized a plastic container and cut up all 5 lbs of bananas (about 23 bananas) and placed them into the container. I then took the glass fermenter and transferred the fermented beer into another fermenter. This new fermenter had the 5 lbs of bananas and the vanilla extract in it. The finished beer was then “racked” on top of the bananas to mix with them and the vanilla. This will create another fermentation while the yeast eat up all the sugar that is in the bananas (AKA a lot ). The fermenter is then sealed and an airlock is placed on it to make sure that it remains air tight to prevent infections. Becuase the temperatures in the house result in the beer being higher than 68 degrees, the fermenters are are placed in a plastic container. Water is added to the container to surround the fermenter. Water bottles with ice in them are then placed in the container to chill the water around the fermenter. A shirt is then draped over the fermenter to act like a wick to pull the water onto it, cooling the fermenter. Almost 6 days later the air lock is still releasing air from the fermenter which are signs that the yeast are still fermenting the sugars in the bananas. Unfortunately, I will still need to wait about two more weeks to be sure that this has completed before I can keg it. Then the dreaded two weeks of carbonation before I can drink it
While I was out I also picked up 4 gallons of apple juice to use for a hard cider. The last one that I brewed was terrible as wild yeast must have lived through the flash pasteurization that the apple orchard did resulting in a TERRIBLE apple cider. We had to dump them all . This time I used pure Apple Juice some grains (for taste) and yeast. I did the normal with the grains, combined the liquid with the apple juice in the fermenter and added the yeast. It fermented away like crazy and is now beginning to calm down. Making sweet cider at home is tricky because yeast will eat sugars until there is none left, or until it consumes its maximum amount. Well in this case it will take it until the cider is dry. Some like it that way – I cant imagine that I would. Since I am kegging, I can chill the cider down very quickly in the kegerator (which makes the yeast “sleep” and drop to the bottom. Then I can transfer the cider to another fermenter with the hopes that I removed enough yeast to stop the fermentation. This is what I plan to do. Then I can keg the cider and carbonate it with CO2.
I cant wait for both of these to be done! I will most likely carbonate the cider and then bottle it up so that I can free up the tap for the banana cream ale. Either way it will be a while before that happens.
Note: The cider started out at 1.052 and finished at 1.010 on 11/6/09.
On Sunday morning, I woke up early to start brewing a beer that I have been dying to do. It is a Banana Cream Ale!! It is a medium bodied beer that after fermenting will sit on 5 lbs of bananas for about 2 weeks. I cannot wait to taste this! It will have lactose added to it for a creamy mouthfeel and a hint of vanilla. Should be a hit just as my Caramel Vanilla Cream Ale was. I spent about 4 hours cleaning everything and getting it all brewed up outside on the back patio. It was nice to brew again. Yeah it takes some time, but it is still fun and oh so rewarding. Heck, I am drinking a homebrew that I brewed almost a year ago as I type this.
Brewing my Banana Cream Ale
Kara and Lin spent the night over Saturday as Kara was going to come with us to Edwin and Geni’s house to hang out since Oktoberfest was canceled due to the rain. Lin had a kickball game in the city that he had to go to so he was unable to hang out with us. Edwin and Geni invited all of the family and a few family friends to come over to enjoy the catered food and just hang out. It was a great relaxing day. We talked, watched some football, drank, and just hung out.
This weather is excellent! I am so glad fall is here!!!
For my own notes the beer finished at an OG of 1.052.
A friend at work emailed me this today – excellent!
Sometimes when I reflect back on all the beer I drink I feel ashamed.
Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery
and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn’t drink this beer, they
might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. Then I say
to myself, ‘It is better that I drink this beer and let their dreams
come true than to be selfish and worry about my liver.
Dan came over this morning to finally botlle the beer that I brewed for him (Caramel Vanilla Creme Ale). I had been meaning to do it for several weeks (okay nearly months now) but just had not gone ahead and done so. I guess I was just dreading bottling beer again when kegging is sooo easy LOL.
I grabbed all of the bottles and got them ready to be sanitized. We spent about 2 hours or so getting everything sanitized, adding the vanilla extract (a whopping 5 ounces of it!), and adding the bottling sugar. The beer came out damn near perfect. I am glad that it was a successful batch for him as after all he did pay for the ingredients LOL. He will need to wait about 2 weeks before he can drink it, but it should be great when he does.
For my own notes, this beer finished at a perfect 1.012 final gravity and we added 5 ounces of vanilla extract
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).
I wont go into much detail but I just got the recipe from Terrapin for one of my favorite beers of theirs. Bobby and I drank the heck out of it while it was available! I ran into him at the brewery tour this weekend and he gave me the recipe!
Tonight I brewed my next beer because my keg has run dry with everyone tasting and loving the Vanilla Caramel Creme Ale. This one will be a very light, drinkable beer and is one that many home brewers on the website I go to for recipes keep on hand at all times. It is well liked by typical Bud Light / Coors Light drinkers and still loved by those that appreciate beers of a darker and more complex tones.
This one is a lighter but still very flavorful beer. It was also my first All Grain beer which means that I am now doing everything (yes everything) that a brewery would do to brew a beer. I use recipes consisting entirely of grains and adjuncts instead of malt extracts. This process does take about twice as long to brew but is much more rewarding when the beer is ready. In addition, there are more recipes to choose from and it is easier to fine tune the tastes that you are looking for or enjoy. This also means that I can make a pumpkin beer this fall!! Whoohoo!
Cant wait to taste this one. Because of its type it will be ready to drink in about 3 – 4 weeks instead of the typical 6 weeks which is nice. Gotta get that tap running again!
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.
Now that I have been brewing my own beer for a little bit, I have decided to skip the most painful process – bottling. Kegged beer is much more fun and I have been wanting to get into it for a while. What is more rewarding than pouring your OWN beer from your OWN tap?
Since Alisha’s dad picked up a new freezer, he gave me their old chest freezer. I read up online and it turns out that it is fairly easy to convert a chest freezer into a kegerator. In short, all you need to do is build a wood “collar” to go in between the freezer and its lid, so that you can mount the faucets for the kegs since you cant drill into the freezer walls (they have coolent lines running in the walls).
Take a look at my kegerator pagefor more detailed information on the transformation from freezer to keezer
Friday evening was a little wasteful this weekend as everyone was kinda doing their own thing. Alisha went with Aubree to a wedding shower and I was at home looking for something to do.
Dan had called to say that he was looking to stop by with Frank and Justin as they had not tried out my homebrew yet and wanted to. Since I knew they were going to stop by, I decided to stay home and just clean up and chill there. The came over at about 9:00 or so, tried out the different beers and then headed out to grab some drinks on their own.
Alisha came back home right after they left and we just chilled, watched TV, and headed to bed.
A poor and slow start to the weekend unfortunately but it was good to see Dan, Frank, and Justin again.
). The fermenter is then sealed and an airlock is placed on it to make sure that it remains air tight to prevent infections. Becuase the temperatures in the house result in the beer being higher than 68 degrees, the fermenters are are placed in a plastic container. Water is added to the container to surround the fermenter. Water bottles with ice in them are then placed in the container to chill the water around the fermenter. A shirt is then draped over the fermenter to act like a wick to pull the water onto it, cooling the fermenter. Almost 6 days later the air lock is still releasing air from the fermenter which are signs that the yeast are still fermenting the sugars in the bananas. Unfortunately, I will still need to wait about two more weeks to be sure that this has completed before I can keg it. Then the dreaded two weeks of carbonation before I can drink it 
