First for the soda. The rootbeer project is complete. I tried it yesterday morning and it had a good amount of fizz. When you're staring at an 18, you know it could get better, but you could bust. No blackjack, but as I understand it, yeast carbonation yields less head than forced carbonation. There was only so much fizz I was going to get.
Next time I will let it ride a bit longer instead of the in-out, in-out of the fridge action. Probably shocked the yeast. I will trust the plastic bottles more next time since I know what to look for now.
On to the beer.
So I just took the specific gravity reading on the beer for the first time. We are sitting at 1.011, so it should be close to done. I will check it again on Saturday to see if it has changed. If not, then the beer is safe to condition and bottle.
Conditioning will be accomplished with a small package of corn sugar, a siphon and the bottling bucket. I mentioned earlier that I was having trouble with connecting the spigot to the bucket. I was feeling a bit discouraged that I was not clever enough to figure out why the hole and the end of the threads on the spigot were exactly flush, instead of stopping at the hole.
The folks at More Beer (www.morebeer.com) were quick to point out that they had mis-drilled holes in some of the buckets, and suddenly I was no longer stupid. They provided a corrected bucket, with apologies, and a new spigot, and I was on my way.
So if the reading on the hydrometer is still 1.011, then I will siphon the flat beer out of the glass carboy, and into the bottling bucket, leaving as much debris, or trub, at the bottom of the glass as I can. To augment my success here, and to minimize oxidization, I will transport the carboy to the counter where I will siphon it ahead of time. This way the trub has time to settle to the bottom.
Once transfered to the bottling bucket, I'll add the corn sugar and let it dissolve.
The yeast will eat the sugar and produce enough sugar to carbonate the beer, but not enough to create excessive pressure.
Now, after the measurement has been taken, I have this tall slender beaker of flat beer, and I'm thinking that I've been wondering if the beer made it through OK or was tainted by bacteria. So I look at the beaker. I give it a whiff. Smells OK. It's flat.... but it's still beer...
What the hell, I gave it a taste....
WOW! It wasn't my recipe, so I can only take credit for the execution (along with Frank) but damn that tastes pretty good.
It has more of a hoppy taste than malty, but I can taste the malt. The hoppyness was like an IPA, but there was a mellowness underneath it, remeniscent of Buffalo Bill's (http://www.buffalobillsbrewery.com/brewery.asp) Tasmanian Devil.
It will be interesting to see what it tastes like after 2 or 3 weeks in the bottle. I was careful to soak the tubing I used to extract the sample for the hydrometer in a bleach solution, and to cap the carboy again once it was done. Would hate to contaminate the beer now that I've come this far.
Tomorrow I will discuss the search for bottles....
Showing posts with label carbonation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label carbonation. Show all posts
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Monday, January 5, 2009
Brewer's log, star date 1-5-2009
We tried the rootbeer in the morning, and it was not quite ready. The taste was pretty good, but it finished a bit on the watery side. Next time, i will replace some of the sugar with honey and see what that does. I am also curious to see what agave syrup would do to the flavor.
We let it carbonate at room temp for the morning, but we were very concerned about the bottles breaking, so my wife put them in the fridge at 11 a.m. Yeast eat sugar and produce Co2 as a by-product. With a capped and sealed bottle, the Co2 has nowhere to go. The resulting pressure forces the gas into the root beer, and now you have carbonation. In beer, the yeast have just enough sugar to produce just enough Co2 to carbonate the beer. But root beer is heavy on the sugar. Left to it's own devices, the yeast would keep eating and making Co2, until the pressure was too great for the glass to hold. The glass would give way, in spectacular fashion, leaving my kitchen full of sharp and sticky shrapnel.
I had taken a few bottles to work for some alternate opinions, and as it turned out, it was still on the flat side. We made the best of it. I got some ice cream- a vanilla honey bee flavor- and made root beer floats; screw Monday....
My wife took the bottles back out at my request, and at 9pm they were a little better, but not quite done. I'm not going to leave them out over night (see above), but I think they will need a little more time on the counter during the day tomorrow to reach their peak.
*****
The beer is gurgling at 36 second intervals. i was expecting it to slow down more quickly than that. I will have to go into the beer shop again to ask about the spigot on the bottling bucket, so I'll ask if there are any leading indicators that the batch may be contaminated. I mean, it's at least theoretically possible to have a successful batch the first time out of the chute, right?
I have added two more bottles to the collection; these with the rubber sealed pop-tops. They came from some fancy French sparkling lemonade. They are 33 oz, so I don't want too many of them, but I do like the feel of pushing the little hinges with both thumbs, and hearing the loud pop and seeing the little cloud of gas rise from the mouth of the bottle. I don't know if I can wait 3-4 more weeks.
We let it carbonate at room temp for the morning, but we were very concerned about the bottles breaking, so my wife put them in the fridge at 11 a.m. Yeast eat sugar and produce Co2 as a by-product. With a capped and sealed bottle, the Co2 has nowhere to go. The resulting pressure forces the gas into the root beer, and now you have carbonation. In beer, the yeast have just enough sugar to produce just enough Co2 to carbonate the beer. But root beer is heavy on the sugar. Left to it's own devices, the yeast would keep eating and making Co2, until the pressure was too great for the glass to hold. The glass would give way, in spectacular fashion, leaving my kitchen full of sharp and sticky shrapnel.
I had taken a few bottles to work for some alternate opinions, and as it turned out, it was still on the flat side. We made the best of it. I got some ice cream- a vanilla honey bee flavor- and made root beer floats; screw Monday....
My wife took the bottles back out at my request, and at 9pm they were a little better, but not quite done. I'm not going to leave them out over night (see above), but I think they will need a little more time on the counter during the day tomorrow to reach their peak.
*****
The beer is gurgling at 36 second intervals. i was expecting it to slow down more quickly than that. I will have to go into the beer shop again to ask about the spigot on the bottling bucket, so I'll ask if there are any leading indicators that the batch may be contaminated. I mean, it's at least theoretically possible to have a successful batch the first time out of the chute, right?
I have added two more bottles to the collection; these with the rubber sealed pop-tops. They came from some fancy French sparkling lemonade. They are 33 oz, so I don't want too many of them, but I do like the feel of pushing the little hinges with both thumbs, and hearing the loud pop and seeing the little cloud of gas rise from the mouth of the bottle. I don't know if I can wait 3-4 more weeks.
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