Bloggling and Bottling day

Today is a rainy Monday, a perfect day for blogging, and bottling...

I'm fortunate to have today off from work, which gives me time to get my Witbier out of the carboy and into the bottles! I'm pretty psyched, as I got to use my thief today and it proved to be one of the most simple yet useful home brewing tools I've ever had the pleasure of using.

Video - This guy shows how to use the thief, if you can stand the sound of the traffic...

The thief rocks! The best/easiest hydrometer reading I've ever had. The F.G. was exactly where I needed it to be, so all is well. I currently have my bottles cleaning/sanitizing. Once they're ready, I'll get to bottling. In the mean time, some blogging...

I've recently added a few new sites to my Other Beer Bloggers of Note section, located towards the bottom of the site along the right side. If you haven't check out these blogs, you really should. Each one offers a unique perspective on beer and/or home brewing. My most recent additions are highlighted below:

• Adam's Beer Bits 2
• Bad Ben's Brew Blog
• Beer.About.com
• Brainard Brewing
• Fermentarium (NEW)
  
• Fermentedly Challenged (NEW)
• Monday Night Brewery
• Stonch's Beer Blog
• The Beer Geek (A fellow beer traveler)
• The Beer Pirate
• The Frosted Brew: Home Brew Tutorials (NEW)
• Travis' Brew Blog

Also, I've added twitter to my site. Not sure why, I just did, after reading this discussion over at the aleuminati: Twitter (All in a ...)

The verdict is not out yet on how useful, if at all, this will be. Might be a good thing for blogging on road trips or staying in touch with other beer bloggers. Time will tell...

That's it for now, I gotta run some errands while the bottles do their thing... More to follow!

DIY: Mash Tun Project - Research Phase

I've been toying with the idea of abandoning the partial grain/extract world of intermediate beer recipe kits, and moving on to all grain beers. Kits are fun and easy, and the results are very rewarding, especially when compared to the limited time and effort you need to put in to make a tasty beer. But I feel I need to grow if I'm ever going to be a serious beer maker.

So, I've been reading up on what I need to make the jump, and it looks like I need to get a Mash Tun. I've found some info on building your own from relatively inexpensive coolers and various parts that can be picked up on the cheap from your local Home Depot.

I think I found a cheap 5 gallon "Gatorade" cylindrical cooler for sale on Craig's List, right near where I work. It's listed for only $3! And I just sent the seller an e-mail to check and see if it's still available. I'm keeping my fingers crossed on this one. A $3 cooler might just be the excuse I needed to get off the couch and start this project! Stay Tuned!

Note: If anyone out there has any experience with building their own Mash Tun, or has advice on going all grain, please chime in, I'm all ears and eager to learn!

Holiday Ale is now fermenting

I originally intending on brewing up some Holiday Ale with some buddies for Teach a Friend to Brew Day... But none of my friends showed much interest... Oddly enough, they're willing to drink it when it's done... Interesting... (Lazy b@st@rds! LOL!)

So I brewed solo this past Sunday, although Dave and Erik did come over to eat pizza, drink beer and do the Sunday Night Football thing.

Dave, Erik & I before we all started to hit the gym and drink more lite beer
(Photo from the big Boston trip)

In fairness, Dave helped out by securing my funnel/filter while I poured the wort in the carboy. Sounds minor, but it was a big help, thanks Dave... And while Erik may not have helped with the brewing, he at least called the pizza delivery place, no wait he didn't do that either... Well, he did provide a half a bag of Doritos... I guess that's something...

At any rate, I didn't get any photos or videos this time around, the wife had the camera and was out seeing a girl friend act/sing in a play, and we all know what she did to the other camera...

About the recipe
This beer recipe is pretty cool because it included the most malt I've used in a kit to date. Not 1 but 2 cans of malt extract, a much larger bag or crushed crystal extract than what is typical, an additional bag of crushed chocolate and black patent malt and a spice pack that included sweet orange peel, cinnamon, cardamon seed and ginger root. Plus bittering and finishing hops. This should be a very flavorful beer, and according to the directions, it should be between 8% and 9% ABV. Should be a fun beer to enjoy by the fire place next month!

Houston, we may have a problem or two or three or four!
Here's the thing, the directions were a little vague at times, so I kinda had to guess when to add the spices, I put them in during the last 5-10 minutes of the boil, hopefully that was right. I baed the decision on other similar recipes I found via google. If it's on the internet, it must be true! Right?

