Well.... It's been almost a year since I last posted here. I have to admit, I forgot about this place and never would have thought about it again if it wasn't for a recent email with a more experienced brewer and general great guy, esheppy. You can find him and his way more informative and entertaining blogs here... http://blog.ericshepard.com/

So what's happened? Well.... I got another year older.
The Tigers lost the World Series. No wait, the Tigers got SWEPT in the World Series!
The NHL went on strike/lock out, which made me realize I am actually a pretty big hockey fan. As much as other people tried to pull people together to try and punish the Billionaires and Millionaires by not attending or watching any NHL when the lock out ended, as well as not purchasing any new NHL paraphernalia, I couldn't resist. I needed a hockey fix! I needed my Oilers!
The Patriots lost the AFC championship to the eventual Super Bowl winning Ravens, which almost made me puke.
Oh and I played Australian Rules Football in Toronto. Yep. I did. There's a league in Ontario. It's no where near the pro calibre that the actual AFL is, but it is a lot of fun and I'm glad I did it. The sad part is it also made me realize how much of a difference age and working for a living plays against kids who go to college and build muscle by eating a large pizza. So 2012 is probably going to be my only year of playing, and I will be a fan/spectator from here on out.

As an aside, typing all that made me realize how far apart my pro sport team affiliations are. Not that I didn't already, but typing it is making my mind run on what to do to correct it, and I'm not sure I can. I tried to go all Boston/Massachusetts teams a few years back. It didn't work. I hate the Red Sox. Don't care about Boston College and would never think of being a Bruins fan. I do have a soft spot for Detroit, mostly because our local US TV stations back home were from there, it's why I'm a Tigers fan actually. Problem is I'd have to give up on my Patriots, and that will never happen. So I guess I'll remain a fan of the teams I am a fan of and maybe hope one or two of them relocate to a city with a team I already like! ;)

Anyways. I have the new Mr Beer Aztec Cerveza in the little brown keg. Nothing exciting. Just the usual boil water, add HME, pour in LBK and let sit. I have to bottle it tomorrow.
I have a can of Mr Beer Octoberfest in my cupboard waiting to brew. Problem is I've made it three times and have come to terms with the fact that I don't like it. Apparently I am not a malty beer fan. This is where the email with esheppy comes in. I sent him a question of how to make the Octoberfest more hoppy so I might enjoy it. He has sent back a couple of suggestion. I'm going to rack my brain to come up with something with these suggestions, and will post my final recipe when I do it.

So that's it for now. Feel free to comment, and thanks for visiting. Cheers!

Octoberfest Vienna w/Mellow Amber

Not much to report today, other than I brewed the final batch of what my awesome wife bought me for christmas... Mr Beer Octoberfest Vienna Lager with Mellow Amber UME.

I absolutely love how easy brewing Mr Beer is. Even with my OCD sterilizing it still takes me less than an hour to brew a batch or Mr Beer beer.

A little change to report... After the low abv's of the last two batches, and some questions on the Mr Beer forum, I came to the conclusion that the yeast provided may not be enough for the two cans of malt. So, I bought a packet of US-05 Safale from my LHBS and poured that in when it came time to add yeast. I'm hoping the little clumps will dissolve, I'm sure I've read similar reports on the forums before, and I did stir the crap out of it.

Original Gravity reading.... 1.039. Maybe 1.040.

High Country Canadian Draft

Bottling Day! No real news to report. I washed 8 one litre bottles with all natural dish soap, which is free of chemicals like scents etc. I then sanitized the same bottles with the sanitizing solution provided by Mr Beer. The only hiccup I encountered was that I forgot to sanitize the funnel and measuring spoons that I need for adding the sugar I have to put in the bottles, to resolve this problem I simply boiled water in the kettle and poured it over the forgotten utensils.

I measured 2 and a half teaspoons of sugar to each bottle and then filled each bottle from the fermenter. After capping the PET bottles I inverted them 8 times each to make sure all the sugar made it into the liquid.

Only news I can really report is the Final Gravity..... My OG was 1.038 and my FG was 1.014 which gives me an abv of 3.144% which is disappointing. I may have to start using the 'booster' Mr Beer provides or even adding some grains to get the abv up. I know home brewing is more about the taste but I also like at least 4.8% alcohol

Until next time... Relax, Don't worry, Have a Home Brew


Update.... Well, I drank it. With the help of a friend. The taste? DAMN FINE! This is probably the best tasting beer I have made yet. And after much consideration, I got over the low abv. Why? The Taste! I'm really impressed with the taste of this one and I may have to make it again soon... I may go with the Safale US-05 yeast next time to help with the abv, and hope it doesn't mess with the taste.

