Geoff's Brew Room

Pilsner Bottled

2008-11-23T00:51:00.002-05:00

Tonight I put up 36 16 ounce Grolsch bottles of the Pilsner brewed late last month. Final gravity was 1.012, adjusted to 60F. A preliminary sip from the hydrometer vessel indicates a hoppy brew with lots of flavor character. Should be good stuff once it carbonates. I'll be trying this stuff out on Xmas!

All the supplies and equipment have been cleaned up and put away. Total time, including cleaning and sanitizing all the counter space and the table in the kitchen, mopping the floor before getting started, washing/rinsing/sanitizing/rinsing the 40 bottles and their seals: about 3.5 hours. It is a lengthy process, even when you are starting from "clean" bottles. Wish it was faster.

Anyway, now we wait and see how it turns out!

A batch of Backyard Pilsner

2008-10-29T20:51:00.009-04:00

Sooner or later, things had to break my way and point me back towards homebrewing, and tonight is the night. Angela and Savannah are away at 5th grade camp, so Joshie and I are batchin' it at home, making homebrew!

It's remarkable that I've gone from brewing as a single man in a one bedroom apartment to brewing as a husband and father of two, and having my six year old boy "help out," but that's where we are tonight. Josh took care of dipping the Cara Pils grains like a teabag and stirring with a big wooden spoon while Daddy wrestled with the *&*($!! electric can opener to get the two cans the malt extract syrup came in. At 8:30pm (it's a school night) he trundled off to bed, not without protest, and Daddy fired up the garage computer/jukebox with my day-old copy of AC/DC's new Black Ice album being pumped out of the main machine back in the living room. Life in the garage that is the Cavant Drive Fire Brewery is good, despite staring straight down the double-barrels of an Obama presidency combined with the worst economic times this side of the Great Depression, but hey, what the hell. I've got the next 8 years to drink homebrew, I hope.

This is a pretty straightforward brew, and being that it's been so long since I've had the chance, I'm not trying to do anything fancy; just trying not to screw it up. Being that Adventures in Homebrewing moved from their (somewhat) convenient location on the western outskirts of Dearborn to god knows where, I found the local brewer's supply house, Kuhnhenn's, over on Chicago Rd and Mound more than willing to sell me supplies. Of course, this means some minor differences in ingredients:

Munton's Gold Continental Pilsner "40 pt beerkit": 6#, 6oz of hopped malt extract syrup
Wyeast San Francisco Lager Yeast WLP810 (in pitchable liquid form)

Other than those two things, the ingredients are pretty standard:

5 gallons of Kroger's finest house brand Spring Water

12oz of Cara Pils

1 oz of Saaz hops (aromatic)

1oz of Perl hops (bittering)

With Joshua's help, I brought two gallons of the spring water to 160F with the 12oz of Cara Pils grains in my muslin teabag. Stopped at 160F for a 10-minute protein rest. Note that I used an old broomstick secured across the stock pot's handles with spring clamps to hold the bag upright by its tie string. Josh couldn't drop it in and was able to "dip" them up and down. It made him happy...
Opened the two cans that the Muntons HME came in. Note to self: find the manual can opener, the electric one doesn't like the shape of these cans. Added these to the wort, and began bringing to a boil...a loooooong process taking about 40 minutes for a rolling boil to start.
Boiled for 30 minutes.
Added 1/4 TSP Irish Moss to the brew after removing the Perle hops. Did this by measuring them, then sprinkling them in with my fingers while stirring. Boiled for 15 minutes. (Okay, it was 16 minutes 30 seconds. Have me shot.)
Added in the Saaz hops and continued boil for an additional 5 minutes
While on the final 5 minute boil, got the 3 gallons of spring water I had in the freezer and poured into the carboy. Yes, the handles were frozen.
Turned off the heat, double-triple sterilizing the strainer by having it in the boiling pot the last minute or two. Promptly put it into the funnel.
Donned my welding gloves and added the wort to the three gallons of cold water.
Measured an initial wort temperature of 90F. At this temp, O.G. was 1.043
Pitched the liquid yeast, put the cork in the carboy, and shook hard to aerate the wort.
Attached the blow-off tube, and ran the line into a refilled water jug to act as an airlock. Put the whole works into the fermentation room, i.e. the basement on top of the washing machine.
Started cleaning up.

We started at about 7PM (it took awhile to find the campstove!). I'm finishing these notes at 10:41, with Metallica's new Death Magnetic rolling in the background.

