Alchemy in action

It really is a bit of a miracle how brewing suddenly turns from chemistry to unadulterated alchemy. The simple introduction of a benevolent strain of micro-organisms is enough to trigger the magic, and turn a sugary bitter concoction into, well, beer.

For the past week, my beer has been fermenting in the boiler room. Every other day or so, I need to do that slosh slosh slosh thing to stir the yeast from its slumber and get it working again, but so far, it's been doing what it's supposed to do.




In layman's terms: booze & bubbles



For the last 24 hours or so, fermentation seems to have stopped altogether. Whether this is a good sign or not remains to be determined.
With science!

CO2 intoxication causes blurry Internets

What you're seeing here is a densimeter in action, which measures the specific gravity of the brew.
Dumbed-down a little, all it does is float in a liquid (like beer). The denser the liquid, the more it floats. The more sugar is left in the beer, the denser it will be. More sugar in the beer means the yeast hasn't finished its plate and needs to take seconds. Or thirdses.

In other word: a high SG reading means the yeast still has work to do. And 1020 is still quite high, even though the OG (original specific gravity, before fermentation was initiated) was 1085.

So I'm leaving the brew to stand for a few more days, protected by a cover of carbon dioxide and yeasty froth. Either it will wake up again with the munchies, or it won't. If it doesn't, then perhaps it's just "used up" (I seem to've cultivated a yeast which is renowned for its sluggishness), or perhaps it can't handle the booze.

Alcohol is, after all, a by product of yeast fermentation.
Refuse, if you will.
Saccharomyces sewage.

Yeast-pee.

Time will tell whether 't is one or t'other.

In the meantime, I discovered that an added advantage of the hydrometer is that you need a considerable sample size to measure the density. About 100 ml should do, and what oh what is a scientist to do with that when the measuring's all done and dealt with?

Right.

Because a good scientist is never wasteful. Although sometimes wasted.

So far, it's beer alright. The malt has lost its saccharine stickiness (thank you, yeasties), and the hops are prominently present. Harshly resin-like, but already mellowing and blending a bit with the solid mouthfeel of the malt. Flat, of course, since the liquid cannot contain the produced carbon dioxide without some sort of pressure keeping it suspended.

A few more days (weeks?) and I'll be lagering. The observant reader may have noticed the utter lack of floating yucky bits in my beer sample. That's all thanks to gravity, and one of the reasons I'll be lagering in a clean vessel in a couple of days (week? please let it be days and not weeks).

Until then!

Greetz

Jo

 

 

Solitary isolation

For its own sake, I have banished my budding beer to warmer climes. For the past few days, fermentation repeatedly ceased, and I had to slosh the bucket to bring the sedimenting yeast back into suspension. Not only will this definitely do no good to clear up my murky brew, it will also lead to all kinds of off flavours I really could do without.
Turns out the Moinette yeast I'm using is a saison yeast, which are notorious for requiring rather high fermentation temperatures. Not that this makes a whole lot of sense to me since saison was a summer beer, and hence brewed in the coldest months of winter, but hey, that's brewers' logic for you.

As I was reluctantly championing the idea of a yeastbox to the Missus, she spoke thusly (more or less verbatim):

"Darling dearest, do you really want to be tinkering with old refrigerators, dangerous electronics, various bits of carpentry and isolation and no doubt highly dangerous equipment and tools, just to build a box to keep your beer warm when we have a perfectly suitable boiler room upstairs?"

Men of the world, take heed: without the collective aid of our Missuses (*), there would be no beer in the world. I'm sure of it.

Because the world would be a poorer place without either.

(*) Missus-es. Not Miss-uses. That's another blog you're searching for.

So up the stairs with the bucket, into the comfortably warm confines of the boiler room, the warmest (and most reliably warm) room in the house. Another slosh slosh slosh just to make sure the yeast knows I'm serious this time, and off to bed.

And yes, the Missus was right, as she so often is. This morning, my beer was steadily churning out CO2 at about one centi-bubblium (that's NuBru speak for "one bubbly fart per minute"), without the need to slosh it around anymore.

A keen eye shall be kept on the evolving brew, and frequent updates shall be posted. For great justice!

Greetz

Jo

Lazy yeast

Not even 48 hours into the main fermentation and the yeast has fallen asleep. Where the airlock was happily bubbling away at one bubble every 5 seconds (I'm not sure if there's a scientific unit of measurement for this, so I shall call it "the bubblium"), this morning I found the fermentation vessel to be sound asleep.
Hibernating.
Comatose.
Flatlined.