Final judgement..... I think I've found my new favourite homebrew that will become a staple in my fridge.

2012 - 1 Brew bottled, 1 brew fermenting

Well... I haven't written on this thing in awhile (forgot I had the account)

So anyways.. My most excellent wife bought me a few Mr Beer items for Christmas 2011... 3 deluxe refills, and an 8 pack of 1 litre bottles.

So three weeks ago this past Friday I made the batch of St Patricks Irish Stout w/Creamy Brown UME, and I bottled it this past Friday. My only concern was that my OG was 1.036 (reading taken after yeast added) and my FG was 1.017 I think. I was concentrating so hard on the bubbles that I only noticed the 7 and not whether it was .017 or .007. I'm hoping that it was 1.007 because if it's .017 I may have just created beer geysers since it would mean the brew was not finished fermenting. Only time will tell.

So today I mixed up a batch of High Country Canadian Draft w/Pale Export. Everything went as it should have... Sanitized the equipment... boiled water... added HME and UME... put mix in fermenter and added water to the 8.5 quart level.
My OG... 1.038.

I'll be back in three weeks with the FG when I bottle.

Cheers
Paul

My First Coopers Bottling Day

G'day!

Well, the Lager sat in the darkened spare room for 7 days. Which made today... Bottling Day!

Not much to report here, as the process is pretty simple. I sanitized the bottling wand that comes with the kit and then inserted it into the spigot. I have heard a lot of positive things about the Mr Beer bottling wands and was anxious to use the one for my Coopers kit.

*side note*- I do not have a bottling wand for my Mr Beer kit yet as I have to get to the US to pick one up-

So, with the wand inserted, I grabbed my first PET bottle that came with the kit, put two "carbonation drops" in the bottle and then put the wand in the bottle and held the bottom of the bottle against the tip of the wand.
This is where the genius of the wand comes in to play... Once the bottle was full to the top of the neck, I simply let the bottle drop a little bit and the beer stops flowing! AUTOMATIC STOP! I LOVE this bottling wand!
Anyways... half an hour later I had 30 bottles of Coopers Lager filled and capped. Now I just have to wait a minimum of two weeks for it to ferment in the bottles and then we'll see just how well I did.

*Fingers Crossed*

Oh hey... I almost forgot.... I used the hydrometer that came with the Coopers kit and... Original Gravity was 1.055 and Final Gravity was 1.012. So, if my math is correct, the ABV should be 5.7%

Coopers Brew!

I made a batch of Coopers Lager today. My wife bought me a Coopers kit for my b-day.
I'm a LOT worried.

First, the stove is upstairs in the kitchen. The laundry sink which will fit the Coopers fermenter is in the basement. I did the initial brew process in the kitchen, then carted the fermenter to the basement to fill with cold water.
I think my first mistake at this point was stirring the wort/hot water/sugar before adding the cold water, as it created A LOT of foam. Once I started adding the cold water (from the tap) the foam only expanded! By the time I got it to the 23 litre mark, the foam was overflowing the fermenter, and I had left the lid upstairs.
So.. with the wort and it's foam offspring exposed I ran upstairs to grab the lid, but I forgot the airlock. So I ran upstairs again to get the airlock, but I forgot the yeast. So I ran upstairs again to grab the yeast.
I installed the airlock incorrectly and sealed the lid. Upon noticing I installed the airlock incorrectly I unsealed the lid and correctly installed the airlock and sealed the lid..again, but I forgot to add the yeast. I unsealed the lid, again, sprinkled the yeast on top of the mountain of foam in the fermenter and stirred vigorously, and resealed the lid.
What am I worried about? Oh I don't know.... the multiple exposures to the outside because I'm a moron comes to mind.

What did I learn?
A. Plan brew day better. I need to figure out how to do it all in one place, not two floors.
B. I LOVE my Mr Beer kit a lot better for the simple fact the fermenter will fit in my kitchen sink!

God I hope I don't get 23 litres of bad beer..

Batch 4!

Oi! What a year so far.

