Most of you probably don’t remember that for a while we were known for insightful commentary and a world-famous beer blog. No kidding. We have archives and stuff.
In a weird convergence our new hire had a long running beer writing gig at his own site, typically with a depth of beer knowledge that puts mine to shame ifidosaysomyself. Then he gave up drinking or something like that, you’ll have to ask Michael for the details.
Unlike Michael I went right on drinking, but my beer blogging tapered off for a variety of reasons too weak to even count as excuses. Now we can thank my brother and sister-in-law for gifting me with a homebrew kit for a recent birthday and waking up the beerblogging bug again. After all, homebrewing works better with copious advice and regular feedback, and I know that at least some of you wogs are homebrewers, so I plan to milk this blogger’s privilege thing for all it’s worth.
Setting the ingredients aside this afternoon I kept thinking about a brewer friend telling me that poor sanitation kill more good batches than anything else. Good news, my day job gave me a decent sense of sterile technique and maybe I went a touch overboard on the no-rinse sanitizer, so at least that (hopefully) won’t be what kills my first batch. Here’s the recipe:
Munton’s Nut Brown Ale hopped malt syrup
2 lb. Dutch amber dry malt
1 yeast packet
1 oz. Cascade hop pellets
The syrup was loosened in warm water and then poured in the pail, followed by 1/2 oz. of the Cascade hops in 3.5 liters of boiling water. Cold water was added to 23 liters, then the dry malt was stirred in. While that cooled I boiled the other 1/2 oz. of hop pellets for 20 more min. in a small amount of water because I’d seen that in a recipe somewhere and it sounded like a good idea. I stirred in the second dose of boiled hops and then rehydrated yeast, sealed the pail and set it aside to ferment.
What’s the deal with the extra hops? Well, I’m a moron who didn’t think to check whether the malt syrup already had hops in it. Or, maybe I’m a natural beer genius who recognized that premade kits never put enough hops in. Does anyone have an opinion on this? The bigger the beer the better as far as I’m concerned, but at the same time I don’t want to be the only one who can drink it. We might as well open the floor for any advice. Warnings, recriminations or bragging about your own upcoming batch are also welcome.
I might not be able to resist blogging this new hobby, particularly if a batch turns out horrendous in some particularly comical way. That said, if you want to make sure that it keeps happening head over to the webbies and put us over RedState.
Now that the yeast has its thing to do, I think I might go make some ice cream.
demimondian
FDDD won’t brew with me. She says it’s too much like working in the lab.
She’s right — successful brewing requires a level of cleanliness that would not be out of place in a microbiology lab.
Jess
That’s what we did in college to get around the drinking age. Of course the bathtub was the best place for the set up, which meant cleanliness fell by the wayside along with godliness (not to mention homework).
VidaLoca
IMHO, putting too much hops in your beer is like putting too much garlic in your spaghetti sauce. It can be done but you practically have to leave out all other ingredients.
Not entirely a bad thing… :)
True dat. It really takes the fun out when you start out all full of enthusiasm and end up with 5 gallons of malt vinegar. But what kind of sanitizer are you using? I always used (lots of) bisulphite myself with good results (though I understand you’ll sometimes run into some people who have bad reactions to the sulphite so there’s a down side). The upside is it rinses off well. If you’re using a soapy sanitizer I’d be a little worried about the effects residual amounts might have on flavor and head.
SPIIDERWEB™
You might want to save this recipe for the first “good” batch of beer. Perhaps the first batch. Period?
Fried Ice Cream
Its not quick and its not easy, but yummies! Should be perfect with a glass of beer.
Ice Creams have always been man’s best friend! I can’t imagine a world without this beautiful dessert…Everything started with a simple Vanilla Ice cream, and as the years went by, this little beauty transformed into different flavors and colors, spreading its charm upon family gatherings, peaceful evenings or large extravagant parties!! One such variation that I came across was “Fried Ice Cream”. I tried it for the first time in an [A]sian restaurant. I was baffled by the name and the concept, and just out of curiosity, we ordered this dessert. But we were very pleasantly surprised with what we saw – simple vanilla ice cream ball deep fried into a golden brown color, and the first bite itself was like a trip to heaven!! Hot and crispy on the outside, and soft and gooey on the inside, indulge into this creative dessert variety that is sure to win your hearts!! (adapted from Emeril’s recipe on his Food Network show) A perfect way to use plain leftover ice cream, huh?!
