Midnight Stout

Starting Beer Three... The Midnight stout, I'm calling it Jen In Black after my niece's email address.
Berkshire Brown still primary fermenter.


One thing they don't tell you about the boil. It is pungent and will make your house smell like barley for a couple of days. However during the boil it is extremely so. I happen to like it but the wife does not. She does however like the way the house smells after the boil is over which is a good thing.

When I made the stout, my wife was in Lansing teaching a class. I took advantage of this to start beer three.

The recipe.
http://www.beersmith.com/Recipes2/recipe_157.htm

More expensive grain bill then Berkshire Brown. I can see why a stout is thick and "chewy", 50% more grain to extract from. I'm now finding out the taste that I like about the stout comes from the chocolate malt and the roasted barley. It's also what give it that dark color.

This time however I using a different yeast type. In the Bershire Brown we used what is referred to as a smack pack. The smack pack has a sealed package of nutrients suspended in a liquid yeast. The idea is that you smack the pack against something to burst the package of nutrients opens. This proofs your yeast and the whole package swells up to the entire capacity of the package as the live yeast multiplies as it consumes the nutrients. It's pretty cool process but it takes over 4 hours to swell up.

For the Jen In black we are using the white labs yeast. It is liquid yeast that comes in what looks like a fat test tube. It smells great.

There are four major components that flavor the beer. The yeast, the malt/barley, the hops and temperature. It's really cool that we have access to so many different strains of yeast for brewing. I consider my self to be a novice with yeast so the exploration is pretty cool when you think of how difficult is to keep yeast going. Yeast will change with it surrounding environments.

I'm thinking my next beer will be a belgian type. I had problems making the decisions. I like IPA's more than Belgians but the people who are going to help me taste the beer are more fans of Belgian style beers. It will be my first high gravity beer. However I think I will enjoy mkaing the IPA a little more since it would be my first experience with dry hopping. So many different beers to try which one do you do first?

I'm also having a blast coming up with the names for the beers. My wife is having a blast coming up with the lables. Her is one of the ideas that my wife had for a label for the first beer I made with the Mr Beer kit.

WeBiG is just a play on my initials WBG. That was going to be the name of the brewery. Say WeBiG fast and it kind of sounds like a frog... hence the graphic. I was going to name the first stout I made "Pond Scum" to go along with motif. I may still do that later

The one for Berskire Brown

We haven't done one for Jen in Black yet.

Day 1

Starting to get into brewing my own beer.

Beers 1 and 2.

First time out. Used a Mr Beer kit that we got on sale from woot.com.  The standard kit comes with a pale ale malt extract. The beer is getting ready to mature. Should be an ok tasting beer from the taste of the wort. I have a feeling the yeast in the kit was old since the wort was on the sweet side.

I had been thinking about brewing beer for a long time. Then I looked at the kits and read up. Three things held me back: cost of entry, access to quality materials and deailing with yeast. Cost of entry is pretty steep. Even though the standard kits are about $100 bucks, these only come with the bare essentials. I tend to like the specialty brews (porter, IPA's Belgian, stouts, bocks, etc) and their process takes additional equipment. I also envisioned having a couple of beers going at the same time, which means even more equipment.

My wife found a guy in Holt, MI getting out of the hobby. I picked up a lot of equipment pretty inexpensively from his Craigslist posting:

• Buckets for primary fermentation
• Carboys for secondary fermentation
• Auto syphon
• Capper
• Pot
• Utensils
• Thermometers
• Hydrometers
• Flavorings
• Priming Sugars
• Copper Wort Chiller
• Cooler Lauter Tun (grain Extraction)
• and enough bottles to store them all in.

Cost of admission came down so now I'm in the hobby. Let's just put it this way, you should have seen the smile on my face when I found out I had all the equipment I needed for an IPA and belgians etc. I smiled so hard my lips got stretchmarks.


Today I'm calling my day 1 though technically it's my second beer. Today, however, is my first attempt at an all grain batch as opposed to creating a beer from malt extract. I found a recipe online for a clone of the Newcastle Nut Brown Ale. I'm pretty stoked.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f67/aberdeen-brown-ale-newcastle-clone-ag-36912/

I went to a place called Adventures in HomeBrewing.

http://www.homebrewing.org/

And picked up these ingredients.

Picked and milled Right in the store.

Finally on April 14th my niece, Jen, came over and we began to brew.

We put the grains in the cooler lauter/mashing tun. Poured in about 3.5 gallons of 165 degree Farenheit water. Let it sit for about an hour checking it every 15 minutes to stir and make sure the temperature stayed above 155. After the hour was up we drained it and closed the ball valve. Then we poured in and additional 3.5 gallons of water for the sparging (rinsing). We stirred it and and let it sit for 15 minutes, then drained it.

We took the pot of wort and boiled it 60 minutes as the recipe described.
Cooled it with chiller.
Pitched the yeast
Put the lid and airlock on.

This one we are going to call Berkshire Brown.