Soon: bottling!

Saflager yeast: the way to go for the Pilsner

2005-11-29T10:10:00.000-05:00

It's been a long time since I've posted, and an equally long time since I brewed. The 'breakdown' brew I wrote of in February was a flop; I blame two things: extended time in the fermenter due to having the Intrepid laid up for a month with a broken timing belt, and the off-brand yeast I used because the brewing store in Dearborn no longer carried Saflager.

At the moment, I'm deep in my Turbo Acclaim project, working on wiring, and haven't had any good homebrew for months. I am asking Santa for some mail-order Saflager yeast and some other brewing supplies, and will probably resume brewing in January. Since the MML is coming to town for NAIAS, I might even heat up the garage and brew with them while they're here...we'll see!

Breakdown beer

2005-02-25T23:51:00.000-05:00

Well, here it is, the end of February 2005, and spring would be in sight, if it wasn't for all the snow falling!

This evening the Intrepid rather inconveniently chose to leave me stranded by the side of the road - the left hand break-down lane of I-75, no less - after an infrequent trip into the office in Dearborn to move some data. Early indications are that the camshaft position sensor gave up the ghost after 105,000 miles of service; time will tell. At least the tow truck driver was an interesting guy, easy to get along with. I sat by the side of the road for about an hour, idly hoping that some drunk wouldn't whack into me while I awaited AAA's magic. I had the car towed home. Hell, I can fix it!

In the meantime, I used some of my birthday money to buy ingredients for a third batch of Pilsner. Running low as I am, I probably have cut things a bit close, but money's been a bit tight as of late, and somehow spending $22 on beer all at one time has been assigned a distinctively lower priority than keeping the roof over our head and various and sundry other items. So my in-laws came through with $50 for my 37th birthday...and I'm a-brewin'! So I ran down to Adventures in Homebrewing the other night with Joshie, and picked up the ingredients. Not sure, but I could swear that I ended up with less malt extract syrup than usual; when I queried the store owner on it (who relayed a sad tale of a newborn first child deep in the throes of colic) he claimed I was probably used to getting more than I pay for. Such is life, I suppose.

This evening, Angela is off to Julie's doing the scrapbooking thing, Savannah and Joshua are tucked safely away in their beds, and the Intrepid is gathering snowflakes where the tow truck left it, out on the street. The temperature outside is in the low 30s, but I'm comfy and cozy, hovering over my Coleman propane camp stove, marvelling at the wonders of LP gas heat out in the garage, which is a very tolerable 68F.

Anyway, I followed the instructions as set forth in earlier posts, with the notable exceptions that I actually got the 160F protein rest right on the money, and I also remembered to add the Irish moss *before* the aroma hops and did the fifteen-minute boil as prescribed. Leo, our new beagle, was in attendance as I variously stirred and muttered incantations over the brew, which incidently was the maiden voyage of my new 24-quart stock pot. Boy, I love this new stock pot. Larger, made out of heavier-gauge stainless steel, it seems much more thermally stable than the old stock pot. The protein rest went without a hitch, and the temp stayed within 4 degrees of target with the burner on the camp stove turned completely off. It's also much larger and hence deeper than the old one; I was unable to boil it over with 2 gallons of brewing wort in it despite several attempts. Still, it's adviseable to monitor it carefully, and control the boilovers by keeping the lid slightly ajar.

The only thing that leaves me wondering about this evening's brewing activities is the O.G. I ended up with: 1.032 @ approximately 89F. Not sure why it would be so significantly lower, unless my hunch about the lesser amount of malt extract syrup is correct; typically I see values in the low 1.040 range. So...what will it taste like??? Will it be essentially the same with a slightly lower alcohol content? (It could afford to lose some alcohol content. One 16oz pint can sometimes leave me wobbly, and that's not exactly always what I'm looking for. Hardly ever, to be truthful.) If the taste is unaffected, the body about the same, and the alcohol content slightly reduced from the approximate 5-ish percent it's normally at...I think I can live with that.

The other difference this go-round is that my friend in Dearborn has stopped carrying the SafLager brand of yeast. This has been successful for me, always working up a vigorous fermentation within mere hours of pitching, so I'm disappointed to say the least that he's elected to stop carrying it. He assures me that the Aussie brand of lager yeast offered as a replacement will be equivalent...but I'm doubtful. It remains to be seen, of course, if "Superior Lager Yeast" (Product of Australia, imported by Superior Brewing Supplies of Hamilton, ON) produces a better brew, well I wouldn't have found that out if not for the inconvenience.

