Category beer

So tonight I decided to have one of those bottles of 11% or 13% or whatever beer that I’d made, the Rochefort 10 Cloneish. Well, I grabbed a bottle which had been aging for six weeks, and what did I find? No carbonation.

Needless to say, I’m really disappointed. I have no idea what could have gone wrong, except for maybe the yeast dying off or something.

Blah. I’ve got no idea.

If you want, here is a picture of it poured in a glass.

I just hope that it either improves with time, or at the very least, that the other two not-yet-complete batches (the modified golden ale and the wheat berry ale) don’t suck.

I think this batch cost somewhere around $60 – $70 plus time once all was said and done.

Blah.

Well, all I seem to post about lately is beer. Thinking about it, for some reason I haven’t been working on much lately besides making beer and my new webserver. Oh, and spending time with when I can.

Anyway, the sixth beer, a modified golden ale, has been bottled. Finally. This is the one that I thought was a bit too sweet and thick, so I added an extra yeast to it. Well, that seems to have done the job. I added 125g of corn sugar (in 2 cups of water) to it today and bottled it. Now it’s down in the basement waiting for it to age…

And now I’m going to relax. I feel really tired for some reason. :(

Oh, if you’re curious how the berry ale is coming along, take a look at the following two links. In short, it’s looking rather interesting, and it is clearly continuing to ferment: 1 · 2

Click for more: Page 1 · Page 2

Well, more progress on the Wheat Berry Ale that I’ve been working on. When I got home after work today it seemed that the fermentation had progressed to the point where I could add the berries. This, however, isn’t quite as simple as dumping them in, because they will ferment more, causing more krausen, and I need to get the beer off of the trub (oil / yeast / hops gunk left in the carboy). So, first I had to first rack (transfer) the beer to a 5 gallon carboy and set it aside. Then I washed and sanitized the inside of the 6.5 gallon carboy, which due to the incredible amounts of gunk inside was no simple task.

Then it was time to take the thawed berries (which had been previously frozen to -15°F and were thusly frozen quite solid) and add them to the carboy. After getting getting the berries into the carboy I then had to simply rack the beer back on to the berries and give it a gentle stir.

After putting the carboy to ferment one could see berry chunks floating in the beer along with a settling layer of a whiteish fluff. This became even more apparent after it sat for a few minutes.

(And that has been another link-er-iffic post, this time made with context-appropriate links instead of bullet points. Oh, and I forgot that I snapped this, and I guess it came out decent: a picture of me from when I was grinding metal to make the power supply bracket for the forthcoming rez.nuxx.net.)

This is weird. I heard a POP-tinkle-tinkle-tinkle sound over the music, and figured I should go to investigate. I went downstairs and the little red cap had blow off the airlock of the fermenter and it was sitting next to the carboy.

Interestingly, the vodka in the airlock was still pure, and there was only a little yeast stuck in the bottom tube.

I’m thinking what happened was that the base of the airlock clogged, it built up a lot of pressure, and when that raced through the cap popped off the airlock and hit the ceiling, which is what I heard.

I’m just glad I caught it now, instead of tomorrow when it completely clogged, giving the basement a yeast and beer shower.

So, to make a long story short, I switched back to a blowoff hose (note that it’s now clean). I had gone to the airlock from the blowoff tube earlier this evening, as I thought the ferment was slowing down. I guess it wasn’t…

Well, I’ll definitely be leaving this as-is for the next few days.

This yeast really is odd… I’ve never seen any do this. Oh, also, I tasted some of the yeast that got stuck in the airlock, and it’s a really, weird, interesting, trappist-ale flavor with the texture of thin yogurt. Almost like melty frozen yogurt, but sour. Sorta neat…

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(Click each for larger versions…)

So this morning I went down to check on the beer, and what did I find? Somehow this beer began fermenting as aggressively as the Rochefort 10 Clone in around 9-10 hours. It’s already pushing a solid stream of krausen out of the airlock into the blowoff bucket.

This yeast, WLP530, is really very interesting. For a beer with half the sugars of the Rochefort 10 clone it’s fermenting just as aggressively. Just as as was seen in the starter, once it gets going, it really gets going.

