Random Idea at Work

Oooh... New idea at work! I'm going to make some Wild Rice Brew this harvest season!

Next on Deck

So I couldn't sleep last night, and as my mind wandered about what gadgets to get next, or what new brews to do. I thought about the size of the All Grain sculpture I'd like to have, and perhaps I could contract Leah's bro Nate out to build it for us! Nate is a savant when it comes to working with his hands. The work he did with our wedding arbor was amazing.

Nate, You Rock!

Amidst my futile dreams of awesome brew equipment, I thought of a new brew to do! I would like to do a Organic Brown Earth Day Ale for April 22, 2009. The recipe hasn't been started yet, but I'm working on it. Ideally I would have started this brew last month so it would be ready for Earth Day, however I didn't think of it until now! So instead we will brew the batch on Earth Day instead. Next year, we'll tweak the recipe to our liking and brew it for Earth Day! When we start coming up with labels, I would like to include some form of helpful tip that the drinker could use to help save the environment on each bottle. This is similar to the bottoms of Mickeys caps. I think this is a good idea, but obviously time will tell. However this definitely reminded me of a quote from Tim.... Peace and Beer Brewing- "Brewing Good Vibes since 2008". (I love this name for a brewery) (Right now it's Tim and my hypothetical business brainchild) :-)

I think I tend to think of names before actually coming up with a recipe to go with them.... I compare this to Duder sometimes coming up with the music before the lyrics. I'm definitely not comparing my feeble attempt at brewing to the amazing skills Duder has, just comparing similar styles. I've thought of a brew name I like. Gunnel Jumper Ale. Gunnel Jumping is the process by which someone who is stranded in a canoe without any paddles can get to shore. He/She stands on the sides of the canoe (gunnels) and jumps up and down without going airborne. This pushes the canoe forward. I've done this before in Boy Scouts, and it's actually quite fun to try! Just make sure you're in deep enough water... This brew name reminds me of the time I spent growing up in the Northwoods in WI.

I've also thought a great name for a brew would be Nuanaarpuq. It's an ancient Inuit word which roughly translates to "Taking Extravagant Pleasure in Being Alive." It's a word that could describe how everyone would like live. When I think of beer, I think of good taste, good friends, and good fun. It combines the grains that Earth gave us with the friends that God gave us with the social interactions we give each other. I definitely would like approval from the Inuit community before using this as a commercial brew name, but if I did, I would want to donate a portion of its profits to environmental protection efforts in Northern Canada.

Prost!


Jeremy

Apfelwein

For our next batch, we've done some Apfelwein. We put just under 6 gallons of White House All Natural Apple Juice into our new 6 gallon Better Bottle, along with 2 lbs of corn sugar and some Montrachet yeast from Red Star. Our estimated ABV will be 8.6%. This will ferment out quite dry. I want to carb up the whole batch, but I think I'll try to sweeten up half of it. Since any sugar I add to the mixture will just boost the ABV or carb the bottle, I'm going to use some Splenda (non fermentable sugar) to try to sweeten half the batch. If this tastes as good as the reviews indicate...we'll be making a new batch before long! The nice thing about this recipe is you can have 6 gallons of apfelwein ready for less then $35! Just about $6 a gallon

Apfelwein for May Delivery!

Prost!

Jeremy

Bottling Time!

Well our first brew is ready to be bottled! The first brew was the Kolsch. The whole process went quite smooth. We really didn't have any mishaps. However, I can definitely say we need a bottle tree! It would make the process that much simpler. We ended up with 46 bottles. We'll wait at least a week, and give one a try to see if it has carbed up. If not, we'll wait another week, and so on. From what I've read, a lot of brewers follow the 1-2-3 rule. 1 week in the primary, 2 weeks in the secondary, and 3 weeks in the bottles. This obviously is just a guideline, and every brew will be unique. The guys at work have been harassing me as to when they get their beer, so it feels good to finally be getting a final product to show to people.

Capped and Ready to Go!

Brewing is definitely fun....but I found the biggest drawback.... THERE AREN'T ENOUGH BOTTLES! Even with the empties from the local bar, we're definitely not going to have enough to produce all the alcohol we would like. At least once we get a good stockpile, we shouldn't have to worry about it anymore. But, I'm definitely excited to try to keg this stuff. That will take a lot of work out the process.

Prost!

Jeremy

Partial Mash

I think that in order to improve at something you like to do, it helps to have an area of focus. Rather then trying to broad brush all your efforts everything, I believe it's more beneficial to try to specialize in an area. Granted, if you focus all your time on specializing you will limit yourself. The trick is to find a good balance on overall knowledge while at the same time perfecting your craft in a specialized area.

The speicalized area I want is Wheat. Since I had my first Steven's Point White, I've always been attracted to the unique flavor and characteristics of wheat beers. From the Belgian Wit to the German Hefe, I've grown to love most wheat beers that I've tried. My favorites being Hoegaarden and Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse.

Leah and I finished this Franzi boot off in the Dells!

However, one problem arises with this. The basic extract brewing we've done now, will not work as well with some of the grains needed to produce these beers. I'm going to have to make a Partial Mash Tun. Since Leah and I cannot afford (let alone fit in our house) an all grain system. I think this is a great way to get into more of the grain aspects of brewing without the money and space of all grain.

The blueberry wine was bubbling like crazy last night! Since this is our first primary fermentation in a glass container, it was neat to see the CO2 being produced and escaping.

