Bottles

I got sick last week, so I haven't been able to get to the Brew and Grow, but I'm going to try to get there this weekend, depending on how long it takes to fix my car.

Anyway, one of the funny things I realized was that I could use my lush friends to my advantage. I have recruited them for bottle collection. Every time I go over to their places now, I take an empty carton for a six pack, fill up on their bottles and bring them back home.

Now I just have to find an easy way to mass-sanitize them. My father in-law suggested the microwave, but I was wondering about any actual growth or sediment collection in the bottles, maybe I could fill them the water and then zap them for 5 or 6 minutes. I wonder if they sell bottle racks I can use to empty them out, and then turn them over to make sure they drain everything out of.

Any other ideas for sanitization are welcome too...

English Brown Ale

It's unanimous that the English Brown Ale was a much better beer overall, so I will be returning to that with my next batch, but taking it a step further and attempting to improve it.

In addition to the Brewer's Best kit, I will purchase an extra 4 oz bag of chocolate grains. I haven't decided if I will use all of them yet, but I'd like the cocoa flavors to come out a bit more in the trial batch. In addition, I will also try to find and use the moss - I can't remember if it's Irish or Scottish at the moment, but it helps with clarity (and, I would imagine, body by virtue of making it clearer).

Now I just need to hit up the Brew and Grow to pick everything up.

(And after that, I think I'm going to make this recipe)

Homebrewing - English Brown Ale

I tasted my first homebrew today. After traveling to the Brew and Grow on the north side of Chicago and picking up the two tubs, sealed lid, blow-off valve, sanitizer, cleanser, tubes, and bottle brush; I also picked up the Brewer's Best English Brown Ale beer kit. The ingredients were:

Fermentables:
3.3 lb. Amber Liquid Malt Extract
2 lb Amber Dried Malt Extract

Specialty Grains:
8 oz Crystal 60L
4 oz Chocolate
6 oz Carapils Dextrine

Hops:
1 oz Bittering
1 oz Flavoring
.25 oz Aroma

Yeast:
1 Sachet

The equipment is much more straightforward than I expected: 2 6gallon plastic buckets (2 x $9.95), 1 6-gallon plastic lid with hole for airlock ($5.95), 1 stopper for airlock($0.60), 1 airlock ($1), 1 section of 3 foot long plastic hose - (~$3), 1 container sanitizing concentrate, 1 container cleansing concentrate. I borrowed a 5 gallon pot from a friend, as well as a bottler, which I'm sure helped as the brewpots are like $40 for the cheap ones.

For sanitization, I dump a gallon of water into the bucket I'm going to use, dump in the cleanser (as this is an update several months after the original post, I have the benefit of hindsight, for those reading this chronologically I had this backwards at first - not recommended) and mix it up, was the inside of the lid (so I have something to put the other equipment on when it gets washed), set that aside, then wash and rinse the rest of the equipment, doing the bucket last. Then I do it again with the sanitizing solution, and let it all air dry. As the pot boils for an hour, I do not clean it.

I combined everything according to the ingredients and with the provided materials (for anyone looking to get into homebrewing, I'd highly recommend the Brewers Best kits). Once everything was set, I actually mis-read the instructions. I popped my first English Brown Ale after 7 days, and it was delicious. The ingredients hadn't fully mixed and melded with each other, and the chocolate flavor was a bit stronger than in the later bottles, and it was extremely good.

The rest of the bottles over the next week were more bitter - but those opened after two weeks were then very good again (though not as chocolaty).

My attempt at siphoning failed miserably, and I need to figure out a better way (ie, not just sucking it through the hose) to start it. That aspect of the sanitation definitely concerned me.