My breakfast stout was perfectly quaffable, but not particularly noteworthy. It was low alcohol, and much more cloudy than I would have liked. Otherwise, it was a fine brew. I realized with the breakfast stout that while kegging is much less trouble than bottling, kegged beer is harder to share with friends.

I've learned that one coworker, and two of the students in my department, are into home brewing. Another coworker doesn't home brew but is very interested in sampling my creations. Transferring beer from my keg into a bottle or growler can be done, but the bottled beer will pretty quickly go flat. For that reason, I'm likely to start bottling beer again, despite my previous statements that I didn't ever want to bottle again. To make the bottling process more streamlined, I invested in a couple growlers and one-liter bottles, in order to minimize the number of containers I need to fill.

While buying the new bottles, I also picked up a Better Bottle, to use in place of a glass carboy for the secondary fermentation stage. The Better Bottle is "made from a special, scientifically tested, polyethylene terephthalate copolymer (PET), which does not have all the disadvantages of other plastics." It is, obviously, a lot lighter than a glass carboy, which makes handling it a lot easier to do.

I brewed an English pale ale with my buddy Andy recently. This was the first all-grain batch I'd brewed of my own (I'd previously only ever watched Tom do an all-grain brew). The brewing process itself was rather unremarkable, and I think I got a decent enough efficiency from the sparging process. Aside from doing an all-grain as opposed to an extract brew, the only other change in process was that I whisked the wort as it transferred from the brew kettle into the primary fermentation bucket, in order to better aerate it. This isn't something I'd ever done before.

As usual, the beer sat in the primary bucket for about a week. It was fermenting pretty vigorously at first, and the airlock was still bubbling at day eight, but I decided to rack it into the secondary anyway -- mostly because I was eager to put the Better Bottle to work. Here's where my process substantially changed from my past brews. I had set the primary bucket atop a workbench in my basement as soon as the brewing was finished, and I left it there for the racking process. With past brews, I foolishly lugged the primary upstairs, agitating it and causing a lot of the sediment to rise up and float around. This sediment was then transferred through the siphon into the secondary, which partly explains why my beers have been so cloudy. With this pale ale, there was little to disturb the trub at the bottom of the primary, and the beer I racked into the Better Bottle was remarkably clear.

The full Better Bottle weighs about as much as an empty glass carboy. I placed the full Better Bottle atop the workbench in the basement, and I plan to leave it there for the bottling process in two weeks. I'm extremely optimistic about this pale ale: it smells great, it looks super clear, and it should be one of the better batches I've ever brewed.

I need to invest in some all-grain equipment, so that I can transition into more all-gran brewing. Much of the equipment I need I can make myself: a mash / lauter tun can be made from a picnic cooler and some copper pipe. What I'd really like, though, is a fancy conical fermenter to completely do away with racking to a secondary. :)

I brewed a Breakfast Stout last night. I felt a little pressured to get this brew completed, so that I could have some available for New Year's Eve. As such, my original plan was to do a traditional 3 gallon boil, and add ~2 gallons of water, as the instructions state, just so I could get it done quickly. I've only done that once, for the first beer I brewed. Since then, I've been using ~6 gallons of water in my boil, so that I never feel like I'm directly diluting the wort. The problem is, boiling 6 gallons of water takes a long time. I didn't want to be brewing all day.

Luckily, I was able to borrow a propane burner from my buddy Andy, who has just stepped up to brewing ten gallon batches of beer. I connected the burner to my propane tank in the back yard, and was able to get a healthy boil going in far less time than it ever would have taken on my stove. With the faster boil, I decided to use my normal 6 gallon procedure.

I made, in my opinion, two big mistakes last night, and I'm a little worried about how each may effect the flavor of my beer. In all reality, I don't think either is really going to ruin it. I was just in a (self-imposed) rush, and the process suffered as a result.

First, I didn't crush the specialty grains very well. I only summarily crushed the Simpson’s Roasted Barley, and didn't crush the flaked oats at all (in fact, I don't even know if I was supposed to). I don't think that will cause too much of a problem, but it's something about which I'm not really happy. I should have taken my time, and done it right.

The second problem was that I didn't account for just how much of my water would disappear in the form of steam. Brewing outside, in the cold, resulted in a lot more boil off than I had expected. When I poured the wort into my primary fermenter, I had to add an extra gallon of tap water. It's not the adding of water that was the problem, exactly. Rather, it was the use of tap water. I would have preferred to use distilled water, for a cleaner addition. I had even intended to buy some earlier that day, but my schedule got away from me. Again, I don't think this will actually ruin my beer, but it was clearly the result of me rushing through the process.

For my birthday in June my dad and my sister bought me a kegging setup, so that I can keg my beer. I've kegged two batches, and loaned the gear to a buddy so that he could keg a batch. I've decided that, in general, I would much rather keg than bottle my beer. Not only is it a lot faster to fill the keg than it is to fill bottles, it allows me to enjoy the fruits of my labors much quicker, through the magic of forced carbonation.

Usually, I leave my beer in the primary fermenter for a week, then transfer it to a carboy for two weeks. Then, if I bottle, it's another two weeks in the bottle before it's sufficiently carbonated and ready to drink. Kegging lets me reduce the carbonation period to two or three days. With my Breakfast Stout, I'm planning to leave the beer in the primary for two weeks, and skip the use of the carboy, instead transferring the beer directly to the keg. This is a marked diversion from my normal process, but it's one with which I'm comfortable for a couple of reasons.

