Map Tack

Friday, January 21, 2011

Homebrewing - Part 2 of 2: Big Bottling Day

Ok. we are back for the Second part of the Homebrewing Session.

First off, I'd like to Stress the fact that EVERYTHING Needs to be Clean and Sanatized. Your Bottling Bucket, Your Siphon Tube, Your Quick Fill Tube and your Bottles.

Sanatation is Most important to make sure your beer succeeds in Conditioning and Carbonating.

So with that in mind, Below you will see my 2 Cases of Empty Bottles. All of the bottles was Cleaned using Really Hot water, scrubed with a Bottle Brush, then Dipped in C-Brite Cleaner, the C-Brite cleaner will sanatize on contact, it will not clean, it just sanatizes. So prepare your bottles first.

After your Bottles are Clean and sanatized. Clean and sanatize your Siphoning tube and other equipment you are going to need for Bottling. Below you will see the process of Siphoning the Fermented Beer from the Glass Carboy to the Bottling/Racking bucket.


Next, which should have been your first step after cleaning bottles, but it don't matter as long as you are careful. You take 1 cup of water and 5oz of Dextrose Sugar for Priming your Beer and you disolve the suger in the water, then you bring it to a boil. After you bring it to a Boil, then you let it cool down, Then you start siphoning your beer into the Bottling Bucket. After you got the flow starting, then you add your suger water while the beer is siphoning into the bottling bucket, this will ensure an excellent mix without getting oxygen into the beer. If you forget to add the suger water in while you are siphoning, add it to the beer afterwords and swirl it around lightly around.



After you got your suger in your fermented beer, whatever method you done, before siphoning or after siphoning, you may need a helper, the less the beer is exposed to oxygen the better. If you want to convert all of your Beer to Malt Vinager then you can leave it exposed. But if you want beer, then you might want a little help from someone. Allow them to fill while you Cap, or you fill while they cap. Either way. This is my Lovely Girlfriend that is Giving me a Hand with Filling my Bottles.




After your helper is done filling the bottles, it's your job to cap the bottles off. Unfortunatly I was unable to get a picture of myself Capping the bottles, here is the end result of your hard work and your patience of waiting for your wort to ferment into beer. 2 Cases of Beer, Bottled, Capped and sitting another week or two to condition and carbenate.





Monday, January 17, 2011

Homebrewing - Part 1 of 2: Big Brew Day

Well it all Started here Home Brewing, here is a previous post that I posted. This was a Post on a Kit I got for an Early Birthday Gift from my Girl. For Christmas she bought me a Beer Brewing Kit. Which included a 6gal. Glass Carboy (Primary Fermentor), 5gal. Food grade Plastic Bucket (Secondary Fermentor/Racking Bucket) with a Spigot, Bottle Brush, Racking Cane, Plastic Hose, Hydrometer, Bottle Capper, C-Brite Cleaning Solution, Airlock and Home Beermaking Instruction Book.

I think this is all that came with it, it looks like it LOL. There are alot of things that come with the Kit, except for the Stainless Steel Brew Kettle. But you can use your own Stainless Steel Kettle at home if you got one, it juse needs to hold at least 2gal.

Now with that out of the way. If you are interested click on the Home Brewing Link above to see the contents of the kit and what's required to brew beer. For anyone that wants a more professional video and audio podcast or something, head on over to Basic Brewing Hosted by James and Steve. They have a Audio and Video Podcast out about every week to every two weeks and they have their own DVD's for purchase as well as a Brewing Log Book to Jot down all of your brews you want to make or attempted to make.
Here is a Picture of my 6gal. Glass Carboy my Primary Fermentor.

Here is my 5gal. Secondary Fermentor and Racking Bucket.
With the 2 Major equipment Pieces outta the way, lets begin. With what the Inscructions say, you wash your 2 Cans of Malt Extract, in the picture above, these are 2 3.3lb cans of Dark Malt Extract. It looks like a Syrup. You place them in a warm Pan or Sink such as I done, this helps warm up the Syrup so it's easier to Despense from the cans.
While your 2 Cans of Extract are warming up in the Water. Bring 1 to 1 1/2gal of water to a boil in a Kettle that will hold about 3gal of water. This is to ensure that if there is a chance of boil over, you will have enough head space to move it off the burner before it gets all over the stove. So that will give you some leaway!

