On the first day of June, I transferred my English Brown Ale from the fermenter to the bottles. It had been in the fermenter for 10 days, and the airlock hadn't bubbled in over a week. I didn't take two separate hydrometer readings to ensure that it was no longer fermenting, so hopefully I didn't just create a couple dozen 22 oz. beer grendades. Actually, I was only able to fill 21, 22 oz. bottles, because of a miscalculation during the initial boil. Our well water here is borderline undrinkable, so I bought five gallons of spring water. Unfortunately, I boiled about a gallon of water off. On the bright side, I should have some nice strong beer. I think this batch will turn out to be drinkable, but it'll probably be mediocre. I made a number of mistakes that a more experienced brewer wouldn't have made: the aforementioned water mistake, letting the
trub get into the fermenter, not cooling the
wort low enough, not putting a wet towel around the wort to keep it cool, and causing a bit too much aeration during the bottling stage. According to the all-knowing internet, it's hard to make a terrible batch of beer, even for a mistake-prone noobster such as myself. I'll be putting that to a test in a couple of weeks, when I crack the first one open.
2 comments:
Hey, we just found out our neighbor grows his own hops. For two years he's had this really tall trellis made with PVC and string -- we couldn't figure out what it was. Finally, we asked last week. They are also brewing their own beer. Can't wait to try yours, Marty!
Well, the first batch should be done in a couple of weeks, but that's kind of a trial batch. I'm going to start on the second batch within the next couple of days, and that one should be an improvement now that I have some experience under my belt.
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