I wasn't quite sure how to keep track of which bottle of homebrew is which, and then I had a good idea: I will write the date I bottled each bottle on the bottle cap with a Sharpie. It is so simple I don't know why I didn't think of it before.

But that didn't take care of the problem of remembering the specifics of each batch (i.e. ingredients, unusual or different techniques that may have changed the outcome, etc.) We bought a little notepad for this, but you can run of space on a page, it can get dropped in a pale of ale, etc. So I had a second follow-up idea to the first idea above: I am going to use this entry to keep track of each batch of beer by bottle date.

I will just keep adding information to this entry rather than adding a new entry with every batch.

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Brew Log

Brad's Summer APA
Brewed 7/3/09
IBU's: 31

1 lb crystal malt steeped 30 minutes
6 lbs Light Dry Extract
0.60 oz Cascade [5.40 %] (60 min) Hops
0.70 oz Columbus [12.20 %] (60 min) Hops
1.00 oz Amarillo [8.20 %] (5 min)
Safale US-05


Hop Scare IPA (kit from Midwest Homebrewing Supply)
brewed 4/26/2009
1 lb caravienne malt, steeped 30 minutes at 155 degrees
6 lbs liquid gold malt
2 lbs dry light extract
1 oz Warrier hops, 15.4% alpha, 60 min
0.5 oz Amarillo hops, 8.2% alpha, 30 min
0.5 oz Amarillo hops, 8.2% alpha, 15 min
1 tsp Irish moss 15 minutes
2 oz Cascade hops, 5.4% alpha, 4 min
Wyeast American Ale II Activator pack


Bottled 1/2/2009
6 pounds light DME
1 pound crystal malt 60L
norther brewer hops
1 ounce 60 min
1 ounce 40 min
1 ounce 10 min?
1 ounce dry hopped
Safale US-05

Bottled 11/15/08
Brewed on 10/25/2008
1 pound US crystal malt 30 Lovibond steeped 20 minutes at 165 degrees
5.3 pounds DME
1 ounce centennial - 60 minutes
.5 ounce centennial - 40 minutes
.5 ounce centennial - 30 minutes
1 ounce centennial - 15 minutes
1 teaspoon Irish moss - 15 minutes
1 ounce centennial dry hopped into secondary fermentor when racking after first week
2 7 gram packets of Cooper's Ale Yeast pitched dry directly into wort without proofing
Used wort chiller for first time. Cooled down to 70 degrees in about 20 minutes

11/1/2008 – Estimated bottling date of batch brewed on 8/11/2008.
OG 1.050
2.5 ounces Simcoe hops, continuous addition. 0.5 ounces dry hopped in secondary fermenter.
3.3 pounds Briess CBW non-diastatic unhopped golden light LME
3.3 pounds Briess CBW non-diastatic unhopped sparkling amber LME
Steeping grains: 1 pound Briess 60L crystal malt 6 row
1 teaspoon Irish moss - 15 minutes
1 pound Briess victory malt
Wyeast Northwest Ale yeast.
Primed with cane sugar.

Bottled 10/4/2008 – Ad hoc recipe. ~5.5% ABV
6.6 pounds amber LME
0.5 pounds light DME
1 ounce Cascade bittering
0.5 ounce Kent Golding bittering
1.5 ounce Kent Golding flavor
1 pack Munton's dry yeast to the primary, and another pack to the secondary when fermentation stopped.

Aerated the wort this time. Poured hot wort into primary fermenter with a bag of commercial ice.

After one week of bottle conditioning my first impression is that this turned out almost like a hopped up stout. Using all amber extract is too much for my tastes. It is still good though.

Bottled 8/22/2008 – Mead, basic dry. 10.4% ABV 12 pounds mesquite honey, Pasteur Champagne Red Star yeast, acid blend (citric/tartaric/malic)

Bottled 8/10/2008 – First solo batch. Used a Brewer's Best American Micro Style Pale Ale. 1.5 ounces Cascade hops, bittering 1.5 ounces Willamete hops, flavor. Added the yeast before the wort was properly cooled. I think it was about 130 degrees. Added a second packet of yeast to the secondary fermenter when fermentation stopped a few days after racking.

Bottled 6/7/2008 – Batch brewed at Bev-Art

I am officially sick of McCain saying "my friends" in every other sentence.

On the positive side though it makes for a good drinking game.

I have been really interested in trying Anheuser-Bush's first ale (as far as I'm aware) called Budweiser American Ale. I finally saw it in the store yesterday and picked up a six pack right away.

