Stout is Bottled!

So, after several hours of work, and a lot of water getting everywhere, the Stout is finally bottled!

We got to get a bit of a taste test, and its very light and crisp for a stout, but has the signature coffee flavor. Hell, Craig might even drink it.

And something we're going to try to do from now on is make a photo log of our progress. My camera is a POS and I didn't notice that the date was way off until I uploaded.



All of the bottles had a nice long soak in the tub, the hot water (at least with the AB and Sam Adams) worked wonders. Those labels came off faster than Bill's pants at a Crackbaby party.



Here's Billdo, with his pants on, sanitizing bottles as I scrubbed them.



We added 3/4c of Corn Sugar for priming and racked it over to the Bottling Bucket. Isn't it pretty? I like my beer like I like my women, cold, black, and bitter. This stuff came out blacker than Samuel L. Jackson. Maybe I should call it BAMF beer...



Bill filled and I capped (and took pics).



We had 49 regular pry offs and it turns out 1 twist off. Can you spot it? One of these things is not like the other...



2 weeks for carbonation is way too long...

I went to St. Louis Beer and Wine and picked up the fixings for a Spiced Belgian Wit. Monday is going to be a late and fun night:).

Dropkick's (James) Deadeye Stout is a brewing

So as my first post here I decided it was probably a good idea to have lots of info so a week ago Bill and I did our first all-grain brew with the leftovers from my uncles metric shit-ton of brewing equipment and goodies that he gave me.

"Deadeye Stout" (or Shortin' Stout, haven't decided yet)

7.5lbs Cargil Idapils (yeah I know its a light pilsner malt, but its what I had)
8 oz. Roasted Barley
8 oz. "Special B" (Dark Carmel Malt. Google it)
12 oz. Oatmeal flakes
1 oz. Perle Hops (Whole leaf 8.2% Alpha - added 1 hour boil time)
1 slap pack of Brewers Best Irish Ale Yeast

Yields 5 gallons

-We started off milling the malt at a medium grind at about 4pm .
-Single infusion mash in 3 Gal of water at 160°F for 1 1/2 hours.
-Laurtered for 50 minutes.
-Guilt tripped Bill for 20 minutes for breaking my thermometer in the sparging water, causing us to dump out the lead pellets and re-heat the water.
-Sparged for 45eque minutes (until we hit our final boiling limit (roughly 4ish gallons)
-We ended up boiling in 2 pots for 1:45 (note to self: buy a 6 gal propane turkey fryer)
-Post boil we cooled off the wart with a couple of gallons of sterilized water that we put on the front porch to get cold, half of it was ice by this time).
-Everything was still way to hot to pitch the yeast so the only thing we could really do was cover the bucket with clingwrap and let it sit overnight to cool off.
-Sunday I had to do family stuff up in IL all day so I asked Bill to rack the wort over into my 6 1/2 gal carboy and pitch the yeast which he did awesomely, and took an initial gravity reading of 1.042 (thanks bro, I appreciate it again)

The carboy was under the table at a nice, comfy 72°F. About 16 hours after pitching it wasn't just bubling, the airtrap was rattling like it was an old coffee pot percolating. It kept that up for a day or so and slowed down to a nice bubble every couple of seconds. We left it in Primary until last night (Friday - 5ish days) when we racked it over into my 5 gal carboy for secondary. Second gravity reading is showing 1.003 so we're looking at right around 5% alcohol content.

And of that reading, we got our first taste test. It was a little lighter than a Guiness, but still very tastey. Yep its a stout.

I'm going to leave it in secondary for about a week before I bottle condition it, that will give me some time to find more 12oz bottles.

Next project is an Irish Red (like Killians)

Side note: We have a lot of Keystone light left from the game of "Beer Hunter" we played around New Years. And unfortunately it is currently the only beer in the house. So we braved it. 2 1/2 cans fit into our Viking mugs, and we tried to stomach it. Someone take it from us or we're throwing it away.

Apple Lager! of some kind...

I don't like that title..

We'll call it : APPLE LAGER!! Of Some King

There, that's better. Paul was taking notes for me while I was brewing and he was watching anime.

- 2 gallons of water
- 2.5 lbs of dry malt extract
(55% wheat / 45% barley)(this stuff turns to glue when the concept of moisture is simply thought of in it's presence)
- James farted!
- 2 tbsp moe-lasses
- 1/4 lb Belgian Candy - ed. note: Are we selling this to InBev?
(this was added about ten minutes into the boil after a gravity reading showed 7%)
- 1/2 hour initial boil - removed from my upper-left thigh
- 1/4 oz Sterling Pellet Hops (6% alpha acid)
- Bill eats the rest of Leigh's fries
- 20 minute boil
- 1/4 oz of the same shit on the last line that starts with "1/4 oz"
(no more heat)
- 1 gallon of cold apple juice, added for cooling
- put pot in the sink w/ ice to help cool it
- cooled to about 110F (gravity showed 7%)
- poured wort into bucket
- pitched yeast (Saflager S-23)
- stirred vigorously to aerate
- covered with two layers of plastic wrap and James tied a wire around the lip of the bucket to hold it closed
- put in the back corder of the basement where its 55F - 58F

The plan is to let the primary fermentation run in the bucket in the cold part of the basement. Then, for secondary fermentation, I'm going to split the batch. I'll put half of it in the garage right by the door to the house (it was 45F when it was below freezing outside). The other half I'll put in the minifridge in the basement and slowly drop the temp from around 55F, down to 34F about 2-4 degrees per day.

Apfelwein bottling!

James and I bottled the Apfelwein tonight.

It was fun. :)

I crushed up 7 or 8 campden tabs, dissolved them in about 2 cups of water, and poured it into a clean 5 gal carboy. Then we racked the wine into the fresh 5 gal.

We attacked the entire collection of bottles here : 7 1.5L bottles and 15 or so various 750ml. I chucked them all in the bathtub full of hotwater and soap. After cleaning out all the broken glass... lol kidding

5 Gal = ~ 19L -- Holy crap that's a lot of bottles...

We used all seven of the 1.5 bottles and 11 regular ones.

We siphoned out of the carboy and had a hose clamp from James's stuff to regulate and stop flow. Piece of cake.

We bottled half of it, and then I used the (Winexpert brand) Wine Conditioner on the second half. It's liquid invert sugar and potassium sorbate. It's to help ensure dead yeast and sweeten the wine a bit.

It calls for a minimum of 2oz / gal. I measured out 6oz for 2.5Gal figuring that I'm leaving a fair amount behind in the measuring cup.

I labled the bottles with my sophisticated cat-hair-roller-masking-tape labling system. (I need to start adding pics to this blog...)

It's very light and dry on it's own, and the conditioned wine has a very light, semi-sweet quality to it. AND I'm happy to say it is crystal clear.

Happy New Year!

Yay! James is moving in!

And with him comes more equipment! Woot w00t and 3riceW0O7!!!

This is good because I've realized I've made the mistake of using all but one of my fermenters. Now I don't have enough to rack items into.

The one gallon jug that I have left I'm going to put to use and just cycle a couple of containers worth.

Kruetz was in town for the new years party and he told me that a common problem with pineapple is that it's too acidic and most yeast can't survive in it. Maybe that combined with a dose of campden killed off most of it, and the survivors just took time to cross the barren wastes to reunite with loved ones and make lots more of said loved ones.