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

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