A cow of a mild anxiety mooed loudly in my ear all day, and after acquiring some valuable advice from the more expert brewers lurking all over the Interwebzthingy, I decided to shake the whole thing back to life. At 1052 SG, the beer (yes, I told you already it's called beer by now) contains far too much fermentable sugar to even contemplate lagering.

Let alone bottling.

Grabbed the bucket and slosh slosh slosh until all the yeast was back in suspension and now we're back to a yeast which is happily churning again at a rate of roughly 1 bubblium.

Hooray, rejoice, and go yeast, go!

Greetz

Jo

B-day roundup

With a nose full of sea air and a headful of dramatic lack of sleep, it's time to round up this first brew day.

Yesterday (okay, I'll concede the point and call it "this morning" if you insist) saw me connecting my 12-plate counterflow wort cooler to the kitchen sink water supply.

All technicalities aside: a wort cooler is essentially a piece of "boys-n-their-toys" hardware which will (du-uh) cool the wort from boiling temperature to about 20°C in no time. Rapid cooling is essential as it will minimize the risk of infecting the wort with all kinds of nasties which float abundantly in the air.

It looks a bit like something someone salvaged from a trainwreck.

See those tubes? Cold water flows one way, hot wort the other.

At least, that's the theory.

In my case, cold water flowed one way, and nothing much was flowing the other way. Not consistently, anyway, and after more than an hour of fiddling with tubes and cursing in increasing vociferosity, the kitchen floor found itself adorned with a nicely congealing puddle of sticky wort.
As it was somewhat past bedtime by then(*), I decided to take what brewers call "a shortcut" and simply use my perforated bucket to filter the now hand-cool wort into the fermenting vessel.

(*) correction. It was nearly time to get up again.

The result, apart from a kitchen floor which made my socks sound like velcro, was this magnificently clear and translucent wort:

Those floating bits are "added vitamins and micro nutrients".

There's probably ways to get rid of all that muck, but at 3AM, my inclination was to "sod it all". I pitched the yeast, which I'd reawoken earlier on by dousing it with 1060 wort.

And whaddayaknow?

The world's first monochromatic pizza margharita

The yeast was doing so well that by this morning it had lifted quite a lot of that floating muck to the surface, where it was sitting on top of the yeast head. Valuable lesson: treat yeast right and it'll clean up your shit for you.

I skimmed off most of the hoppy bits and the brown scum, leaving the head mostly intact so as not to compromise the sanitary state of my beer (because yes it's now called beer at this stage).

Fitted an airlock and now it's time to sit back and watch the bubbles.

...and protect the beer from unsanitised intruders...



So there you have it. That's most of the messy work done. The rest is less messy but infitely harder: let the yeast do its work. Resist the temptation to constantly peek into the fermenting vessel. Do not obsessively check the airlock. Stop worrying about SG. Drink great beers without despairing my own will be crap.

I've made a fair bundle of mistakes this first time around, which I'll happily outline at some later time.

Until that time,

Greetz

Jo

B-Day continues into the next day

There.

It is done.

On top of a malfunctioning cooling unit, leading to a wort-drenched kitchen area, my camera has run out of batteries so I can't even show you what the end result is.

But it's done. You can all sleep safely now, whilst I try and clean up this mess.

More details tomorrow. I mean later today.

Greetz

Jo

B-day!

It's Brew Day!

Well, technically, it's B+1-day, and the brew is almost half done. Timing really isn't my forte, so instead of around noon-ish, I finally kicked the whole thing in motion sometime after dinner. Not ideal, but Saturdays are sparse, and quality time even sparser.

So instead of milling, I went grocery shopping.
Instead of starting a mash, a made scrambled eggs, something the kids call Crabs Burgers, and noodles for lunch.
Instead of filtering, I took the kids out and sang for the climate.
And instead of boiling wort, I prepared dinner.

I cannot for the life of me say that this was a day I'd rather have spent differently.

But work needs to be done or else this beer will remain loose components for ever.

So I got me some assistance for the milling.

Some home brewers use a drill. I think of the climate.

Adjusting the mill to achieve the proper coarseness was fiddly, but I got the hang of it. Witness this quality grist:


Yes I have very small hands and I like purple nail polish.

