Posted on 06/08/2012 3:28:55 PM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good afternoon/evening FReepers. Yep it is Beer Thirty Time!
Happiness is a bubbling airlock!
PORTER ALE
After last weeks positive acceptance of the Homebrewing Thread a few of you decided we needed to go weekly with this thread and I agree. Thanks to all who participated in last weeks thread.
So lets get talking about beer and wine. Last week I bottled a 9.3% Porter and decided to try one yesterday just to see how it was doing. As you might suspect it was nowhere near the carbonation level I was looking for, it needs another week or two or more. But I drank it anyway. It was quite sweet like a malty koolaid. I suspect the sweetness will mellow out and the carbonation will improve after a few more weeks aging in the bottle. After the last few sips were downed I actually needed to take a nap. It is not a session or lawnmower beer for sure!
I brewed up a Copper Ale yesterday morning. OG was 1.080 and it has a beautiful deep copper color like an old copper brew kettle. I also transferred my Honey Ale to a secondary after it had been in the primary for two weeks. So things are moving at a nice pace in order to keep the homebrews flowing around here.
Typically I like to brew the darker beers but the Honey Ale and my next brew, a Liberty Cream Ale, are Light Ales. I hope they turn out to be good brews.
When I don’t have a homebrew ready to drink I have been enjoying some Shiner Bock and a couple of styles of Blue Moon Ales. I tried a Belgian Wheat Ale from Blue Moon, which I did not like at all. Yuck! It is not a beer I like.
Find your favorite commercial beer alcohol (ABV) % level at the link below. There are 728 beers listed. There is a Sam Adams at 17.5% and a molly-whopping 43% Schorsch Bock 43.
Beers and their Alcohol Content
Life is good.
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Wow tacos for 125 pepole. Do they get to eat more than one? sounds like a chore glad it is not me doing that.
I will brew mine up next week. From the reviews I have read it is a winner!
One more thing: Could you add me to your ping list? Thanks!
If I had three of those those tacos would not get made! LOL
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Add me to the ping list please. Thanks
Most definitely! I started my brewing hobby with Mr. Beer, which leads people to think that you can bottle beer after a week of fermentation, and drink it at two or three weeks. Wrong! You need patience to brew good beer! After the initial fermentation, get it off the sediment and transfer to secondary (even if it's no longer fermenting!) and let it mellow for at least two or three weeks before bottling. After bottling, give it at least three weeks before drinking. If you're brewing ales, and you've got an extra refrigerator, age it at around 50 degrees Fahrenheit for that three weeks--add a little ale yeast before bottling, since the cold temperatures will play havoc on the residual yeast you need for carbonation. You'll be rewarded with beer that's every bit as good as some of the finest name-brand beers available.
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How much yeast do you add to each bottle when refrigerating?
Actually, I add it just before bottling--only if I've been cold conditioning beforehand. I add about a third of a packet of dry ale yeast to the entire batch, along with my carbonation sugar, for five gallons. It's just to make sure you've got enough viable yeast to produce carbonation.
I typically leave my beer in the primary for two weeks and do a two to three week secondary/mellowing.
This thread is worthless without free samples.
My motto is anything worth doing is worth overdoing, so I figure everyone should be able to eat as much as they want.
We will probably have so many leftovers we will probably hate tacos for life after the next week.
Crazy week. We had a surprise party for my daughters 16th Birthday last night. Thankfully my Mom chopped up 10 heads of lettuce and 25 tomatoes today. I cooked up 25 lbs of taco meat, chopped up about 5 lbs of onions, and cooked up 25 cups of Spanish rice.
Moms transmission went out tonight on her way to my nephews graduation ceremony and she is buying a house on Monday.
On top of all that I am putting together a worship service for church Sunday.
It's all coming together in spite of adverse circumstances.
Loving it.
Sounds like your week is living up to your screen name.
I’m a newbie wine/mead/beer maker. Been making fruit wines for a couple of year now. We have also brewed 5 batches of beer (extract with specialty grains). And I’m working on my 3rd batch of mead (which is taking a month of Sundays to ferment).
As I type, I’m drinking some homemade wine made from Welches grape concentrate. Not bad for cheap drinking wine.
We have some cream ale to bottle tomorrow and I have no idea what it’s going to taste like. I’m hoping for a “lawnmower beer”.
But, more importantly we made a breakfast stout a few weeks ago and it is ready to drink! It has coffee and chocolate in it. It came out pretty darned good! (Okay, it has a few coffee grounds in it, but these things happen). So, we will be drinking this while bottling tomorrow.
We plan to eventually start kegging our beer instead of bottling. Hubby wants to get a freezer and convert it to a “keezer”. Been looking at a small freezer at Costco. But the cost of the freezer, corney kegs, Co2 tank, and all the other bits and pieces are a bit more than we can afford right now. So we will be bottling for a while. With two of us, it doesn’t take too long to bottle (ugh, I would hate to bottle 5 gallons of beer by myself, it would take forever).
Okay, I’m thinking I need to be added to the ping list (not that I’m sure how that works). I’m mostly a lurker and this would be my 1st FR ping list.
Added to the ping list.
I hear you on the cost of kegging. It is hindering me also.
Bottling day around here is just me. I don’t mind it since I bought a spring loaded bottle filling wand no leaks or messes. Capping is still a chore for me, using a red hand capper,
Being added to the ping list is easy. I do all the work to get you pinged to the thread each week. Just sit back and wait for the ping. You will get the same red notification at the top of the page just like you got when I sent you this reply.
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