The other thing is, I put the bittering hops in a little late. I hope that doesn't harm the brew too much... I got a little distracted with pizza... DOH! Any of you more experienced brewers out there think there will be much impact if the hops were added about 15-20 minutes late? Feel free to leave a comment and school me up...

I also had a couple of short boil overs! Damn that tasty pizza and ample supply of cold beer, so very distracting! Again, these were short, minor boil overs. I was getting a little sloppy, but I think all will be well, I hope...

I will say this much, the airlock has been going bubbling like crazy, which is a good sign... But, my boiler is on the fritz, and the temp dropped to 64 degrees in the house today. None the less, the airlock is bubbling away, which is a bit of a relief. I was concerned the temp fluctuation would have ruined things, but the beer appears to be doing well. Fingers are crossed, stay tuned!

AHA Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day (Nov 3rd)

I've been trying to lure some of my friends into the subculture that is homebrewing as of late. This weekend I used my latest homebrew as the bait, offering samples on two separate occasions.



One of my buddies (no not Erik in the video above) has been "threatening" to get into home brewing for well over a year now and today I called his bluff and invited him, and some of the other guys, over for AHA's Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day.

But here's the catch, I have to work on Nov 3rd, so I'm hoping to do my part for the cause on an alternate day. Perhaps this weekend, if I can get a willing student or two on the hook.

I haven't decided exactly what I'll brew, but I was think something seasonal like Midwest's "Happy Holiday Brew" or perhaps something darker for a change of pace... But first things first, I need to see if I have anyone interested in learning...

My English Pale Ale: It's not bad!

OK, so I cracked open a couple bottles of my English Pale Ale tonight and shared it with a few friends... And the verdict is...



Well, it's not too bad! Granted I didn't give it enough time to chill, and it'll probably be a little better after some additional conditioning, but over all, pretty damn good...

Check out this MP3 audio review... (OK, that's not really a review of my beer, but I had you there for a minute, no?)

2 second review:
English Pale Ales are known for their clarity, but that's not the case with my rendition of the English classic. While it does have a pleasant copper to reddish amber to it, it's also a little cloudy. This may be a case for secondary fermentation for future home brews. Not a big deal though, it's still a pretty beer.

My Pale Ale has excellent head retention. I tried to get my buddy to snap a good photo of me with a "beer head mustache" but the images were all too disturbing to post here... I think BigDog put it best when he commented on the Ale's well balanced mixture of fruity sweet flavors and hoppy bitterness. OK, those weren't his exact words, but that's what he meant...

Here's BigDog's take on my beer, note no babies or mommies were harmed in the making of this beer nor this video clip...



There you have it... Stay tuned for some real tasting reviews some time over the next week or two, after some additional conditioning...

Homebrewed English Pale Ale: & the verdict is...

Well today is the day... I pulled 4 bottles of my English Pale Ale out of the basement and placed them in the fridge. I'll let the rest continue to condition downstairs in what was once referred to as the workout room, but now serves as the fermentation and conditioning room.


It's been about 2 weeks now and the suspense is killing me. As noted previously, I have a few folks coming over to help me celebrate the wife's birthday, and to serve as my home brew guinea pigs.


No not that kind of guinea pigs, although I did stumble upon this random CNN article during a "guinea pig beer" google search...

Clemente Villanueva, third generation traditional healer, feeds a guinea pig beer. He says the animals curitive powers against bad luck are strongest when it is drunk.

In the village of Huasao, a 20-minute drive south of Cuzco, Clemente Villanueva, a third generation curandero, treats bad luck with tipsy guinea pigs.

Grasping a jet-black guinea pig, he forces it to drink a tall glass of beer. The animal's power to remove bad luck is stronger when it is drunk, Villanueva explains as he adorns the glassy-eyed rodent with colored ribbons before rubbing it over a patient.

He says the guinea pig will be set free in the countryside, ribbons and all, but will remain highly contagious with bad luck that will pass to anyone who has the misfortune to cross its path.

Note to self, avoid the unlucky, drunken guinea pigs roaming the countryside... But I digress...