It is easily the best beer AB has ever produced, but it is just an OK beer compared to all of the other great beer out there. The carton says it is dry hopped with Cascade hops but I can just barely detect their aroma, and I detect no hop flavor. The hop bitterness is nice without being too overwhelming for people used to insipid macro lagers.

It wasn't dry, but it also wasn't overly malty or heavy. It had a nice body and mouth feel.

Another nice touch is the bottles have pry off caps rather than twist offs which means I can reuse the bottles for my homebrew. I expected to have to throw them away. A nice surprise.

Finally, a six pack was $7.50. For just $0.50 to a $1.00 more you can buy a really outstanding beer. If it was priced more like their other beers in the $6 range I might be more tempted to pick some up every now and then when feeling the pains of a bad economy, but at that price I don't think it's a beer I will be seeking out.

So overall it is a decent and approachable beer, but nothing too interesting. My hope is it will give people that normally just drink Budweiser-type lagers their first experience of a nice hoppy ale and be a "gateway drug" to the better beers that are out there. I am also hoping it will be showing up on tap in bars and restaurants that normally just have Bud on tap. If that was the best choice and I was feeling like a beer I would order one. If they just had Bud, Miller, etc. I would probably just pass.

I went to the homebrew shop on Sunday to get ingredients to brew an IPA next weekend and I am pretty excited about what I got.

The centerpiece of the batch is three ounces of Simcoe hops plugs! Their alpha acid content is 13.2%.

I also stepped up from dry yeast and got a Smack-pack of Wyeast Laboratories Northwest Ale strain. This is a link to the details of the yeast strain.

For steeping grains I got a pound of 60 Lovibond crystal malt and a pound of victory malt. I tasted a few grains of the victory malt before he crushed it and it has a very pronounced toasty bread taste. Lovibond is a measure of grain's darkness. The higher it is the darker it will make the beer. Crystal malt has a nice sweetness to help offset my Simcoe hops.

Finally I got a 3.3 pound can of amber liquid malt extract (LME) and one can of light LME.

On Saturday I finally bottled the batch of beer that my family drove 4 hours to help me brew 6 weeks ago on August 23, 2008. It is tasting really good and it is going to be really difficult for me to wait until this weekend to try a bottle. Friday after work I will bring a bottle up from my beer cellar and put it in the fridge so it will be ready to inspire me while I am brewing Saturday morning.

As a treat to myself for a productive weekend of yard work and chores I went to Whole Foods Sunday evening to try a new beer.

I picked up a 22 ounce bottle of Dreadnaught Imperial IPA from Three Floyds Brewing Company for $12. It turns out my instincts were good because it is the 17th highest rated beer on Beer Advocate! I didn't end up drinking it because I wasn't 100% in a beer mood and didn't want to waste it. Maybe I will save it for Friday night to enjoy while watching the presidential debates.

I also picked up a six pack of Mad Hatter IPA from New Holland Brewing Company. This is what I ended up having Sunday evening and I loved it! Might be my new favorite. At $8.50 I consider it to be a bargain. I almost walked out with a different six pack but I noticed that they had twist offs and I can't use those to bottle my homebrew, so I picked up my second choice and really lucked out. I can't wait for Tim-In-Law to try it and see what he thinks. I think it will compare well with his favorite Arrogant Bastard.

I've decided it would be better to make one post here rather than countless tearful phone calls to friends and family.

I have been diagnosed with bruxism.

I have been in regular contact with health care professionals and they are doing their best to help me. It is not contagious.

My head is still swimming with what this means, how my life will change, and if people are going to think of me differently.

It would mean the world to me if you see me in the store, at work, etc. to just treat me normally. Tell me about what is going on in your life, how your job is going, what you did over the weekend.. Don't cross the street and pretend you didn't see me. I am still the same person I was yesterday, just with a new cross to bear.

Thank you in advance for your support.

When I first started my journey into homebrewing I thought the goal was to try and make something that tastes close to what your favorite craft brewery makes.

Now I realize your favorite craft brewery's goal is to try and make something that tastes close to what homebrew tastes like.

Quick update: had a follow-up dentist appointment tonight to have a preemptive filling in some deep places that could collect debris. Very minor. She didn't even give me a shot, just a topical anesthetic. She also ground down a couple of points on a couple teeth so my bite meshes better. I could feel the improvement right away. Finally I was also fitted for a Nightguard because she said it looks like a might be grinding my teeth from side to side when I sleep. She said they will call me in a couple of weeks when it is ready to come in for a final fitting.

On the way home I stopped at Office Depot just to see if there is anything I couldn't live without. I couldn't find anything, but on the way out I stopped at the clearance table and found hand held staplers for $2 each, so I bought two.