Ingredients
1 quart vanilla ice cream – 3-4 scoops (You can use any other flavor that you like)
1 cup crushed frosted cornflakes (Kellogs or other)
1 cup sweetened coconut flakes (if you like nuts, use walnuts or choco-chip cookies)
2 large eggs
2 tbsp sugar
Vegetable oil, for frying
Hot chocolate sauce or strawberry sauce
Whipped cream (optional)
Method
With an ice cream scoop, form 4 large balls of ice cream. Place on a dish and freeze for at least 2 hours.
Grind the cornflakes first so they are converted into a fine powder. Do the same with any other ingredients you are using, like walnuts or cookies.In a bowl, combine the cornflake crumbs with the coconut and walnuts (or cookies). Spread the mixture in a shallow dish. Now dip the ice cream balls in the crumb mixture, roll around so each ball is evenly coated with the mixture and freeze again for 30 minutes.
In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar. Dip the coated ice cream balls into the eggs, then gently roll in the crumb mixture again, coating completely. Freeze for another 1 hour, or until you are ready to serve.
Heat the oil in a large pot and wait till it is really hot (around 375 degrees). One at a time, lower the balls into the oil and fry until golden brown, about 10-15 seconds only. Do not fry more else the balls will crumble and the ice cream will melt. Remove from the oil, drain on a piece of paper and place in a dessert bowl. Drizzle with chocolate sauce and whipped cream and dazzle your guests with your Fried Coconut Ice Cream!! Remember, you should deep fry the balls immediately before serving only. Do not fry and keep! Also try my Fried Banana with Ice Cream dessert.
Tip: If you want to make this eggless, try using maida (refined flour) with a little water and use this batter instead of egg yolks. You can use any ice cream flavor that you like, but vanilla, coconut, butter pecan or chocolate would be the best suggestions. Also, try not skipping the coconut shavings in the mixture as this adds a nice crispy flavor to the dessert.
Phillip J. Birmingham
About all the advice I can offer is to get as big a pot as you can see fit to buy, and a wort chiller, and boil as much of the brew volume as possible, with all the hops.
Failing that, never add cold water to hot wort unless you first drive the oxygen out of the cold water by boiling it, then chilling it. Failing that, add hot wort to cold water — that way the wort will cool before it can oxidize too much.
F. Frederson
I’ve always used unhopped bulk malt, but the amount of hops in a batch is both a matter of taste and of the beer style. The pre-hopped malt can’t possibly have the “right” amount or “right” aroma/flavor for most beers. I posted a detailed step-by-step of my brewing process over here a while back, if that helps.
Phillip – my understanding is that the yeast needs oxygen early in the process, and thus I’ve always stirred my wort well after adding the yeast and before sealing (the sealing prevents oxidation later). BYO explains the reasons for wort coolers here.
Phillip J. Birmingham
F. Frederson —
Yeah, it’s important to add oxygen to cool wort (although the enormous cell count with dried yeast makes this much less important.) Oxygenating hot wort, however, oxidizes wort components that can then undergo a redox interaction in the finished beer that results in the ethanol oxidizing, giving you a sherry-like flavor. It’s so bad it even has its own name — Hot Side Aeration (HSA.)
The reason that adding cold water to hot wort is bad is that the cold water will heat up and release its oxygen, which will be readily snarfed up by the hot wort. Hot wort added to cold water, though, becomes cold (okay, warm) wort, and will not oxidize.
BTW, brewing is one of the few topics that I never be tire of talking about.
jc
If you’re having ice cream you should be drinking a stout, they go together naturally.
Been a few years since i brewed, but earlier this summer I found a hop vine growing in a field near our house. Not too unusual as we live in oregon (home of Willamette hops) but still a nice find. Might be time to clean out that carboy again…
brendancalling
shit, you guys aree saturday beer-blogging too? Someone’s got a diary on kos too.
