Beer Making Day Twelve

So today I went skiing, the snow sucks. It is old, icy and is almost gone. It was warm too- a balmy 38f at the pass. I was pretty excited to return home and get my bottles ready for the final stage of my beer making process.

I had about 24 bottles but calculated that I needed about 48, assuming some loss of wort. So I ventured down the alley to see if any of my neighbors were drinking beer these days- most seem to be drinking wine. I was hoping to get basically the same style of bottle- long necks. My reasoning is they will stack better, probably not true, but I was also hoping to have a consistent look about these bottles.

Fortunately, several of my neighbors do drink beer, and they had the right kind of bottles. I am still a little short, but this will have to do, otherwise I am going to go buy some. The only think left was to get the labels off the bottles.

Soaking them doesn't seem to work by it self, so I put the bottles in by boiling pan and brought the bottles to the boiling point. The labels pretty much fell off as you can see from the picture!

I then just wiped glue off with a dish rag- the bottles where still hot while doing this, so you need to have tough hands or hold onto the bottle with something that insulates your hands a bit. For a few, I had to use a green scouring pad to get the glue off, but that didn't cause much extra work on my part, just a different medium.

The wort still seems to be active so I am going to wait another day or two. Hopefully I will find a few more bottles.

Beer Making Day four

So today, after waxing my skis, I took the long hose off the wort and put on the little blow hole. Most of the nasty looking stuff has long since blown out and it is just slowly bubbling. It is sort of fun to see it alive!

I am still worried about the sediment on the bottom, but I will deal with that in a week or so. Right now I have to go out an put another coat of wax on the skis, my wife likes to glide easy, I think she is just lazy.

Beer Making Day Three

Today the stuff is blowing crazy. The sink and hose are all dirty with stuff. I will wait a few more days until it settles down to change the hose to the little gas trap thingy.

My wife is convinced that the stuff blowing out the hose will stain the sink- it is one of those composite sinks- so I put the end of the hose into the drain. She scrubbed out the sink, I would have but she beat me to the punch line.

I am a little worried about all the sediment on the bottom of the carboy - why is it called a carboy? Anyway there is a lot of sediment about an inch or so (it looks like). I guess I will need to either filter it in a cheesecloth or just be careful when I pump it out.

I bought this nifty little pump that consists of two tubes, one bigger than the other. They fit together to make a little pump with a croaked neck. The idea is to put a tube on the end of it and pump the wort into each bottle after I add the final malt to give it the extra sugar to prime the yeast and add carbonation.

Making Beer

So Last Month I stopped by Bob's Homebrewing supplies and bought myself the basic beer making kit. I have been wanting to do it for quite sometime, but had hoped to get most of the items on craigs list. Sadly I never found what I was looking for and decided to just cut to the chase.

After getting everything home, I immediately put it in the cabinet and took off on a month long vacation to New Zealand.

Upon return, I puled every thing out and took stock. Some where between the time of purchase and no I managed to lose the Irish moss, which turns out to be seaweed? Aparently this helps keep the beer from becoming cloudy after it is cooled.

In addition the package of yeast, that has a small package inside to get the yeast started, probably some sugar based product, didn't seem to be activating. The instructions indicated to activate the yeast the night before for best results. I squished the bag around a lot, but it didn't quite poof out the way I was hoping.

First thing in the morning I made a trip over to Bob's and picked up the lost Irish moss and asked about the yeast- he seem to think I was okay, so I returned home to proceed. The whole process took most of the day, mainly because I am slow, but also because I was reading as I went.

Most of the steps are pretty simple, boil some water; steep the hops; strain the hops; add more water rinse the hops; add malt; boil for a hour strain; cool and add yeast. The only issue I had was when I got to the end of the mash process I brilliantly added enough water to exactly 5 gallons. The carboy actually hold exactly 5 gallons, so I had no room left for the yeast. After sucking out a few cups, I then added the yeast and waited.

This morning when I went into the kitchen- kazam- the beer was alive. We will see what happens when I get home from work.

New Zealand and Back

I just returned from three weeks in New Zealand. Although it is fantastic, the outdoor life has it's limitations. I need a few museums or diversions in between my tramping. To be fair there are many architecturally interesting buildings, and there is a limited museum....

My trip started in Auckland, where I visited with my friend Tim, for a day before we both flew to Christchurch. From there we rented a car and headed toward Mount Cook. Mount Cook is amazing.

After doing some short hikes we headed down to Queenstown where I jumped into the shotover with a rubber band tied to my ankles. After which we went a drank a few beers. The jump, formally a bungee jump, went pretty quick, but it was exhilarating. Queenstown was still celebrating New Years Eve, so everything was marked up 20%- special way to get more money for bad managers that cannot seem to figure out their running costs.

From Queenstown we headed down to Te Anau, where we planned to do the infamous Kepler Track. Te Anau has nothing much to speak about except the fantastic pasties near the corner of main street- I think I ate way too many.