For the first time in almost three months I brewed beer again! Finally! I'd catch you all up on batches two and three and their processes and what I learned etc.... but honestly it's been so long I've forgotten. Hence the reason they say to write things down as soon as you can.
What I can remember is that batch number 2 tasted too much like a Belgian, and I don't like Belgian beer. Not sure if it turned out that way because I didn't bring my added DME to it's 'heat break' or 'boil point' or whatever it's called, or if it's because I had too much malt, and not enough hops. Either way, I didn't like it until I drank the last two bottles about 3 weeks after drinking the first bottle. Lesson learned..... let it sit in the bottles longer.
As for batch 3.... wasted. And I don't mean it got me wasted, I mean it got wasted. I brewed batch 3 in early January and marked my calendar on my phone and my computer so I would bottle 3 weeks after brewing. Problem was 3 weeks later I was so sick I could barely hold a glass of water, and I slept 20 hours a day. The weekend after I was looking after my sick wife as she suffered through the same thing, only without the sleep. Then our days became overly busy and the next thing I knew batch 3 had been in the fermenter for 9 weeks!!! I didn't even bother to try bottling it, everything I had read said the same thing... do NOT let it sit on the turbo for too long or your beer will go sour! I didn't like the thoughts of sour beer so, I poured it down the drain. I'm glad it was just 2 gallons and not 5, I probably would've cried if it had been 5.
After posting the loss of batch 3 on the Mr Beer forums, the more experienced brewers there asked if I had tasted it first. Tasted it? Why would I taste it? Obvious answer.... to see if it had indeed gone bad! I'M an IDIOT! Why the hell didn't I think of that?!? I may have just wasted 2 gallons of beer for nothing! Lesson learned... taste test!

So... batch 4. For the first time in a long time I actually had a weekend where, besides the usual chores, I had nothing to do and nothing planned for me to do! Which made Sunday evening BREW NIGHT!

The only can of LME I had left was my Whispering Wheat Weizenbier so that was the beer I was making. I decided to add the Amber DME I still had on hand so I could have a beer with a little more abv to it. That and I wanted to try this method of taking the DME to it's boil point and see if it improved overall taste and mouthfeel at all. I understand that I should make my beer from the base level, i.e. not using any additives, and then improve from there. But to be perfectly honest, I don't really like wheat beers, and I had the DME on hand with only one can of LME left.

I sanitized the fermenter and utensils and pot first. Then, after emptying the pot of the sanitized water, I added 4 cups of cold water to my pot and slowly stirred in the package of booster.
Now, the instructions that come with Mr Beer say to stir the booster into the water until it's fully dissolved. The problem with that is that booster is corn sugar, which means it clumps in cold water, and yes it will dissolve over time, but it takes a LONG time. I turned the burner on low and slowly moved it up to medium to help the booster dissolve a little faster without actually boiling it.

First I should let you know that our stove top dials go from low/simmer to 8 and then high. By the time I had the booster dissolved I was at 6 and a half, and from the lesson learned with my last DME experience I decided this was a good temp to start adding my DME. That way it wouldn't clump up like last time and it might dissolve a little faster. That plan actually worked! I slowly stirred in the DME I had measured out, and once it was all in the pot I turned the dial on the stove up in small increments, until the DME was fully dissolved, by this time I had the burner at 7.
After reading about how to add DME on a few posts on the Mr Beer forums I had gathered enough info to come to the conclusion that I needed to get the DME to it's boil point, but not take it past that, and apparently the boil point is 212 degrees fahrenheit. I don't have a candy/liquid thermometer. I also read a post by a guy who said he boiled the DME until the foam was almost overflowing the pot and then removed it from the heat so it would settle and then returned it to the heat again, repeating this process until the amount of foam in the pot became almost non existent. I decided to combine these two trains of thought and left the burner at 7. The DME - booster combo started to 'roll', but there were no bubbles breaking the surface, which indicated to me that I had the mixture hot enough that it was ready to boil, but not so hot that it actually did start to boil. I allowed this to go on for a few minutes while noticing that while the liquid was not actually at a full boil, it was rising. I decided to employ the heat/no heat part of my plan and turned the burner to high. The wort mixture quickly began to rise and boil, at which point I removed it foam the heat so it would settle, and then returned it to the heat again to get the foam rising again. I repeated this process a few times until I noticed the foam was almost non existent.
I removed the wort from the heat for the last time and opened my can of Whispering Wheat LME and stirred that in to my DME/booster wort mixture.
I then followed the rest of the Mr Beer directions and poured the completed wort mixture into the waiting fermenter that I had already added 4 quarts of cold water to, and like it says to do in the instructions, I added more water until the liquid was at the 8.5 quart mark on the side of the fermenter. I stirred the wort in the fermenter and added the Mr Beer dry yeast, and let that sit for 5 minutes (yes I set a timer) before stirring it vigorously.

The completed Wort now sits in my step-daughters bedroom (she doesn't live with us) and will sit there for the next three weeks, at which time I will bottle it.
I REALLY hope this turns out well!

Cheers,
Paul