Batch No. 4: Toronto Brewing Co.'s Honey Porter

Now TOBC's kits (the two I've purchased anyhow) include a muslin steeping bag (henceforth known as the "Sock Puppet" for holding the grains in the water like a giant tea sock. I used this for the Brown Ale and decided two and a half things noted in that post:

1) it made cleanup really really easy. 
2a) was never fully confident I got everything out of the grains I could.
2b) it made the mash really really boring. 

So I said bugger that this time around. Recipe called for 7 quarts (1.75 gallons) of water, so I did a 3/4 split for mash and sparge. Which went smooth and was a lot more fun than teabagging my stock pot with the sock puppet. 

When I did the brown ale, the resulting wort was not as dark as I'd imagined it should be. Though this is all conjecture never having done a brown ale before but still.... it looked and smelled "weak". 

The honey ale: No such conniptions. It was dark, very very dark, ran off the stirring spoon like warm syrup, and honest to goodness smells between the brewing and the slow cooker full of my SO's chili/stew/beef cilantro mix my senses were going haywire. 

Truer words have never been spoken, at least in the last week. This is the motto and mantra of my cousin's brewing group. A phrase I have the utmost respect for. Even when playing Risk. But more on that later. 

Now last Friday I visited a cousin who've been brewing his own beer with friends for a few years now. This was my first foray into teamwork and large batch brewing. They were firing up two 5 gallon batches. One of a lager they came up with and found successful, and were going to tweak slightly. The second the same recipe but as a true experiment, altering the hops added, and several other factors. 

By the time we even started the water on the stove we were pretty far into the beer we'd brought to drink while brewing. There was some of Kieth's Hops varieties, Lake of Bays Crosswind, and weissbeer. All went down damn fine. 

Now they do it a bit differently. Where I've been doing grain mashes for malt, they've gone with malt extracts which simplifies the process a fair bit. Boil your water, toss in the extract, begin hops and boil schedule. You skip the mash/sparge process, which also kinda removed the fun for me a tiny bit, but we were drinking and telling stories too much for me to care ;-)

The space involved was considerable, both kitchen and laundry room were co-opted for it. Two large pots boiled both batches almost simultaneously. Now the pots were both 10-12 quarts no different than my own, at first I wondered at what point this boil would become the 5 gallons it's supposed to be but then as we poured the wort into the carboy we then added water from the tap until it was at the right amount. Shake that baby up a bit and take a gravity reading (something I haven't done yet, basically checks the sugar density of the brew, which is basically a measure of it's eventual alcohol content). First batch was more or less in a range where they'd expected it to be. 

Now the second on the other hand.... Using almost all the same ingredients except a different type of hops I believe (I'll confirm later), the experimental batch had a much higher gravity reading, leading to some low whistles when the foam settled. High 60's, damn near 70. The yeast will be having some fun with this one. 

Now I haven't played Risk since I was in grade school but the basics are easy: beat the hell out of everyone else until you rule the world. Now I've never been big on(read: terrible at) strategy, Add a long day or work, travel and drinking on top of that and what you have is a confusing giggle fest that was a lot of fun but not very conducive to effective warmongering. 

Public Service Announcement: If keeping grain kits in the fridge for freshness, do not put frozen meat on the rack above them to thaw. 

I lost a amber ale kit from The Brewer's Market to chicken blood dripping out of the packaging and into the top of the bag, which was tied closed with twine. 

Am sad, but at least it wasn't the kit for the Chocolate Porter. That would have made me cry. 

Must find a semi-flat but really wide container with a lid. 

Batch number 3: Toronto Brewing Co.'s Brown Ale
Yield: 10x 355ml bottles

This was an odd one for me. Instead of a mash and sparge which splits the water up through the process, they included a giant muslin sock to steep the grains in a full 7 quarts off the get-go. This, while making cleanup incredibly easy. Did not give me the confidence the grains are being fully soaked as with a straight porridge style mash. It also, more importantly to me, took some of the fun out of it. 

