I get excited about 3 weeks after bottling a new batch of beer. It is about this time that the beer undergoes its almost magical transformation. What started off barely drinkable turns into this wonderful, carbonatey elixir that the world calls beer. At least it is supposed to, sometimes really BAD magic happens during the 3 weeks. Fortunately for us (the Marquise and I) the beer gods have smiled upon our efforts. The latest batch is really maturing into a tasty drink. It is actually rather quite sweet, which is surprising because this is the first batch we have not added any sugar to. This batch is all malt extract. It should be really good when we head off for the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games in about 3 weeks or so. We will be prepared this time and bring our own beer. We are not going to have another repeat of last year when we couldn't find a beer to save our souls. (for those of you that don't know, the games are held in a "dry" county - no alcohol available for sale in the county) So far I've only had the beer warm (it kinda grows on you - warm beer that is). It should be really good cold. Somehow, I've gotta make the beer last another 3 weeks. It's a good thing that the Marquise doesn't drink as much as I do. At least there's a really good chance she'll have a lot available if I succumb to the temptation.
Next batch - - An Irish Stout!
Showing posts with label home brewing beer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home brewing beer. Show all posts
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
More Beer!
If you have not noticed, beer is a recurring theme on my blog lately. Well, what can I say. I've got a new hobby. I'm a kid in a candy store. I'm the proverbial happy pig in the mud! And guess what? this is gonna be another post about BEER.
The Marquise and I bottled our second batch of beer last night. Everything went a lot smoother than last time. We got a bottle filler from the store and that helped tremendously. What a great invention. It is basically a long tube with a spring loaded valve at one end. You connect the free end to the bucket-o-beer with tubing and insert the other end into the beer bottle. You press the spring down against the bottom of the bottle and the valve opens up and fills the bottle up with beer. When the bottle is full, you just lift up the contraption and the beer flow stops. Wonderful!!!!
We did make a couple of changes to the beer this time around. Instead of using raw cane sugar, we used corn sugar. It is really interesting the difference in taste between the two sugars. The cane sugar mixture was a lot sweeter and the beer foamed up a lot more. The cane sugar produced a beer that had a slight "cidery" taste to it. The corn sugar is a lot mellower and there was almost no foaming during the bottling. I guess that is actually the way it is supposed to be, but so far, with the preliminary tasting, I think I liked the cane sugar a little better. I'll give a final review when the new beer is ready (about 3 weeks).
Now for any beer purists out there, yes, I know beer is not supposed to have sugar added to it. But, give us a break we are just starting out here. The Marquise and I decided to start out simple and easy. We wanted to get a couple of batches under our belts before we started on the more complicated recipes. I have already picked out another type of beer mix to try, so we will probably stay with the KISS method for the next batch also and then gradually get more complicated. Hopefully more complicated will equal better beer (even outstanding beer, maybe). I think our next step will be to substitute malt extract for the corn sugar. The question with that is what type of malt extract do we use and how much?
The Marquise and I bottled our second batch of beer last night. Everything went a lot smoother than last time. We got a bottle filler from the store and that helped tremendously. What a great invention. It is basically a long tube with a spring loaded valve at one end. You connect the free end to the bucket-o-beer with tubing and insert the other end into the beer bottle. You press the spring down against the bottom of the bottle and the valve opens up and fills the bottle up with beer. When the bottle is full, you just lift up the contraption and the beer flow stops. Wonderful!!!!
We did make a couple of changes to the beer this time around. Instead of using raw cane sugar, we used corn sugar. It is really interesting the difference in taste between the two sugars. The cane sugar mixture was a lot sweeter and the beer foamed up a lot more. The cane sugar produced a beer that had a slight "cidery" taste to it. The corn sugar is a lot mellower and there was almost no foaming during the bottling. I guess that is actually the way it is supposed to be, but so far, with the preliminary tasting, I think I liked the cane sugar a little better. I'll give a final review when the new beer is ready (about 3 weeks).
Now for any beer purists out there, yes, I know beer is not supposed to have sugar added to it. But, give us a break we are just starting out here. The Marquise and I decided to start out simple and easy. We wanted to get a couple of batches under our belts before we started on the more complicated recipes. I have already picked out another type of beer mix to try, so we will probably stay with the KISS method for the next batch also and then gradually get more complicated. Hopefully more complicated will equal better beer (even outstanding beer, maybe). I think our next step will be to substitute malt extract for the corn sugar. The question with that is what type of malt extract do we use and how much?
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