All that grist wound up in that nifty double bucket thing I told you about some time ago. Poured 14.2 liters of 69° water on top of it and added hot water until I got a steady 66°C, and then left the whole thing more or less alone for about an hour and a half, which was just about enough to put my lovely assistant to bed. Some whining and moping was exhibited, since said assistant really wanted to, well, assist me further. Looking at the time now, I'm glad I used my sternest Daddy-mode and got her to cooperate on the "get some sleep now and help me clean up the mess tomorrow if you insist".

Filtering took forever, but I'd been warned about that, and while I cannot honestly call my wort "clear", I think it may just be about good enough for a first time.

 

Okay, I confess. I "forgot" to take a picture of my cloudy wort.

 

The filtered wort went into my supersize casserole, which I purchased off a nice gentleman called Mustafa near the Brussels Red Light District, which I happened to be passing...through...on my way...to...work no really I can explain all that.

 

 The steaming vessel itself

 

 

When this finally came to the boil (and I really need to find some way of boiling 20-odd liters of fluid that doesn't take forever), I added these little babies:

 

 

Because I always cook sideways.

 

 

Those are Challenger hops, which will serve as the main "bittering" hops. The long boil will not leave much in terms of aroma, but should provide a nice bitter foundation for the beer.

 

I also added 1 kg of dark brown sugar, which will do three things for my beer:

1. make it darker
2. make it heavier in terms of alcohol
3. make it less sweet. Yeah. I know. Someday I'll explain, but until then you'll just have to take my word for it.

Aroma hops need to be added and the boil needs to complete, but you'll be reading more about that later on.

 

Till then!

 

Greetz

 

Jo

 

 



Autoblog this, IFTTT!

Got a nifty new toy :)

That should take care of all this Blogger-to-Facebook-and-Back--Again crap.

Let's give this baby a spin then :)

 

Blood. Sweat. Tears. Beers.

I'm rapidly becoming a fan of De Molen brewery. So far, I haven't had a single brew of theirs that disappointed. The fact that they're Dutch, and hence share a troubled history with Belgium, combined with the ever-prevailing Belgian prejudice that the Dutch brew shit beers, makes this an all the more impressive feat.

Tonight, I'm having a sip of their Bloed, Zweet & Tranen (gotta love those big fat baroccy names they give their beers).

...with a nigh-on sacrilegious misuse of a Belgian beer glass

A deeply dark-brown pour, black until you hold it against the light, with a soft and fluffy beige head. Lots of enthusiasm from the foam, so pourer beware: this beer froths.

The nose is intriguing: you get the smoke up front, but not in a really big-ass chimney way like the Rook&Vuur had. This is a gentler smoke, which is more easily mellowed out by the downy head. Touches of wood, a hint ot of vanilla maybe. The link with whisky is easily made, but this is not the harsh, iodine tang of Laphroaig and related Islay whiskies, but rather the mildly laid-back smoothness of a Lowlander or Speyside. Smoke, yes, but not as peaty as the Rook&Vuur.

The aroma is delicate, which I didn't expect to find in a smoky beer. More than Rook&Vuur, the BZ&T puts a sober but present aroma of smoke in the front, with a lingering, sticky-sweet taste of roast barley in the back. Much more balance between aroma and flavour/taste than the Rook&Vuur, which was all about smoke and peat. Again, I get faint echoes of vanilla around a firm of base of roast barley, with a fleeting whiff of burned caramel. Meaty, perhaps. Dry smoked sausages, or the rafters of the smoke house.

After a few sips, the hops finally pierce through in the nose: a pleasantly harsh, resin-like tang which really works quite well with the smoke. A bit reminiscent of burning pine wood, the scent of a winter bonfire.

Only bigger

According to the label, only Sladek hops were used (both as bittering and aroma hop), and I'm intrigued. I like resin (Retsina, yes please), and a resiny hop adds a little bit of punch to a beer I generally tend to like. Again so here. Sladek, I have my eye on you.

Seriously, that could be a line from a kick-ass movie

From what I understand of old-style UK ales, this is something resembling (or based on) the Porters of about a century ago, only with a more ABV. The use of smoked malt, combined with the whisky malt, makes this "something else", as most brews by De Molen seem to be, but I like the little wink to the past this one makes.