The next step. Of course if you purchased the Bock Style Beer Kit. You will need to toast your Grain. For my next step, I needed to Toaste my Crushed Pale Ale Grain for 10 minutes on a Cookie Sheet at 350 Degrees. This helps release some of the Grains natural Surgers, the sugars is what's going to play a part for the yeast to do it's work to convert all of the sugars into alcohol.

After the Pale Ale Grain is Toasted, Put it in the provided Steeping bag along with the other Grains provided with your Kit. The Steeping bag makes it easier to retreive the grain after it's been spent. What you are doing, is Basically making a Tea Bag. You drop this in the hot water, let the hot water pull out all of the Flavor, Sugars and Color from all 3 grains and make a Tea so to speak. This is what will give the beer it's color. It will also provide some Flavor Profiles. But mostly it provides the Yeast Sugar it needs to produce Alcohol!

After you tied up your Steeping Bag with all your Grains, you are ready to Steep. Pull your Boiling water off the burner. Drop in the Steeping Bag with the Grain. Let it sit in the hot water for 20 to 30 minutes. This will pull out the sugars, color and everything else it needs. I put on the pot lid to help retain the heat and steem to keep it warm.

After you Steep your grain pulling out what's needed from it, put the kettle back on the burner and reheat it back up. Not boiling, but near boiling. After you bring it up to temperature, then pull it off the burner and both cans of Extract 1 at a time WHILE Stiring your Colored water, it's basically Called Wort at this point. You ALWAYS Steep your grain before you even add your Extracts. Don't ask me why LOL, Just what I read. I think maybe because if you add the extract first, it won't pull out whats needed from the grains.

After you bring the water to a boil, add the Hops. In this case for this kit, you add 1oz of hops at the beginning of the boil. This will be your Aroma Hops. It will give you your smell. These hops had a hit of Lemon Smell to them, but it won't give you a Lemon Flavor to it, Hops are for Bittering your Beer and help it from spoiling. Hops has like an Antiseptic propertys in it that help protect your beer but NOT from sunlight lol, that's why ALL or most beer is bottled in Brown bottles, Sunlight will Skunk your Beer if it's exposed to Sunlight. When your wort is boiling it will start to foam. Pull the kettle from the stove, let the foam subside then put back on the burner. Keep doing this until there is no more foam then set a timer for 45 minutes. This is how long the wort will boil.When you have 1 to 2 minutes before the END of the boil (45 Minutes) Add these hops here another 1oz of them, after the 2 minutes are up, Pull your Wort (Unfermented Beer) from the burner.


Put 3gal of cold water into your 6gal Glass carboy, then pour the wort (unfermented Beer) into the carboy to cool it down to under 90 Degrees. If you want to take a Hydrometer reading do it now. When you take your First Reading write it down cause you'll be taking another reading after you Ferment the beer so you'll know what the ABV is for your Beer.
After you transfered your wort over to the carboy and made sure that it is below 90 Degrees then add your yeast. I just sprinkled the yeast on the top, but it's better to start the yeast in a Starter first to make sure the yeast is vialable. That way you know if your yeast is reproducing and going to do it's job. If you put the yeast in, you take a chance of it not working and you'll have to purchase another package of yeast.

And here you have your Beer. Put it in a Closet and make sure it maintains inbetween 65 to 75 Degrees, It should stay at a consistant temp, I've got a heater in my closet set at 68 degrees because the wort as it ferments it will generate heat so the temp will be a few degrees higher. So this should set my Temp about 70 to 72 Degrees and it will stay Consistent. Keep an eye on it, make sure it's safe from fires. You can get other equipment in your Brewing Hobby, they make a Refridge Regulator that will help you maintain a temp in an Old Fridge. You can set the temp to higher temps out of the norm for a fridge with this regulator. You can take it off if you want to Lagar beer put it on to ferment Ales.

And here is one last Picture. This is the picture from this morning. The wort has been in the closet since last night fermenting, I wasn't sure the yeast would take off, but looking this morning, them babys are dancing around like a Hoedown. They are having one hell of a Suger Fest in that badboy.

Hope this helped, hope you enjoyed my Experience with Brewing my First Batch of Beer, I hope that it encourages you to brew your own eventually.

