For those visiting, let me put your mind at rest. This is no "beer brewing blog". I got a LARGE gift certificate to the somewhat local homebrewing store and spent it all on the ingredients for
the beer of my dreams. A little beer in moderation ain't so bad and it's always a nice gift to share. That said, come on in for a minute, I've got something to show you:
That's where I pick up the mail. Here's where the beer's been for the past week:
The wise will take heed. . .a five gallon bucket of beer is no place to let the little ones go bobbing for apples. Leave the stunts to Joe's college-age children.
The bottles, the bottling bucket, the tubing, and the hydrometer all need to be sanitized. This means fill 'em with water and dump in some bleach and let them soak. Bottles can be sanitized fairly easily this way, provided you a)get all the air bubbles out of them and b) have enough room to accommodate all the bottles. For us, we have our bathtub. Yes, bottles and beer brewing supplies can be sanitized, with bleach, even in our house. Plenty of scrubbing went into the preparation.
So, even though it smells sinful, letting the priming sugar (1 1/4 cup malt extract) boil over while you go to get the camera is not advised.
This was the easiest transfer from the fermenter to the bottling bucket. I got it all this time, no cloggage. Only, somewhere along the line I lost 1 full gallon. Final gravity was actually the same, 1.030 (7.9% alcohol). I guess all the burping was just to let the residual CO2 out of the beer. It was clean, dark, and smooth.
Bottling went pretty well, I only got distracted twice letting beer spill all over the floor.
And after sanitizing the caps. . .we only ended up with 35 beers. . .each beer $2.17
That's about a $13.00 six pack. A little expensive, the final product will be the determining factor. . .did I taste any tonight? Indeed. How was it? Oh my goodness, yes. Now on to wait at least one week for minimum carbonation. It'll be months before it's fully matured. I think I'm going to have to hide it. Joe. . .I'll save a sixer for the summer.
My only worry is that I may have used a little too much priming sugar which would result in, basically, each bottle exploding one day while I'm at work. But whatever, I'm relaxing having a homebrew.
And now for some Black Superman by Above the Law and we'll bring this full circle, second verse:
How cool! This is a great series.
ReplyDeleteTwo questions:
So does your mail get presorted by priority or size - I assume the big one is for credit card offers and Victoria's Secret catalogs and such?
Do you have to draw straws for the first bath after the bottles are disinfected? Mmmm, I bet that is one clean tub.
Interesting reading list ...
I guy I know knew Kubler Ross pretty well. I've never read the book even though I am "in the business."
ReplyDeleteI read some Freud, more Jung, a bunch about prejudice (like of the Gordon Allport era, the Jurassic, I suppose, to you young scholars). Plenty of William James: Yes, that is more my period. I moved out of psychology to the sociology side with history and ethnic studies (the 80s, mind you) dominating my final academic work. I was a huge Kierkegaard guy, still am really. But now that I've found Ann Coulter so much has been pushed aside ...
I think you should consider doing a book about brewing. Make it downloadable and sell it for $15. E-commerce is practically free nowadays. I bet you would sell a ton of them.
It's gotta be pretty cool to be able to say "I'm in the business of death". I'm off to work, more later. . .
ReplyDeleteReading aside. I've seen that bathtub and now I'm going to have to think twice about any beer you brew. =)
ReplyDeleteYeah, you say that now, b but I bet you only think once. :)
ReplyDeleteJoe, I don't remember having an immediate bad reaction to Allport, though I don't recall what his exact theories were. Most theorists, well, maybe all, like the sound of their own one hand clapping if you ask me. But where would we be without theory? I like research. I like science. I don't like buzzwords. Sociology is a bit interesting to me and I almost got a minor in it in undergrad with the most memorable class being the Sociology of Emotions. . .or was it Contemporary Social Problems?
ReplyDeleteBest experience? Working with the chronically mentally ill. Blows those personality theories out of the water, that's pretty clear objective illness.
Now, let's talk about your delusions about Ann Coulter. . .
I just throw Ann in as a red herring - I think you know that.
ReplyDeleteAllport is not bad, lots is based on research and what we now call focus groups.
I have an in-law who is a professor and more on your side of the science aspect. She showed me a really interesting Web site a couple years ago with a test for monitoring bias at the more phenomenological level. I'm going to try and dig that out.