So, after tasting my home brew earlier, I decided to brew up yet another batch. This time it is this Bee Cave Brewery Haus Pale Ale. Sounds like an awesome ale, nice and simple too.

mashed @ 150, 60 min, with just under 2 gals (2 gals will be fine for 5.5lbs of grain next time)
sparged @175 15 min, with 3.5 gals
boiled 60 min (hop additions as per recipe)
added DME and whirfloc at 15 min left on boil
Pre boil gravity: 1.028
OG: 1.054, a teeny bit high, but much better than last time (I must be learning something )

This time around, the finished wort definitely smelled hoppy, haven’t got that before, and since this recipe has a lot of hops, that’s a good thing.

Also, it looks like I’m gonna need to invest in a wort chiller as well, this cooling wort in the sink thing sucks

If I can stop watching movies later, I’ll probably bottle up the cream ale from a couple weeks ago, can’t wait to try that .

And a totally unrelated note, 1408…still creepy as hell.

So, I cracked my first bottle of my first brew today, actually, my second, but the first one was a week after bottling, and it really wasn’t very good, so it didn’t count Plus, that is way too early to open it, but I couldn’t resist trying. Anyway, this bottle (and the next five :hic:) was quite good. It isn’t the best beer I’ve ever had, but still quite tasty. It is woefully undercarbed, probably due to the crappy instructions on the carb pellets that I used. Next time I’ll do it the proper way and measure priming sugar, oh well, live and learn.

It also has a bit of a strange / strong aroma, almost like it has too much alcohol in it, but it tastes fine. Have to do some research to figure out what that’s about.

It really is quite good though.

Did a new brew yesterday. a Cream Ale from a recipe on homebrewtalk.com. I adjusted the recipe a bit for a partial mash and substituted a pound of Light Munich for a pound of the pilsner (local store only had a pound of the pilsner). For my first partial mash (and only second brew total) it went pretty good.

mashed with 1.5 gal water (60 min)
sparged 2.5 gal water (10 mins)
boiled for 60 min (pre boil gravity 1.034)
added DME and whirfloc with 15 min left on boil.
original gravity = 1.042 (low end of efficiency, but not bad for first PM)

In a couple weeks, we’ll see how it comes out.

So, I bottled my first brew tonight. Was definitely a learning experience. Reading what I needed to do, I assumed 30-60 mins at most. Haha, 2 hours later, we’re done

So, things I learned, 1. when everyone says to never bottle straight out of the primary, listen to them, you want a bottling bucket. 2. Never use Anchor Steam bottles (presumably all Anchor bottles), I used 4 of them, 3 had the capper stick to them, I had the top break off as I was trying to remove the capper (12 precious ozs. of beer down the drain ). 3. Use a bottling bucket. 4. The bottling cane is not completely air/water tight, major leakage as I capped some of the bottles.

Before bottling, I did taste the beer (tasted a bit watery) and took a gravity reading of 1.010 (kit said 1.012 – 1.014) I came out a bit low for some reason, but hopefully it should turn out ok. I’m hoping the watery taste is just because its warm and flat. Experienced brewers always say to let it condition in the bottles before judging, 2 or 3 more weeks, and we should know for sure. When in doubt, RDWHAHB .

BTW, Caprica and Human Target…both very good…you should watch them .

My first brew was Sunday (2 / 7). It was nothing fancy, just a True Brew kit (Nut Brown Ale). The guy at my lhbs switched out the yeast for me with an English Ale Yeast (I’ll have to ask later which one) after saying he’d hate to have my first brew not work right due to old yeast.

Anyway, brew went fine. I followed the instructions supplied with the kit, which were a bit vague, but will hopefully work. Next time I’ll follow better instructions and not use a kit. OG came out exactly where the kit said (1.0490), active fermentation (rapid bubbles in airlock) started approximately 7 hours after pitching yeast. As of right now (Wed afternoon), bubbles have slowed to about 1 ever 10 secs or so. I’ll take a gravity reading tonight after work and see where we really are.

I’ve recently started homebrewing beer and thought this might be a nice way for me to keep track of recipes I’m brewing and also notes and whatnot on what I’m doing and learning. Its really more of an experiment than anything, but if you want to read / comment, feel free to.