Category: Beer Brewing

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.

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.