If you check out the “What Am I Drinking” page, you’ll have noticed the appearance of more and more “homebrew” entries under the beer section. Since I resumed brewing activities a couple of months ago, I’ve knocked out three batches. The first two were kits from Northern Brewer – something I’ve never brewed before, having previously always created my own recipes (even my first batch ever back in 1994!). But, I wasn’t inclined to drop coin for sacks of malts and pounds of hops before I was sure I could stick with it, particularly since I’d be bottling – a task I remembered as heinous when I dropped it back in 1996 or so.
First up was their Three-Hearted kit, an all-Centennial hopped American IPA inspired by Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale (probably my favorite beer ever). I could not resist making a couple of tweaks – dropping the initial gravity to a more manageable 1.060, and using all of the hops in the kit by upping the dry hop amount. I also did the ferment with some way past expiration Safale US-05 (like two years past . . .), which worked just fine, thank you very much. I’m quite pleased with the result, and only have about a third of the batch left to drink. I started drinking it too soon – the classic first batch of homebrew problem, and initial bottles were quite green, but it’s now drinking quite well.
Next was Northern Brewer’s Extra Pale Ale kit, inspired (I assume) by Summit‘s outstanding Extra Pale Ale. I also tweaked the dry-hopping on this one, adding an ounce of Amarillo. This one is still a touch green, so I’ve not fully formed an opinion on it yet. Also fermented with a way out of date packet of US-05. It’s alright so far, but I’m hoping it will continue to improve.
The most recent batch was the first wholly personal recipe of the great brewing restart of 2010. I’m most excited by the fact that I’ve decided to utterly eschew styles in my recipe construction for a while (i.e. until it becomes boring). This one is a mix of two row, raw wheat (about 30%) and a bit of carapils to 1.050, bittered with Columbus, with flameout additions of Citra, Centennial and Columbus, and fermented with a fresh satchel of US-05. Everything apart from the yeast came from Kent at Missouri Malt Supply – a great local source for top quality brewing ingredients at virtually wholesale prices that evolved from homebrewers getting together to order full pallets from various malt suppliers. I dry-hopped this beer last night with 30 grams of Citra, and 15 each of Columbus and Centennial. I plan to leave it on the dry hops for 10 days and then package. I’m very excited about the interplay of the citrus (duh) notes of the Citra with the raw wheat.
I’m also pleasantly surprised to find that I don’t mind bottling at all. The key has been a repurposed tupperware tub that I previously used to hold sacks of grain. It conveniently holds about 30 12 ounce bottles, meaning that sanitizing the bottles is a matter of about a half hour of work, rather than the hours I recall. Add a spring-loaded bottle filler, and bottling is done in about an hour total. Not too much longer than kegging used to take.
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