If my beer sucks, I have an odd variety of commercial alternatives in the fridge, including the latest light beers I'm drinking as part of my current fitness drive. Amstel Lite, Sam Adams Lite, and even a couple Michelob Ultra Ambers (not a great beer... Go figure...) I also have a 6-pack of Magic Hat # 9 and a sixer of Brooklyn Brewery's Pumpkin Ale, in case any of tonight's guest want to get a little seasonal.

The back deck should offer them a view of some of the fall foliage and a Pumpkin Ale may be a nice New England treat to go along with the view. And I even have a can of Budweiser a guy gave me at our tag sale a couple of weeks ago.


We put what ever we didn't sell out on the curb so the Sunday drivers could pick over the crap left over. This guy pulled up and asked if he could have the computer parts I left out. I said sure, and he offered to pay me. At that point I was just glad to see the old junk go. So then he offered me a couple of cold beers, I can't pass up free cold beer, even if it is Bud.

I slammed one (it was hot that day and I needed a beer) and I kept the other one in the fridge just for the hell of it... This guy didn't have a lot of money, but he had a 30 pack and was willing to barter with his precious cargo so his son could learn how to build a computer... What a dad! But again, I digress... More to follow after tonight!

Waiting eagerly to crack open my brew

My most recent attempt at home brewing is nearly complete. The beer has been bottled and has been conditioning in basement for about a week or so now. I should be able to crack one open in next Sunday and see how I did. Although I'm told a few extra weeks of conditioning would make it all the better.

In the mean time I've got to get back to the gym. After a 4 day stint on sick leave, and then a 3 day weekend of none stop work, there hasn't been a great deal of time in the schedule for me to workout, and I've been eating poorly the entire time. We ordered Chinese food last night, That General Tso gets me all the time...

I think I'll take my beer's lead and spend the next week conditioning. In this case I will not be sitting in my dark basement waiting for my taste to improve, but I will be working out and more closely monitoring my diet (beer included) over at my traineo page.

Stay tuned for my brew results and the final installment of my Boston Beer Tour.

28 Bottles of Beer on the Floor? (VIDEOS)

I had today off, in honor of Chris Columbus. Thanks Chris, here's to you... Thanks for the day off!

At any rate, I decided to bottle my batch of English Pale Ale today, holding off a week based on input from a guy over at beertools.com. It's early October and there's no work today, what better New England tradition to following than home brewing?

My wife was a little annoyed, as my bottling activities interfered with her desire to go apple picking, another great New England Fall tradition. Not to worry, I'll make it up to her. I think...

When I set out to sanitize my gear this afternoon, I was a little low on C-Brite, so I went out to CVS and got a bottle of good old fashioned bleach. I gave the new flip cap bottles the wife got me for Christmas a good bleach and water bath in my bottling bucket and my old fermenter bucket. I also gave the rest of my bottling stuff a good cleaning. Let's hope those flip bottles work, last time was a disaster.



She sprung for four 12 packs of those "Grolsch" style bottles, but at the end of the day I only filled a bout 28 bottles. Oh well, that'll work, and hey! I have enough bottles left to brew a second batch!

Here's a tip: An empty dish washer makes for an excellent drying rack, even better if you can run the heated dry cycle on the bottles. You may not want to wash them in there though, I've heard that jet-dry stuff can harm your beer.


As the priming sugar boiled away, I took my final gravity reading and all seemed well, it was close to the 1.012 indicated on the instructions that came with the kit. Perhaps my struggles with the hydrometer were now in the past.


And, maybe I was a little hard on that yeast, maybe it wasn't so lazy after all... Maybe it was over achieving yeast and just finished earlier than expected. but it's not like I ask a lot of my yeast, I just want them to make my wort into beer and then carbonate it, it's the YEAST they can do! (Sorry!)



Unfortunately I made a bit of a mess in the kitchen. I was a little slopping with the bottling cane, and had to do some quick mopping up with some towels.



And to make matters worse, I asked the wife to take a couple of photos of me doing my thing, and she accidentally banged the camera up in the process of taking a photo while handing me some paper towels to clean up my mess. I think the camera is dead, and the wife is none too happy. But life goes on. Here's the last picture that camera will probably ever take... (I should have been a male model...)


After all was said and done, I was able to bottle, clean up, crack a celebratory beer from the fridge, shower, hit the blog and get ready for some early evening quality time with the wife in record time. All is right in the universe.

