Sunday, December 30, 2012

Grandpa's Batch!

Rich being Rich!
Posing for our second batch of Cooper's!




Father and Son brewing beer together, too bad Dad doesn't drink!
We will either build or buy a wort chiller before our first all grain batch.
Rich pitching the variable - Nottingham Yeast!
I had some family in town and we were sitting around bored and finally decided why not brew tonight? We looked around and found our All Grain Ingredients (why did I capitalize that?) but we didn't have the pot for it (the pot is scheduled to be delivered on the 2nd of January). So we had another Cooper's Draught Beer can. We added roughly 2.5 lbs of dextrose and instead of using the Cooper's yeast we added Nottingham's Ale Yeast. We sat around arguing over what variable to change over the last batch and finally decided on yeast. So basically we added a little more sugar (about .5 lbs roughly) and used a different yeast (nottinghams) than our Dishwater Draught. We pitched at 76-78 degrees Fahrenheit. It is sitting in the garage right now at 55 degrees Fahrenheit.


So tonight's batch is called Grandpa's Batch - only reason because he finalized some decisions between me and Steve. Basically, he said arbitrarily "it's ready," and he pitched the yeast. He also helped stir and gave some great grandfatherly advice about life in general. So here are the pics! 

Friday, December 28, 2012

Cooper's Dishwater Draught Beer

Brew Day
Starting Gravity of 1.045

Flat Beer

Tip #1: Fill the bottles on the dishwasher, easier cleanup!
A family that brews together, stays together!



Okay, this is our first "easy" kit and our final practice run before our 1st all grain batch. It is a Coopers's Draught Beer Kit, it is fairly simple and is said to produce a beer similar to BMC (Budweiser/Millers/Coors). Also, I broke the hydrometer, so I can't record all the scientific details to figure out alcohol percentage. But it did have a starting gravity of 1.045. This went into the bottles on the 26th of December and we brewed it on the 15th of December, so 11 days in the primary. The only thing I really want to improve on our process is the chilling. We will probably invest in a wort chiller or build one from Home Depot before our next batch, which will be our first all grain.


****Will Update with Pictures****

Pints for Prostate!

Our first batch of beer! Its a Pints for Prostate PSA IPA from True Brew. $3 from each kit sold is donated to Prostate research and awareness! It features Palisade, Summit and Ahtanum hops and thats where it draws the name PSA. Only rookie/noob mistakes we made were:
1)  I let the temperature get out of control while steeping the specialty grains
2)  We squeezed the grains, so there might be some tannins in the wort.





So we also tasted afterwords - it was amazing! I've brewed roughly 5 batches of beer before and it always tastes horrible before bottling. So the fact that this tasted good is weird. I can't imagine what it will taste like in couple of weeks in bottles!


Brewed on the 8th of December, sat in bottles for 20 days and bottled on the 28th. One weird thing, after I moved it to counter, it started bubbling through the air lock. Normally I would think it isn't done fermenting, but it sat in the bucket for 20 days. Oh well, we'll see if we have some exploding beer bottles soon or not.  Also, I used the priming sugar from the package dissolved in 2 cups of water. I've always just used a half teaspoon per 12 ounces poured into the beer bottle. I did add Irish Moss to the beer the last 15 minutes of the boil, which isn't in the recipe.