So as always, there were a bunch of little variables I couldn't control for. But I had a good time anyway, and was done with everything, even the cleanup, in under 3 hours. Not bad.

Award winning....

2004-09-25T20:29:00.000-04:00

...well, sorta.

Siena Heights University's Alumni weekend featured an alumni brew-off today. Which would have been great, except the only two participants were myself and Bill Blackerby, a business professor at the college. Bill has an affinity for porters and ales, so he brought some of that along, and I brought down four bottles of the first batch of Pilsner for judging.

Something happened along the way toward getting things organized, and not everyone who might have participated was notified to show up. So, basically, I won by default, although we sat down and had a nice conversation with Bill, Joe and Christi Balusik, Tony Scioly, and some other faculty and a few students. Bill did the show and tell bit on what homebrewing is, having brought along some of his equipment. I filled in a few details here and there, and in between watching the kids while they had their faces painted and bounced around in the big moon walk, I received some nice complements on the Pilsner. Bill disqualified himself for the grand prize -- a giant beer mug with an engraved plaque proclaiming the bearer to be "First Place -- 2004 SHU Alumni Brew-Off," so I ended up with it.

As a bonus, Mr. Balusik, who, uh, has connections in the Toledo glass industry, kicked in a couple of brand-new cases of 12oz bottles.

And a good time was had by all.

Beer: The reason for the two-party system

2004-08-26T15:56:00.000-04:00

My buddy Joe Balusik sends this along...

The History of Social Evolution

The division of the human family into its two distinct political branches occurred some 10,000 years ago, when humans coexisted as members of small bands of nomadic hunter/gatherers.

The pivotal event of societal evolution was the invention of beer.

This epochal event was both the foundation of modern civilization and the occasion of the bifurcation of humanity into its two distinct subgroups: Liberals and Conservatives.

Once beer was discovered, it required grain, and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so it was necessary to stick close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days killing animals to barbecue at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of the conservative movement.

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting, learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly barbecues and doing the sewing, fetching and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the liberal movement. An interesting evolutionary side note: some of these early Liberal men eventually evolved into women.

Liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the trade union, the invention of group therapy and group hugs, and the concept of democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that the conservatives provided.

Over the years, conservatives became to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth.

Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare. Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men.

Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't "fair" to make the pitcher
also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer; they eat red meat, and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumber jacks, construction workers, medical doctors, police officers, most corporate executives, all soldiers, some athletes, and generally anyone who works productively outside government.

Conservatives who own companies hire other Conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to "govern" the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America. They crept in only after the Wild West was tamed, and created a business of trying to get MORE for nothing.

Here ends the lesson in social history.

Bottled!

2004-08-18T07:30:00.000-04:00

I bottled the latest batch last week Tuesday (10-AUG-2004), ending up with 39 bottles, mostly 16-ounce flip-top 'Grolsch' bottles. There were 8 12-oz 'stubbies' used -- I think they were Negra Modelo bottles. These didn't work out so well--the neck on these is very thick, and it made it difficult for me to get the bottle capper to crimp down on them. Hopefully they sealed alright, I had to "recrimp" them twice before the caps looked like they were secure. After they get emptied out, they're going to be recycled.

I really went overboard this time in sanitizing the bottles, filling each and every one with a strong solution of bleach and water, and then leaving them to sit overnight for two nights in a row. (This was after spending a few hours the preceeding Sunday with Savannah cleaning them out.) One nice result was crystal-clear glass, however. I don't believe these bottles were ever any more clean when they were in the original beer bottling factory. I'm reading where the cleaning solution I'm using (have to post the name another time, can't remember it right now) is an adequate sanitizer in and of itself, so really these bottles are double-sanitized. I know it's impossible to completely remove all the bacteria in a basement, rather than a clean-room environment, but I think I've gotten as close as possible with the bottles, anyway.

I picked up a nice trick while I was filling the bottles this time. Instead of setting them directly on the floor to be filled, I put them 8 or 9 at a time into the dishpan I use for sanitizing onto the floor. Now when I slightly misjudge how full a bottle is becoming, the resulting overflow goes into the dishpan instead of onto the floor where it has to be mopped up.

