Back to the Grind

I hope you all had a relaxing holiday weekend.  I spent most of it in the back yard working on the garden and grass (or lack there of).  We only have a few more things to plant on the patio and then we can sit back and watch it all grow.  I’m crossing my fingers for the second round of grass seed we put down.  Don’t let the green in the photo fool you.  It’s 90% weeds with a few patches of grass around the edges.

 

I also spent some more time helping out at the Fulton Farmers Market on Saturday.  I went towards the end when I would be starting to help with the clean up.  By the time I got there a lot of the easy to grab greens and veggies had been sold which was great for the farmers but not so great for me.  I made up for it with a run to Kingfield market on Sunday morning for fresh salad fixings.  Even with the cooler weather this weekend both markets were busy.  I hope it keeps up that way for the rest of the season, I’ll just have to try and get there earlier to make sure I get what I need!

In my travels last week I got to check out the Momofuku Noodle Bar in NYC.  Not exactly local but look at that noodle bowl!  So good!  I got their namesake Momofuku noodle bowl as well as some pork dumplings (missed getting a picture of those).  Both were really, really good.  You could easily share the dumplings and noodle bowl.  I was stuffed by the time my bowl came to the table.

I also tried some New York brew while in town, Porkslap Pale Ale.  It was sold to me as a hoppy IPA, not so much.  It was an easy drinker, light on the bitter hops taste.  The can itself sold me on trying it though.  It must be the Iowa farm girl roots.

Nut Brown Ale- Bottling

Remember this post?
Well a few weeks ago we got to bottle that brew.  It was quite the event!  My in-laws were visiting for the weekend so we made a bit of an assembly line out of the process.

First step was sanitizing all of our bottles and equipment.

While those were soaking, I started a mix of sugar and water boiling on the stove.

We added it to the container we would be transferring the brewed beer to.  The additional sugar re-activates the yeast and creates the carbonation you enjoy later.

Next the Hubs siphoned the brewed beer to the new contianer.

When we got towards the end we tipped it back on the table to get as much as we could without getting any of the sediment from the bottom.

We checked the specific gravity of the brew to see how on the recipe we were, we were right on at 1.016, meaning our beer was a 3.7% alcohol by volume.

With the brew transferred we started the assembly process.  Hubs filled the actual bottles, more on that coke bottle in a minute.

Then my father-in-law clamped on the bottle cap.  We used those rubbermaid lids to help with cleanup later on.

Then it was up to me and my mother-in-law to wipe down filled bottles and keep handing over new bottles.  When it was all said and done we ended up with a grand total of 49 beers.

We tried a trick the Hubs had got from a fellow brewer with the coke bottle.  We filled it about an inch from the top and then squeezed the air out before we twisted the cap on tight.  The theory was, the bottle would expand back to looking like a regular coke bottle as it carbonated and by that time, your beer should be ready to drink too.

It worked ok, the beer was carbonated and tasted ok but it still wasn’t quite finished.  We gave it another week and had perfectly carbonated beer, very tasty!  The bottling process was much more fun than the brewing part and it moves pretty fast.  You’re also that much closer to being able to enjoy it!

Nut Brown Ale

This weekend I finally helped the Hubs brew a batch of beer.  He’s gotten two brews under his belt and has been enjoying his first batch for the last week.  He’s been really enthusiastic with the whole process and is turning himself into a bit of a beer geek.  The first two batches he made were IPA’s and pretty hoppy which isn’t my favorite, so to get me excited about brewing he bought a Nut Brown Ale so I could enjoy it at the end too.   I think it’ll be my last time helping though, it wasn’t hard or frustrating, it was BOOOORRRINNNGGG.

The very first thing we did was get the liquid yeast going.  You find the little pouch inside the package and smack it so it pops.  Then you let it swell up for at least 3 hours before you start brewing.

Later that day, you get 2.5 gallons of water in a large pot and then add your mesh bag of crushed grains.  I should note, we bought this kit at Northern Brewer so we were able to get the grains crushed at the store and pre-mixed for the recipe.

We let the grains steep in the water for about 20 minutes until the water temperature reached 170 degrees, then removed the bag.

We then turned the water up to let it get to a boil and while it was working its way up there we put our malt syrup in a sink of hot water to make it easier to add in once it was fully boiling.

Once the malt was added you bring it back up to a boil, it’s called a wort at this point (nerd stuff), then add in the pack of hops and let it boil for a good hour.

This is where I got really bored.  You have to watch it so it doesn’t boil over and you’re not supposed to stir it because you want any solids to stay at the bottom for later.  So we sat in chairs in front of the stove and waited, for the full hour.

After the hour was up, we brought the pot down the stairs and put it in our basement bathtub to get it cooled back down to 100 degrees as quickly as possible.  We made a makeshift trivet out of aluminum foil underneath so we didn’t burn through the tub.

While it was cooling down we filled up a carboy (or primary fermentor, nerd) with 2 gallons of cold water.  We also had to make sure all of the pieces of equipment were sanitized and yeast pack  we’d be using through the rest of the process.

Once the wort was cooled to 100 degrees we added it in to the carboy (making sure the solids stayed at the bottom) with the other 2 gallons and started aerating it.  This means the Hubs rocked the carboy around for 2 minutes.

Next we took a sample to measure the specific gravity of the wort with a hydrometer and wrote it down (super nerd).  Ours was 1.044 which matched the instructions so we’re right on track.

Then we had to wait until the temperature reached 78 degrees or lower then cutting open the yeast packet with sanitized scissors and added it into the wort.

Then we could finally seal the fermentor with the fermentation lock and let it sit in a warm dark place to let the yeast do its work.

I just looked at it tonight and we’ve got a nice head of foam on top.  We should be able to bottle this round in about 2 weeks.

Like I said the process wasn’t too difficult but it was just so long and monotonous.  I started to loose interest about halfway through the cooling down of the wort.  I think part of what was boring to me was we still have to wait before you get to taste anything.  True, bacon was a little over a week to enjoy but it wasn’t as much time in up front.

I’ll let you know how bottling day goes in a couple of weeks!