Stay tuned for the final results on this batch! Inthe mean time, have a beer and relax!

Home Brewers in Iran and Iraq?

I recently added a "Live Traffic Feed" from Feedjit to the bottom right hand side of this blog to track what site visitors of going to what pages from what countries. It's a pretty interesting little tool that even provides a Google map that locates where your most recent site visitors
are located. You can see the map here.


There's many interesting locations listed, with a high concentration in the USA, some in Europe, Australia, Asia and even the Middle East. I found it particularly interesting that I got at least 1 hit from in or around Baghdad, Iraq and 2 hits from 2 locations within Iran!

At fist I thought the cause may have been some key word search that led to this post:

• Where was beer born? Iraq?!?

But that was not the case, according to Feedjit, the site visitor from Iraq went here instead:

• Brew-Day step by step

Could it be that some poor beer deprived troop or contractor in Baghdad is secretly learning to brew his or her own beer? Learning from my mistakes? And what's up in Iran?

You can't drink beer in Iran, at least not beer with alcohol in it. A little slice of irony Mr Behi, and Iranian blogger, has not failed to notice. Although his statement that beer was born in Iran contradicts my post that Iraq was the birthplace of beer. Then again Iraq and Iran are right next to each other, and I suppose today's borders didn't mean anything back then, so who knows, right?

So if you can only drink non-alcoholic beer in Iran, could it be that some revolutionaries in Iran are visiting my site to learn how to secretly make their own beer and provide it to the oppressed masses? These are the pages they came to see:

• Tips and Info on using the Hydrometer

• Brew-Day step by step

I suppose there are no home brewers or beer drinkers in Iran either, ehhh Mr. Ahmadinejad?

At any rate, all beer lovers are welcome here... I hope one day you can all raise a glass of real beer and toast freedom... Until then, keep on brewing and don't let your Government catch you!

Thoughts on Yeast & Ice on Bottling Day Eve

I'm still concerned about my yeast and their lethargic efforts... So I'm reaching out to the beertools.com community for advice. Below is what I posted in the forums over there this morning.

Lazy Yeast? Please Help!

I brewed a batch of English Pale Ale (From a Brewer's Best Kit) last Sunday. My airlock stopped bubbling on Wed. Or so I thought. Yesterday, Sat, Upon closer look, I was getting 1 or 2 bubbles subtly in about a minute.

But here's the deal, there's very little foam on top of the beer in the glass carboy. Shouldn't there be a ton of foam?

The funnel I got from my brew supply store that I used to dump the wort into the carboy on brew day had a strainer, so most of the "clumpy stuff" did not make it into the carboy, was that my mistake? Did I short change the beer on some yeast or other important ingredient for the fermentation process?

Should I add more yeast or something? Please let me know, THANKS!

I hope some brew-guru reads that and offers me some sage advice. Were the yeast lazy because my beer kit was a 4 - 6 months old? Was it that damned funnel with the strainer? Or was it something else I did on brew day that slapped the yeast into a coma? And what the hell is yeast any way?

What is it?

Yeast belongs to the fungi family. It is a very small single cell micro-organism. Like all other fungi it doesn't have the power to produce food by photosynthesis. Instead it ferments carbohydrates (sugars) to produce carbon dioxide and alcohol...

Bottom line, there's tiny monsters in your beer... Frightening isn't it? But back to business...

Did I make a mistake?

I wonder if I cooled the wort down too slowly, or not enough, before adding the pitched yeast? As stated previously, I don't have a chiller, and depend on the kitchen sink filled with water and ice. What about adding ice directly to the wort as part of the water required? Would that work? Here's a tip I picked up on line that I will need to read more up on and perhaps try with my next brew...

If you don't want to invest in the wort chiller I mentioned before, here's another trick for cooling the wort a bit more quickly than an ice bath.

If you follow the steps, you'll notice that you start with 2.5 gallons of water (step 1), into which you put some malt extract - typically a quart or two (step 3) - and then somehow manage to pour 5 gallons of cooled mixture into the fermentation bucket.

What actually happens is that you pour about three gallons of cooled wort into the fermentation bucket, and then fill it the rest of the way to the 5 gallon line with water.

