Dry Hopping

The keg on the left is the American Devil IPA and the keg on the right is the Fallen Friar. The American Devil IPA has been fermenting for 18 days. I dry hopped the beer, which just means adding hops that are not boiled. It is done towards the end of the fermentation period and enhances the aroma. The Fallen Friar has been fermenting for 21 days. I tasted the sample all 3 times and it was great, I am very excited about this beer! I would put it on par with a Sierra Nevada. I took the following three hydrometer readings:

Day 18: 1.018
Day 20: 1.011
Day 21: 1.010 - Bottline time!

My estimated ABV for this beer was 5.8%. Unfortunately, I forgot to take the original gravity (OG) reading when I brewed it. Calculating ABV using the estimated OG from QBrew and my third final gravity (FG) reading, the ABV for my Fallen Friar is 6.56% (estimated).

Whispering Wheat mistake

I messed up using the booster as priming sugar... I was re-reading a thread yesterday about using booster as the priming sugar and realized I did not put enough in! Since booster is only 80% fermentable sugars and 20% dextrins, I should have used 25% more of the booster in each bottle. I put one bottle in the refrigerator yesterday. I opened it today and it was noticeably under carbonated... I read this thread before I used the booster too, it just completely slipped my mind.

Bottle Labels

Since my obsession with home brewing keeps growing, I figured the next logical step was to create bottle labels and create a "company" name for my beers. I decided to go with Booya Brewing, and the logo is a a picture of a owl with creepy eyes. This is something I put together in Microsoft Word. Magsvmi from Mr. Beer Fans sent an awesome step by step walk through on how to make a label in Word. I decided to omit type or name of the beer on the labels so I could use any bottle with any beer. I have been looking into ordering colored bottle caps that will make it very easy to tell the beers apart. I am not that close to printing these, but here is my first attempt:

How To Brew

How To Brew is a fantastic book written by John Palmer. I decided to purchase the latest version of the book from Amazon, but the first edition can be read online for free on his website! The book details the entire brewing process, as well as explaining key terms and the basics of brewing. Even though the book walks you through all-grain brewing, I highly recommend reading the book if you are just using Mr. Beer kits or extracts recipes. The follow excerpt is taken from the first paragraph of the introduction section of How To Brew:

There are many good books on home brewing currently available, so why did I write one you ask? The answer is: a matter of perspective. When I began learning how to brew my own beer several years ago, I read every book I could find; books often published 15 years apart. It was evident to me that the state of the art had matured a bit. Where one book would recommend using baking yeast and covering the fermenting beer with a towel, a later book would insist on brewing yeast and perhaps an airlock. So, I felt that another point of view, laying out the hows and whys of the brewing processes, might help more new brewers get a better start.

American Devil IPA

I just finished brewing my "suped-up" version of the American Devil IPA. This was my first attempt at making big changes that deviated from the Mr. Beer recipe. I added everything except the 2 cans of Hopped Malt Extract. I also forgot to buy muslin bags, so I went commando (added the hops without the bag).

American Devil IPA:
2 cans American Devil IPA Hopped Malt Extract (HME)
1# Amber Dry Malt Extract (DME)
1 oz. Cascade hop pellets @ 5 minutes
1 oz. Centennial hop pellets @ 20 minutes
S-33 yeast.

Directions:

Sanitize utensils and everything that will come in contact with the brew

Put the 2 cans of HME in lukewarm water

Add the Amber DME to 1 gallon of water and bring it to a boil. (2 notes about boiling water with DME: 1. Be careful and watch it the whole time. I turned around for 2 seconds and it was boiling over onto my stove. 2. It smells. I think it smells fantastic, but my lovely, amazing, patient, and understanding fiancé begs to differ)

Add 1 oz. of Centennial hops and set a time for 20 minutes (I constantly stirred while the hops were in there)

Add 1 oz. of Cascade hops when the timer has 5 minutes left

Remove the pot from heat, and add the two cans of HME

Cool the wort to 80 degrees and add to fermenter

Add water until the volume reaches 8.5 quarts, aerate with a whisk, and pitch the yeast

The wort was 162 degrees after all was said and done and needs to be cooled down before it is added to the fermenter. You want to get the temperature of the wort below 80 degrees before you pitch the yeast. I did not have enough ice to make an ice bath, so I added it directly to the wort. Most people frown upon doing this because the ice may be contaminated, but the ice is made from the same water that I add to the fermenter anyway.

