Yet another birthday, they seem to come faster and faster now! We
went walking around (with my new hiking staffs) on the ice to get
some Thai food and get a video (latest Buffy episodes.. fun!). We also
bottled my first beer. I got 8 6-packs out of it, and on tasting it
I'm not much impressed. I've been told it needs a couple weeks to age
which makes a big difference, I hope so! Perhaps using more real
grains instead of malt extract would improve things, or maybe I need
to filter my water? I'll ask some homebrew experts to give their
opinion, but I'll keep my fingers firmly crossed for now.
Also I'm getting ready to pick out a radio control plane to fly with
the guys at work! This will be my first powered plane, but I will be in
good company to learn to fly it.
The ice melted just in time for church last night and work today.
Posted by brettblog at January 17, 2005 12:08 PMwell, happy birthday!
belated now, I know...but nonetheless....
hopefully the beer turns out -
Posted by: timmeh at January 18, 2005 12:45 PMThanks!
Yeah, I'm hoping so also. I think it will be ok - instinct is telling me but maybe I should start filtering my H20 for beer just in case? I'll be starting another batch any day now, I think.
Posted by: Brett at January 18, 2005 02:43 PMYeah,
filtered water can't hurt anything that's for sure...after all...it makes up something like 98% of the beer...
I also read somewhere that the beer wont' taste too great until after it goes through the secondary fermentation, although I can't seem to find th elink right now...
It probably is embedded somewhere in the how to brew beer by john palmer guide...which is floating online everywhere...
http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html
Posted by: Timmeh at January 19, 2005 10:22 AMThanks for the link to the palmer guide, I'll check it out.
Secondary fermentation is somewhat of a debated subject, the "joy of" book I've been following maintains that it isn't particularly important unless you are going to ferment for longer than ~2 weeks. It's also helpful to reduce the sediment in a second stage, but increases the chance for contamination which is the prime evil.
I suppose for lagers and such it is important because you ferment for such a long time (months) at low temeratures, but the advice I've been going on is that this isn't important for ales. The thing is the amount of time that the beer is exposed to large quantities of yeast sediment (after 2wks it starts to impact the flavor) and the way it ages (in a 5gal container vs many bottles with small quantities of beer.
At least that's what I read, but there are quite a few people that are adamant about 2nd fermentation staging. Funny thing is commercial breweries don't do it! Maybe I'll try it one day and see, there seem to be very contrary opinions on the matter and few facts to back it up.
Posted by: Brett at January 19, 2005 01:04 PMYeah, I'm no expert, and even the palmer guide seems to suggest that it's pretty much a matter of taste...who knows...not me...not yet...but soon =)
i'll keep my fingers crossed
Posted by: Timmeh at January 20, 2005 08:12 AM