I've decided to rename the beer. Currently the name I'm pondering is 'Presidential Brand Pilsner' and I'm going with a simple design theme for the label. Basically it's an inverted triangle composed of vertical stripes of pale red, white and blue with the words 'Presidential Brand' superimposed horizontally across the top and middle, with the word 'Pilsner' superimposed vertically in the bottom 'tip' of the triangle. Below the triangle is a 'frosty mug' image on a pale blue background. The label also includes the words 'Gariepy's fire-brewed' and 'The Cavant Drive Brewery', along with the bottling date. Since I'm looking for something simple at clean-up time, this will be printed on standard inkjet plain paper, and affixed to the bottle with scotch tape. We'll see how well it works out.

In the meantime, Angela has given me a brand new stock pot for our anniversary! This is a 24-quart model, so I should theoretically be able to do 'full-wort' boils if I decide to go with all-grain brewing sometime in the future. (I also have an old cooler to use for a lauter tun. I found great instructions on how to design one this morning. It looks like an interesting project.) It's a nice, heavy-gauge stainless steel stock pot. The thing must weigh in at nearly double the weight of my old stock pot, which was a gift from my mother-in-law and arrived in the mail with a dent in the bottom. Will a thicker, heavier stock pot be more thermally stable for the 160F-degree 'rests'? We'll see the next time I brew!

Here's where it all happens...

2004-07-31T00:09:00.000-04:00

I can't say enough good things about the garage space and workbench I inherited from our home's previous owner. That work bench, made out of old pinbacks from the burned-down bowling alley owned by the previous owner's brother-in-law, has survived countless projects, including two brews (to date), the rebuilding of the top half of a minivan engine, being stood upon, numerous electrical house rewiring projects -- it's up to just about any task, really. Just short of 12 feet long, and 32 inches deep, it is the ultimate garage workbench in my humble opinion. It might not be the end-all workbench for any one task, but as a general purpose surface for hobby and home maintenance, it's a dandy. It needs a little TLC -- the base that supports the top should be rethought and reconstructed -- but they can have my workbench top when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers. Here's a shot of my propane-powered Coleman camp stove, which makes a fine little (and portable!) fire brewing platform. Brewing in the garage can take place year-round courtesy of the propane fired heating unit on the opposite wall. This allows me to keep all of the (beautiful) brewing odors in the garage, where it can be appreciated to its fullest!

The Cavant Drive fire brewery

Original date: 28-JUL-2004

2004-07-30T23:26:00.000-04:00

Brewing again! The batch brewed on 24-APR has proven to be just short of a complete success: good flavor, good color, good carbonization and a healthy alcohol content of approximately 5%/volume. I was quite hung over the next day after downing 4 pints while sitting out on the porch with Angela and our neighbors Richard and Kelly one fine June evening. I haven't purchased a commercially-produced beer for home consumption since this batch was ready. Now that I'm down to the last gallon or so, I've got to make more. There's even talk of a homebrew bake-off at the SHC Alumni weekend, for which I'll need to bring along a six-pack.

The only disappointment with this batch -- easily on par with the batch of stout I brewed in 1996-7 (considered a personal best) has been poor-to-modest head retention. According to Charlie Papazian, this can stem from numerous causes, including the formation of fusile oils (alcohols), water mineral content, dish soap, etc. Without a clear plan of action, I'm just hoping for better luck this time, knowing that even if I don't resolve this, at least I'll probably do as well as the previous batch, which is to say perfectly acceptable.

Angela's in Atlanta this evening and the kids are tucked securely away in bed...so I'm free to brew!

Started out with 2 gallons of Meijer-brand "Natural Spring Water" and the Cara Pils grains. Spilled about 1oz of the grains on the floor in the process of putting them in the Muslin bag. I relaxed. I did not worry. I opened a homebrew. Brought the temp to 166F (a six-degree overshoot; probably about 1 minute's worth of inattention) Held at that temp for 10 minutes by turning off burner.
Removed the grains, added the malt extract - again using fresh stuff from Adventures in Homebrewing - 6.6 lbs. Started to bring to a boil.
At the start of a rolling boil (11:20pm) - added the bittering hops. Managed to avoid boilover by watching temp carefully.
Incidently, after cleaning and sanitizing the carboy (done simultaneously while heating up the grains to save time) - I soaked a new paper towel sheet in the bleach water and draped it over the opening of the carboy. Last brew, I found a pine needle from one of the trees in the front yard in the leftover yeast at the bottom! Don't want that to happen again!