I also wanted to post a picture of our guest bedroom/secondary fermentation chamber! The Kolsch is on the right and the Irish Red on the left. (The pic looks darker then it really is.)

Organic Blueberry Wine

The nice thing about learning to brew your own beer, is that it opens you up to brewing your own wine too! There are obviously some differences, however the basic premise is the same. Sugar + Yeast = Alcohol. So Leah and I decided we would try our hand at becoming vintners.

We just received a package from Midwest Supplies. It included 2 new 1 gallon jugs. We wanted to try some wine, however we didn't want to go the 5 gallon route. So we thought that these could allow us to experiment a little bit more. It look as though our "brew couple" Tim and Kalli, have also purchased some experimentation vessels as well.

We started off with 4 bottles of Full Circle organic blueberry juice. The starting gravity on just the juice was 1.068. We figured that most of that sugar is likely simple sugar, it should ferment nearly all of it, leaving us with a FG close to 1.000. This would leave us with a ABV between 8 and 9%. The achohol tolerance of this yeast was I believe around 14%, so the juice should ferment out completely dry. We rehydrated our Lalvin D47 yeast, and threw it in the vessel with the juice. We figured we would not have to boil the juice because it came sealed in its containers. Low and behold less then 12 hours later. Our airlocks are bubbling away! We hope to eventually arrest the yeast after we've reached our FG, and then sweeten it up. (We both are not a fan of dry wine).

We also racked our Red Ale to its secondary fermenter. The final gravity ended up being 1.012. Unfortunately this is just a point or two higher then our expected FG. Beer Smith gave us our ABV of 4.7%, however the beer tasted quite watered down. Apparently others have seen this with the Brewers Best Red Ale Kit. However, I know we steeped the grains long enough. We shall see. I've read that a lot of times uncarbonated beer can taste quite thin. It has 2 weeks at least in the secondary and then 3 in bottles, so hopefully the flavor will shine through with age.

I've been reading more and more about the Kolsch style ales. Come to find out the proper way to age this beer is pretty much to lager it after the fermentation is complete. This will give you the true flavor of this beer. For our Kolsch though, we've had it in the secondary for over two weeks at room temperature. Since we're already so excited about this beer, we're not going to lager it. Instead, I've ordered the grains and malts, and we are going to try to replicate the beer, however this time, I'll lager it in the new fridge. This way in a few months, we can compare the beers to find out how the flavor changes from the lager. We'll

When we racked the Kolsch out of the primary I did notice a appley sort of flavor at last taste (It tastes like Budweiser). This is usually a sign of acetaldehyde. This will hopefully be converted out to ethanol, and this flavor will mellow out. We shall see though. The Kolsch gets bottled next week.

Also next week, we're going to start a batch of Edwort's Apfelwein. This recipe has produced over 12,000 gallons on the Home Brew Talk Forums, so I have to try it. Everyone raves about it.

Prost!

Jeremy

First Post!

Here is my first attempt at starting a blog. I'm not much of a writer, so I'll see how much I keep up with this. However, I have been really getting into the brewing! Hopefully my excitement from that keeps me active on here. This blog will mainly contain the Schulz family brewing adventures...although I'm sure other useless ramblings will find there way here as well.

Leah and I got our home brewing kit for the wedding from our good friends Matt and Laura Smith, and Katie and Nereus (soon to be) Dooley. After Leah moved down here, it sat in our guest bedroom for the winter... Feburary rolled around, and I pulled it from the spare bedroom to our living room. We decided that sometime that month, we were going to finally start using it.

We started doing our research, since neither of us had any experience with this before. I found a great site that had in depth videos of the process: HomeBrewers.com

Right about the same time, one of my best friends from college, Timmy "Stubby" Axford, contacted me, and discussed the brewing Kalli (his wife) and he has been doing. They started their own blog: Northland Brewery. Tim's enthusiasm, as well as ours fueled us to get brewing right away!

We found out we have a local home brewing supply store, Home Brew Haus, in New Bern, NC. I went there one afternoon, and picked up a Kolsch Brewers Best kit. I've read that the standard dried yeast that comes with kits like this can be unreliable from batch to batch. In order to make sure I could get consistent results, I purchased a vial of German Ale/Kolsch (White Labs #WLP029) yeast.

Our first brewing experience I think went about as good as it could have on Feburary 28th. The starting gravity for the wort was 1.046, which was in the range recommended by the instructions. We didn't have any commercial sanitizing sollution, so we used a bleach/vinegar solution, to achieve an adequate sanitation. The yeast took over 24 hours to get started which scared me a little bit that I had done something wrong, but later that evening, the airlock started going like crazy.

We kept the Kolsch in the primary for a week, after the final gravity read 1.010 for a few days in a row. We then racked it to our secondary fermenter to clarify the beer a bit (but mostly to make room for our next brew!). The sample I stole from the primary smelled and tasted great! I can see how the patience part of this, can drive a person crazy!! I was thirsty for more!

Our second brew we started a week after the first. It was a Brewers Best Red Ale. We did have a few problems in our grain steeping this time. We lost control of the temperature (over 170 F), and likely extracted some tannins from the grain. This could lead to a harsh bittering of the beer, however from what I've read, for extract brewing, this could have a minimum effect. The rest of the process went great, and we used a English Ale yeast. The Red Ale goes into the secondary tomorrow. I've already smelled it, and it smelled great, so I'm excited to taste it when we rack it.

I need a cool sign off phrase,

Jeremy