weekly homebrew update

I love talking about homebrewing! This week we brewed Coffee Porter Stout. (Or was it Coffee Stout Porter?) We need a good name for it, although I'm sure chris has a great idea. We bottled Tongue Splitta:



A hoppy beer.

A little note about brewing: It is really not that complicated. The first step involves boiling water with malt extract and hops. That concoction is called wort. The wort gets put into a bucket with yeast, and we leave it there about a week for what's called primary fermentation. After a week in primary fermentation, we move it to a glass carboy for secondary fermentation. This helps with clarification of the brew, and lets the yeast work its magic a bit longer in the beer. The final step is mixing a sugar (we use honey) in with the beer and then bottling it. The sugar is for carbonation. One of the fun gadgets is the bottle capper. Chris is the best at capping!





There was a little bit of confusion - We always have two beers in secondary fermentation, and we bottle the one that has been in the longest. We almost always put the carboy that contains the newer beer in the back so that it is easier to take the one in front and bottle it. This time, we picked up the one in front and bottled it, assuming we had put the newer one in back the previous week. (Hope this makes sense.) Then, when i went to move the back one to the front, i found the label we had put on the barack obama presidenti-ale (the most recent one to be put into secondary) so i started to worry that we had accidentally bottled the presidenti-ale! I'm not worried about the missed time in secondary, but i want to drink the beer that i see on the label. :) I was really bummed about NOT KNOWING - then chris remembered that we did put the newer carboy in the back because it was a bit of a pain. So, crisis averted, we were 95% sure that we bottled the right one.

I still have to make a label for the spiced ale, it is in bottles but unlabeled - i hate to leave them without labels. (i think we'll call it rudolph's tasty treat. Chris's idea!) I am almost done with the presidenti-ale label. Today, we put a bottle of Not From a Cow Cream Ale in the fridge, ready for tasting tomorrow! I can't wait!