Carboy with sanitized paper towel seal

Also -- since outside temps hit 85F today (it's 78F in the garage tonight) I started out by placing 3 gallons of water for the carboy in the fridge earlier in the afternoon. I moved them to the freezer as I started to brew tonight.
30 minutes later (11:50pm) (spent the time reading Charlie's books) added the aroma hops. Also added 1/4 tsp. of Irish Moss (did these two things in the wrong order. Will it hurt anything? We'll see!)
Finished the rest of the boil. Removed the hops bags. Put the three gallons of ice-cold water (see below) into the carboy, then put the funnel and strainer into place and poured in the wort. Measured the original temperature at 94F; original gravity at that temperature was approximately 1.039.

Other Notes

The two or so hours that the water spent in the freezer was enough to begin to form ice around the "shell" of the gallon plastic jugs. The handles were frozen solid. Fortunately, most of the water was still liquid (about 20% of the water was frozen), and I was able to get the ice out by cutting the jugs open.
Found the strainer this time (I didn't have it for the original batch) and poured the wort through it after boiling it for quite awhile to sanitize it. I also used it to remove the grains and the hops bags. We'll see if this makes the beer even more clear than before.
Instead of dumping in the Irish Moss, I sprinkled a measured amount using my fingers into the boiling wort. Better dispersion/coagulation vs just dumping it in?
It pretty much takes 1 complete propane cylinder to brew a batch. There's still some left over in the new one I opened tonight, but not much.
A few silly little mistakes might otherwise have conspired to make tonight's brew an anxious one, but I really DO enjoy this process, even all the sanitizing and post-brew cleanup chores. I was laughing as I cut open the three water jugs with a knife to get the ice out of them. Every time I brew, something like this happens.
One complaint -- I LOST this notebook & searched for over an hour to find it to determine which yeast I used (see ingredients, below) the last time. This time, I'm saving the packaging from the hops and the yeast, and thinking of starting a brewer's blog.

-----------------------------

Ingredients:

12 oz. of Cara Pils grains
6.6 lbs of malt extract
11.5 grams of Saflager S-23 dried lager yeast
1 oz German Perle Hop pellets - bittering (9.0% alpha acid)
1 oz Czech Saaz Hop pellets - aromatic (3.6% alpha acid)

These ingredients are from an Internet recipe originally called "Back Yard Pilsner" available at Adventures in Homebrewing of Dearborn, Michigan. The malt extract is from that store; they have it "on tap" in bulk quantities, and it seems to be quite a bit fresher than the canned extracts available elsewhere.

-----------------------------

Post-brew notes.

At 8:30AM the following morning (about 8 hours after pitching) therewas discernable activity in the carboy and bubbles in the blow-off container.
At 8:40PM that evening, a vigorous brew was underway with considerable blow-off occurring.
By 11PM on July 30th (2nd night after brewing) fermentation has slowed significantly and a decided color change has overtaken the beer, which happened the first time as well. It's an opaque light brown color, and is quite vivid, actually. It will be ready for a regular airlock tomorrow.

Toad Spit Stout -- Original date: 21-SEP-2000, 12:44AM

2000-09-21T01:44:00.000-04:00

And lo! For many moons have passed since last I brewed. During my time off from these writings, Savannah was born and is almost two, Angela & I bought the house on Garry Street, a couple of vehicles, and a whole lot of paint!

During this time, Homebrewing as a hobby has been on the wane. In the Detroit area, many shops selling homebrew supplies have discontinued them. Indeed, I was forced to go to two places to find these ingredients, and bought some of the last close-out merchandise from one of them at a 30% discount. The fella at that shop, The Red Wagon Liquor Store in Rochester Hills (corner of Rochester & Auburn) told me that his sales went from having to re-order every week to throwing things with expired dates out from a lack of interest. It's sad, but the Brew & Grow store in Livonia is still around, and theres always ordering supplies over the Internet, I suppose.

Angela is off for her 48-hour crop-til-you-drop weekend in Port Huron, so I'm Mr. Mom for the weekend. I've wanted to brew a batch for some months now -- the supplies of vanilla & licorice porter have dwindled to one solitary Grolsh bottle -- but of course time is never on my side. I'm getting a late start so as to allow Savannah to sleep whilst I work. Hopefully I'll get some sleep tonight too...

