The Fabled Ferocious Fermentation.. Really?

By Malty Mike

Well I can't really decide if this is good or bad.

The angel to my right says I know my beer is fermenting, but the devil... the hot sexy devil, is telling me that a strain of wild yeast may have found its way into my fermenter.

Angey, the angel, quickly replied that at least the temperature in the fermenter room, aka closet, was the right temperature, but then again Elizabeth Hurley is telling me the portable heater with auto sensor set to 66 probably shouldn't have been pointing so close to the fermenter.

Well after deciding there's nothing these 2 fine ladies could help me with at this moment, I turned to my very own fine lady to look up the problem on various forums and websites as I tended to the cleanup. I whipped up a cup of EasyClean, less than a teaspoon for the little red cup, and started cleaning off the airlock and the lid. I have to admit I was panicking quite a bit at this point because although I had heard of stuff like this happening, I never expected it to happen on my first batch. I was sure something was wrong. The bubbles kept getting denser and denser and the "sanitizing solution" kept looking more and more like wort.

By the time I cleaned it up Erika had read enough forums to tell me I should probably just clean out the airlock and see if it happens again. So i quickly do that and within 5 minutes I see the stupid, mean, insensitive bubbles forming their very unwelcomed mosh pit on top of my airlock again. So the next piece of advice I got was to make a blowoff tube. Supposedly I could put my airlock in my fermentor and hook my bottling siphon tubing directly to the airlock and make my own little blowoff tube. This is so many words.. did not work. The tube was slightly smaller than the airlock passthrough, too small to get over airlock, too large to be stuffed in it. After what seemed like hours but im sure may have been closer to 15 minutes, I realized, if the tube is approximately the same size as the airlock, well then cant I just insert to tube. SO i try that and it seems to fit reasonably well. I whip up another batch of easyclean solution, this time about a half a gallon, for the other end of the airlock and boom problem seemingly solved.

Its a little scary to see all these bubbles and gross stuff running through the tube I am supposed to sanitize and use as my siphoning tube but it had to be done right. After about a day the major fermenting seemed to have subsided and I reinserted the airlock and my "major catastrophe was over." Here are some pics of the final rig.

Blow-off, Check!

Hard to see, but very gross.

Malty Mike Brews His First Beer

By Malty Mike

Well I brewed my first batch of beer! Yes I know I know, NBD. (no big deal for those of you scratching your heads right now). But this is a big deal, I have officially taken my first step to becoming a brew master. I found the whole process very fun and interesting. I started the brewing around 10:30 pm and finished around 1 in the morning..

Beartooth Stout Kit:

I would say everything went very smoothly. I didn't follow the directions that came with my kit, instead I used the directions given in John Palmer's "How To Brew". The main difference between the 2 was my kit said to put in the specialty grains and take them out right before the pot begins to boil where Mr. Palmer said to steep the grains between 150 and 170 degrees for 30 minutes.

I have not build my immersion chiller yet so I bought 2 bags of ice and filled my bath tub up with water for its nice cold bath. Since I have read how this method is not the best for chilling ther wort, I left it for 30 minutes before pouring the 2.5 gallons of wort into my 2.5 gallons of cold water. The final temperature was around 65 degrees. colder than the desired 75 degrees the wort should be but, I did not see any particles of a cold break. Does anyone have any idea why I didnt get any cold break? But I poured in my yeast , shook it for a good 3-4 minutes, took a sample and checked my OG. 1.052, .002 higher than the kit says, but I'll take it.

Everything looks good so far, its just stiiting in the bucket in my closet that is holding steady at 66.2 degrees. The only problems where I may have messed up are.

-Some condensation from the lid and 1 drop of cold ice water from my hand fell into the beer while it was cooling.
-My kit said to add the finishing hops with 5 minutes left in the boil, that seems too short to me
-Some Sanitation liquid fell into the fermenter while i was putting in the airlock

I hope everything works out! I guess its just time to be patient and wait for this thing to bubble..

Please Please bubble!!!!

Here are a few extra pics

The Hot Break Forming Nicely

Hops Added To The Rolling Boil

1.052!

Malty Mike starts his blog

By Malty Mike

Well I am about to start my journey into the frays of Home Brewing. That sentence may or may not make sense but I figure it will serve as a introduction (see: warning) of what you may expect from this blog. I am what you might call, "not the best writer," and I have no qualms about that and if anyone intends to possible check in on my situation from time to time, they must also be sans qualms.

I have been thinking about brewing beer for about a year now and for some reason or another it just never happened. About 3 weeks ago my loving, wonderful, perfect, supportive girlfriend asked me why I haven't started brewing my own beer yet and I couldn't come up with a reasonable answer. So it was that moment I decided the time was now, no more excuses, its time to buy a kit, and plus once I have the kit in my possession making the beer would be the easy part.. right?

Admittingly, while putting off buying the beer brewing kit, I also put off learning anything about actually brewing beer. My only research consisted of trying out as many new kinds of dark malty beers I could get my hands on. A quick Google search of "home beer kit" brought up a substantial number of sites. The first I clicked on was homebrewers.com which proclaimed it was "The #1 site for Beer and Wine Making Kits, Supplies, and Equipment." Sounds sort of wonderful right? After about a few days of looking at different kits and asking myself the real tough questions like: "Do I really need a 21 inch spoon" and "If I'm just starting is a secondary fermenter really necessary" With a quick "Yes" and a reassuring nod to myself I was ready to pull the trigger. I decided to go with the "Beer Making Plus Kit with Secondary Fermenter and Ingredients" This came with one kit, and being Malty Mike, I went with the beartooth stout, which I didn't read too much about but I would assume uses some bear parts during fermentation to enhance a mans stamina, if you know what I mean. But this process was not without fault, which I will go over in my next post, which I hope will serve as a learning tool for anyone who is interested in starting out brewing their own beer.

The reason I am actually sharing all of this information is because of my aforementioned girlfriend Erika. She has been super supportive in my efforts and is really excited for me to get started. She picked out this lovely blog template that you see here. I have been watching her start her own blog, Erikurious (which you can see here.. (show your wife/girlfriend/more feminine guy friends because she is far better at cooking than I will ever be at brewing beer. (How many sets of nested parentheses is too many you might ask.. 3!)))