Homebrewing

My first beer was based on Charlie Papazian's ``Toad Spit Stout''. I ``messed up'' and got Wheat Malt Extract Syrup instead of Dark Malt. . . I worried needlessly: the stuff came out wonderful! Good body, nice head, and in some ways surprisingly close to how I remember Guinness Extra Stout from my last trip to Ireland.

And this one is still my mom's favorite, too. She waxes poetic over this one, and judges every one of my beers by its memory. Let's see if my Chocolate-Nut Imperial Stout can beat this record!

Based on Papazian's ``Holiday Cheer'' recipe, this one is brewed with fresh ginger, cinnamon, orange peel, etc. When I first tried it the ginger was overpowering, but as the beer is supposed to age for many months (brew it in the summer, enjoy it during the end-of-year holidays) that was no surprise.

I served this beer in April 1995 on a first date with Kristy (now my wife). She joked for a long time after that the love potion was beginning to wear off and I had better brew again soon. :)

Drank the last two bottles in June 1996, 20 months after brewing. It remains at the very top of my favorite home brews!!

My third beer is a significant variation on Papazian's ``Sparrowhawk Porter'', and thereby my first attempt to deviate a lot from a beer recipe. I exprimented with four different hops for bittering, aroma, and bouquet.

The beer came out of the fermenter almost perfectly enjoyable and within days began rounding out quite nicely. I had a great difficulty restraining myself from drinking a bottle or two every night. Needless to say it was gone before I knew it.

This beer is a bitter and highly hopped I.P.A. (India Pale Ale) wich has been behaving a little ``funny'' in the fermenter, but smells quite wonderful. I've experimented with dry hopping and a long secondary fermentation before bottling.

When I first bottled it the smell of hops was almost overwhelming. It's bitter and sweet at the same time. A really powerful combination. The toasted malt gives it a very intense red colour. Two weeks after bottling it had settled into a delicious, but not overpowering hoppiness. I never had such a hoppy brew. Incredible!

Look, ma! I'm a hophead now!

Boiled over twice (the stove was an unmitigated disaster afterwards, hence the ``Titanic'' in the name), but it never boiled long enough to achieve a definitive hotbreak. Had a lot of precipitate, even in the bottles. A rather thick, heavy, and sweet concoction that reminded me of some Barley Wines.

Needless to say it turned out very different from what I had intended, but if the previous version was any indication then its character will continue to evolve.

I found a last remaining bottle of this brew in January 2001. It had still not become a terribly good beer, but it had mellowed and rounded a lot. There remained a distinct edge to the taste that was at first unpleasant, but after about half of that liter was gone I found it increasingly enjoyable.

I'm now convinced that I screwed up with sanitation: the odd taste resulted from bacteria influencing the taste. Don't worry about bacteria in your beer, though: the alcohol that the yeast produces from the fermentables in the wort will effectively kill the bacteria. The only reminder of those critters is from the off-taste. :-/

When I put the bittering hops into the brewpot the smell of hops exploded through the kitchen. In a happy daze I rushed to the refrigerator and took out another ounze of hops. Before I knew what I had done there were at least 50% more bittering hops in the beer than the recipe (an English Bitter) had called for.

When I first tried it, about a week or so after bottling, it was so bitter as to make my cheeks pucker! I'm glad that I did not write this beer off, however, as it only required about three weeks from bottling to become one of the most drinkable and refreshing beers in memory.

This goes to show you: experimentation is a good thing. If you keep the sanitation under control you cannot go wrong if you remain in the realm of reason. :)

The only real difference from last year's version is the fact that I did not dry hop this one. It didn't come out as hoppy, therefore, but my friend ``Hoover'' from Germany loved the stuff when he visited us, and he has since taken up home brewing on his own (and that in a country where you can find great commercial beer at every street corner!)

I brewed this in preparation for the birth of our daughter Veronika, and because Kristy didn't (shouldn't, mustn't) drink during pregnancy and should have something special to enjoy after the birth.