This stout was the first really successful beer I ever made, back when I was living in our first home together in the high-rise on Crocker (Harrison Twp, MI) Virtually indistinguishable from Guiness, it's a good cold-weather brew. Hopefully, it will be in its prime sometime around Christmas.

As usual, I was forced to improvise on the ingredients when shopping tonight (Savannah was a great little helper - she assisted in turning the crank to grind the grains - and generally charmed everyone, as is her custom.) - so here's the actual list. If the brew fails, blame the fact I was forced to substitute. Otherwise, laud my ingenuity... I might have made a great brewer had Y2K forced me to change careers!

Recipe called for	Actually Used
1. 3.3lb John Bull Hopped Dark Malt Extract syrup	1. 3.75lb (1.7KG) Morgans Dockside Stout (Australian) Morgan's Brewing Co Pty Ltd 9 Lochlarny St Beenleigh, Queensland, Australia 4207 Phone: 61 7 3807 2648
2. 4lb plain dark DME.	2. Same. Munton's Brand
3. 3/4lb Crystal malt. 1/3lb roasted barley. 1/3lb black patent grains	3. Same.
4. 1 1/2oz Northern Brewer Hops (Boiling)	4. 1oz Perle Hop Pellets--7.2% alpha acid
5. 1/2oz Fuggles or Willamette Hops (finishing)	5. 1/2oz Fuggles -- 4.5% alpha acid
6. 8 Tsp gypsum	6. Same
7. 1-2 pkgs ale yeast	7. 1 package - came with syrup

Process

Washed over 2 years of dust & dirt off of equipment. Used bleach to sterilize stuff that will come into contact w/wort.

More Vanilla/Licorice Porter: Original date: 13-JUN-1998

1999-08-27T22:18:00.000-04:00

Home in Utica.
More Vanilla/Licorice Porter!
Flying solo. Angela out with Sarah (Rigg). Cat doin' his thing.

1. Materials-
-Same as last time except got Absopure "Steam Distilled" water at Hollywood Market. Total cost-$41.00 (or close to it) between the water & ingredients at Shelby Homebrew Supply.
2. Process

Put 4 gallons of water in fridge

Cut vanilla bean into 3 equal parts after scoring it lengthwise down the middle

Put licorice stick into two ziplock bags and bashed the hell out of it with a ball-peen hammer

Put vanilla bean, licorice smashings, 1 gal of water into the stock pot and brought to a boil. After it started to boil, set timer for an hour.

While the water was boiling, dug out the beer-making stuff:
- Cleaned carboy with hot soapy water & rinsed with power washer
- Filled with a mixture of bleach & hot water (135F out of tap!)
- Set up a dishpan with hot water & bleach to sanitize the other beer-making goodies
- Filed sink with hot water & put cans of malt extract in to soften

Ate lunch. Leftover pizza. Yum!

Started writing these notes

Added the malt extract & 2lbs dextrose

Boiled for 35-40 minutes. Had two minor boilovers.

Filled carboy with 2 jugs of water

Drew wort out of stock pot with a sanitized pitcher & put into carboy.

Measured specific gravity of 1.052@82F

Woke up yeast in the distilled water for 10 minutes & pitched into carboy.

Topped off, corked, and cleaned up

--4 1/2 hours--

6/29/98
F.G. 1.010 @ 77F
Bottled.

Contemporary Notes -- August 2004

This was the last time I would brew beer for over two years. In the meantime, we bought our first house, and Savannah was born, all within the five months following this date. To be honest, I don't remember much about how this batch turned out--or if it even did turn out. Obviously, the first batch from the previous November was a success, and I was trying to make more, but life got crazy after this, and I just didn't have any time to brew again.

Vanilla/Licorice Porter: Original date 15-NOV-1997

1999-08-26T21:51:00.000-04:00

-- At Dugland --
1. Materials:

1 Vanilla bean, scored lengthwise then cut into 3 parts

1 Muntons Gold Docklands Porter Kit (2 cans plus ale yeast)

1 Stick Italian licorice, pulverized with a hammer

5 gallons distilled spring water

2 pounds dextrose

Placed licorice powder & vanilla bean into 1 gallon of water & boiled for 1 hour. Water turned dark almost immediately.

(Before boil)
- Placed remaining 4 gallons into snowbank for 2-3 hours. Temp=44F
- Sterilized fermenter (glass)

(During boil) Softened up the two cans of hopped malt extract in hot water for 30 minutes

Added contents of the two cans + 2lbs of dextrose to the brewpot & brought to a vigorous boil for ~ 45 minutes.

