Posted on 10/19/2012 4:47:42 PM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good afternoon/evening FReepers. Yep, it is Beer Thirty Time Once Again!
Happiness is a bubbling airlock! And a Cold Brew
BEER
Good evening/afternoon brewers and winemakers. I brewed up an Irish Stout this past week using a extract kit I had ordered a few weeks ago. It has an Original Gravity (O.G.) of 1.065 and is bubbling the airlock nicely. Yep, I am back to brewing an Ale after a side trip into making a couple of Hard Apple Ciders. I will continue my Hard Cider Brewing as long as I can get the fresh squeezed Mussleman’s Cider I have been using.
I popped the swing top on one of my Grolsch-style swing-cap bottles of Cranberry Mead a couple of days ago and got a big surprise … Wow! It blew like I was uncorking a bottle of Champagne. Spewed all over before I could get the cap back on. I bottled it as sparkling Mead and it sure is! It is a nice tasting bubbly.
Last night I popped the top on the first Hard Cider that I bottled a few weeks ago. Nice carbonation and it has a beautiful very, very clear light yellow color (a #2 on the Lovibond scale).
My wife had helped me make and bottle it, and said, “Oh my, it tastes like a wine, this was way too easy to make.” Yep, and it turned out good! This is the one I made with the frozen apple juice concentrate. It was inexpensive and turned out to be very tasty. It was easy to make and quick from the ferment stage to popping a top and drinking. Not bad for 7.8% ABV - Can’t beat that combination. I think the carbonation makes the hard cider much better. Drink it cold, cold.
I hope all of you and your Brews and Wines are doing well. Stop by and share what you are brewing or let us know what your favorite brew, wine or spirit is.
St. Andrew’s Altbier is out of secondary and is entering its second week of conditioning in the keg under pressure.
Tasted a bit last night, gonna be good when it finishes “gittin’ it’s FIZZY on”...excellent malt body at the start, with the hop bitterness you’d expect from a Northern German Alt, and a REALLY interesting malt sweetness that lingers on the back of the tongue.
I'm planning on a second batch now.
Speaking of beer, I gave two 22-oz bottles of a year-old bock beer to a friend last week. When he opened the first bottle, it fountained quite spectacularly. He told me about this, so we decided it was best to open the second bottle together and outdoors. That second bottle was just fine.
What happened? Double-primed?
(I don’t recall for sure if I bottle primed or batch-primed that one.)
When I still used to bottle, many moons ago, I would get that too.
I think it has a lot to do with the distribution of the priming sugar. When the sugar is added to the bottling bucket, unless it is completely and thoroughly incorporated, some bottles will be under primed and some will be over primed. Constant stirring is the key I think.
My buddy who still bottles goes one further and adds the sugar to some sterile water and heats it up until it is completely clear then adds that to the bottling bucket. Liquid vs solids and all that. He still stirs it frequently to avoid the heavier sugars to sinking to the bottom.
Cheers,
knewshound
Do you remember what type of sugar you used to prime that Bock?
I think that I would have used granulated cane sugar for priming.
This is from the link I gave last week Alternative Brewing Sugars
"Brown sugar should never be used for priming, as it distributes itself fairly unevenly, and can result in some beers being flat, while others explode in the bottle."
I have always done what your buddy does using corn sugar. One cup water with 5 oz corn sugar. Slow boil sugar in the water, let it cool and add that to the bottling bucket then rack the beer into the bucket to get a good mix going.
For my 1 gallon Hard Ciders I have been using Coopers Carbonation Tabs in the bottles. They work well.
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