Homebrewing: Batch brewed, lessons learned, part two

Welcome back to the House of Fermentation!  When we left off, I had managed to spill some water into the wort from the unsanitized airlock.  Not the most auspicious moment, but everything is a lesson.  The question was whether this lesson would be a harsh one.

I put the fermenter in the laundry room and set our space heater, which has a thermostat, to what had been described by the Adventures in Homebrewing folks as an ideal temperature for the particular strain of yeast I was using.  I wanted those sweet babies to be comfortable.

The next morning, I went in there first thing, hoping for bubbles in the [potentially germ-ridden and thus catastrophic to my brew because of my idiotic spill] airlock water.  And there were!  Signs of life!  The right kind of life!  At least so far!  Fermentation confirmed!

In the meantime, in the spirit of sibling harmony, I had already promised my 7-year-old that the next batch would be named after her.  In fact, I already know the style: steam beer, aka California common.  The reasons were straightforward enough.  As a reader of this blog, you may recall from an older post that I have a particular love of Anchor Brewing, including its flagship Anchor Steam Beer.  I want to brew something like that.  Obviously, on just my second batch, and using extracts instead of having the control of all-grain (where you mash the malt yourself), it might not match up, but I want to try.  But it's not just about love and reverence.  There's also a practical reason: steam beer is made with lager yeast but fermented at closer to an ale temperature.  Lager yeasts ferment at much lower temperatures than most ale yeasts, and I don't want to be using that space heater quite so much next time around.  So, by using a lager yeast at the temperature at which the House of Fermentation hovers in the winter, I can brew up a batch of steam beer without resorting to the heater.

Down in the basement, the yeasts continued to work their magic.  Day after day I went down, and day after day I saw triumphant, burbling bubbles rising to the surface of the airlock at regular intervals.  If I sniffed at the right time, I could catch a whiff of the developing beer.  The aroma was still on target.  Hope was building.

Instead of the 4-6 days that had been described, I had active bubbles for 7-8 days, and then let it rest as instructed for 2 more days.  There are stories out there of exploding bottles caused by bottling beer that is still fermenting too actively.  Glass shrapnel, huge mess... hmm, best avoided, no?

Waiting to bottle the beer, I finally did something that I'd suggest a novice homebrewer do much sooner. I watched the incredibly helpful, straightforward videos at homebrewingvideo.com.  I started off watching the ones about the bottling process and ended up watching them all.  Lots of useful tips in there!  In fact, Video-man mentioned the importance of sanitizing the airlock.  Ouch!  Anyway, I was ready to bottle my elixir.

I sanitized my clean bottles, bottling bucket, and all other equipment.  Then I opened the fermenter, and the aroma of freshly brewed beer filled the kitchen!  Malty, a bit bready, some lovely floral overlay of hops... I had made beer!  Flat beer.  Now it needed to condition in the bottles.  I boiled up a solution of priming sugar as instructed and put it in the bottling bucket.  My dear yeast would be well-fed one last time and carbonate my beer in the bottles.  Perhaps I should mention here that by now, I had fallen in love with the yeast.  It feels a bit odd to fall in love with a microbe.  Sure, I have always had a healthy respect for yeast, given my admiration of beer and bread, not to mention hard cider and wine, but working with them on this first batch, I think I fell in love.  I'm not proud to admit it.  In fact, I should probably get some help for this, but I want to be honest here.

Now, on to the transfer from fermenter to bottling bucket.  Siphoning looked very easy on the video. Obviously, since I went through all the trouble of sanitizing everything, sucking the tube to get it started wasn't an option.  I primed the racking (siphon) tube using sanitizing solution, as instructed, and got it started by running some water "backward" into the tube and then lowering and opening the tube to start the flow, as instructed.  It took me three tries to get the flow.  Video-man did it in one.  Video-man was an expert, but really, we're just talking about siphoning.  I have no excuse.

I got it flowing just in time to stave off panicky thoughts of failure, stopped the flow, transferred the racking cane and tube to the fermenter, and let the flow start again, first into a cup to let the sanitizer out.  Once beer was flowing, I lowered the tube into the bottling bucket, and within minutes I had a lovely bucket of beer there, ready to bottle.

Bottling was straightforward enough.  There's a handy (when it works) valve on the end of the bottling tube that only allows beer to flow (when it works) when it touches the bottom of a bottle.  Did I mention that it didn't work all that reliably?  I mean, it definitely allowed beer to flow, but let's just say it didn't always stop on cue.  Video-man had said to put towels under the bottling area, and never, never, never bottle over carpet.  I listened to Video-man.  Whew.  I quickly learned to re-tap the valve against the bottom of the bottle every now and then to keep it from sticking.

By the way, it is a painful thing to spill beer that you went through the trouble of making.  When that valve stuck and beer overflowed the bottle and soaked the towels, I wondered if it would be undignified to suck on the towels later.

Capping (remember, sanitize those caps!) was a breeze. I put the bottles back in their warm, cozy, pro-fermentation environment and prepared to wait two weeks.  After bottling, there was a tiny bit of beer -- and a lot of sediment -- left in the bucket, and my wife and I isolated a bit of the liquid and tried it.  Sure it was flat and needed to mature, but it actually tasted pretty darn good!  It was definitely beer.  I appeared to be on the right track.

I looked ahead to the two week wait, and it sounded painfully long.  Lucky for me, my friend Sean -- an experienced homebrewer -- said on the 8th day to go ahead and try it!  It's probably ready!  My wife and I put two in the fridge, and close to dinner time we took them out and let them come up to cellar-ish temperature.  I held my breath opening the first one.  Remember that unsanitized airlock spill-over?  Well, I was sure thinking about it, but the bottle opened with a healthy, sharp hiss and didn't crazily froth over -- which can be a sign of infection -- and it poured beautifully.  Nut-brown color, a nice head, aroma of malty sweetness with just a bit of background hops.  And it tasted... GOOD!  Not fantastic.  But good!  A touch sweet, a bit roasted, a hint of chocolate, nice bittering from the hops along with just a breath of floral quality.  It was an English brown ale, as planned.  My wife and I both enjoyed it.  Sean had said to shoot for drinkability with the first batch.  This one exceeded that expectation.  This homebrewing thing is a whole lot of fun.  Sure, there were anxious moments.  There were even moments of utter folly.  But I'm hooked.

Before the first taste, my 5-year-old was watching intently, and as I sipped it, he asked eagerly, "Is it good?  Is it good?"  And when I told him it was, he crowed gleefully.

After all, it's his namesake beer.