Preliminary

After 8 short days in the bottle, the Oktoberfest tastes surprisingly good. My best "green" beer yet. Can't wait for it to mature!

Time to Bottle

It's been lagering 7.5 weeks, time to bottle my not-so-Octoberfest-y beer. I really wanted to get it bottled in time to drink in October, but that's just the way the hop pellet crumbles.

Powerless

Brewing is on hold due to an extended power outage because of the hurricane previously known as Ike.

Not to mention my lagering! Hopefully the Oktoberfest turns out OK (haha). But seriously. I hope it turns out after going a week unrefrigerated.

Original Recipe

This is my first original home brew recipe. It's up next.

Ingredients:
5 lb - Briess Pilsner Bulk Extract
1 lb - Corn Sugar
0.5 lb - Briess Cara-pils malt
1 tsp - Irish Moss Flakes
1.5 oz - Hallertau hops (bittering)
0.5 oz - Cascade hops (dry)

Suitable Yeast Strains:
#WLP810 - White Labs - San Francisco Lager Yeast (available at Listermann)
#2124 - Wyeast - Bohemian Lager (available locally and at Listermann)
#2042 - Wyeast - Danish Lager
#2000 - Wyeast - Budvar Lager

Instructions:
Steep grains in 2 gallons of 150F water for 30 minutes
Remove grains and bring to boil
Remove from heat, add extract, sugar, and bittering hops in a bag
Return to heat, boil for 45 minutes
Add one teaspoon of Irish Moss, boil for 15 additional minutes
Remove from heat, cool wort
Add to 3 gallons of cold water, pitch the yeast and aerate
Ferment between 45F - 55F for two to three weeks
Rack to Carboy, and add the dry hops
Lager for one month or more
Bottle with the standard 5oz priming sugar

Sure, I'm not going out on a limb but my goal is to boldly brew cheap delicious beer, not pretentious ultra-hopped all-grain labor-intensive quadruple-hyphenated beer.

October in August

Yesterday I brewed Listermann's Oktoberfest. After two weeks in the primary, three weeks lagering in the carboy, and two weeks in the bottle, this brew should be ready to drink the second week of October.

Ingredients:
7 lbs. of Pilsner Extract syrup
2 lb. Munich malt
1.5 oz. Hallertau hop pellets
1 packet of Superior lager yeast

Wood Aging

The wood aged beer turned out pretty well. I made two batches, one with Cherry, the other with European Pear.

First I sanded down the blocks of wood and rinsed them off with water to remove any tool residue. Then I microwaved the wood for a minute to hopefully kill any lingering bacteria. Next step is toasting. I used a baking tray, tongs and the broiler to lightly toast all sides of the blocks. Then into the beer!

I used two, half-gallon jugs to age the beer for a little over a week.

The end result: Cherry made the American Lite Ale substantially smoother. The Pear, on the other hand, probably subtracted from the flavor somewhat.

I'll definitely try aging with Cherry again. It takes the bite out of ales.

I could even try coopering up a small Cherry barrel. Now THAT would be something!

Esters

From the research I've conducted. It appears that the banana odor and taste is an ester, a byproduct of yeast. The banana one in particular is called ethyl butyrate.

The potency of the ester has mellowed in the past couple weeks leaving a smoother drinking beer.

Listermann's Pilsner

My most recently completed brew is the Listermann's Pilsner kit (kit & instructions).

I lagered it for three weeks and it turned nice and smooth. However I wasn't expecting the wheat beer banana flavor. Which is good when you expect it, but wasn't what I was looking for in this brew.

Lagering

Racking

Ingredients:
5 lbs. of Canadian light syrup
0.25 lbs. Cara-Pils malt
1 lb. Corn sugar
1 oz. Northern Brewer (bittering)
0.25 oz. Saaz Hops (finishing)
1 packet of Saflager lager yeast

I might be able to enjoy the banana and clove taste of similarly style beers but I had a bad introduction to them. It all happened back in the spring of 2001, I was wandering aimlessly around the streets of Munich with a freshly minted Australian friend who was staying at the same hostel. With nothing to do that night we decide to see a movie, Castaway in fact.

I order a beer in the movie theater, and being a poor exchange student, I hadn't had a beer in more than a week. I was itching for the sweet taste of golden brew. But what do I get? A mouth full of banana and spice. Maybe my palate wasn't fully developed. Maybe it's like reaching for a glass of milk and sipping orange juice instead. But that made a lasting impression on me.

Therefore, the Pilsner kit is excellent, smooth, drinkable, crystal clear. It just tastes like bananas.

Breakage

Last weekend I had my first bottle break due to fermentation. It was in the batch of pilsner, hopefully the beer isn't too sweet since I've had overly sweet beer not break bottles.

Lexicon

There's so many brewing specific terms that there are already words for, I guess it's either for history's sake or to jargon-ify it to make it seem harder. These are the ones I could come up with off the top of my head, there's probably more brew-specific terms for common things.

brew kettle - a big pot
coldbreak - cooling
condition - aging
grist - grain
hotbreak - boiling
kraeusen - foam
lauter tun - a big pot
mash - grain and water
mash tun - a big pot
pitch - adding yeast
priming - adding sugar to carbonate
rack - siphon
sparge - sprinkle hot water over grain
steep - soak
trub - dregs, junk on the bottom of a container
wort - pronounced wert, unfermented beer

Equipment List

Your local home brewing shop will sell you what you need for home brewing, or you can order online. But the main components are:

fermenter - big plastic bucket with airtight lid
bottling bucket
siphoning equipment - racking cane, bottling wand, hose
hydrometer - to measure the specific gravity of your brew
measuring equipment - teaspoon to cup, thermometer, and a scale is handy
a big spoon
brew kettle - 20+ quart pot with lid. Mine has insulated handles, an added bonus
bottles, 22oz or 12oz non-twist offs, I hear flip top style bottles are nice too.
airlock for the fermenter
bottle capper and caps
cleaning supplies - bottle brush, bleach, bottle cleaner

You should be able to pick up all of this stuff for about $100. Mine even came with a can of pre-hopped malt extract for making my first batch of beer.

Additional equipment gets fancier and more expensive. $20 will get you a glass carboy (big jug), which some people swear by. I just bought one for lagering (cold aging). I have a pilsner in there right now, chilling in the basement fridge. Other equipment will get you into larger volume production, or all grain brewing which is supposed to give you more control on the final product. I'll touch on this topic another time.

Beers to Date

I've brewed the following beers since I started in January this year.

Imperial Pale Ale - January
American Lite - February
Irish Stout - March
American Pale Ale - May
Pilsner - June

Pictures, tips, equipment list, and links to come.

Stay tuned.

Hello World!

First Post!