I didn’t brew yesterday, but did manage to transfer and keg. Brewing tomorrow though.
So far we have thanksgiving ale #1 in the keg, Xmas ales 1&2 in the secondary, and leftover yeast chilling in the fridge for tomorrow’s batch.
I love brewing.
Blake
Eek, dry malt and hop pellets? Okay for a “safe” first batch, I guess, but wow, next time splurge a little and buy some fresh ingredients. Brewing is cooking, after all, and doing it with hop pellets and powdered malt is a lot like baking with Splenda and trans-fat free margarine. Best advice you’ll ever get: find a LOCAL shop run by a knowledgable guy, and seek out his advice. If he’s not selling FRESH hops and LIQUID yeast packs out of a big fridge, move along until you find the real deal.
Even with better ingredients, you’re not going to break the bank. I used to spend about $0.50 per bottle to make a partial mash (half raw grain, half malt syrup) with fresh hops and Wy’East “smack pack” yeast. Even if you end up having to buy supplies online and ship overnight, brewing is CHEAP compared to the grocery store, unless you don’t mind drinking Coors for the rest of your days :).
The advice above about a wort chiller is well-taken, too. This gizmo is about $40, and takes the cooling time for your beer from several hours down to
Blake
Gak, cut off! Okay, as I was saying, a wort chiller takes your cooling time down to ~15 mins. without any actual work on your part. This is a good thing.
BTW per the comment above about oxidizing, this IMHO is a matter of superstition on the part of many home brewers. The particular point mentioned is probably correct, but in general the idea that you need to do anything post-boil to add oxygen is right out. DO NOT stir wort to “oxidize”, you’ll just stir in any loose bugs that happen to be floating around in your air! Chill the wort, add your (filtered!!!!) water to come up to the 5 gallons or whatever, pitch the yeast, seal the bucket IMMEDIATELY, and forget about it for a week or two. It’ll be fine, really.
demimondian
C’mon, guys, if you’re going to use fresh ingredients, do it for real. All-grain is just a vast enzymatic reaction, completely with stopwatch and thermometer.
Not only are the final results far better (less of the funny caramel flavor that malt extract has, as well as a truer color in the final product), you get much more precise control of the end product. Want extra alcohol (for stability, of course)? Add rice to the mash. Want a darker color, or a slightly different flavor? Change the balance of light malt to other malt entries.
It’s infinitely variable, that way.
Next up, the details of coffee roasting — cheaper than home brew, and no yeast required.
Ninerdave
Demi, you roast your own coffee? Do tell.
I typically only use fresh hops for finishing, then again, I’ve never done a full all grain beer. I’ve been making more wine recently anyway. In fact, I’m prepping to plant a bunch of vines next year. I live on a warm hill side with rocky soil , in theory perfect for grapes. I’ll let you know in three or so years.
Tim…clean, clean, clean. If you are so inclined an extra fridge can be converted to a keg’erator cheaper than buying one. A fridge will be necessary to make lagers anyway, unless you make a steam beer (yum!).
The second batch I ever made, made it’s debut on a camping trip. What I didn’t know, was the batch was infected. A buddy grabs a beer, opens it with a Bic lighter and the top half of the bottle promptly explodes in his hand. He was cut a little, nothing too severe (thankfully). Was quite the show! Later that trip someone kicked the cooler that contained the beer and you could hear bottles inside exploding, think that Bud Light Opera commercial.
Brewing isn’t a hobby it’s an addiction.
demimondian
Niner — I do, indeed.
I’m cheap, and I figured out that with my Wally-esque coffee habit, I would net save money roasting my own — and I do; fifteen pounds of green coffee nets about seventy bucks, where an equivalent amount of roasted coffee would set me back about twice that much if I bought it from Tully’s. That works out to paying for the little roasting unit in about eight months when I’m just providing for FDDD and myself.
More than that, though, I discovered that I could experiment with the bean types — nothing to give you a clear and unequivocal understanding of the relative qualities of arabica beans and robusta beans than being able to blend them, not to mention the wild differences between the various arabica beans. Nowadays, I roast a mixture of Guatemalan Antigua and Ethiopian Yergachev (4:1 G:E) to a darkness just beyond that of a standard French Roast. Makes FDDD happy, and me too.