Overall, this is a truly recommendable brew. It's different alright, but in a good way. It's a smoke beer that doesn't seem to go out of its way to make you burp smoke rings all evening, while still retaining a firm rooting in old-school smoke (a mellow rauchbier or a Porter of yore) and contemporary flirting with whisky flavours. Much more so than the Rook&vuur, this is a brew for anyone with an interest in beer, who'd like to have a brush with "something else".

Although the palate is unusual, it is less of a session beer than Rook&Vuur. In the right season (winter evenings sound about right, or a chilly but clear late-autumn afternoon), I can see myself asking for another one. And perhaps another one unless I'm driving.

Hats off to De Molen.

These guys know how to brew.

You're starving. Now go on a diet.

All right, you can all stop worrying now, the Yeast family are fine.


After transferring my captivated yeast colony to a larger container, it looked like all activity had ceased. Turns out they were starving: the SG(*) had dropped to about 1014, which is way below the comfort zone of my budding buddies.

(*) The specific gravity of a liquid describes how much more dense than water it is. In the case of wort, it is indicative of how much sugar is still available for the yeast to munch, and hence to grow, on.

So I topped up the broth with some extra wort, cleverly calculated to be of a sufficient SG to come up with a total of 1040 again, which should be enough (*) to get the yeast going again.

(*) But not too much. Yeast can pretty picky and delicate, especially at the cultivating stage. It wouldn't do to overcompensate by dousing my recuperating colony with wort of, say, SG 1080. Just like you don't save a starving child by forcefeeding it a double Whopper with extra cheese.

So, feed the hungry so the thirst shall have drink. Eventually. The Yeasts were happy with theirextra bento boxes, and after a few hours, a nice white head had reformed on top of the wort (no pic, you'll have to take my word for it).

With still about 4 days to go till brewing day, I heeded the advice of the learned and stopped feeding the yeast for a while. Fitted the bottle with an airlock and allowed them to come to rest for a bit.

Airlock. No seriously.

Three benefits from this resting period:

1. I won't have to keep feeding the yeast for 4 more days. It's a bit of a hassle, what with the risk of infection imposing a serious level of sanity from my part.
2. Extending from this, I will have a manageable volume of yeast starter by the time I need to pitch it, instead of 5 liters of the stuff
3. the yeast, which now somewhere its 100th generation since I started cultivating it, can have its first fling with anaerobic respiration and (yay) alcohol

Tomorrow evening, D-day-minus-one, I'll feed it again so it'll be all ready and gung-ho by the time I get to pitch it on D-day.

Till next time!

Greetz

Jo

Not quite settled after moving

The Yeast family have all moved out to a bigger place. Since I'll need to scale up the yeast starter in order to achieve a decent volume when the time comes to pitch, I've transferred them to a 5 liter jug.

This morning, they looked just fine.

After aeration

However, when left unattended, the head seems to subside somewhat, and turn a not-quite-so-pleasant off-beige color.

I'm not sure what's causing this, but it could just be that the yeast is slowing down for lack of oxygen. Carbonation has almost completely halted, so it looks like it's gone back to sleep.

Not sure how to take it from here, but it's clear that I need to do something.

Greetz

Jo


 

Go forth, and multiply

My yeast is doing good. Not great, if I'm to believe the words of more experienced brewers, but good enough to make my happy.

It's been five days since I kidnapped a few milliliters of yeast out of a Moinette bottle, and it looks like they're doing fine. Scaling up the volume of wort to allow the yeast to propagate has brought me to about 400ml of yeast primer now. With six more days to go till brewing day, I'm in good spirits alright.

Time to look for a bigger apartment

Some carbonation going on, with a steady stream of tiny bubbles rising from the slurry at the bottom to the white foam on top. In fact, so much carbonation that I've replaced the screw-top cap with a wad of cotton. I've had some messy experience with exploding bottles of ginger beer in the past and I'm not going there again.

So tonight, the Saccharomyces family are moving out, and into a bigger vessel.

Stay tuned!

Greetz

Jo

 

Life!

This were looking grim this morning. The first rays of the mid-september sun awoke the sound of dismayed groaning, a bit of wailing and the occasional gnashing of the teeth.

The surface of my slowly awakening yeast colony was dotted by little white islands of, for want of a better word, muck.

This can't be good, can it?

That, my fellow uninitiated yeast enthusiasts, looks like mould to me. A quick and cautious sniff, however, revealed no suspicious odours, so I left things as they were. But I admit: the spirit of the moment was lost and I was about ready to pour the contents of the flask, microbiological denizens and all, into the sink.

