Brewing a Batch: American Pale Ale

Because I've made a few missteps lately I decided to brew my very tasty first batch again, though with a few modifications such as a liquid yeast and a bit more hops. Brewing was straightforward, though as usual the foam on the chilled wort prevented me from getting an accurate reading of the initial gravity. Another frustration is that I am going through C-Brite sanitizer like crazy. I will be looking for something more cost-effective on my next trip to the homebrew supply shop.

Batch Three Update Four

After performing a messy recapping and letting it coolish-condition for another week, this brown ale has become drinkable if not great. Carbonation is now at reasonable levels, though the beer is still a little more fizzy than my other batches. It doesn't have any off flavors, so I am fairly sure the problem was bottling it too early. Lesson learned, hopefully.

Batch Five: Mild Porter

Style: Porter
Grains: 32 oz., 60 minute soak in 1.5 gal.
Malt: 3.5 lbs. Muntons light, 2.5 lbs. Muntons dark, 60 minute boil in 3.0 gal.
Hops: 1.0 oz. Northern Brewer @ 60 minutes, 1.0 oz. Fuggles @ 15 minutes
Fermentation: 5.0 gal. total liquid, Wyeast London, 8 days
Yield: 47 12 oz. bottles, 3/4 cups corn sugar as primer

Appearance: Dark brown, brown-colored head that subsided after a few minutes, light lacings
Aroma: Traces of malt, smoke
Mouthfeel: Medium
Taste: Some smoke, some malt
Verdict: A decent porter
Comments: At the first sampling of this batch after two weeks in bottles I was unimpressed. But after another week the flavor was much improved and I am now really enjoying this beer. The two flavor aspects are nicely balanced, which is what I was aiming for, instead of a beer dominated by smoke like my previous porter. It is a bit thin for the style, but that just makes it more drinkable now that the weather has warmed up. Next time I will try to make it stronger while keeping the balance.

16th Annual Green Mountain Homebrew Competition

For homebrewers in northern Vermont what might be a pretty fun event is on tap this weekend. The Masher's website doesn't give exact hours but the April edition of The Barleycorn Press says the action will start around 9:30 on Saturday the 5th of May. The location is near the airport in South Burlington, which isn't within walking distance of downtown but somewhat to Saint Michael's College in Winooski. I'll be checking it out for sure.

Bottling and Brewing

In a marathon session in the kitchen I bottled my previous batch, which is a Belgian brown ale, cooked dinner, and brewed a new batch, which is a Kölsch. Before bottling I pulled the spigot off my bottling bucket. The helpful people at my local hombrew supply shop said it is a good area in which bits of trub get stuck and cause contamination. My spigot turned out to be pretty clean, though there are some suspicious looking dark blotches between the inner and outer sleeves, an area that liquid should only be able to enter very slowly. I will probably soak the parts in some bleach before the next bottling session. Brewing was straightforward, though with everything going on I was pretty beat by the end of the night.