Getting 7 quarts of water up to temp on a cheap apartment electric stove is not the easiest process as well. Though once there did make it easier to maintain temperature through a combination of mass and the fact I learned to not crank the heat up so fast like I did with batch no. 1. 

Now this one was only a day behind schedule on the bottling having brewed it several days after the dubbel. Now learning lessons again, this time I chose Founders IPA bottles. Slightly shorter and a bit wider in the neck, this may or may not be a problem. I found the capper did not entirely pull down over the bottle due to the wider neck so I'm not 100% confident that the seal is good. I may end up with a buggered batch but at this time it's hard to tell. 

Also, maybe it's the style, sugar amount, yeast type, but there was no call for a blow off tube for a couple days as with the previous two batches. Straight to the bubbler in the top, and thankfully it's fine. No explosions or flooding! I like that part, I enjoy my explosions but prefer them to stay in video games. 

Batch number 2: The Brewer's Market Belgian Dubbel
Yield: 5x 650ml bottles

A nice odd batch, cooking went wayyyyyyyy smoother being more familiar with the process. Now due to the untimely death of a close friend who's family is like our own, literally on the day I was supposed to bottle this batch, it sat for an extra week in the primary before finally being bottled. I chose the 650ml bottles for this on purpose and thankfully Cameron's Brewery puts two of my favourites, their Rye Pale Ale and Obsidian Rum Cask Porter, in bottles this size. Which I consider a "proper" serving size. This whole 355ml thing is...quaint.  

When closet time is done, taste test it, see how it's turned out and if appropriate, I'll be passing along a bottle to my sister and her husband who were very close to our fallen comrade, and another to his father and brother. 

Now initially, when it was first put into the primary the instructions said to put in "half" the yeast. Not having a small enough measuring cup handy I had to eyeball it so no idea if I tossed in half, more, or less. 

Figured from the effects I'd tossed in possibly too much due to the fact that the blowoff tube for the first couple days needed some space. For both the IPA and Dubbel I'd used my second carboy as the sanitzer blowoff holder. 

Thank trout I did. 

The dubbel went gyser on me and the sanitizer in the blowoff carboy was as dark as the primary and tube had to be soaked for the better half of a day before I could get it cleaned out from all the gunk. The primary bubbled like a pissed off volcanic crater. If i'd used a smaller bowl or glass to hold it there would have been a moat of dark beer flooding the bottom of my closet. What a waste that would be... 

Alright that Weebly App for iOS is nice, but when it crashes.... it crashes hard.

Anyhow I digress. 

First batch ever! (yay!) 
Brooklyn Brew Shops Everyday IPA recipe kit 
Yield: 9 x 355ml bottles
Code Name: Jupiter's Arse
Result: quite palatable, better than expected, room for improvement

Now.... one of the challenges in home brewing is always space. As previously mentioned why I already love the concept of 1 Gallon batches. The other: 

Cats. I love them. But they love to be cats. 

Now the most important thing about brewing is the sterilization hands down. Anything stray get in there that doesn't belong you can end up with all manner of unpleasantness. Go figure the moment I had my back turned one of our little furballs (Jupiter be his name) decides it's a great time to take a tour of the table. I catch the little blighter on the table sniffing, nuzzling and rubbing against all my previous sanitized equipment. When he sees me see him... he just plops his butt down on the paper towels and meows at me all proud of himself. Hence the code name of Jupiter's Arse. 

Sanitation round two thus begins. Brewing in an apartment is a two person job. 1 to brew, the other to entertain the kurious kitties away from the equipment.

Now the cook up itself was a lot of fun, high maintenance taking temperatures and by the end I was tired and ready to not be on my feet. But definitely worth it. Found it really hard to keep the temp where it was supposed to be and it ran hot in both mash and boil by anywhere from 10-20 over in both. 

Anyhoo, the eventual end result was a great first try. I chose, fittingly, Muskoka Mad Tom bottles to use for this batch. Good karma I suspect aided my fledgling efforts.