I wonder how long it’ll be before I can put the beer on the berries. I’m really looking forward to that, not least of which because the carboy will probably be swirling with all sorts of fruity lumpyness, and hopefully smelling rather good.

The boiling wort, right after the hops were added. · Click for more…

Well, the yeast is pitched and the start of the berry ale is fermenting. dropped by, and thanks to his help I was able to get the wort ready for fermenting even quicker. And, right around the time he left, we noticed that there were already signs of fermentation, only three hours after pitching the yeast. I think this will definitely be a mighty yeast.

For the record, I saw the first bubble rise from the blowoff tube at right about midnight while I was on the phone with my mom.

I can’t wait to see how it looks tomorrow…

Anyway, if you want to see some more pictures, including a nice close-up of a bowl of whole hops, click either the image above or this link and you’ll be taken to the Berry Ale album.

And now, bed!

Click for more from this gallery…

That’s what happens when the yeast that you use is really, really potent. I’ve got a 32oz starter of a moderate strength wort in a 64oz growler, and the yeast was fermenting so actively that it completely filled the container with krausen^† and spilled over into the airlock!

I have never, ever had a yeast do this… For what it’s worth, this was with a single vial of White Labs‘ WLP530 – Belgian Abbey Ale yeast. Per the description, it appears that this is also used in two of the six remaining Trappist breweries.

Hmm, I’m not so sure how well that’ll pair with a berry hefeweizen, but I guess we’ll see…

^†Krausen: Yeast-laden foam which is created on the top of a beer as it is actively fermenting.

Click for more…

Well, I guess it could be said that I’ve started on my seventh batch of beer. I’m going to be attempting to make a berry ale, and the recipe which I hope to follow can be found here.

I’ve got two kilograms of berries slowly freezing. It’s one part each blueberries, marionberries, raspberries, and strawberries. The first three berries were part of a frozen blend and the strawberries were fresh, all purchased from Costco. I ended up having far more strawberries than I needed (I purchased a four pound container) so I cleaned and stored the rest for another day.

So, hopefully it’ll be good… I’m hoping for a nice reddish beer with some great berry flavor to it. We’ll see…

Well, the Rochefort 10 Clone-ish is finally bottled. Now, 10 weeks of aging… That means this nice, strong winter-time beer will be ready to drink on Labor Day weekend. Hrm, that doesn’t seem right… That’s okay, maybe there will be some of the next batch ready for then.

If you take a look here you can see all 49 bottles. They are filled almost exactly the same amount each, capped, etc. You may wonder why 49 bottles… Well, the first I tend to set aside because it contains the little bits of sanitizer that was pushed out of the lines and bottling kit was the beer first ran into the bottle. I tend to mark this bottle then set it aside for… Well, just to make sure that I don’t get it to anyone intending it to taste spot on. As I use commercial food grade sanitizer the beer is very safe to drink (one can drink the sanitizer straight, although it’d probably cause heartburn) and it’s probably just fine tasting, but I don’t want to risk anyone accidently drinking something unpleasant.

There’s also a shot here of the kitchen as I typically have it set up for bottling. Bucket on counter siphoning the beer down to a bottling wand. Then I sit on the floor, case of empty (and washed and sanitized) bottles in front of me, filling them one at a time and setting a cap on top. The caps are soaked in cheap vodka (Crystal Palace) four at a time in order to sanitize them but not inadvertently use up the oxygen-reactive lining which (supposedly) helps preserve beer.

So, uhm…. Yeah. The beer is bottled. That shot up above is something which I noticed when drying the bottles towards the end of the night. See, after bottling I’ll rinse the bottles in room temp water and then hand dry them, just to get any remaining sanitizer or drips or whatnot off the outside. This ensures that they look nice. Anyway, I saw my Kubrick Pill Tofu peeking distortedly through the Crystal Palace bottle, so I grabbed that image too.

Now I’m done, which means bed time soon. No work tomorrow, but I’m still really sleepy, and a good night sleep will (hopefully) do me well.