Cream Ale

            I would have to say that my favorite American style beer is probably the cream ale.  I have drank only a few of them so its kinda hard to get a good understanding of what one is supposed to taste like.  Being a big Northern Brewer fan I decided to brew their all-grain cream ale kit. 

Doing some wort circulation. Its got a nice color and great smell.

Hops just added with a good boil. NO BOIL OVER!

I was able to keep the mash around 150 degrees F. Hopefully I will get a dry tasting beer.

I got an original gravity of 1.040 (temp adjusted) and the color looks awesome. Fermentation kicked off very quickly and I was awakened in the middle of the night by a loud POP! sound.  Sure enough it was my airlock blowing off and fermentation foam was everywhere.  I quickly fashioned a ghetto blow off set up and fermentation has since calmed down.  In keeping with energy savings it is about 61 degrees in my house.  Here are some pics from brew day.

Fuller's London Pride

After all of our talk about the Innkeeper, and now with two versions of it either almost ready to drink or fermenting, I had to pick up some Fuller's London Pride last week. It's just about the closest commercial beer to the Innkeeper that one can find in the US. It's a great beer, easy to drink and low in alcohol, with a nice dryness and biscuit flavor. But I still prefer the Innkeeper v1.0 that Chad the Lad brewed a few months ago. Perhaps it was because that beer was on tap and this Fuller's was in the bottle, but the Fuller's is missing some of the creaminess and rich flavor of the Innkeeper. I can't wait to try the new versions.

First All-Grain Batch

I finally decided to make the switch to all-grain brewing in 2012. After much deliberation on whether or not to go with an elaborate setup or a budget setup, I couldn't resist the $40 turkey fryer I saw at Home Depot. Chad the Lad came over several days ago to guide me through my first all-grain batch, an Irish red ale. I chose to brew an Irish red because of its simplicity and mass appeal. We picked up the ingredients at American Brewmaster in the morning and began brewing at around 1130.


My mash tun was really easy to make. I took the spigot out of a 10-gallon cooler and replaced it with a ball valve from Fifth Season, as well as a screen fro inside the mash tun. I then added a hose barb adapter to the outside of the ball valve and picked up a 3-foot length of high-temperature hosing from American Brewmaster. It worked well to drain from the mash tun to the brew kettle.


I was a little worried about how long it would take the turkey fryer burner to bring the wort to a boil, but it was actually pretty fast (and it was a cold day). It took about 25 minutes.


One problem with the aluminum kettle that comes with the turkey fryer system is that the capacity is 7.5 gallons, which makes it a close call when it comes to boilovers. I forgot to heed Chad the Lad's suggestion to have a water spray bottle
handy, so we had a minor boilover, but nothing too bad. Lesson learned.


I am wary about wort chillers because of the water they waste. Instead I picked up three bags of ice and made a water bath, and we got the water down to the low 60s in about 25 minutes.


We siphoned about half of the wort into the carboy using the steps off the deck.


We poured the other half of the wort into the carboy, which I like to do because it aerates the wort quite nicely.


I set up the blow off hose for this beer in case the fermentation proved to be vigorous.


Actually, fermentation did not take off as quickly as I anticipated because the wort was too cool. I moved it out of the closet and placed it next to a heating vent so that it would warm up a little bit. This helped the fermentation get going.


This first all-grain experience was great, and I can't wait to brew another batch. It was really nice to put all of the equipment into use and to learn things that will help me in the future.

"Beers and Ales"

On the Beers and Ales clear misunderstanding...I'm with you Chad. That is utter bologna if you ask me, why should they pretend to have a higher class beer section if they can't even label it correctly?! I went to the Harry Tweeter the other day and was again somewhat impressed initially by the selection of beer "and ales...", but, quickly, after getting over the initial shock of the more choices beyond the usual Lagerland of mass production mid-western American beers, I got bored of the choices. It's like somebody went through a catalog and picked out some of the more exotic beers they had at some somewhat trendy restaurants, not what I would consider a knock down fest of microbrews and exotic tastes. There also seems to be an obsession with carrying every beer out there that comes in a clear bottle, which clearly indicates a lack of quality storage to pour in a heavily lighted environment. Then, I remember that the Tweeter's goal seems to be to stay at just above the middle of the line as far as megamarts offering just enough exotic tastes and choices for the standard white person to feel that they can get most things on their recipe list and to just feel explorative enough to see new ingredients, beers, etc. to maybe try something new. For those of us who have clearly tasted and explored beyond that, we have higher standards and our shopping must expand beyond the megamart. For us, it's required to go the Sam's QuickShops, Asian markets, Whole Foods, and other more specialty shops of the worlds to satisfy the urges we have of what the world has t offer. There's my 2 cents...

Inkeeper 2 in the bottle

Innkeeper version 2 is in the bottle.  A couple things of note..... this version is much lighter and has a gravity more commensurate with the package instructions.  I think this beer will taste more like a Fullers London Pride than a Fullers ESB as the last Innkeeper tasted.  I tasted the beer and it was fantastic.  I also realized that I had run out of priming sugar and thus used table sugar to bottle with.  Northern Brewer recommends this as it dries the beer out a little more.  We will have to see how it turns out in a couple weeks.