Read that last paragraph again. Notice the past tense? Notice how the tension builds up, and you're left wondering how things went from there?

Oh enough already, here's what things look like right now:

This must be good, mustn't it?

Now hold your horses, I know what you're thinking. "But that looks even muckier than before! Why don't you trash the whole thing for it starts to stink up the place?"

But no! See that foamy mess between the clots of the other white mess? That's the yeast head forming! We're in the clear! They live!

THEY!

LIIIIIIIIIIIVVVVEEE!

(A quick recap for the slow-witted or the unaware: the yeast I'm cultivating is a top-fermenting yeast. This means that as it gets more active, it'll form a white, dense head of yeasty froth on top of the wort. And what we're seeing here is the birth of that very head. Yes, you read that right: we're watching the birth of a head)

But wait! It gets even better!

There's a reason why the above is a movie clip and not another boring still picture: it moves! There's life in this muck, and the rising bubbles indicate that the yeast is busy producing carbon dioxide. Of course, I don't want it to be producing too much of that; I'd rather have it focus on producing more yeast, but hey, we're on a roll here!

All this notwithstanding, I'm still set to start a parallel batch of Westmalle yeast. Because pessimism isn't all about the glass being half empty, but also about being prepared for the worst. As long as the yeast isn't more active, it's still at risk of being infected by all sorts of nasties which consider wort to be the ideal breeding grounds. And I don't want moulds, bacteria or duck-billed platypi pissing in my wort, thank you very much.

Go little yeasties, go! You're doing great!

Greetz

Jo

 

No life?

Things aren't looking at all great for my yeast.

After four days, the bottle is looking decidedly lifeless:

Cueue dramatic music in minor key

Could be that I collected bottle yeast instead of  primary yeast. After all, when fermenting the wort, we want the yeast to be super active, converting the wort into beer at the best rate achievable. Once bottled, the only thing we want to yeast to do is produce enough carbon dioxide to make it fizz.
Too little of this and the beer is flat and lifeless and not all appealing.
Too much and the bottle might go ballistic at some random point, or at best gush out of the bottle as soon as you apply an opener to it.

So it could be just that: I may have been cultivating a bottle of low-activity bottle yeast.

...or these could all be corpses...

 

Off to find some apple juice to set up a parallel batch of something else. From what I hear, the monks at Westmalle use a yeast strain which is quite responsive to the treatment I've been attempting, so I might as well give it a shot.










Eight days to go until brewing day. Getting just a bit worried now...

Greetz

Jo

Amarillo Night

The Missus out of the house, daughter asleep and son camping in front of the TV... what's a dad to do?

This, perhaps?

The guys at De Molen brew beers to my heart: radically on a genre's outskirts sometimes, soberly classy at others, but always fine brews.

Amarillo is their take on an IPA (*), dry-hopped with (du-uh-huh) Amarillo hops. Amarillo is one of those hops that smack of American microbrewing, very aromatic and fragrant, with a grapefruity twang. Recently, Europe has taken up with the fad, often overdoing it by making very citrusy beers, a tendency which not only does a grave disservice to the Amarillo hop, but also to American craft brewery in general.

(*) India Pale Ale. A beer style which has less to with India than with the UK.

Let's take a closer look at this Amarillo beer of theirs then:

Glass exclusively restricted to males with a degree in parenthood

Splendid, and everything I hope to see in an IPA of this caliber. For those who are in the know, that's a 31 EBC you're looking at here. For those not in the know: kinda dark for a "pale ale", but that's how I like'em.

The nose is a delight. Of course you get the Amarillo up front, but it's not as much of an "in your face" experience as one would fear. De Molen brew classy beers when they make an effort, and this one is a good example. Beneath the Amarillo, you get a wonderful base of malty booziness, and the head nicely buffers the hoppiness so it doesn't get too overpowering on the nose.

Sip-sip-sippity-sip and the aroma is everything the nose was teasing us about: again there's a solid spot in the limelight for the Amarillo, but you never get that Europeon "CAN YOU TASTE THE GRAPEFRUIT ALRIGHT?" vibe at all. Nor is its presence understated; this is a fine example of what a great hop the Amarillo can be.

