Thursday, June 12, 2008

Beer update

I'm probably the only one interested about this, but I'm happy to say that my beer is now racked into the secondary fermentor - a glass carboy with a bubbler valve on top full of vodka, wrapped in light protectant (posh description of taped up garbage bags :) ) to keep the skunkiness light reactions away from my precious precious brew. The krausen had fallen, and there was about 2 inches of berry sludge in the bottom of the primary fermenter that I left behind, all gungy strawberry bits and yeast. I lost a bit of beer, but I think the beer is better without it. I added some pectic enzyme powder to the carboy before I put the lock on so perhaps that will help clear the beer up a bit. If not I'll boil a bit of water and dissolve some more in and add it in a few days...we'll see. It takes a while for beer to clear up and it will take probably about 10 days before I can bottle it.
It smelled amazing...
I pulled the brilliant act of sterilising the carboy by filling it full of bleach water in the kitchen and then realising I couldn't lift it to empty it...so I had to siphon out some of the (delicious and flavourful) bleach water before I could rinse it and use it. Magnus managed to not mock me too much while I figured that out. J was working luckily, so the mocking was kept to a minimum. :)
I just wish I could find the jar so I could use the whatchamajig to read the specific gravity of it. I need to be sure it's done fermenting before I bottle it...I forgot to find it before I racked the beer...so no intermediate reading either. The scientist in me is wigging about that, but it'll be OK.
I heard it bubble this morning before I left...and grinned ear to ear. It's pathetic I know, but I really love making beer.
It makes me grin on the inside.
It's like baking or cooking an elaborate meal. You get the fun of making it and then get to enjoy it at the end.
Nice.

4 comments:

elasticwaistbandlady said...

So beer brewing is the alternate career path for those with super duper chemistry skills like you!

My daughters got a National Geographic kit last year and they made their own bubble gum and root beer. It wasn't the greatest but it was aight.

Magnus said...

I am very excited about the beer and look forward to learning how to make my own.

the Bag Lady said...

This all sounds very cool - don't forget to bring some with you to the firepit partay...

Anonymous said...

You can get a masters degree in brewing...I'm often so very tempted :)

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