The trick I wanted to mention is that you can actually use ice instead of some or even all of the water. One pound of ice is equal to one pint of water. So once the wort comes off the boil, pour it into the fermentation bucket and pour two five pound bags of ice in there. The ice will melt, becoming five quarts (1.25 gallons) of water. Top it off to the 5 gallon mark and you're ready to go. - scottb (found here)

Does this work? Any one else have an opinion? Could there be any harm in using this method?

UPDATE! The Yeast Still Has the Farts!

In my previous post I mentioned, with some genuine concern, that my current batch of beer (still in the fermentation stage) is no longer producing bubbles in the airlock. In other words, the yeast is no longer farting... *GULP*

I posted this in the hopes of fishing for some advice, but either no one read my blog today, or no one had any hints to share. So I was going to wait it out and press on with the next phase on Monday all while hoping for the best.

The wife and I are having company tonight, so I had to pitch in with some house cleaning this afternoon. Sadly the brewery smell is no longer in the kitchen, it left some time shortly after last Sunday night. So cleaning was fairly quick and painless. On my way downstairs to the do some vacuuming, I decided to check in with the beer, in the hopes that perhaps the yeast woke up and started to fart again.

There's it was sitting there all alone in the dark, with no one or nothing for company but the box fan I set up to keep it cool. It still proudly wore the yellow beach towel I wrapped around it to block any sun that may seep in through the window, blowing in the fan's breeze, it looked more like a super hero's cape than a beer making accessory. Sorry, I how long was I out just then?


Here's the thing, I thought I caught the airlock bubble once out of the corner of my eye. So I sat there on the floor staring lovingly at the glass carboy, like a father waiting for his son's first steps. And sure enough about 45 seconds later, another subtle bubble appeared. This thing may not be a bust yet... Stay tuned!!!


Cheers!

What happens when the yeast stop farting?

Seeing that airlock bubble is a good thing. It lets you know "stuffs happening", the wort is becoming beer... I always think of the bubbles as yeast farts. Gassy yeast are happy yeast, and happy yeast make happy beer. At least that's my theory...

Most home brewing directions and how-to books I've read say the bubbles should keep coming for about 5 - 7 days. In this case, I brewed last Sunday, and by Wednesday, the bubbles stopped. I'll admit, I'm a little concerned...

I was so concerned that I called the guy at my local home brew supply shop. According to him, I shouldn't be worried. But he admitted he was more of a wine making guy, I guess the beer guy was out sick or something, he really didn't say...

So the wine guy said I should stick to the plan, and come Monday (which is an off day at work for me! Yeah!) I should take a reading with the hydrometer, and if was where it should be I could bottle. So, I'm going to stand bye and see what happens.

Unless someone out there has a better suggestion? It's only Sat morning, if I need to do something to save this beer, please chime in and let me know...

UPDATED: Brew Day

The thing I hate about brewing beer is keeping everything clean. I've read that your stuff should be nearly as clean, if not more than, as a hospital. That aint happening at my house. But I sure did give it a good try this time around.

This time around I was going to use my brand new glass carboy, so I can check in on the beer periodically and watch it grow up into a tasty liquid refresher right before my eyes. There hasn't been this sort of excitement in my life since I got that Sea Monkey kit back in the day!

I used my old plastic fermenting bucket as a cleaning basin, filling it to the 2 gallon maker with clean water and some C-Brite sanitizing solution. I believe that's suppose to be a non-rinse cleanser, but I always rinse anyway.

I always flash back to my days of working the all night shift at that crappy gas station in Willimantic, CT, otherwise know as the heroin capital of the East Coast. The manager told me to clean the coffee dispensers with comet, and she wasn't all that particular about rinsing them out... Keep that in mind the next time you help yourself to a hot cup of gas station Joe...


At any rate, I think I did a pretty good job cleaning the gear, but I wouldn't do any open heart surgeries on my kitchen counter. Especially considering that ugly yellow towel I used to dry the equipment on has been to Afghanistan, God only knows what sort of microscopic funk lives in that towel.

But I'm sure the beer will be fine, what could possibly go wrong, right?


I love to watch the water slowly turn that wonderful copper color as the Crushed Crystal Malt begins to work it's magic. The water is now gradually becoming wort, and before you know it, it'll be beer! (Well hopefully in a few weeks it will be...)