Then I stopped at the library and got two beer history books and the movie 300.

I sat on the patio and read some of one of the beer books and had a delicious homebrew.

My favorite beer was Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, very respectable beer with an "A-" rating on beeradvocate.com. I think my first solo batch of homebrew I made on the patio is noticeably better than that, even though I made the two yeast mistakes and had to pitch additional yeast halfway through the fermentation. I am very encouraged. I can't wait to taste a sample of my latest batch when I rack this weekend.

Even though I have an awesome dentist and totally trust her I still get nervous and worked up before going in. When it's over I feel exhausted from stressing all day prior to the appointment. Therefore I am already brushed, PJ'd and in bed and it is not even 9:30 PM

Friday afternoon around my lunch break I jokingly sent my brother-in-law (who lives over four hours away) a text message telling him I would be brewing beer Sunday morning and he should come and help me.

To make a long story short about eight hours later mom, dad, sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew rolled into my driveway!

We all went to Portillo's to get some dinner and then went back home. Everyone else went to bed but Tim and I stayed up until a little after 1 AM talking about beer and we sampled 16 of them between the two of us. We have a lot of fun buying a big variety of individual beers and then splitting each one and see what we like and don't like.

Even though I then took a shower and didn't get to bed until 2 AM we were awake and brewing on the patio at 8 AM. I had a good time because that's what I was looking forward to doing all week anyway, and Tim seemed to enjoy it, but I think everyone else just indulged our beer enthusiasm. Thanks guys!

It was humid and getting warmer by the hour so by the time the beer was in the basement starting its fermentation and we got things a little cleaned up I was all hot and sweaty. I took a shower and then we went to Two Brothers Brewing Company for lunch, a few celebratory beers and a brewery tour.

After that we stopped at Binny's and picked up a large bottle of Chimay Blue and an out of this world outstanding large bottle of Avery Maharaja.

By the time we got home the lack of sleep, early start, heat and beer got to us and the guys stayed home and took a little cat nap and the girls drove to our downtown and walked around a bit.

For dinner we got some nice Chinese takeout which hit the spot and then we drank the two bottles of beer from Binny's.

This morning, Sunday, we got up and went to breakfast and then stopped at a local international grocery store and picked up a few fun things. Then we went back home, they had to pack up and they hit the road around 12:30 PM.

Since then I have just been doing little chores: laundry, straightening up, putting away brewing gear, etc. It was a really fun weekend that seemed to go too fast. I think part of the fun was that it was so last minute and spontaneous.

Somewhat related: last week I chilled one of the beers from my first solo batch and it seemed very light in body. Almost no mouth feel, but the flavor was good. I didn't care because it was my first batch and didn't expect it to be perfect. Thursday I brought another beer upstairs and put it in the fridge. While waiting for the family to show up I thought I would drink the now two-week-conditioned beer so the family wouldn't have to make polite comments about it. To my surprise the extra week of conditioning turned it into a super star! It was so good I immediately put eight of them on ice so they would be ready when they showed up after their drive, and I brought 6 more up and put them in the fridge before going to bed. Yeah beer!

The batch Tim and I brewed Saturday morning seems to be doing fantastic. The wort tasted good, and the piney hops smell that is coming out of the bubbling air lock now is just amazing. My original gravity was 1.060.

After the boil was done I added 10 pounds of store-bought ice per Alton Brown and it brought the temperature of the wort down to 70 degrees almost instantly. Great tip.

For aeration I used a half gallon plastic pitcher and scooped up water from my dechlorination bucket and then dumped it back in from about 6 feet up and did that for a few minutes and then added that water to the wort to bring it up to 5 gallons. I did not actually aerate the wort for fear of it oxidizing. So far the yeast seem to be digging it.

My plan is to brew my next batch of beer this Sunday morning. I wanted to do it Saturday but it is going to be hot, humid, and probably rainy. I have all of the ingredients I will need. Here is the list:

1 pound Gambrinus honey malt – crushed

3.3 pounds Northwestern Amber Liquid Malt Extract (LME)
3.3 pounds Briess Sparkling Amber LME

1 ounce Centennial hops (9.6% alpha acid)
2 ounce Kent Goldings hops (5.0% alpha acid)

Muntons' yeast

I also have a few pounds of Briess Pilsen light dried malt extract (DME). I am going to add some to the batch to see if it will give me extra body, but I am not sure how much I will add yet. Probably between 8 and 16 ounces, but I have to do some research. I will also use DME rather than priming sugar when it is time to bottle.