It's a relatively sweet beer considering it's supposed to be about hop. That's what I like about a good IPA: a firm, slightly sweetish malt base (I'm guessing the cara malt is doing its work here), with an overlay of hoppiness. Nevertheless, at 60 EBU (**), you can't call this beer sweet without taking a defensive stance. The bittering hops (the ubiquitous saaz and the sladek, which I'm less familiar with) are doing a fine job at making this a non-sweet beer, but at 19° Plato, the bitterness is nicely balanced with the body of the brew.

(**) European Bitterness Unit. Like meters and seconds, only more bitter. For reference, a common pilsner is about 15 to 30 EBU.

Oh and another thing: I'm picking up something of a trend in De Molen beers. This is the second IPA I've had of them (Vuur&Vlam was the other), and both had a remarkable amount of sediment in the bottle after I left them alone for a couple of weeks.
Poured "the proper way" (i.e. leaving the sediment in the bottle, pouring the clear glass you see in the pic above), they are both very nice. But really, the yeast adds such a shitload of mouthfeel to the beer that I'm calling it a shame to pour these beers "properly". They need the yeasty residue to create that smooth, velvet mouthfeel.

I'm tempted to compare this Amarillo to BrewDog's Hardcore IPA. Both are very similar, yet distinctly different. I can't imagine anyone liking one but not the other. BrewDog's IPA is a bit more exuberant, a bit decadent even, as befits the brewery's public image. De Molen again impresses with their brewing savvy-ness, and the delicacy with which this beer presents itself.

Till the next time!

Jo

Life?

Day three of the Yeast Thief experiment. So far, I'm not getting much response from mrs. Yeast

Here's the bottle yesterday evening, after giving it a bit of shaking aeration:

 

 

 And here's the bottom of the bottle today (before shaking):

Those floating bits and the white sludge on the bottom is yeast, and perhaps it's my childlike optimism, but it looks like there's now more than I poured in three days ago.
While that sounds good, I'm not sure it is. I wouldn't be to surprised if what we see here as dead yeast cells, and I think it's obvious why I don't want those.

Some advice-gathering revealed that

• my wort may be too heavy (SG 1065 is good for my brew, but may be too much for the weakened bottle yeast at the moment)
• I may have "drowned" the yeast in too much wort. A small initial volume, increased exponentially (doubled each day) is preferrable, although I don't really understand how that should make much difference.

Anyhoo, later today (or tomorrow), I'll try a similar experiment, using apple juice as starting "wort", in smaller volumes, upgrading to lighter wort if and when the yeast wakes up.
Alongside, I'll keep this bottle and see how it evolves.

Come on li'l yeasties! I'm rooting for you!

Greetz

Jo

 

The Yeast Thief

Brewing beer seems like a lot of work, but the hardest work will not be done by me but by this little mama:

Saccharomyces cerevisae or brewer's yeast is the magic ingredient that'll transfor this somewhat dubiously smelling liquid called wort into actual beer.







The yeast will ferment all the sugars in the wort (well, almost all but near enough for now), converting them into

• more yeast (good but not the real aim) 
• carbon dioxide (good because I want fizz and, all innuendo aside, a bit of head)
• alcohol (which sets beer aside from pop in the first place)

I could just buy yeast from specialised stores, like I did with most of my other ingredients, but those 6 years of academic toil and meddling with micro-organisms have instilled in me a willingness to do this the hard way: I'm going to cultivate my own yeast! **insert Cackling Laughter à la Mad Scientist about here somewhere**

Well..."my own" means "a succesful brewer's" in this case, and that brewer's not me. Not yet anyway.

Dupont brews an excellent beer called Moinette which has a basic flavour I find absolutely charming: fruity and full-bodied, reminiscent of UK ales and hence perfectly suited for my first attempts at brewing an IPA. Since Moinette has about 8.5% ABV, it should be capable of rousing my wort to acceptable levels of booziness, as I'm aiming for about 7% myself. 

My attempts to break into the Dupont brewery and liberate a couple billions of yeast cells from their labs were sadly unsuccessful (but that's another story) so I decided to take a more legally and morally acceptable approach at  pilfering by collecting the yeast sediment from a bottle of Moinette I happened to have lying (*) about in my cellar.

(*) standing, really. All beer snobs store their beer upright. Unless it's gueuze. Because we like to be picky about beer.

