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.