Beer Diary...

I hope that all of the readers and beer enthusiasts that follow this blog have a healthy and prosperous new year. I want to thank you all for supporting my efforts to share my homebrewing experience by joining me on this site. The following is a list of the top 10 Beer Diary... posts listed in order of their popularity for the year 2009. 1.) How To Make Your Own Keggle Sight Glass 2.) Pulque Not Beer 3.) 3 Simple Homebrew Tricks 4.) One Simple Kegerator Trick 5.) Duchesse De Bourgogne 6.) Filter Your Beer If You Can 7.) Take A Homebrew To Work Day 8.) Bottling Alternative 9.) Cerveza Casera 10.) 3 More Easy Homebrewing Tricks Happy new year, Feliz ano nuevo, and here's to enjoying a pint with you in 2010!

Tadaaa!! Beer brewed from home malted barley. It was a fun and educational ride and the ultimate pay off is a pretty good pale ale. The following is the recipe which includes a significant amount of cane sugar to get the gravity up but it didn't hamper the delicious (if I do say so myself) maltiness of the barley. There is also a nice citrus flavor provided by the cascade and centennial hops and a crisp mouthfeel from the dry final gravity and moderate to high carbonation level. I poured samples for friends this evening and got a mix of responses from "that's pretty good" to "sure I'll have another" . O.K. not outstanding testimonies but at least they didn't spit it out. What's interesting to me is how much the flavor stands out in this beer after drinking the light lagers of Mexico. It's a welcome change. Here is the ingredients and process I used for brewing. Do you batch sparge? This was the first time I did this as I normally fly sp...

This is an often experienced occurance in the homebrew world and has happened to me a couple of times. In fact, I presently have a German hibiscus/wheat beer that has stopped dead at 1.020 when I expected it to finish at about 1.012, the original gravity was 1.050. This is a German style hefe weizen with the addition of hibiscus flower. I used the Safeale S-33 Belgian ale yeast from MoreBeer to ferment. There are a number of reasons that stuck fermentations happen. Yeast viability, lack of adequate aeration, high mash temperatures, low fermentation temperatures, you could probably name a few others. The point is that the beer has not fermented completely and you've got five or ten gallons of under-attenuated beer sitting in the fermenter looking up at you with an expression of defeat. An under-attenuated beer can be problematic for a couple of reasons. The main reason is that the taste will be sweeter than you may want considering that you hopped with an expectation of a drier be...

I picked up a six pack of Modelo 'Barrillitos' from the abarrotes as I headed home. Not because it's a great beer but because it's cheap and I can reuse the bottles in the future for my homebrew. I carried my bolsa outside into the bright light and as I turned the corner to start the climb home I saw a dead man on the street. Laying on his back, his worn clothes matched the color of the dusty cobbled sidewalk. His grey eyes staring blank through half opened lids at nothing just beyond the tree branches. Two plastic bolsas were at his feet, the contents of his morning grocery shopping spilling out. Some bananas, a pepper, tamarindo. A small clutch of pedestrians looked down at him from their improvised ampitheatre, some making the sign of the cross while a short policeman stood by impatient for the ambulance to come fetch the body. I'd crossed the steet to get a better look. I don't often get to see a dead person, in fact I've only seen one other in my life...

I have to begin by saying that malting barley is hard work. I have to give a lot of credit to the professional maltster out there, and in the future will find it easier to pay what now seems like a very reasonable price for a bag. From the original five kilos (11 lbs.) of raw grain that I purchased at the beginning of this project, I ended up with 9 lbs of malt. Once my malt was ready to mash, I set about milling it severely in the hope of exposing as much of the interior of the grain as I could in an attempt at extracting as much sugar as possible. I found this mill at the hardware store for $25usd and it did a great job but I wouldn't want to use it to mill more than a few pound as it was difficult to crank and there is no easy way to motorize it. On the other hand if you need a starter mill for cheap, this is one way to go. Molino I used a plastic bucket with a braided hose attached to a spigot as my mash tun and (don't tell my wife) insulated it by securing a c...

Just a quick update on my malting progress. The barley has grown as much as I want it to and so now it's time to stop the growth. One interesting note is the growth is very inconsisten t. Much of it is over modified and just as much is undermodified. Does anyone have an idea why that would be ? The weather has been partly cloudy but I was able to get enough sun to spread the grain out on the terrace with a temperature of 90f. I collected the grain to keep inside over night and then put them back the following day of additional drying. Here are a few pictures. I layed the chicken wire over the top in a half ass attempt to keep the ginormous grackles and other birds out which seemed to work. After several hot days of drying, I placed the grains on some aluminum pans to be lightly roasted in the oven at a temperature of around 180f. for a few hours. After that, I pushed the grain around the inside of a colinder to remove the rootlets. Then next step is the...

When Susan and I first arrived in San Miguel de Allende this year, we stayed at the Antigua Capilla bed and breakfast for a couple days. What a treat. Francisco and his wife Antonieta own this gorgeous Spanish colonial style hotel that is built around a 17th century chapel nestled on the side of the hill east of town. Within walking distance of the central plaza, Antigua Capilla is the perfect retreat from the bustle of town but an easy walk to enjoy the sights, sounds, food and shopping that the city has to offer. I highly advise it for those thinking of visiting SMA. Francisco lives part time in California and more frequently in San Miguel as he gets his new hotel up and running. I met Franc isco through a brewing course that I was teaching in Soquel, California. He would make the drive down from the Bay area each weekend to attend. He arrived here in San Miguel a few days after us and I joined him at Antigua Capilla as he brewed up the first batch of beer to be made at his n...

Here are some updated pictures of the sprouting barley after several days of growth. There are a significant amount of grains that do not show any rootlets or even chit and this has me concerned. I will be giving this growth period another two days before starting the drying process but I will dissect a couple of the grains to confirm the acrospire growth before that step. As I turn the germinating grain by hand, I keep finding a variety of beans. No me gusta frijoles! Grains with rootlets . Keeping the grains moist and cool. The weather here has been cloudy with intermittent showers and I'm hoping that the clear warm weather returns for the drying step because my plan was to spread the grain out on the floor of the upper deck rather than trust the inconsistent temperature that my oven provides. More of the drying step in a later post. In the mean time I returned to Cerveza de San Miguel last night to sample some ales and get in touch with the owner Matthew Carrol...