Posted: February 26th, 2008 | Author: Stacy | Filed under: Bottling Beer, Grand Cru, Homebrew | 1 Comment »
I’m bustin’ my chops to get this beer bottled!Sometimes I feel like I live in an I Love Lucy episode. Or, like I live in that SNL Gilda Radner sketch where she plays
Lucy handling nuclear weapons.
I always obey the Joy of Home Brewing edict “relax, and have a homebrew” while bottling. So far, I’ve never made a skunky beer. I maintain that brewers are as superstitious as sailors, so I must have a homebrew while bottling to keep the mojo alive and ward off the bad bacteria that might ruin my beer. Since I already had a homebrew earlier (o! delicious brown ale), and am on a one beer a day ration, I had a cider. All the other ciders I’ve had from that batch have been very nicely carbonated, but this one decided to pull a Vesuvius on me and spray all over the counter and floor like a cheap sparkling wine. Fie!
Look at all those glorious bottles of beer!I had already siphoned the grand cru from the fermenting carboy into the bottling bucket, and when I went across the kitchen to start filling up bottles I noticed that the spigot on the bucket was leaking. Double fie! Hoist up 5 gallons of beer (good thing I’ve been going to the gym) and get Kathy to cram a kitchen towel under it to soak up the leaked beer, then BOTTLE LIKE MAD. I had all of the beer in bottles in about 20 minutes! I probably lost one beer to the leak, but that’s not so bad. And I’ve since tightened the spigot, so the next beer should bottle without a hitch. When I make Belgian style beers, I always like to use a special colored cap so I know exactly what’s what. Duvels are silver, and now Grand Crus are metallic red.
The good news is that the beer smells really good. Spicy, banana esters, cardamom notes, a little hint of honey. And the color will be great when it clears. It will condition in the bottle for at least a month before it’s ready to drink, but right now I think it’s going to challenge Celis White as my favorite wit/grand cru style.
Posted: January 25th, 2008 | Author: Stacy | Filed under: Grand Cru, Homebrew | 1 Comment »
Grand Cru at 24 hoursI’ve made a few beers from the
Complete Joy of Home Brewing with great success and always wanted to make a Grand Cru. I got a shiny new 5 gallon brew pot for Christmas, so it’s maiden voyage was Who’s in the Garden Grand Cru. Honey always boils high in the pot, and every time I brew a beer with honey in a 3 gallon pot it boils over and makes a huge mess. If you don’t have a 5 gallon (or larger) pot, go get one now!
I hadn’t made a beer with spices in it yet, so adding coriander and sweet orange was exciting. It really smelled good, that’s for sure! And with the current hops shortage going on these days, it was handy that all I needed was 2oz of Hallertauer hops rather than something harder to find (no Northern Brewer in these parts, for example).
Grand Cru yeastIn the past, I’ve made a Duvel with 2 pounds of honey in it (one of my favorite beers to brew), and every time I make that beer it takes f o r e v e r for the yeast to get active. Seriously, like 3-5 days sometimes. Just enough to think I may need to pitch more yeast. So that’s what I expected with the Grand Cru. In under 24 hours, it was vigorously fermenting and had a lovely yeasty foam on top. About a week later, it’s still bubbling along and probably will keep it up for another week or two.
I’m a little unorthodox in my brewing methodologies because I don’t check my initial and final specific gravities. Why not? Because I’ve broken two hydrometers and I’m tired of buying new ones! But it’s also pretty easy to tell when a beer is done fermenting and ready to bottle. Also, I bottle and don’t keg beer because I don’t have a keg fridge, and I don’t really need the temptation of beer on tap in my own home all the time.
Anyway, it’ll be neat to taste how this turns out. I figure I’ll get to drink it some time in March or April.