And saves money. Can’t beat that.
Phillip J. Birmingham
And an extra vessel to clean, and about double the time investment…
Don’t get me wrong, the bulk of my eighty or so batches have been all-grain, but now that I have two young children and a wife who won’t appreciate me dumping the kids on her for six hours at a stretch, it’s extract brewing or nothing.
demimondian
Ah, Phil? I did the bulk of my brewing when, we, too, had young children. By some accounts, one of our kids is still relatively young. Get your wife involved, perhaps? I only quit when my spouse stopped having time for it.
As to double the time investment, I really don’t think so. Most of my time was invested during the fermentation process. And the bread we could make with the spent grain…heavenly!
Phillip J. Birmingham
Ah. When you mentioned the thermometer and the stopwatch, I didn’t realize you were talking about sitting by the fermenter the whole time! Don’t you get cold?
Now, those of us who just stuff the thing in the basement and maybe come down and check on it daily or so until racking/kegging time, we’re looking at an extra half-hour boiling, an hour to ninety minutes mashing, and somewhere around fifteen minutes to a half hour sparging (I really forget how long that took.) So, yeah, it’s about two hours extra of “sorry, honey, I’m in the middle of something” time. As you note, this is dwarfed by the “I have a big jug burping in the basement” time, but my wife doesn’t care if I have a big jug burping in the basement.
I’d love to get her involved, but she doesn’t like beer, doesn’t like the smell of boiling malt and hops, and isn’t really interested in brewing. My current bright idea is to turn brew day into “wife takes the kids to the in-laws’ day.”
RodeoBob
All-grain is definitely the way to go, and the increase in investment is a one-time cost, quickly offset in savings over time.
Total time is 60-90 minutes mashing (plus time to heat the water first) with about 30 minutes sparging, and then the boil. But if you’ve got multiple batches going (and that’s the fun part!) you can be re-racking/kegging/bottling one beer while you’re mashing/laudering the current one.
Phillip J. Birmingham
Yeah, don’t get me wrong — I will return to my all-grain ways when the kids are old enough to need less attention, but right now, neither my wife nor I can get away with devoting five to six straight hours to a hobby.
binzinerator
Why bother with a wort chiller? A sink half-full of cold water and ice cubes does a great job.
My wort pot (I use bulk malt syrup & add flavoring and aroma hops near the end of the boil) is a 5 gallon stainless steel stock pot with lid. To chill the wort I float the pot in the chilled water, and by the time all the ice cubes have melted (about 15 minutes), it’s at just about the perfect temperature for adding the additional cold water to make a 5-gallon batch and have the whole thing cooled down enough to pitch the yeast.
You save some bucks and don’t have to clean yet another piece of equipment.
binzinerator
I hear you. I brew in my kitchen, and when I’m ready I move the primary fermenter (a 5-gal bucket) to the floor for ease of pouring the cooled wort into it.
Ever try to keep curious toddlers from wanting stick grubby hands into your nice sterile brew bucket? There’s a lid (also sterilized), and I put it on to limit any airborne contamination, but the covering of something of course makes it even more necessary for the inquisitive to take a peek inside.
And just pouring the wort into the bucket is fraught with peril: The waterfall of dark rich aromatic sterile wort streaming from one container to another just fascinates them. They just gotta try to put their hands on the rim of the bucket so they can peer down inside to see what happens in there.
Yup. The only answer is one’s partner takes exclusive and vigilant charge of kid-care for the duration.
Else you will see a grown man freak when his kid, who just had her finger up her nose, tries to dunk her hand into 5 gallons of freshly pitched and hitherto-sterile chocolate stout wort. “Bubbles!” she says joyfully. Her Papa wasn’t so happy though.
BIRDZILLA
Theres a three stoogiee one where they make their own beer they each put in three cakes of yeast and en up with beer everywhere
eric
this is cool i love beer
eric
i love beer and i love to make beer and i love to drink beer.
F. Frederson
Phillip – you are right. I hadn’t really made the hot/cold wort distinction before, but fortunately I’ve only poured/diluted cool wort.