Brewing beer

Well Folks, it’s apparently been ages since I last blogged. You’ve probably been worried. Where is Russ?  What has he been up to?  How can I go on without knowing what Russ is doing?  Right? … (Insert the sound of crickets chirping here).  OK… so maybe you aren’t holding your breath.  For all I know, you deleted me long ago, or only keep me bookmarked for a laugh.

So, whether you’ve been waiting with baited breath for my next post so you can go on with things, or with finger poised over the delete key, threatening to remove me from your life if I ever post again, if you’re reading along now, you are in for a treat. You are finally going to find out what I have been up to these last several months. Well… maybe not everything I’ve been doing over the course of the last years absence, but at least something that I’ve done and want to share in yet another witty and thought provoking post. If you’re as clever as I suspect all of my discerning readers are, you will have seen the title and saved yourself a whole lot of reading already.…but for those of you who may be a bit slow on the uptake, I’ll spell it out….this weekend I brewed a batch of beer.

Beer brewing has become a favorite hobby over the last year. It actually all started about 20 years ago, when I decided to try brewing beer after my friend Bill had completed a few successful batches. He got sick of it and gave me his gear. I tried to make beer 3 or 4 times. I had a couple poor batches, one that never fermented and one that fermented real well but tasted like what plastic band-aids smell like. …undrinkable to say the least.

Last June, a new shop, Brewtopia, opened up near Central Square in Keene. I was excited to see what they had for craft beers, so I stopped in. What to my wondering eyes did a appear, but a beautiful beer store AND a home brewing supply store, all in one. I talked about brewing to the guys a little bit and picked up a great book on making homebrew that they recommended.

I went home and read the book in one evening. It became quite clear why my original batches 20 years ago were so un-spectacular to downright horrid. The next weekend, I rummaged around in the basement and found my glass carboy and some of the other beer making stuff I still had and decided to give it a go again. I went back and asked AJ at Brewtopia to hook me up with the ingredients for a pale ale recipe, which he did. I didn't even bother to ask what they were or in what amounts. I just wanted to try out the brewing process.

My first brew came out ok. Very drinkable. Not an award winner, maybe, and not particularly reproducible, since I had no idea what I made it with, but good. I was hooked. I joined some online communities like Hopville and  Homebrewtalk , and got a subscription to Brew your Own magazine and a home brewing website called Beer Tools.(Ya, I know… I get a little obsessive at times)

So one evening, I was enjoying a Shipyard Export, and wondered if I could figure out how to make something that tasted like that. I opened up the Google Machine and Wham!  clone recipes galore.

The next weekend, I hit up Brewtopia, got my supplies and brewed up a batch. As luck would have it, we had a pig roast for the Elm City Derby Damez on the same weekend that the beer was ready, so I brought out a cooler full. It was a hit and disappeared pretty quickly.  I decided to call it “Pig Roast” and to keep tweaking the recipe and brewing it until I had something super delicious and of my own make, and so I have brewed the last 3 times the same recipe with various little additions, changes or subtractions. I’ve also picked up, or been given, better brewing gear, which has enhanced the whole brewing experience, as well as helped things look and taste better.

This weekend past, I brewed it again. This time, I used yeast that I had farmed from a bottle of an earlier batch. I had made a starter earlier in the week and built up a good sized yeast cake.

Once again, I messed around with the hop schedule and the various amounts of malt to try to find just that right combination.

The process is pretty easy and fun. It feels like working at the Alchemy Lab for all my Skyrim addict friends. First, I steeped my Wheat and Crystal-30 grains in a small pot on the stove for about 1/2 hour at 150+/- degrees.

 

Since it was a glorious Sunday, with the sun shining and the temps in the 70’s (a very rare occurrence in NH in March), once the steeping was done, I set up my burner and kettle out by the fire pit and played all afternoon at being a brew-miester. I brought my water to a boil, then added my steeped wort, my malt extract and the first addition of hops. I was trying something a little different, so I had to stay close in order to add hops at timed intervals, especially near the end of the hour long boil.

When I first made beer, I would get so wound up and have my books and directions out the whole time, checking to see if I was “doing it right” I have the process down now, so there’s less checking and more enjoying. That’s not to say stuff doesn’t come up that causes a panic now and then. I stepped away yesterday for just a moment and had a boil over that put out my burner. So I lost a little propane and about a quart of wort. That was a bummer. The dogs enjoyed liking the the fire pit patio stones though.

Once I was done boiling, I cooled the wort with my handy little cooling device, and then poured the chilled wort into the carboy. I found that I boiled down more volume that expected in an hour, so my 6 gallons to start with turned into about 4.8 in the carboy.

I expected 5.5 gallons, so the batch is a little denser than I expected. (An O.G. of 1.071 for you brewing types, whereas I was aiming for 1.060) The beer is also going to be a little hop-ier (more bitter) than the recipe goal, but I think it’ll be good anyway. It meets all the style characteristics of an OLD ALE, so I’m sure I’ll like it.

 

I pitched my home farmed yeast, and it took off…. the airlock started bubbling within a half hour of pitching. I hope that’s a good thing….sure seems so. It has a lot of work to do.

So now the beer is at its primary fermentation in the basement at about 65 degrees. Hopefully, I’ll bottle in two weeks and be sampling deliciousness around the 1st of May.

 

    Pig Roast Old Ale