The beer was done fermenting after three or four days in the primary but spent about two months in the fermenter (sitting on the trub!) because the situation at work was crazy (70 hour weeks, yuck!) and I simply had no time or mind to bottle this stuff. Even so, this beer came out fantastic!

The secret? More hops, more hops! Can't get enough of those hops (play a little jingle in your head as you continue. . .) They preserve the beer, they make it fresh, then add bouquet, they taste great, they do wonders for the beer overall. The Bitter is a superb base for such a beer. Go crazy, knock yourself out!

It's been a few years since I brewed a stout. With the cold winter days finding no more homebrew in the cellar, and having had a taste of Victoria Brewing Company's ``Storm King Imperial Stout'' (see the resources section below), I decided that after nearly seven years it was high time for a stout to come out of my brewpot again.

Click here for the recipe of the Chocolate-Nut Imperial Stout.

This one is based on 10 U.S. pounds (4.54 kg) of malt extracts, 1 pound of chocolate malt, and ½ pound of toasted malted barley (for a hint of nut).

The beer achieved an original gravity of 1.072 and is expected to reach an alcohol content of about 7%. It's still in the fermenter, having spent about two days bubbling violently. I tasted some of the (bitter) overflow and was delighted with the taste. More information to come after bottling and tasting of the beer. . .

It came out extremely tasty; full-bodied but not heavy; the chocolatey taste is slightly more than a hint: noticable but not overwhelming by any stretch of the imagination. Round and full and so good that it's almost gone now! And at 6.5% it was just the thing in front of the fire. . .

Brewed on the same day as the Chocolate-Nut Imperial Stout, this beer is my most experimental one yet: Inspired by a conversation with a friend at work who does all-grain brewing, I decided to try my hand at a partial mash; my first attempt at temperature controlled mashing finds me starting the mash at 70°C (158°F) (by appropriately mixing two volumes of water at different temperatures) and letting it go down from there on its own for 90 minutes.

I've no idea, really, how much of the starch conversion completed, or just what portions, because not only did I not calculate the effects on temperature of adding the grains to the mash, but I also forgot to take the temperature after the 90 minutes were over and could not plot a temperature-time scale to match the various ranges where different conversions occur.

But I did taste the mash before I took out the grains and brought the rest back up to a boil: It was very(!) tasty. The only real question I have is ``how much of that tasty wort was fermentable sugar?''

The recipe is entirely my own, based on 6 U.S. pounds (2.724 kg) of extra light DME, 3 pounds (1.362 kg) of white wheat, and 1 pound (454 g) of munich malt. It achieved an original gravity of 1.066 and is expected to reach up to 7.5% alcohol. This is a ``wheat beer'' that will hit you like a hammer! More to come when bottling and tasting time arrive. . .

At bottling time and in the weeks thereafter this beer turned out to have a lot of ``weirdness'' in the taste, as a result of me being tired after a long day brewing and in my haste and inattention killing most of the yeast during rehydration. This caused the yeast to take 48 hours to build up enough of a population which gave various unnamed bacteria a chance at my beer. Enough of really good taste came through, however, to tell me that it was only for that one mistake that my beer was not what it could have been.

End of May, about 100 days after bottling: all the ``weirdness'' is gone! This is one fine, fine wheat beer now, thoroughly refreshing and possessed of a rather delightful combination of flavours and nose. I'm definitely hanging on to this recipe to make another version of it soon. Goes to show that no bad beer is ever a waste until it has not improved even when given the chance.

The recipe calls this a lager, meaning that it ought to be fermented with lager yeast and at lager fermenting temperatures. But given that I have no refrigerator to keep the beer cool (my wife would kill me if I usurped the one in the kitchen!) I've decided to ferment with ale yeast at a slightly lower temperature than what I usually do: the basement is somewhat cooler than the rest of the house, so we'll see how that goes.