Triumphs and Travesties in Homebrewing

As you may recall, I had been brewing up a storm in preparation for my wedding which takes place this coming Saturday. I made two batches of Honey Duvel, two batches of Kolsch, and a Grand Cru. In the end, both Duvels turned out to be straight up Belgian dubbels, which is fine but not what I’d intended. One batch of kolsch was delicious and I “accidentally” consumed most of it by August. Oops! I figured I would be bailed out by the second batch of kolsch, but how wrong I was. For the first time ever my beer didn’t turn out at all right! I guess I didn’t rinse the santizer out of the carboy entirely, because each bottle of beer tastes vaguely of sanitizer, and that’s just no good. At least the Grand Cru is what it should be!

But the surprise of the month was finding that the mead I started in February had finally cleared and was ready to drink. And what a fine drink it is! Clear, crisp, honey-hued, sweet and delicious! So we’ll be serving that at the wedding for sure. I’ll post some photos later.

This, along with the availability of gorgeous local blackberries at the farmer’s market, inspired me to start a batch of blackberry mead this weekend. 15lbs of local honey, a half-flat of local blackberries, water, and yeast. Such delightful simplicity!

Duvel #1 bottled, #2 updates

The first batch of duvel — the weirdly quick to ferment one — is now in the bottle and seems normal. Only taste will truly tell! In my mad rush to make tons of wedding beer I am now running out of bottles to put beer in. Anyone in Portland want to save their non-screw top bottles for me? Rinsed before storage, if you please

As for my second duvel, it’s pretty much done fermenting, right on schedule. I’ll have to wrangle some more bottles for that one.

Next up: another batch of kolsch because, well, I’ve consumed much of the last one. Oops!

Duvel #2 update

The duvel I brewed last weekend is behaving normally, and took about 5 days to develop any fermentation activity. Whew, just as I’ve come to expect! I think that the previous batch started fermenting earlier because I pitched the yeast when the wort was at around 74 degrees. For the second batch, I pitched the yeast at 68 degrees. I used the same brand of yeast for both. What a difference pitching temperature makes! Now I’ll have to see if the flavor and quality of the beers are different.

Steamin’ up the joint

More duvel is cooling in its carboy right now, bringing me up to 10 gallons of wedding toast beer. I think we’ll call it good at that. All the windows are steamy from so much boiling water, which reminds me of how much water goes into making beer. It’s a little shocking even at the homebrewer level! I use at least 20 gallons of water per 5 gallons of beer made, considering all the washing and sterilizing that goes into brewing drinkable beer. And since I’m using malt extracts, I have no idea how much water was used just to create the syrupy goodness I turn into beer. I can only imagine how much water is used on a commercial scale.

Curious how much water it takes to make 1 pint of beer? Find out on John & Heidi Guenin’s Water Project site. Yeah, it’s a lot of water.

Brewing updates: mead and duvel

On March 11, I made my first ever batch of mead. Today, June 6, I racked it to a secondary fermenter where it will dwell until it clears — which apparently means it’s ready to drink and bottle. That’s nearly four months of fermenting! Impressive. And if I’d fermented at lager temperatures there’s no telling when this would ever be done. Who even knows how long this next round of fermentation will take. Don’t forget that I accidentally used the wrong yeast in this mead and wound up adding champagne yeast along with the accidental lager yeast. While it tasted sweet and of honey when I tried a little today, it’s still not quite mead-like.

On the other end of the fermentation spectrum, the duvel is quite active which I find a little surprising and worrisome. The last few times I’ve made this recipe, the yeast takes a good 3–5 days to get active in the wort. This time, I had solid fermentation within 24 hours. Unbelievable! I’ve brewed this recipe at least five times before, and each time the fermentation was so slow to start that I thought my yeast might be dead. Because this is abnormal in my experience, I’m definitely going to make more duvel next week just in case the first batch of the season doesn’t turn out right.

This brewing endeavor will have all three of my carboys in use for who knows how long. I may have to borrow one from a friend if I’m going to make more kolsch and possibly some porter for the wedding. So much beer, so little time!