I will use all of the Centennial hops and half an ounce of the Kent Goldings hops for 60 minutes of bittering, and the remaining 1.5 ounce of Kent Goldings hops during the last 5 minutes of the boil for flavor and aroma.

For those keeping track I got the Briess Sparkling Amber LME and Briess Pilsen light DME in Toledo. The rest I got at Two Brothers Brewing Company.

I am kind of following the proportions that my first kit had, but not necessarily the ingredients. The kit had two cans of light LME, whereas this batch is amber, so it will be a darker beer and possibly sweeter. I think I will have an extra half ounce of hops more than the kit, but that should be OK because of the extra sweetness, plus I like hops.

I am just using dried yeast ($1 or $2) and not liquid yeast ($8) because I am still not confident yet, and if I screw up I don't want to waste money on premium yeast. If this one turns out good the following batch will have liquid yeast.

I'm looking forward to it! I will try to get all of my chores out of the way on Saturday so I can dedicate Sunday to beer and brewing.

I think I am going to buy this phone just because opening the box is so cool!

We bottled our first solo batch of beer 6 days ago and I couldn't wait a full week before trying a bottle. It turned out really good! I think it is on par with the batch we did with supervision at the beer class. It has less carbonation than the supervised batch because of pitching the yeast improperly, but it still gave me a little beer burp. I can't wait to see how it tastes after another week or two. Here is the obligatory video I took of the first pour.

Needle Nose thought my tool box was as good a place as any to rest his amazingly heavy head.

This is how I start sanitizing my beer equipment on brewing, racking or bottling days. This was taken on a racking day.

I have already added an ounce of iodophor to the carboy and am now adding 5 gallons of water. This will sanitize (not sterilize) the inside of the carboy which is what the beer will be racked into from the primary fermenter.



After the carboy is filled up I siphon it into a plastic container we got just for sanitizing. Doing this will sanitize the inside of the hose, and then I drop the whole hose into the container to sanitize the outside of it. We also put all of the equipment that will come into contact with the beer into the container.

I checked the specific gravity of the mead and beer tonight and the alcohol content of the mead is about 9.9% and the beer only changed a little bit since the last time I checked and it is between 4.2% and 4.4%.

The beer hasn't changed much because the fermentation really slowed down after I checked it last and I didn't add more yeast until just a few days ago on Friday. It took a couple days for the yeast to really get going again. Because of the way the beer is bubbling now I think it should be ready for bottling by this weekend.

You have to sanitize everything that comes into contact with your beer. The easiest way is to mix up five gallons of iodine solution in the fermenter and throw all of your equipment in there. That works great for most of my stuff but there are a few things that stick up well above the top of the bucket. Also on nights like tonight when I just need my thief and hydrometer it is wasteful to mix up a full five gallons of solution, but the thief is one of the long things that stick out over the top of the bucket.

Well I had a brainstorm and came up with the perfect solution. I went to the hardware store and bought one of those plastic troughs you use to wet wallpaper rolls. It cost $3 and one gallon of iodophor solution is the perfect amount to adequately cover everything. Here is a picture of it in action.



The thief is in the trough being sanitized and it is what I use to pull a sample out of the carboys for testing.

On the counter next to the trough is a racking cane. I don't use it because I bought an autosiphon, but the cane came with the bottle filler so I keep it just in case.

The next thing on the counter is the autosiphon. This is a racking cane inside of a tube with an airtight seal between the two. You pull the racking cane out and then push it back in and it automatically starts your siphon going. You don't have to suck on the end of the tube to get it going and contaminate things. HIGHLY recommended.

The last item is a food grade high temperature plastic stirring paddles for stirring the wort in the brew kettle.

I took this picture a couple weeks ago after I racked the beer from the primary fermenter to the carboy. The stuff in the bottom are the dissolved hop pellets and yeast hulls. The tube is the autosiphon with the flexible tubing attached to it and is of course what I used for the transfer.

Here is a picture of our mead and ale fermenting. The mead is in the carboy on the left and ale is on the right.



Notice the clarity of the mead. Last Wednesday I went downstairs to check on it and it still looked like lemonade. Completely opaque. I went downstairs on Friday and it was totally clarified! What a surprise. They have both been fermenting for three weeks. The beer is probably a little over 4% alcohol and when we checked the mead a week ago it was 8%, but the as vigorously as it has been fermenting I'll bet it could be over 10% now. I plan to check both within the next few days.

I didn't think a movie from my digital camera would have enough light or resolution to show the massive amounts of tiny bubbles that continuously rise to the surface day and night, but you can actually see it pretty well. The sound in the background is the air conditioner running. The mead is actually pretty quiet. At the end you can see a bubble of gas escaping in the air lock at the top.

