The little batch that didn't want to burble...

...goes into secondary.

FG 1.012

Now this is what you do with a couple Christmas presents

4:40 pm: The Victory Malt is almost done steeping.


5:20 pm: The boil is about to start. The hop particles on the surface look like some crazy green moonscape.



6:23 pm: the copper chiller springs to life!



6:34 pm: we are below 80d Fahrenheit. That's ten, eleven minutes. What a piece of technology!

Boil test

How long will it take to boil four gallons of water in my new kettle?
Initial conditions: 50d Fahrenheit at 9:08 am.

UPDATE: Final conditions: 212d at 10:05.

Irish Redshirt Freshman

Bottled the small batch of what I've decided to call Irish Redshirt Freshman. Got about 1.5 gallons total (down from an original boil volume of 2 gal), which is a little less than I'd wanted, but that's life. Primed with dry table sugar again this time instead of mixing in sugar syrup; no sense in playing the national championship game flat due to a coaching error.

Now this little recruit has two weeks to get ready to play for all the marbles. Ironically, it's staying right here, while I'll be flying off to South Florida.

I'm drinking the sample I pulled off for gravity measurement (FG 1.010 against an OG of 1.050, thank you very much), and it's already quite tasty (though definitely young and raw -- again, like the Redshirt Freshman it is). A little sweet up front, with bitter underneath; a little puckery in the mouth.

Catching labels with vinegar. Haven't tried honey.

One of the annoying facets of homebrewing has been securing adequate bottling supplies. I've got a small stable of Grolsch-style swing top (EZ-cap) bottles, which are my favorites, but not enough for all the beer I expect I'll soon have ready. Hence, I've taken to collecting reusable (i.e. non screw-top) beer bottles and have invested in a capper.[1]

Now, I probably could just throw the beer into bottles that still say "New Belgium Trippel" or "Singletrack Copper Ale" (which we definitely didn't kill a whole sixer of last night. No sir). But being the anal-retentive type that I am, I'd rather not mislead myself and/or my drinking buddies that way, so I needed a way to remove the commercial labels. (I also need a way to make my own labels, and possibly a design team to help out, but that's a problem for another day.) One approach that was suggested was to heat the bottles in the oven to 400°F-450°F to melt the glue; then peel off the label whole. This worked for Sam Adams bottles, but not for others.

That method was chiefly favored for those collecting beer (and wine etc.) labels. If it had worked, I'd have not cared whether the label came off in one piece or many, but since it didn't (some of the glues just absolutely refused to melt), we decided to go the chemical route.

I tried a test run last week, with several bottles (mostly Mission Street and New Belgium) in my chemical bucket in undiluted vinegar. Left them all night, came back in the morning, took a razor blade to the labels and they came right off. Well, they still needed some coaxing, and they definitely left in pieces.

Doing the real run now; probably have thirty bottles to de-label, including a whole box that JJ's Market was kind enough to let me haul off. Assorted doesn't even begin to cover it. Anyway, the vinegar (5% white vinegar, initially undiluted) seems to be taking a lot less than all night to do its work, so I'm moving on through them pretty well.

Some observations and ideas for next time:
1) Start with your shortest bottles. Fill them with water (to keep them from floating), put them in the bucket, fill around them with vinegar up to the neck.
2) Don't use a metal razor to scrape off the labels if you can avoid it. The vinegar acid will react with the metal to discolor or corrode it. Doubly true if you're thinking of using a knife or metal kitchen utensil that you don't want to replace. I'm using a hard plastic spatula and it's going great.

[1] The Red Baron Capper, if you're interested.

Brewer's night: UnPale Ale

Two beer-related items tonight. First, I brought a few bottles of Sweet English Bitter to choir rehearsal tonight for the after-singing snacks, and they were well-received. The only problem is that they're way too carbonated; I realized when I got home and reviewed the log, that I doubled the poor yeasties' priming sugar ration when I bottled.

Second: Fired up the new 5 gallon beer rig tonight for the first time. Decided to basically completely freestyle a recipe, possibly something in the porter family, but with aspects of pale ale too. Will update with observations and notes as they come in.

UnPale Ale

Malts:
3.3 lb (1 can) Briess Traditional Dark LME
3 lb Briess Golden Light DME

This gives a calculated gravity of 1.050 in a 5-gallon brew, which is a nice middling; but also, it means that the boil gravity is really high. If I could have brought the boil volume up to 3.5 gallons, it would have meant a boil at 1.072 gravity intstead of the <2 .5=".5" and="and">1.100 that I actually had to work with; and apparently hops just don't want to give up the alpha when the sugar content is that high. (The limiting factor was the largest cookpot in the house... This strikes me as likely to be a recurring problem.)

This was also my first brew doing my own bittering (ie only using unhopped extract), so I secured

Hops:
1 oz. Columbus (14% alpha), pellets
1 oz Liberty (4% alpha), pellets

I boiled the Columbus for 60 minutes, half the Liberty for 15 minutes, and the other half for 10 minutes. The boil wasn't all that vigorous; the burner was only just keeping up with the wort. (I wasn't using the biggest burner for most of the boil, because I had an early boilover and didn't want to cook very dark sugars onto Ms Heelfilcher's stovetop. Ugh. (See likelihood of recurring problem.)

After cooling the wort in the sink-turned-ice-bath, I poured it and pitched a tube of

Yeast:
White Labs Cry Havoc

which is supposed to be an odd little beast (it will ferment at both ale and lager temperatures) but is known for producing a clean flavor profile with a little fruity sweetness.

No gravity measurements, I don't currently bother with them (or even own a hydrometer).