Brewsky

Homemade root beer

Robb Allen — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:20:51 GMT

Oh yeah, it's good. It's reeeeeeeally good.

I ran out of CO₂ halfway through force carbonation, but picked some more up yesterday. As of this morning it's accepting no more so it should be completely carbonated now. This picture is from last night where it was 80% carbonated and it was still delicious.

Unfortunately, the only tap I have sucks. It's a standard picnic tap so it's either all the way or nothing. I have to regulate the pressure in the keg to assist with pushing it out and that needs to be pretty darn low so that I don't rattle the beer out too fast.

One day I'll get a nice tower...

Helpful brewing tips

Robb Allen — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:13:08 GMT

When boiling water in your 5 gallon, stainless steel kettle over a propane burner on high, ensure that your daughter's favorite fishy plate did not somehow miraculously adhere to the bottom of said kettle while filling it up in the sink.

Said plate is not dishwasher safe, and apparently not open flame safe either.

Update

From the comments, this is too priceless not to highlight

re: Helpful brewing tips - BugSpray

The four rules of brewing:

Pots are alway cleaned before using.
Never heat an empty pot or any pan you are not wanting to destroy
Don't crank up the heat until the pot is on the burner
Be sure of your Pot and what's underneath it.
You violated rule #4. You're lucky it wasn't your wife china or somebody would have gotten hurt.

Homebrew time

Robb Allen — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 02:00:26 GMT

Time to make some homemade beer again. 'Cept this time it's just going to be root beer since I don't have the time / $$$ to brew a real batch, but that has to change soon.

I've been wanting to make my own sodas for a while. For about $10 total, I can make 5 gallons of some of the best damned root beer in the world. That ends up about 18¢ a glass. I'm using Gnome extract for this, but some day I want to brew it from scratch with wintergreen leaves and whatnot.

Root beer now, real beer soon. Promise.

How to make a proper martini

Robb Allen — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:48:36 GMT

Seems like Greg and Law Dog are proffering their recipes for martinis, so I thought I'd give my opinions on them.

Gin - Brand unimportant as all gin tastes like what you'd expect cheap cologne to taste like.
Vermouth - A thilly thounding thpirit. Again, as it will be mixed in with the gin, it's quality is irrelevant.
Olive - disgusting little rancid grapes.

Mix any ratio of gin and vermouth in a mason jar.
Shake the living fuck out of it or stir it with one of those mini tongue depressors they give you at Starbucks. Whatever floats your dingy.
Drop in half the jar of olives.
Toss mixture down garbage disposal and hit frappe.
Go grab a beer and enjoy yourself.

Why homebrewed beer is infinitely better than the mass produced swill

Robb Allen — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:51:49 GMT

The Brother-In-Law gave me some Blonde Ale he made in February. I had forgotten about it until I was cleaning out my closet yesterday. So I put them in the fridge and had one tonight.

Delicious! Try that with a mass produced beer and see how skunky it tastes.

Oh, did I mention it was made in February. 2006???

Born-on-dates are for carbonated horse piss.

At least some of us aren't cretins

Robb Allen — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 02:23:38 GMT

Me? I'm a beer guy myself. Vintage in my terms is a 6 pack of Dog Fish Head 90 Minute IPA that's sat for more than a week.

J.R. however has taken a break from gun blogging and written a review of a new wine he tried. I think he's done a rather nice review. I might even try to find a bottle of it somewhere as I, too, sometimes partake of the grape.

However, I admit to being a cretin. I don't match wines with food the way I will with a beer. And then again, I match beer with food by my own standards and no one else's.

Suds & guns

Robb Allen — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:50:55 GMT

Sebastian is not only a fellow gun nut, but a fellow homebrewer too.

Fantastic!

Now if I could only get off my lazy ass and actually brew something.

My very first beer review!

Robb Allen — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 13:21:10 GMT

Which also happens to be the reviewer's first beer review.

This is from my Ithurtzwhen IPA, a 12% monster beer I made last April and gave a few bottles to my friend at work. The beer was so alcoholic that the yeast died off (very happily, I might add!) and never carbonated in the bottle so you have to force carbonate each one individually. It literally has taken almost a year for the beer to age to the point of drinkability.

But I'll let Steve describe the experience.

Wow, my first beer review ...

Brown with a hint of red, but also with an very deep orange underlying hue... ( I might even describe it more dark reddish orange than any shade of brown). Slight to moderate chill haze.
Holds a white, fluffy quarter inch head like meringue on a pie
Powerful citrus nose (nose is an understatement!), almost oily (if you can actually smell "oily"), like a bitter orange peel - maybe some piney smells in there too? More floral and piney as I got about half way down the pint glass. Every now and then, I think I can smell the alcohol, but its hard to say.
Malty sweet! Front of the tongue got assaulted on the first taste, but got much better after that.
Taste is hard to pin down (which is always a problem for me with a big beer) - reminds me of other big beers brewed with fresh (wet) hops. Some sort of dried dark fruit (raisony? maybe darker?). Strong but veddy delicious!
Mouth feel is great/huge. Saw that coming once I noticed the almost "syrupy" pour!
NICE strong bitter on the sides and back of the tongue. Ever so slightly astringent, which goes very well with the bitter (makes me thirstier!).
Alcohol is "evident" on the roof of the mouth - very good with the bitter flavors.
Impressions: I was almost afraid to try this, but I'm glad I did. Looks good, tastes even better! Big alcohol! Bigger hops! Even bigger malt! Perfect for my big hop-head thirst! Drinks like an 8-9% beer, which is dangerous! I'm already considering the next one since I drank the first one in the 10 minutes time that it took me to type this!
Too bad the yeast wasn't just a little tougher; would be nice to not have to force carbonate. However, my hats off to the yeast - it had a huge fight on its hands!
WOOT! Good job. Steve likes! Am I going to have headache tomorrow?
--
Steve (Hiccup!)
Have you ever tried to calculate the IBU? (Not even sure if you can do that...)

The IBU (International Bitterness Units) calculated to around 120. I say around because of this (from Wikipedia)

The bittering effect is less noticeable in beers with a high quantity of malt, so a higher IBU is needed in heavier beers to balance the flavor. For example, an Imperial Stout may have an IBU of 50, but will taste less bitter than an English Bitter with an IBU of 30, because the first beer uses much more malt than the second. The technical limit for IBU's is around 100, others have tried to surpass this number but there is no real gauge after 100 IBUs when it comes to taste threshold.

I think I found the perfect tap

Robb Allen — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 16:54:23 GMT

At least for me

Hat Tip to my Brother-In-Law Tracy who I don't think has a blog yet but should.

Chimay clone notes

Robb Allen — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 02:16:20 GMT

I meant to blog about this earlier, but I seem to be out of motivation. So here it is, finally.

I moved the Abbey Normal Chimay Red Clone into secondary over the weekend. Now, during brewing I totally failed to take an original gravity reading so based on my ingredients and calculations, it should have been around 1.068 which is considered a high gravity brew.

During the move to secondary, I took a hydrometer reading and the final gravity was 1.009. This indicated about a 86.76% apparent attenuation (69% real). The temperature control really, really helped. I'm going to have to get another temp controller for the fridge so I can hit those temps again.

Now, when taking a sample, you can't pour it back into the carboy because it could infect it. So, what do you do with the beer? Drink it!

If the sample is any indication of what's in store for me, this might be the best beer I've ever brewed. It's got 4 more days in secondary until I keg & bottle it, then several days after that before the C02 levels are right (in the keg. I estimate about 2 weeks before the bottles are conditioned).

Can't wait!