Drinking my first brew.

Here it is. The first beer I created with my own two hands. It's a bit hazy, but I can deal with that. Just over one week in the bottle and it's really conditioned nicely. Still has a bit of 'bite' to it, but I think that will mellow out in a couple of weeks

I got Shawn to take one sip, and she scrunched her face up in the worst way. She was polite enough not to spit it out and I appreciate that. Bah, she never liked good beer anyway!

New Toys!

Crushing grains has always been a problem. I could either have the store crush the grains before shipping them, leaving me to the whims of the warehouse monkeys or could try to crush them myself using a ziplock bag and a rolling pin. Neither of these were particularly appealing and in neither case was I assured a good crush. The results from the warehouse were mixed and the rolling pin method tended to leave me with half whole grains and half flour.

So I ordered this bad boy. The Barley Crusher! (http://www.barleycrusher.com) Shipped out today. Can be either hand cranked or driven with a 3/8" drill. As I start making the move to all grain brewing this will come in quite handy.

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

I decided my next brew would be an American Pale Ale (APA). Since the definitive APA is the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, I decided that would be the one to try and emulate. I found a recipe online to guide me. Once again it was an extract recipe using a few specialty grains.


Type: Extract
Date: 4/18/2007
Batch Size: 5.00 gal
Brewer: Joshua
Boil Size: 6.50 gal
Boil Time: 60 min
Equipment: Brew Pot (12 Gal)

5.50 lb Extra Light Dry Extract (3.0 SRM)
1.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM)
0.50 oz Magnum [14.00%] (60 min)
0.50 oz Pearle [8.00%] (30 min)
0.80 oz Cascade [5.50%] (10 min)
2.00 oz Cascade [5.50%] (0 min)
1 Pkgs California Ale (White Labs #WLP001)

Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.049 SG
Measured Original Gravity: 1.054 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.011 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 4.9 %
Bitterness: 44.8 IBU
Calories: 43 cal/pint
Est Color: 9.7 SRM


This recipe makes use of a large amount of Cascade hops for aroma and flavor, while using Magnum and Perle to give the bulk of the bitterness.

I wasn't able to find Extra Light Dry Malt Extract (DME) here in Reno, so I had to make do with Light DME. I bought 6 lbs of Light DME at Reno Homebrewer. It shouldn't affect the flavor too much, but the beer will be considerably darker than I really wanted. I really should have used some clarifiers in this as it is such a light colored beer, but I didn't have any on hand. I can deal with hazy beer, I think.

This was the first beer that I did outside on my Bayou Classic patio burner. This thing puts out 155,000 BTUs and heats 7 gallons of water to a rolling boil in about 30-35 minutes. Took a fair amount of fiddling to get the air mixture right, but once I had it set I had a nice ring of blue flame.

Once boiling, I dumped in all 6 lbs of DME. It wasn't until after I was all done that I remembered I should have only put in 5.5 lbs. Oops. That will affect the Original Gravity (OG) that I was shooting for. Recipe estimated 1.049, punching a couple numbers into BeerSmith and I get 1.053 for 6lbs of DME. That will darken the beer some and give it more body, but should still turn out OK.

The boil was mostly uneventful. Added my hops at the appropriate times, at 20 mins I threw the immersion chiller in to sanitize it. I was able to cool the wort from boiling to 70° in about 30 minutes. It's nice to have good cold tap water here.

Once cooled I put it in my 6 gallon carboy. After boil-off I ended up with a hair over 5 gallons. Perfect. I took my hydrometer reading and came up with 1.054, adjusted for temperature. This is where I realized my mistake with the DME as I was expecting 1.049.

I threw in a yeast starter that I had made earlier in the week and by morning I was greeted with this lovely sight. Nice thick head of krausen on it, sitting at a perfect 65°.

The cats are particularly enjoying the beer making. They sit on the side of the tub and watch the bubbles in the airlock. Keeps them entertained for hours.

At the end of the day, as I was cleaning up, the wind picked up and blew my test vial and hydrometer off the table. Snapped the hydrometer in half. I guess I need a new one now.

What we currently have

Here is what I currently have going on

American Amber Ale. The style is somewhat similar to an American Pale Ale. A little less hoppy than a pale ale.

My first brew, made with a kit from Northern Brewer. This one was done as a partial boil, extract with specialty grains. After I boiled the grains, hops and extract I put it in the carboy along with 2.5 gallons of water. I completely forgot to top up with more water to account for boil-off. So I ended up with about 4 gallons of fairly strong beer. Which explains why my original gravity was so high. I was expecting 1.047 but ended up as 1.058.

After fermenting for 2 weeks it finished at 1.010 giving it a fairly high 6.3% ABV. It's currently sitting in bottles, I might crack one open sometime this week and see how it is going.


Dry Irish Stout. Think Guinness and you will have the right idea. In the carboy this one has a beautiful jet black color. Like motor oil. I remembered my top off water this time, and ended up with 5.5 gallons in the primary and just over 5 gallons when I racked it to the secondary. The original gravity on this one was expected to be 1.042, I overshot that a bit and ended up with 1.047. With all the water I added, I'm not sure how that happened. Still scratching my head over that one.

This one is currently on week 2 in the secondary fermenter. I will probably bottle it this weekend. It was tasting a little thin and watery last week, I'm hoping carbonation brings a lot more of the Roasted Barley flavor to the front. It has almost no hop flavor or aroma, but that's typical of the style.


Cream Stout. This is basically a clone of Sam Adam's Cream Stout. This is my first non-kit beer. This is also the first time I boiled all the water together and didn't top off with water at the end. 7 gallons of water takes a long time to boil on the stove!

I picked up a propane patio stove to use for future brews. It also gets the smell out of the kitchen. I rather liked having the house smell like malty beer all day, but Shawn wasn't so thrilled about the idea.

The brew process went fairly well with this one. Took a lot longer than the previous two due to the excessively long time it took me to boil the water. I ended up putting the pot on the stove straddling two burners and it still took 2 hours to boil. This was also my first experience with White Labs pitchable yeast. I had been having less than 24 hour lag times before fermentation began and this one took longer than 48 hours. I almost pitched some dry yeast in there to try and save it, but it turned out OK

I was also quite concerned after fermentation started and I ended up with a nasty looking greenish Krausen (foam) with slimy particles in it.

This did not really inspire confidence in the brew. Still, I decided there was little I could do except relax and let the yeast do it's thing.

The original gravity was 1.053, expected was 1.050. A little high, but close enough. I had good temperatures with this one. I used the old carboy in the bathtub trick and stayed a pretty steady 65°. I moved it over to secondary with a final (or near final) gravity of 1.018. A nice 4.6% ABV and should have a decent body to it. As usual, I drank the beer that I used to take the reading (hey, beer is beer!) and it has a nice solid flavor. Really looking forward to this one.

Since John wanted it...

Here is my brew blog. I'll post the progress of each of my brews here. I'll do a photo blog of my next brew session, so you can all follow along at home!