The hydrometer for my beer came in a little lower than the estimate on QBrew. My estimated original gravity (OG) was 1.069, my actual reading was 1.063. I am attributing the lower reading to the loss of DME when the wort boiled over.

Fallen Friar

My much anticipated Mr. Beer order arrived with the hops I needed for my next brew! The Fallen Friar was the first recipe I made that requires the addition of hops. The hops were not boiled. They were added after the wort was boiled and everything was ready to be poured into the fermenter. I used the 2 packets of Mr. Beer yeast that came with the cans of Hopped Malt Extract. I am planning on doing a 3-2-2 or a 3-3-2 for this brew since I added the booster to increase the ABV. I have read that the increase in sugars will require a longer fermentation period with only two packets of the Mr. Beer yeast. Unfortunately, I forgot to take the original gravity (OG) reading with my new hydrometer (I was actually really excited about doing this too...). I will just have to use 1.060 as the OG that was estimated in QBrew. Since I now have a second fermenter, I am going to try and brew the American Devil IPA this weekend!

Local Home Brew Store

A Local Home Brew Store (LHBS) is a great place to pick up additional brewing supplies. In central New Jersey, there are 2 LHBS that are equidistant from where I live. Corrado's Family Market in Clifton and The Brewer's Apprentice in Freehold are both about a 40 minute drive each way.

Today I took a trip to The Brewer's Apprentice and picked up some extra beer ingredients for some upcoming recipes. In addition to adding malt extract to improve a Mr. Beer recipe, it is said that using better yeast will result in a better beer. I purchased:

1 lb. Amber Dry Malt Extract (DME)
1 lb. Wheat Dry Malt Extract (DME)
2 oz. Cascade Hops
2 oz. Centennial Hops
1 Safbrew S-33 Ale Yeast
1 Safbrew T-58 Ale Yeast

The Amber DME, hops, and S-33 yeast are going to get added to the American Devil IPA recipe and the Wheat DME and t-58 yeast will be used with the Witty Monk.

Today was also bottling day for my Whispering Wheat Weizenbier since it passed the taste and color test (just like clear and flat bud light again). I have been saving

as many beer bottles as possible over the past few weeks. The labels of Sam Adam's bottles are extremely easy to remove after soaking them in oxiclean. It is recommended to use 1 plastic PET bottle each time so you can give it the "squeeze test". You know the bottle is carbonating if it is firm.

QBrew

QBrew is an easy to use recipe calculator that allows you to easily modify and create any type of recipe. The program automatically calculates the gravity, bitterness, and color of a beer based on the ingredients you plug in. The database includes many different styles, grains, hops, and other miscellaneous ingredients.

There is an upgraded database that includes Mr. Beer ingredients and can be found here with simple instructions on how to get yourself set up. Below are 2 QBrew screenshots of the Fallen Friar recipe I inputted. The first screenshot is the exact recipe from Mr. Beer. The second screenshot is the same recipe with an added bag of booster. I added the booster because I wanted to increase the ABV of the beer to 5.8%. Notice the difference in Original Gravity (OG) and Final Gravity (FG) between the recipe with booster and without. The OG and FG are used to calculate the ABV for the beer. You also want to make sure you edit the batch size. Since I am using the Mr. Beer fermenter, I sent the batch size to 2.13 gallons (8.5 quarts). I am going to brew the Fallen Friar recipe with the booster as soon as my Mr. Beer order arrives!