Oatmeal Stout Bottles

The Oatmeal Stout was bottled yesterday 2/28/2010. This will be the first batch of beer in 2010. Below are some photos of the day.

Bottle of delicious Oatmeal Stout

Case of Oatmeal Stout (labeled and capped)
Box

Bottle & Label

Applying Labels

Cleaning equipment

Weekend Aftermath

The weekend bottling process turned out good and bad.

First off, the good...

Bottled the dunkelweizen with no problems. The stockpile of beer is increasing. The Sam Adams Summer Ale Clone is the best beer we've made to date..

Stockpile!

Now the bad...

Bottling the Belgian Dubbel this weekend turned out to be one gigantic clusterfuck. Where to begin...

1. Short on bottles
2. Siphon tube was fucked up
3. Some bottles got fucked up (see pictures)
4. The capper makes sounds of glass crunching
5. Broke another siphon tube (which has been repaired..)
6. Broke the necks off some of the bottles

Broken bottles full of Dubbel

A sad, sad picture

Yes, the capper was literally cutting the neck of the bottles completely off. In the first picture, you can see two bottle caps still sealed on the broken neck (Yes, I saved them as keepsakes)

So yeah, the Belgian Dubbel didn't go as smooth as expected, but there is enough there to get hammered. There are 13 bottles of Belgian Dubbel that are 22oz. So no worries! More to come with the Memorial Day weekend ahead.

Status Updates

Belgian Dubbel
The Belgian Dubbel just began its primary fermenting on Monday. It took about 30 hours before I seen any action taking play within the carboy. Right now it is blowing out a bubble every 5 seconds and a thick layer of krausen has formed on top of the carboy. The fermentation temperature is around 68 - 70 degrees. I will keep a close watch on it this weekend because the Philadelphia area is supposed to get temperatures in the 80's.

Ed Wort's Apfelwein
The apfelwein seems to be fermenting or doing its thing. It is in a plastic bucket fermenting, so I can not see what is going on. I smelled the top of the airlock to get a hint of what is coming out and it smelled like rotten eggs. This is common in certain strains of yeast. And since this yeast is a wine yeast, it probably produces some interesting smells.

Wild Flower Wheat
The Wild Flower Wheat is just about hitting the 2 week mark of fermentation and should be bottled this weekend. It is still shooting out a bubble about every minute or so. The fermentation temperature is around 64-66 degrees. I might try to warm up the Wild Flower Wheat a little bit to make sure fermentation is complete.

Fat Tire Amber Ale (Clone)
The Fat Tire Amber Ale has been conditioning just about 2 weeks now. I was impatient and sampled one at the 1 week mark, and it tasted wonderful. This recipie will be brewed again this weekend, but with some personal tweeks to the recipie.

Wild Flower Wheat - 6 Days of Fermenting

The Wild Flower Wheat is still going strong in the ferment. The krausen is lowering, which is good... but it is still blowing out a good amount of bubbles after 6 days. I might have to leave this batch in the fermenter close to 3 weeks.

I also need a new hydrometer due to an "accident" from last weekend. Around the 2.5 week mark, I will start taking hydrometer readings to ensure fermentation is complete. If the hydrometer reading stays constant over 2 days, it is safe enough to bottle.

Also, there will be some interesting brews being made. Stay tuned!

Wild Flower Wheat - 5 Days of Fermenting

Maybe it is the ingredients of this batch, or the yeast, or the higher sugar content... but this batch is still fermenting pretty strong. It is still blowing out a bubble about every 5 seconds after 5 days! The krausen has died down a bit and it is less foamy that it was a few days ago. Also the color is still a golden brown.. looking almost like apple cider.

I will be letting this one ferment for a total of 2 - 2.5 weeks before bottling. Also, once it is bottled, I will let it condition for about 2-3 weeks before cracking one open. I can't wait to drink that 6% ABV goodness!

Weizenbier a.k.a "Not So Good Ale" Sample

Last night after stopping up the Hulmeville Inn to meet the brewer of River Horse Brewing Co., I decided to crack open a Weizenbier to take a little sample. It has been sitting roughly 5 days, so I couldn't wait any longer.

The beer poured with a nice head as shown in the picture. The beer also smelled very good. So, I was hoping that the taste test I took on bottling day tasted bad because their was no sugar added in the beer. Sadly, I was wrong and the beer still tasted off. It still had an acidic/soapy aftertaste. The beer also looks very clear... probably from adding too much water. A weiss beer should be somewhat cloudy.

I can't really say much about this batch other than it was a learning experience.

Some reasons I have that may have ruined the batch:

1. We did not boil the water before topping off the wort. We used cold tap water which could have caused some of the off-aftertastes.


2. The lid was left off the wort while cooling down which may have let some germs in.


3. The yeast starter we made was from warm tap water. This water should of been boiled. Also, we did not cover the yeast starter while we were brewing.
   

I will be bottling the Fat Tire Amber Ale (clone) tomorrow. I will post some pictures for that process and try to document everything we did.

BONUS!

Here is a picture of my River Horse Burnt Sugar Ale from last night. It was a very tasty beverage.

Bottling Day - Weizenbier

Well... bottling day went well. We did not really have any issues as far as the bottling. All the tubing fit as needed. We picked up a auto-siphon, a bottling bucket and some empty bottles from the home brew shop. The bottling process went very smoothly, however, the beer tasted VERY watery.

Joe holding the tube

Racking the Weizenbier

Empty Bottles Drying

The Final Gravity (F.G) reading was exactly as it should of been at 1.010.

Hydrometer Reading of 1.010

The issue that pretty much 'effed up the batch was the fermenting bucket. The bucket we purchased in our kit did not have any of the gallon markers labeled on the side. So, when we originally made the beer, we assumed it was a 5 gallon bucket, and topped off the wort just a bit below the lid. The bucket is actually a 6.5 gallon bucket. This caused the batch to have a very watery taste to it. I also calculated the alcohol percentage to be around 2.6%. It should have been around 4% - 5%.

Joe Taste Test

Mark Taste Test

So, this has been a learning lesson, again! We did bottle the beer and I will give it a taste on Saturday (1 week). If it still tastes watery, it's going down the drain so I can use the bottles to bottle the Fat Tire Amber Ale.