Now here's one of the steps in home brewing that I always hate. The age old problem of the watched pot... You know what they say... IT NEVER BOILS! My pot took nearly an hour to boil. Completely frustrating! I'm beginning to think I need to spring for one of those outdoors, propane brewing cooker things. Does anyone know if they're more powerful than your standard stove? I almost wonder if there is some sort of heat governor on my stove, to prevent the glass top from cracking? I couldn't find the pot's top, so I had to improvise and use an old cookie sheet on top to speed up the boiling process.


The biggest challenge for me continues to be the hydrometer. But I followed some advice I got from "Camper" over at beertools.com

To get rid of the foam fill up your test tube almost to the top. Then when you place your hydrometer in the tube the wort will overflow along with the foam. I will spin the hydrometer to get rid off any bubbles that are on the hydrometer...

Try and look at the level of the wort. Sometimes you take an average reading. I have a precision hydrometer that reads from 1.000 to 1.070. This is easy to read than the ones that have a large range. - Camper

I followed "Camper's" advice and the wort did in fact overflow onto my kitchen counter. The wife loves that... It was a little easier to read. Although I'm still confused about my reading. According to the brew kit instructions, the initial gravity should have been somewhere between 1.044 and 1.048... My reading was 1.034, off by .01... But I called my local home brew supplier and he said not to worry too much about it.


He suggested sinking my hydrometer in water and take a reading. It should be 1.000 if it works properly, I guess I'll try that later this week.


At any rate, I did my best to cool the wort quickly, I really need to get one of those chillers, it cools almost as slowly as it boils! I just hope I didn't shock the yeast, I hope it was cool enough.


After the yeast was added I used my new funnel to fill the new glass carboy with my wort, and only splashed a little on the kitchen floor. The wife loves that...


Here's the thing. The new funnel has a mesh trainer built in, and the sediment ended up clogging the funnel, a big pain in the butt. I had to scoop it out as I poured the big pot of wort, not an easy thing for one man. I sure hope that sediment wasn't critical to the fermenting process, I guess I'll find out soon.


After I got the wort into the carboy, I popped on the airlock and brought the whole thing downstairs to the finished basement. It's cooler down there and the temperature is more stable. But, it was a little warm, so I aimed an old box fan at the carboy and hoped for the best...


I have more to tell you and more pictures to add, but blogger is being flaky, and I'm tired... Time to get some shut eye so my eyes stay open at work tomorrow...



More to follow...

Back in the saddle again!

I finally got off my butt and started brewing a batch of beer last night. I've been a little gun shy since my last turn at bat...

If you recall. my first attempt at home brewing came out pretty well, but my second batch was a disastrous flop. Would the third time be the charm? Or would I regret mocking Michael S. Marsh for his recent brewing blunder? I guess we'll find out in a couple of weeks...

For now I'm sticking with the pre-packaged brew kits. I've got a lot to learn, and I'm hesitant to get too creative with my own recipes until I've at least half way mastered the basics. This time around I chose Brewer's Best Classic English Pale Ale.

A classic style that will produce slight caramel flavors, golden to deep amber color with a crisp hop finish. - Brewer's Best

English Pale Ale is one of my favorite styles of beer. I love Bass Ale, and hope my brew has some sort of resemblance once it's completed. Here's Beer Advocates definition of the style:

The English Pale Ale can be traced back to the city of Burton-upon-Trent, a city with an abundance of rich hard water. This hard water helps with the clarity as well as enhancing the hop bitterness. This ale can be from golden to reddish amber in color with generally a good head retention. A mix of fruity, hoppy, earthy, buttery and malty aromas and flavors can be found. Typically all ingredients are English.

INGREDIENTS:
3.3 lbs. Plain Light Malt Extract
2 lbs. Plain Light Dry Malt Extract
8 oz. Crushed Crystal Malt 60L
1 each Grain Steeping Bags
1 oz. Perle Hops (Bittering)
1 1/2 oz. Willamette Hops (Finishing)

Sounds delightful, doesn't it?

Maybe living in a "a city with an abundance of rich hard water" will finally pay off!

I'll blog some more tomorrow and let you know how phase 1 of batch 3 went, but now I need to eat some chow and kick back after a long day at work...

First time brewer goes flat in front of Jim Koch

Michael S. Marsh over at the Cigar Aficionado recently gave home brewing a try at the urging of the one and only Jim Koch. The good folks from Sam Adams sent Mr. Marsh a home brew kit to promote their 2007 Samuel Adams American Homebrew Challenge.