First, I'm in a rush to get this beer to friends. If I use a carboy for two weeks, I'll miss my self-imposed deadline of New Year's Eve. Yes, I waited way too long to brew this batch: I should have started at the beginning of the month.

Second, I don't think this is a particularly complex beer. It had only a single hop addition, and not a lot of grains, so I don't think the flavors need to blend quite as much as some other recipes might. Also, it's a low alcohol beer, so I don't expect quite as much from this as I might from a higher-alcohol brew.

Third, I'm not opposed to experimenting a little bit. If I always follow the recipe guidelines exactly, I'll never really learn the kinds of tricks that may yield different results. As long as the beer isn't infected, I don't mind straying from the directions a bit: it should still be a perfectly quaffable beverage, and I'll have learned how cutting some corners effects the outcome.

Hopefully the Breakfast Stout will be an enjoyable beverage. If not, I'll chalk it up to a learning experience. Either way, I know that the next time I brew I'll be sure to plan ahead a little better.

I bottled my third batch of beer last Sunday, and brewed my fourth batch of beer on Wednesday.

The third batch was a smoked porter, the kit for which I obtained from The Winemaker's Shop. As with the previous two batches, my friend Andy helped me brew. We made a few small changes in our brewing process for this one. Most notably, we elected to use distilled water, rather than tap water, when boiling the wort. This likely won't have a very big effect on the flavor, and was mostly done from a "why not?" attitude. The other major change to our process was the addition of a digital thermometer. For the prior two batches, we'd been winging it with respect to temperature as we cooled the wort before pitching the yeast. The first time, we cooled it too much, and the yeast took longer to ferment the beer. The second time we simply got lucky. For the porter, though, we carefully monitored the wort as we chilled it, and made sure that we didn't pitch the yeast until we were within the 70-75 degree range.

The bottling process was tedious, as usual, but working on it with a partner makes the whole thing much smoother, and far more entertaining. Andy and I laughed and giggled almost the whole time. I can't imagine bottling alone.

On Wednesday I brewed my fourth batch of beer, the Northern Brewer Single Hopped Best Bitters. Brewing the SHB2 was not particularly different from any of the other brews I've done. The big difference is that the kit included dry malt extract, rather than liquid. This was my first experience with DME. I found it to be slightly easier to deal with than LME, and plan to look for more DME kits in the future. (I'm not interested in stepping up to all-grain brewing yet, thanks.)

This batch is specifically intended to be kegged, rather than bottled. My sister and dad pitched in and got me a keg, CO2 canister, regulator, and associated hoses and couplings, so that I can enter the wonderful world of kegged beer. I wanted to brew this batch as quickly as possible so that it would be ready for consumption in time for the upcoming Habari Party.

My buddy Chris came over to lend moral support as I brewed the SHB2. He's a homebrewer himself, and has only ever kegged his beer. I picked his brain about his kegging and carbonation strategies, and learned a few good tricks: connect the CO2 to the beer out line to force carbonate faster: the beer out line goes down to the bottom keg, forcing the CO2 to rise up through the entire volume of beer. When carbonation is complete, remove the CO2 line from the beer out line and connect it to the gas in line as normal to maintain pressure. Neat!

I shared with Chris the secret of my wort chiller, which is nothing more than 50' of coiled copper tubing, some reinforced plastic hose, and a coupler to connect the hose to my shower head. One can spend a pretty penny on a commercial wort chiller, which will no doubt look nicer; but my D-I-Y chiller costs less and is every bit as functional. When my boil is done, I move the brewpot to my bathroom, connect it to the shower, and run cold water through it. It dumps directly into the bathtub. It takes about 30 minutes to bring the wort temperature down to a range suitable for pitching yeast (I'm usually impatient at this step, and pitch the yeast when the wort is still a wee bit hot.) The next time I brew, though, I'm going to immerse the brewpot into a cooler filled with ice water, and then use the wort chiller, in an effort to cool the wort as quickly as possible.

It's always an interesting experience to talk process with other homebrewers. The focus of our various interests are all over the map. Tom homebrews, and he seems to take particular interest in the science of brewing. He takes meticulous notes, and works to minimize variations in his process, so that he can have a repeatable, reproducible brew should he strike upon a recipe that he really enjoys. He's also moving more toward all-grain brewing because he enjoys the process much more. I'm far less interested in the science, and not overly concerned about reproducible recipes. I'm in this purely for the result: beer! I enjoy drinking beer, and it's fun for me to know that I created the beer I'm drinking. As Chris watched me brew, he declared that I was way more "loosey goosey" with my process than he was (particularly when I declared "Yeah, that looks like a boil to me. Toss in the hops!") Ironically enough, Chris admits that he's loosey goosey when it comes to carbonating his beer: the gauge on his CO2 regulator was broken when it arrived, so he's always just guessed at how much pressure to use. "That's too much, that's too little" he said, as he pantomimed fiddling with a dial.

Adam recently pointed me toward The Scioto, Olentangy and Darby Zymurgists. I may try to get involved with them, but I worry that they'll be overly focused on process, and science, and the fun I get from homebrewing will be absent.

My porter will be ready to drink on Sunday, August 29. My SHB2 should be ready to drink on Friday, September 11. If you'd like to taste the former, let me know. If you'd like to partake of the latter, keep an eye on the Habari Party details.