After about 1 to 2 weeks, We will be adding some more sugar to the wort after it's done fermenting, then we bottle the fermented beer. The sugar added to this fermented beer will give the yeast some more sugar to eat and create carbonation to carbonate the bottles. But we will get to that in a few weeks, so Stay tuned for the next Segment.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Testing The Waters! Again!

Well it appears that after testing the water for the afternoon yesterday and part of the morning and til now. It appears that the closet is going to be way too cold to Brew an Ale in.

So I took my old AccuTemp Heater and cleaned it up, oiled the motor. And set it in the closet to attempt to bring up the temp in the closet to bring the temp up in the fermentor as well.

So far it's been a success. The water has been a study 52 Degrees since this morning. I put the heater in on the floor and set it for 75 Degrees.

Needless to say, It went from 52 Degrees up to 65 Degrees with just a rescent Reading. Going to check back at 4:00p and see how the temp is, this should prove to be a successful brewing after I make sure the temp will hold at where I need it.

Testing The Waters!

Well, all throughout the day about every 2 hours I've tested the water in the fermentor to get a Tempature.

My Fermentor is in my Closet off the living room. I may have to move the fermentor out, I'm not quite sure if this will be sufficient for fermenting the Wort or not.

I The tempatures are as followed.

Day of the 14th:
2:00p was 74 Degrees
4:00p was 74 Degrees
6:00p was 68 Degrees
8:00p was 66 Degrees
11:30p was 62 Degrees

Morning of the 15th:
7:11a was 58 Degrees
9:23a was 56 Degrees

I'm gonna still read the tempature throughout the day or maybe at least til Noon to see how much of a change there is, if it stays around 56 Degrees or maybe a tad higher, then I May give the closet a Try. Brewing an Ale, which is basicaly what I have, the tempatures require between 55 Degrees to 80 Degrees for fermentation.

I'm hoping the water don't drop any lower, if it does, then I'll just have to drag it outta the closet and try somewhere else. Kinda sucks it's putting a Damper on my Brewing, but at least I'll know what the temp is and where it settles at for certain kinds of Beers.

I may have to use the Closet for Lagar Fermentation and in the bedroom for Ale. Not sure yet. We'll see how it goes.

I'll Keep everyone posted on the progress, this is going to be so fun and So kick ass once I get started.

Handi

Friday, January 14, 2011

Home Brewing


Well Folks here it is. I'm attempting to brew my Own Beer. After a LONG Wait on getting my Kit. I guess my Girlfriend got tired of me hollering that I wish I had a Home Brewing Kit to Brew my own Beer.

Well Needless to say, Santa brought me one for christmas. The only problem is I didn't have a Home Brewing Kit, the ingrediants to brew the beer. So last week I ordered a Kit from www.monsterbrewing.com whish is showen on the left side here.

This is what the box looks like, It's a Bock Style beer. Right now I'm in the process of taking the Temperature in the closet to see how much of a change it is. Right now as of 8:00p it is 66 Degrees in the closet but it is 72 Degrees in the living room.

To the bottom right here you will see a Picture of the contents of the Box. It contains 50 Bottle Caps which is enough to cap 2 Cases of Beer.
There are 2 3.3lb Cans of Malt Extract, 1 6oz Bag of Chocolate Malt Grain, 1 6oz Bag of Pale Ale Grain, 1 6oz Bag of Grain, 2 1oz Packets of Flavoring/Aroma hops, 1 Packet of Ale yeast and 1 5oz Bag of Dextrose Sugar for Priming the Beer after fermentation.
Hopefully tomorrow, if the temperature is right, I'll be doing some Brewing. I'll be taking some Pictures with my iPhone and then uploading them as I do a Post and write my experience with my Beer.
I'll also be taking a Picture about every day maybe every other day of the fermentation process which is a 1 to 2 week process, so expect to see about 7 Pictures at least lol.
After the fermentation process, I'll be transfering the wort over to the Racking Bucket, which is where I'll be filling all of my Beer Bottles I've saved up.
Once these beer bottles are filled, I'll be capping each bottle, then they will sit again for another 1 to 3 weeks to condition in the bottle. After the 2nd to 3rd week, I'll stick a few in the fridge and chill it and give it a try.
A Taste test of my Hard Labor if you will!