Placed 3 gallons of cold distilled water into the fermenter & emptied brewpot into the fermenter. Added final gallon of cold water to fill to the middle of the bottleneck. Temperature worked out to exactly 70F!

- Heated a small pan of water to 165F, then chilled to 70F in snowbank.
- Woke up yeast for 10 minutes

Took Hygrometer reading of 1.040 at 70F = ~1.043 adjusted to 60F

Pitched yeast, attached cork & blow-off hose to fermenter

Placed in Dug's basement (65F ambient temp) with hose in water.

Contemporary notes -- August 2004

This was the first of two batches of Vanilla/Licorice porter I made from directions I got from Shelby Beer & Wine Supply. At the time I visited the store to get the ingredients for this batch, a fellow by the name of Bob -- another customer -- was in there drinking it up with the store's owner, whose name was Doug Hawley, if I remember correctly. They were also smoking pot, as I recall, so I guess it wasn't a really big surprise when the place went under a year or so later. I went in there a few times, and I don't think I ever saw Mr. Hawley sober, although he was an entertaining man. Anyway, this guy named Bob told me that if I had any questions about how to brew the beer to call his number, which I wrote down in the original version of my notes as (248)651-0123. He also claimed he would buy the stuff from me if I didn't like the beer! An AnyWho lookup of that number this evening turned up a listing for a Robert Klinkhamer in Shelby, MI, so that's probably the same guy!

Anyway, I never felt the need to call Bob, the beer turned out great, and I brewed more during my next brewing session.
At any rate, Dug and I spent a fine fall day brewing this beer in his upper Hamtramck flat, and we enjoyed ourselves a great deal.

Cherry Wheat - Original date: 8/23/97

1999-08-25T18:25:00.000-04:00

Me & Rob

Ingredients

4lb Ironmaster Wheat Beer Kit (from Shelby Beer & Wine Supply)

1oz Slovenian Styrian Golding Hops (Alpha Acid: 5.2%)

60oz Frozen "Big Valley" dark sweet cherries (5-12oz packages)

What We Did

Started around 2PM on a bright sunny Saturday

Brought 2 gallons of filtered tap water to a boil

Added the hopped malt extract and the hops (in a strainer mesh bag)

Had a beer

Boiled for 1 hour

Had a PB&J or two

Washed out the plastic fermenter and sanitized

Added the thawed cherries and steeped for 20 minutes (water actually started to boil again and I turned it off)

Put 3 gallons of filtered cold water in the fermenter

Poured the wort and cherries into the fermenter

Put the lid loosely on the fermenter & set it on the floor

Put a wet t-shirt around the fermenter and directed a fan toward it - temp 110F

Several hours immersed in ice water - 9:03PM - Temp 80F

Specific gravity - 1.030

Woke up yeast for 10 minutes in boiled then cooled water (used microwave, then immersed the Pyrex measuring cup in water

Pitched yeast

8/24/97

10:30AM - Bubbling like crazy!

8/26/97

Bubbling stopped. Attached airlock.

9/4/97

Bottled

74F - 1.004Hg

Contemporary notes -- August 2004

This beer was something of a disappointment to us because the cherry flavor wasn't very strong. It was a decent enough wheat beer, but we should have probably used three or four times as much fruit. We were trying to duplicate the level of 'cherryness' in Samuel Adams Cherry Wheat, and failed miserably.

This, incidently, is the first brewing session I recorded in my notes. There had probably been half a dozen or so sessions prior to this one when I got started sometime around 1995 in my bachelor pad apartment on Nicke St in Clinton Township, MI. None of those very first beers were particularly memorable, except for one that was brewed sometime in late 1996 or early 1997--a Guinness knock-off found in one of Charlie Papazian's books called 'Toad Spit Stout'. That beer was an unqualified success, and I think that it came at a time when I was almost ready to give up on homebrewing because I hadn't been terribly successful until that point. Unfortunately, I have only the vaguest recollections of the brewing of that beer...Angela's cousin April came with me (she was staying with us for a couple of weeks that summer) to pick up a plastic fermenter -- really a used pickle bucket from a restaurant on Gratiot Avenue! Despite its humble origins, that old bucket brewed some pretty decent beer until I replaced it a few years later with a store-bought fermenter.