Category: homebrewed

And there was a kind of Yellow King Kolsch…

And the last of the extract brews is in the keg… It’s for the Super Bow…. BIG GAME in February… Any whoo it’s a Kolsch style ale so by far the lightest I’ve ever done.  And by light I mean I can’t hide any screw ups in the brewing process.

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With the restart of the brewing hobby (3 batches in the last two months) I’ve moved to a bucket for a primary fermenter (heck of a lot easier to clean) and have moved the carboy to secondary fermenter status.  Previously I was using the keg as the secondary fermenter and ager which led to some funkiness (and not in a good way) to the beer.  The last two batches have employed the carboy for secondary fermentation and the keg for aging with distinctly better results.

And because I’m always looking for a excuse to use my iPhone… here is a time lapse of transfering the Yellow King Kolsch from the carboy to the keg.

The sediment on the bottom of the carboy? That’s after a 24 cold crash…. and I wonder why the other beers tasted kind of funky.

 

Well other then the lines.

Caution “Danger Lager” ahead….

The latest creation(ish) from your top 5 favorite home brewer is “Danger Lager” originally called “Max’s Danger Lager” but I decided to change the name since I probably shouldn’t be promoting a cute little baby to drink.. though I openly encourage his parents.

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So what’s it taste like? Well it’s got a sweet start and and has hints of alot of things… amongst six taste testers I got six different responses, the one thing they all said…. It lacked the distinctive bite of usual home-brew (I’ve been trying to get rid of that bite for a while now). And as Don said… “This is a beer you could sell” well that was nice of him.

Basic components of the “Danger Lager”? A kit from my new favorite brew shop “Brew your own brew” It was originally a Golden Ale kit, but instead of a ale yeast I swapped out to a lager yeast. I also made a few other modifications to the recipie but it’s still really hard to screw up a kit home brew beer.

Why call it “Danger Lager”? Well other then being a cool name, well it kind of sneaks up on you and can kick your ass.

It feels like I’m losing touch….

So it’s been a while since I wrote about the journey that is my homebrewing experince…. and well there is a good reason I haven’t written about it.

I’ve been in something of a rut with home brewing over the last 18 months or so… process is down to the point that I can teach someone (as has been done multiple times) but for the most part I stick to kits which have the same basic process.

Heat to 155 for 30 with grains
bring to boil and cut heat
add malt
bring back to rolling boil
add hops at specified intervals
cool
place in carboy and pitch yeast.

It’s really pretty hard to screw it… you actually have to try. I’ve kicked around going to a all grain setup, but that seems to involve a bit more work then I really want to put into the hobby / I’m afraid of the dark path that will lead me down (NASCAR isn’t bad enough).

So with a somewhat heavy heart I must break with my Ale brewing roots….

I must purse “MAXimum danger” I must brew a LAGER! *queue ominous music*

Honestly the brew process isn’t that different… actually it’s the same damn kit just with Lager yeast instead of Ale yeast. What’s the biggest difference you ask? Well temperature is the biggest place Ale’s are are 65F to 72F where Lagers like to be between 50F and 56F. It’s a smaller window but doable, the bigger issue is finding a space in Arizona to accommodate that… turns out if you don’t have a digital control on your fridge the minimum temperature is 42 degrees. I did not know that until this weekend.

So with all of this written the brew is in the cooler the temperature stable at 54 degrees and me left contemplating a name….

I’m thinking “Max’s danger lager” is a good name….

It will have a picture of Curtis’s beard on the label.

IT’s Alive!(?)….

The latest batch of home-brew is fermenting… and well it’s fermenting. I’m on about a 3 batch a year clip. Which for how much beer I drink vs how much I have away to the curious hordes is about the perfect amount. The main obstacles to higher production levels have more to do with my unwillingness to invest in a true fridge for fermentation or dispensing.

Actually this little hobby of mine is coming up to a cross roads of sorts for me… On the one hand I can keep doing what I’m going which are kits and recipes that other people have come up with and keep using the dry malt and syrups. It’s easy and fairly “quick” to turn around a batch of beer in about 3 hours. On the other hand I don’t have the level of control that I would like to have for the final product. I don’t know how much control I really can have since there are so many variables at my level of brewing (temperature, yeast variety, sugar in the brew) and 1 bad part of the process and I’m screwed. On the other hand I don’t feel that I’m at a level that would justify spending the time and money to work all of the “variables” out.

I tend to be of the opinion that I need to either;
1. Start coming up with my own recipes (no small task but do able)
2. Leave the malt extract world behind and start looking at going to a all grain process. (no small task but doable)

I’m tending to lean toward the all grain process since it would let me develop some additional skills in my hobby and at the same time allow me to work slowly but surely to developing my own recipes.

In either case I need to rework my fermentation cooler. I like my ales just as much as the next guy but the freezer with a thermo-coupler is not cutting it anymore. My biggest issue with the freezer is that it’s just a pain in the back (literally) to get the carboy in and out when it’s full. Also the temperature control is not the greatest. I’m thinking a small fridge that could hold 2 carboys would be about perfect. Have one carboy on fermentation and have the other one on aging. I’m not worried about carbonating the beers as that takes place in the keg which would stay in the freezer (though the CO2 tank needs to come out side so I can get two kegs in there). The fermentation fridge also opens up possibilities of expanding beyond beer to things like Wine or Mead (OK maybe not mead).

For the time being I have a batch that will be ready in about a week or so and maybe sometime this summer I will sit down and make this rather nifty chiller that was on life hacker on Friday… that thing would be deadly for Cardinals tailgating.

Whoa…

Yes I’m still brewing beer…

This is more of a informal post on what I’ve been up to with beer since the last time I posted.

I did a kit amber ale in January that came out really really really well and everybody who tried it really liked it. That would be the one where Curtis is kissing the carboy. So I don’t know if the goodness resulted from my skills or Curtis’s affections towards the beer, but for now lets say it’s my skills.

So in the six months that I’ve been not brewing beer, my favorite beer store went belly up, so Homebrew Depot in Mesa Az is no longer. It’s a sad day for me… good thing I live in the greater Phoenix area. A quick google search and BAM! new brew shop! Brewers Connection in Tempe AZ. Staff of 3, all very very knowledgeable and a book of beer recipes from customers! I’m going to be trying one of those next time around.

As far as this batch goes, it’s another amber since that’s a good base to work from. This time I’m going to be working on Clarifying the beer to see if I can get rid of that oh so lovely cloudiness that I haven’t been able to get rid of.

And as has become something of a tradition I’ve put out a open invite to all who want to learn and I have a few takers once again. It’s always fun to share the love.

In your world….

The homebrew is good…

Batch #3 has gotten WAAAAYYYY better with a month of aging… like much smoother and no bitter after taste.

We tapped that way to early

yes I’ve been drinking my beer…. yes I just made a “funny”