Music for the weekend!

Stay Crunchy!

Great Song...

I was not a huge fan of the movie, Jeff Bridges was amazing, but the movie just did not stand up to the hype for me, but this song is one of the best movie songs that I have heard in a long time, right up there with the Into the Wild soundtrack.  Enjoy!

Furious Clone in the bottle and some tips

I was able to bottle the furious clone on Saturday.  It took about 2 hrs as I had to clean and sanitize a bunch of bottles and I had to remove the labels on about 50% of them.  Bottling went smooth and fairly quick.  I ended up with 12 22oz bottles and 25 12oz bottles.  Now it is just two weeks and I can drink it!  I cannot wait and I will update this post with the tasting.

A helpful tip for the fellow brewer, I bought a 18 gallon HDPE tub on a whim at home depot for $6 thinking that I could use it to store equipment and such, and it has really come in handy.  It came in handy on brew day, but where it really shines is bottling.  I put about 5 gallons of warm water in it and also added some one step cleaner.  The labels and most of the glue came right off of the bottles.  This made it so easy to clean them up, just a wipe with a clean scrub sponge and the glue was totally gone.  I rinsed the bottles with a bottle jet prior to putting them in the one step.  After the bottles were cleaned, I emptied the tub, put the now cleaned bottles back in it and poured in 10 gallons of water and 2 oz of star-san over the bottles.  I know that I just could have used them after the one-step as that is a sanitizer as well, but due to the amount of glue that was most likely dissolved I decided to rinse the bottles again with the bottle jet and then use the star-san.  While it was probably overkill I just didn't want to lose my first batch to infection. 

On another note, I have saved up some money and I am now focused on brewing my second batch of cream ale and then ditching the extract brewing in favor of all grain.  I am going to go the cooler route and I am going to purchase the round 10gallon Rubbermaid cooler.  I am debating if I should just bite the bullet and get a sparge arm, but I don't have a hot liquor tank and I think that I am just going to start with the batch sparge or fly sparge and see how it goes.  Expect much more on this as the parts are purchased.  I cannot wait to relax and have a homebrew!!!

Walks like a duck...

And smells like furious!  I checked in on the dry hopping last night, removed the stopper/airlock on the better bottle and took a good whiff...man does this beer smell great!  The dry hop has really gives the furious aroma that I love, I have a feeling that this is going to taste close to furious but a little lighter bodied and a little less sweet due to the extract fiasco mentioned in the brew day post.  I am planning on bottling at some point this weekend.  Hopefully on Saturday if I am not stuck at work...The other thing that is planned for some time next week is the brewing of the cascade hopped cream ale.  I think that I am going to see how it goes and if it needs a little kick I may stop and get an ounce of Cascades to dry hop that with as well.  Stay tuned!

Fercious Dry Hopping

The furious clone has been racked to secondary for dry hopping.  I am going to dry hop for 10 days then bottle it.  It was my first time using Star-San and wow is it foamy...but don't fear the foam!  The racking went smooth and all seems well.  The beer is fairly clear but I am hoping that the time in secondary will do it some good as it does have some haze.  But as long as the final product is tasty who cares!  It smells tasty and it will be in the bottle in a little over a week.  Cannot wait to tase it!

Great Cover Part Deux

Sorry about the commercial at the beginning. I have got to say that this is probably one of my favorite Stones songs, this and can you hear me knocking. Taj is a legend in his own right and this combination is amazing to say the least. Enjoy!

A Great Cover Tune

Fercious Update 2

I did not rack to secondary.  On Saturday I raised the temp to 70 to get any last activity completed.  I took a gravity reading last night and it was 1.018 so it is getting close.  I will rack to secondary either sometime this week or on Saturday.  Saturday is the most likely as I have to do quite a bit of cleaning and sanitising and I doubt that i will have time during the week.

Fercious Update

Airlock activity has greatly slowed, and I have raised the fermentation temp a few degrees.  Fermentation strated at around 62-63 ambient air temp and yesterday I raised it to 63-64. This weekend I plan on taking a gravity reading to see where fermentation is at. If the gravity is close to the expected FG then I will rack into secondary (5 gallon Better Bottle) and dry hop for 7 days. After reading lots of brew forums and getting some advice from other sources it may seem like I am rushing a bit. There is tons of controversy amongst home brewers over the racking to secondary and when to do it and do the risks outweigh the benefits. Well, I am just going to listen to my hydrogmeter and see what it tells me. If I am close then I am going to rack, if not I will give it a little bit more time in primary. I am a little impatient as this is the first batch of beer all on my own, but I am just going to see what the batch tells me and go with it. Expect more updates and pics if time allows.

Greatest movie of all time?

First Brew Day...

Here are some pictures of the first brew day.  I definately learned quite a bit and now I wish I would have done an easier brew for brew number one, but hey, as long as there is no contamination it should be at the minimum drinkable.  The biggest thing that I learned is that my kettle only hold 7 gallons.  I was shoot ing for 6.5 and forgot to factor in the amount of extract that needs to get put in so I over shot the water which lead to a much lower gravity than I was hoping for as I was not able to get all of the mixed extract in the kettle, painful lesson but I definately will never repeat that mistake again.  Fermentation started just fine and was active the next morning so I think it will be alright.  Here are the pics:

Steeping the Crystal 50/60

Hops all ready to go

The boil..bad pic it was rolling but looks flat here

Racking to Primary and getting ready to pitch

The sweet wort is aerated and yeast has been pitched.

All in all it was successful, the wait is killing me but hopefully I will know in about a month if I did alright!