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| By Jim Edelstein on Mar 7th 2005, 3:55 am | Permalink |
Due to a family emergency in my wifes family, I had the pleasure of a weekend alone with my older daughter (she's four). Friday night we brewed the Roasted Brown who's recipe I posted a week or so ago. She enjoyed it but was dismayed to go to bed before we were done. We did bedtime between steeping and boiling. I also broke down and started drinking a six pack of my bottle conditioning stout (my first brew ever). I think it's decent(I was loving it  , it's only been in bottles for a little over a week and the carbonation has't completely disolved in the beer yet, the bubbles are big so the head doesn't last too long, but at least it doesn't go flat. Body-wise it seems a little bit thin but I usually drink oatmeal or milk stouts. It smells amazingly good, the malt and hops aromas both come through really well balanced. Also the finish isn't that great though, hops flavor isn't that noticable to begin with and the finish quickly looses it to an estery flavor that lasts too long and I'm not loving anyway. A little higher HBUs and better yeast should help with that next time. Gotta pickup a 6 pack of guiness to compare with.Anyway here's how friday nights brewing endevour went: 3/4 Dithyramic Roasted Brown Ale - Recipe posted at http://www.tastybrew.com/newrcp/detail/89 8:17 - Added three gallons poland springs to brew kettle (alas for the brew kettle, read the last paragraph to learn of it's demise) 9:08 - 168F - Add Grains in Nylon Hops bag, turned off heat 9:37 - 150F - Removed Grains, rinsed with 1/2 gallon, turned on heat - seems too dark 10:32 - Reached boil, turned off heat, added Malt Extract, turned back on heat 10:52 - Returned to boiling, added bittering hops 11:37 - Added Tsp Irish moss and 4 oz malto-dextrin 11:47 - Added finishing hops 11:52 - Removed from heat, cooled with wort chiller, rinsed hops bag with 1/4 gal and squeezed out 12:10 - 75F - 1.059 plus .003 Temp adj equals 1.062 OG 12:15 - 73F - Pitched Yeast and stirred in It was fermenting by 7 AM the next morning (when we woke up) and by 10 AM it was pretty vigourus. This evening it slowed down a bit to about 10-20 seconds per bubble. Meanwhile yesterday I soaked some beer bottles wlabels to remove in my brew kettle with super grung remover cleaning stuff that contains Sodium Carbonate. I had done this in my primary fermenter with great success. My brew kettle is aluminum, a really nice $80 24 qt one. Apparently Sodium Carbonate eats away aluminum. I threw away all the bottles, and the kettle has a black ring around the top and is dark grey where it was exposed to the solutoin for hours instead of silver. There's even a few untainted circles on the bottom where the bottles prevented the solution from reaching the metal. The wife wants me to throw it away saying it's too dangerous if some poisonus aluminum compound could get into whatever is cooked in there (my beer primarily). I want to try to use a wire brush or something to literally scrap it away down to the shiny alumimun underneath. I really like that pot damnit. I'm going to post a question about it on the forum, I really hope to be able to salvage it. Looking for my next recipe now, thinking of an Irish Red Ale, unless anyone can suggest something better to drink while caring for my seedlings (which should be on their way by the time it's ready) and preparing my gardens beds. |
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| By Jim Edelstein on Mar 2nd 2005, 3:21 am | Permalink |
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Thanks for the words of encouragement Sean, I'm using a plastic primary right now, the local homebrew shop didn't think it was worth it to attach a blow off system, they seemed pretty sure I had just used too much water. We'll see what happens next time. Speaking of next time, I found my next recipe and got some ingredients. Going to brew night after tomorrow. It's based on Carlie Papazian's Dithyrambic Roasted Brown Ale. Has anyone made this BTW? I posted my personal version to the recipe on this site, if anyone has thoughts I'd love to know. Bought a bunch of miscellaneous supplies tonight, despite the snow and 45 minutes out of the way, bottle washer and tree, much better cork for carboy, new fermentation lock (lost 2 of three pieces of the first, kids...), new hydrometer (broke the old one trying to get the cork out of the carboy  ), Irish Moss. |
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| By Jim Edelstein on Mar 1st 2005, 4:57 am | Permalink |
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My First Post I'm just beginning, and looking for a good place to keep my brewing logs online (with a family including small children, and a small house, keeping a decent notebook free of scribbling and grocery lists is nearly impossible), as well as find an online community to discuss the challenges and successes I encounter. This site seems to be the best I could find for journaling as well as community. It does seem like there's not many beginners, but hey, why not. For posterity, I'm putting my notes from my first brew down. I added the recipe exactly as I used it as "Just Stout". The goal was to make a reasonably good stout as a foundation for my first goal of a creamy mocha stout (I'm thinking real chocolate, coffee, and lactose) even my wife will enjoy. 2.13.05 Notes - Used Idophor for Sanitizing, all new equipment, 24 qt aluminum brew kettle, 6 gal plastic primary fermenter
2.14.05
2.17.05
2.22.05
2.26.05
So if anyone made it this far, a couple of things I'm wondering while the bottles condition. 1) How bad was it that I didn't scrub the bottles with soap, just rinsed after using and thouroughly before sanitizing with very hot water, and I didn't remove the labels from the bottles before adding to the sanitizing solution. I did batches of 6-8 bottles in my brew kettle, using idophor an very hot water, changing the water if it got noticably tinted or very cool. 2) What is the absolute soonest I can start drinking the carbonated beer. It's getting really hard to wait. 3) Why did so much krausen foam come out of my fermentation lock!? Should I get a blow-off system next time or was it something about my recipe or techinique? |
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