So:

1. made a small batch of wort by adding 16g of wort extract to 100ml of water
2. brought to the boil, which also sterilises the wort
3. disinfected a 1l yeast bottle with alcohol
4. poured the hot wort into the bottle and closed it
5. cooled the wort to hand temperature by swirling it under the cold tap
6. opened the Moinette
7. carefully decanted the beer into a glass, leaving about one centimeter of beer, along with the sediment
8. swirled the beer bottle to bring the sediment back into suspension
9. disinfected the mouth of the beer bottled with alcohol (you never know where that has been)
10. poured the sediment into the yeast bottle

Drum roll! Applause! Californian wave! Cheering and chanting and high fives aplenty! 6 years of grueling university tutelage prove themselves well spent.

Witness the star players as they line up for encores:

 

Now the hardest bit: waiting for my babies to multiply.

The tension is killing me.

Greetz

Jo

The leaking bucket

Hah! Barely up and a new message already. Who said anything about procrastination?
Oh. Wait.
That was me.

Getting ready to brew, with nearly all my stuff(*) in place. Most of said "stuff" can be purchased online these days; the days when home brewing was strictly limited to the well-connected are over. Well, no, you still need a connection but...whatever. Stuff.

 (*) "stuff" is an ancient brewing term for "materials and ingredients".

Since I wanted to at least do some tinkering of my own, I decided to cobble up my own filter tun.

For the layman and -woman, here's  quick-and-dirty run-down of the brewing process (to illustrate my level of savvy-ness as well as the importance of the filter tun -see step 4)

1. acquire stuff (important!)
2. mill malt (more on malt later, look here if you can't be bothered to wait.)
3. steep milled malt in "hot" water to breakdown starch into sugar
4. filter the infusion (called wort), discarding the leftover solids. 
5. boil the wort, together with hops
6. cool
7. add yeast, which will eat the sugar and convert it into alcohol and bubbles
8. lager
9. bottle
10. drink (the main reason we're going through all this trouble in the first place)

Sounds easy, but like I said: this is the condensed version. Condensing beer is a bad idea, so more on these steps later.

The filtering tun then. Being the simplest of filters, and the easiest to assemble yourself (myself, I should say, mustn't generalise my ineptness at DIY projects), it consists of two buckets, one inserted into the other. The inner bucket has holes in the bottom, allowing the wort to seem through the collecting solids into the outer bucket. The wort is drained via a conveniently installed tap.

So I purchased two 30l buckets (metrics only here, sorry 'bout that), one with a tap already installed. The other is just a plain bucket:

With the right tools in hand, I drew a grid on the bottom, with the intersections being the targets for my trusty hand drill.

I used a 2mm drill bit, which of course won't fit in the drill itself. After some swearing from my part, and some pitiful whining and moping, I fitted the drill bit with a wad of paper, which seemed adequate. Another reason why I didn't use a stainless steel bucket (hah! on purpose, I tells ya!).
After getting rid of the whiteboard marker lines and the swirly bits of drilled-out plastic, I ended up with...

...this! A 161-mesh, home made filter bed!

Insert into the outer bucket and you get something like this:

Some clever calculations reveal that about 5l of "foot space" exists between the two buckets. I'll probably need to fill that with hot water during the mashing (that's step 3 in the condensed outline above).

Whoohoo exciting! Next stop: the wort cooler. Some minor DIY required there, combined with clever trading skills I levelled up during the time I spent playing online RPGs.

Until next time!


Greetz

Jo

Up and not yet brewing

Booyakasha!

Yours truly is almost brewing, and since the internet simply does not contain enough blogs about blokes brewing up random stuff in their kitchen, I'm adding mine today.

Expect (more or less) frequent updates on something that's been bubbling in my head for far too long: brewing beer. What seems like ages ago but is really about as long ago as my son is old, a friend and I (hello Wim, where are you?) dipped our fingers into something resembling brewing.

As evidenced here:

Evidence A: Boyz a-brewin'

Oh there you are, Wim!
Notice the savvy expression on yours truly's face. Yup, first stages of brewing look kinda questionable.

Our first brews were of mixed success, and sadly lost to humanity and the teeth of time.

Procrastinator that I am, I've been telling myself (and ever once in a while others) that I'd start brewing again someday, only this time "for real" (picture me saying "for real" whilst sticking up my fist, Stupendous Man style. Now picture that again without me pulling  that face I make in Evidence A).

So here we are: a new blog, about beer. About the making of it, and the drinking of it. Watch this space for updates, I might actually post some.



Greetz

Jo

Really, I do have an almost normal face. Just not when there's a camera pointing my way.