I racked my beer again yesterday and checked the specific gravity. It went down only another point in the last week, but it tastes really good. It will still be very drinkable, just not as high of an alcohol content as it is supposed too. Actually that might make it a good summer beer! It is still around 4% ABV. I plan on bottling it next weekend. I think I am going to put a little yeast nutrient and yeast energizer in the fermenter today to see if that might help things along a bit.

We also racked our mead and checked its SG. It is at about 8% alcohol now! We drank the 6 ounce sample we needed to check the SG and it was so good we pulled another glass to drink. If it tastes that good now I think it will be amazing in a few months. It has a beautiful light straw color. We used Champaign yeast because we wanted a dry wine rather than a sweet one, and the Champaign taste is coming through nicely. We were going to make half of this batch still and half sparkling, but we think we might make it all sparkling now. Still not 100% sure yet, but that's what makes it fun.

After we took care of our 10 gallons of deliciousness we took the Two Brother's Brewery tour. I've done it once before with my parents but Amy had not taken it. Afterwards we were sitting in the tap house and I was trying a Cane & Ebel and think I have fallen in love with Simcoe hops. They are a fairly new variety introduced in 2000. I haven't seen them at my local homebrew shop and I think right now they are available mostly to commercial brewers. If I can't find them for my next batch I think I will try Cascade hops because I have read people describe Simcoe hops as Cascade on steroids.

The brewery also has a homebrew shop and I picked up 3.3 pounds of amber liquid malt extract for my next batch of beer and Amy got a large can of sterilized peach puree for an upcoming batch of mead. I think for the other half of the malt in my next beer I will use a powdered malt extract, but I don't know if I want that to be an amber or a light. I still have to do some more research. I am thinking about buying a little bit more than I need for the batch and use the extra as priming sugar rather than corn sugar.

If you describe the homebrew process to somebody it sounds like a lot of work and complexity, and it is if you had to do it all at one time. But because brewing and racking and bottling all happen on different days separated each by several weeks it is really not that bad. I actually look forward to each process. Each process takes about two hours from start to finish. Brew day probably takes a little longer because you have to boil your wort for one hour, but that is more just relaxing than actually working.

I had to go into work today for a little bit to check on a database that had been updated yesterday, and Amy is in Kansas to see a patient for the day. I am going to start some laundry, put away some brewing gear from yesterday, and do some puttering yard work. Don't know if I will cut the grass, but I plan on at least spraying and/or digging some weeds, pick up dog poop, light pruning, and maybe organize the garage a little bit. My aquarium has not had a partial water change in WAY too long. I should do that today too. Oh yeah, a bike ride would also be a good idea. The weather here is perfect today.

Just got back from a 9.8 mile bike ride. Had a Smithwick's and a Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA (I'm feeling good!) I'm going to take a shower and then check the specific gravity of the beer we brewed last week. I did two things wrong with it. 1) I did not aerate the wort and 2) pitched the yeast while the wort was too warm. The first day the airlock was bubbling almost continuously. After that it was bubbling about every 3 minutes or 3.5 minutes which I think seems on the slow side. I think it stopped bubbling today. Checking the specific gravity will tell me how far along it is to being beer. I might be surprised and it is already beer. It could go either way. We'll see.

I got this clipping in the mail today from my Dad. I HAVE to try this place. Any restaurant that boasts multiple menu items with "1 pound of bacon" in the same ad has to be good, right?


click on image to enlarge

Last week I went for a 9.7 mile bike ride and tonight I rode for 11.7 miles. My legs could have gone more, but my butt was getting saddle-sore.

Today Mitch is a big boy and is 5 years old! In honor of his birthday I thought I would post a video of him I took a few weeks ago but never got around to posting.

I was trying to get him riled up to play by making growling sounds and thumping the bed. It works sometimes, but this time all he did was stick his tongue out of the side of his mouth. I was laughing so hard I couldn't keep the camera steady.



My beer was going gangbusters the first day, but today it slowed to a bubble every 30 to 40 seconds. I did some looking on some homebrew forums and it might be because I did not aerate the wort enough before I pitched the yeast. I also added the yeast when the wort was possible too warm. You are supposed to get the temperature down close to 70 degrees, but I added it when it was 105 degrees. I hope to rack it to a carboy Friday are Saturday. I think I read somewhere that doing that can sometimes give the yeast a little nudge to start working again. I will also measure the specific gravity again to see how far along it is. (i.e. how much of the sugars have been converted to alcohol)