Photos
August 26th, 2008 Why buy beer when you can make your own?
August 21st, 2008
The best part of homebrewing: taking raw ingredients and turning them into one of the oldest beverages in the world that you can share with your friends. Second best thing, its cheap. I haven’t actually done the math, but my gut tells me it must be cheaper. Something about removing the middle man.
Last night we tasted our Mystery Recipe Pale Ale. It is still very young, having only been in the bottle 6 days, but it has that nice crisp carbonation sound when you pop the top, which is what we were really checking on. Anyway, as expected from the low starting gravity (meaning not a lot of sugars to begin with) it feels a little on the watery side. It has a nice malty sent with a surprisingly strong hoppy aftertaste.
The point is we now 50 49 bottles of our very own beer.
Psuedo-Sanitary Siphoning
August 18th, 2008
When I read advice to beginning home brewers, the major theme seems to be making sure you maintain a sanitized work surface. If you have ever wondered just how important this might be, I think I can provide an idea. In my previous life, I worked with a lot of E. Coli bacteria to carry out various tasks. They are grown in a media comprised of a salt, bactotryptone, and yeast extract (i.e. vegemite). Essentially a nice mix of proteins and everything yeast need to survive. I have a feeling that a few liters of wort would have worked just as well. The take home lesson, don’t let let anything you wouldn’t want to ingest get into your beer.
One of the best times for germs to hop into wort has to be during the transfer from one carboy to the next. A great way to do this is by using an auto-siphon. After watching that video I see two problems: 1)apparently auto-siphoning makes you talk in extreme monotone 2)what’s the fun of siphoning without even the slightest chance of getting something in your mouth?
The picture is not Joe indulging in medicinal marijuana. It’s our very own psuedo-sanitary siphoning technique. We could have purchased an auto-siphon, but when one of your two bloggers may or may not be unemployed it’s best to not make any unnessary purchases. Instead, we used the thoroughly sanitized (and already purchased) airlock and placed it at the end of our tubing. It allows all the fun of using your mouth, but without the nasty contamination.
Hail the Pale Ale
August 15th, 2008
As the sun set on another day of brewing in Oakland, CA, Joe and I had bottled 50 bottles of gold that we are calling our Mystery Recipe Pale Ale. With our first attempt at all grain brewing appearing to have been a non-failure, our heads have inflated just a bit more . All we can do now is wait two weeks for the yeast to do one last bit of work and carbonate each bottle.
According to our hydrometer readings, our pre-fermented wort had a OG of 1.036 and the beer we bottled yesterday a FG of 1.010. What does this mean? It means we have an alcohol content of roughly 3.2%, making it legal for sale in Utah! Well, except for our utter lack of any sort of license.
Seriously???
August 14th, 2008
I really should have gotten into cognitive science. I can only imagine walking into your PIs office and saying hey let’s study beer goggles. The crazy thing is this is only after one drink.