When the time came to show off his creation to Mr. Koch here's what happened...

He was genuinely happy to see that I had attempted what he has been so successful at, and immediately cracked one open. His first impression was encouraging. From the aroma, he was surprised that it was my first homebrew. He noted hops, citrus and a flowery note.

So far so good, but then...

Then came his first sip and it was back down to earth for this homebrewer. It wasn't that it tasted bad, in fact, he said, it tasted very good compared to thousands of homebrews he'd sampled in the past, just that it was lacking carbonation. He questioned if I had properly sealed the caps as he felt gas might have escaped. It should be more carbonated, he said, and suggested that adding an extra teaspoon of priming sugar could help, but most likely it was because I hadn't crimped the bottle caps tight enough.

Damn. I was positive those caps were on as secure as they could be. Oh well, I was happy with the results.

Happy with the results? He's delusional! Damn, Mr. Koch went easy on him! LOL! I'm just kidding! But that must have been a little embarrassing, falling short in the face of a beer making legend. Live and learn I guess...

Homebrewing while counting calories

The hardest thing about staying in shape, besides cutting back on my beer intake, is counting calories. Half the stuff I eat don't have that label on the back to tell me how many calories I just shoved down my throat. Fortunately it's relatively easy to find the caloric content on the back of a beer bottle but what about the calories and carbs in your own home brews?

Enter, the calorie and carbs home brew calculator...

I'm glad I stumbled upon this thing. I'm thinking of getting back into the kitchen this afternoon and finally brewing up a new batch of home brew and this thing will come in handy regarding my recent fitness push.

To use this calculator you must have your original and final specific gravity readings. You get these readings from a hydrometer or refractometer which can be purchased at your local homebrew shop. I'm still searching the globe for a digital hydrometer. I've never been good at getting those readings...

YouTubing YouBrewing: Home Brew How Tos Part 1

There's some pretty good home brewing tutorials available on YouTube. Check out this 4 part tutorial from CraigTube.

Home brewing the easy way part 1

"This is an easy way to prepare home brew beer inunder 1 hour"

Home brewing the easy way part 2

"Part 2 of easy home brewing. Make beer easily in your home"

Home brewing the easy way part 3

"Bottling a batch of Home Brew"

Home brewing the easy way part 4

"Bottling a batch of home brew"

Tips and Info on using the Hydrometer

If you recall, I posted a question about hydrometers over at beertools.com.

Good morning,

I'm fairly new to brewing (I've had one good batch and one terrible batch) and I could use some help with my hydrometer... I don't know if it's just me, or if other newbie brewers have the same problem, but I can't get a clear reading on my hydrometer. Either the brew is too foamy in the sample tube and I can't get a good read, or I have trouble reading it along the meniscus. Or maybe I'm just a byproduct of the digital age and refuse to use a simple tool like a hydrometer the right way. But, I feel like I really wasting my time if I keep brewing but goof up on the gravity readings.

Do they make digital hydrometers for brewing purposes? Can anyone direct me to a site where I can find one? Or does anyone have any suggestions for getting past my inability to use the standard tool effectively?

Thanks for the help...

- Bryon

Well I got a couple replies from some seasoned beer makers...

Hi Bryon!

I have never heard of a digital hydrometer but that doesn't mean much in today's world. I know that using one of these tools can be some what frustrating and takes time to get the hang of it. You may want to consider using a Refractometer instead. Granted, the refractometer is not taking the easy way out, but after you learn how to use it you will rely on it anytime you need to take a quick accurate reading. I used to use a hydrometer and used it for many years until I tried a refractometer. I have not used my hydrometer since and have had outstanding results using only my refractometer. It allows you to take on the spot SG readings of your post and pre boil worts using only 2 or 3 drops of wort. It sure beats trying to fill a hydrometer tube full of boiling hot wort...or cooling the wort just to get a decent reading.

I would advise that you do some research about using the refractometer before rushing out and purchasing one as they do have their pros and cons and you'll have to decide if going this route is good for you.

I still have my hydrometer and will not do away with it as it is still one of the most viable tools to check the gravity of your brews in any stage that it is in. The decision is yours. I find that by using both tools, I tend to get very accurate results. I use the refractometer on brew days to quickly che