Brew #2 : Deadguy Ale Clone

I gifted myself a brewing kit last week and got the ingredients for a brew along with it. I’m a big fan of Rogue Brewery and have the recipe for a clone of the “Deadguy Ale” so this was an easy choice. It was recommended to me that I add a bit of gypsum to the wort boil so as to harden the water a little bit. The brew went really well on the new equipment, I got the burner up and running in minutes and the thing did a great job at bringing a full 5.5 gallons of water to boil quickly.

Notes on the brew:

Steep for 30min at 150F:
13oz Belgian Cara-Munich
13oz German Munich
7oz US 40L Crystal

Include and boil for 45min:
4lb Pale Malt Extract Syrup
4lb Dry Malt Extract
1oz Perle
2tsp gypsum

Include and boil for 15min:
0.25oz Perle
0.25oz Saaz
1tsp Irish moss

Cool to 75F and pitch European Ale yeast into 6.5ga carboy.

Original Gravity taken 1.063, the book called the target to be 1.064. (I hit the OG pretty well!)

Fat Tire Clone Bottled

Hoping that the Fat Tire clone brew has had enough time to age, I went ahead and bottled the brew today. I’m hoping that Wendie and I will be able to share a beer over the New Years, even though the beer might be a little “young”. After another week or two, the beer should be in full stride and tasting what I hope to be very close to Fat Tire.

Bottling is a little cumbersome, but it was still a good time.

1. I cleaned all 48 bottles with an oxygen based cleaner (kinda like Oxyclean) then sanitized the bottles in an Iodophor bath.

2. Boil bottle caps for 5 minutes. Let sit.

3. Boil 2c. water, add 3/4c. priming sugar, boil for a minute or two then cut the heat and cool the solution in a water bath to around 80F.

4. Add priming sugar solution to bottling bucket, and rack (siphon) the brew from the carboy to the bottling bucket.

5. Now I had a bottling hose which I used to siphon beer from the bottling bucket into each bottle. The hose attachment has a stopper which requires you to push in order to allow the brew flow (siphon) to continue. This way you can fill a bottle up, disable the flow and move to another bottle without splashing (very much) beer around.

6. I’d fill 6 or 8 bottles then cap them all, then arrange them in their boxes and repeat. All told, the process took about an hour for bottling. With another hour of prep and an hour of cleanup it took a little longer than I imagined it would but it really was a piece of cake anyway.

7. Now the bottles (complete with yeast consuming a little bit of fresh sugar) will sit in 65F - 70F while the yeast produce alcohol by consuming the bottling sugar. The yeast carbonate the beer in the bottle because they create Co2 by converting the sugars to alcohol. The beer should be fully carbonated in 10 - 14 days, that is if they don’t overcarbonate and explode. :)

Take a peek at a few pics! Yes, you might notice I’ve got a beer poured and I’m enjoying it. The closest thing I have to homebrew is Jubleale from Rogue Brewery.. mmm! Everywhere I’ve read and consulted with friends says that you must enjoy a beer while brewing and I don’t want to tempt the beer gods. :)

Merry Early Christmas to everyone!

www.flickr.com More of revgum’s photos tagged with bottling

Origami oh my!

I am absolutely amazed at where Origami is in this day and age. Paul sent me some links to Robert Lang’s Origami website. One of my favorite (there are many!) is the Silverfish.. you can see the ‘crease pattern’ so that you could fold your own. (good luck! email me if you actually make one of these!)

Robert Lang also spoke at OSCON 2005 in August to discuss how he has used computers to aid in Origami ranging not only from an art perspective but also things like a folding solar sail.