Been a while...

... since the last update. I've previously written that we'd planned on entering our first homebrew competition this year with the New England Regional Homebrew Competition, by entering our Oaked Oatmeal Stout. Well, due to the flatness of the beers opened by the time of registration, we didn't bother.

That's all changed.

I've opened five more bottles and they've all been carbonated. So, that's awesome! Aside from being tasty, maybe we can still enter them into the comp! Nope. Registration hit its 450-entrant cap three days after opening. Sad face.

On the bright side, the beer is still yummy. Maybe I'll hold on to a couple for the next comp that rolls around.

Uh-oh...

Time for a mega disappointment. Yesterday I passed out four bottles of the Oaked Oatmeal Stout to some coworkers. Then, when I got home, I opened one and was greeted with.... nothing.

No hiss from popping the cap.

No foam when pouring.

No head on the beer.

It was completely not carbonated. It wouldn't be so bad except... I just gave four away in an attempt to impress! Clearly this would fail in that regard. The taste was still great, but the beer is just flat. What happened??

We did everything we were supposed to do to carbonate it. We filled the keg, primed it to 30psi, let it sit for three days to allow the CO₂ to permeate the beer, then bottled it. We even tried a couple glasses straight from the keg minutes before bottling, and it was carbonated! What gives?

Well, after reaching out on /r/homebrewing, it seems the general consensus is that it should have been chilled during the priming, because colder beer allows greater CO₂ suspension in the beer. Unfortunately, we omitted that step because we don't have the capability to refrigerate a keg. Looks like all our effort was for naught...

Some recommended using carbonation drops, but they're just simple priming sugars and require the beer to hold yeast in suspension. Given that this beer is six years old, I highly doubt there's any viable yeast remaining, so that's out the window. Regardless, I advised a couple coworkers (fellow homebrewers) who hadn't yet popped the beer to try adding a pinch of sugar and re-capping the bottles. After a week or so they can try the beer. We'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, one option we have is to simply empty the bottles back into a keg and prime it at a very high PSI (PSI vs ambient temperature leads to proper carbonation). Or we just enjoy it flat? Ugh. Not very tantalizing.

Further discussion is required.

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One day, four beers

So yesterday we'd planned on kegging the Nut Brown and, in order to do so, we needed a couple empty kegs. We had one empty already, and were close to empty on another. So what do we do?

"Hey Brian, want to come help us empty this keg?"

"I'll be right there."

So we promptly finished off the Oatmeal Stout and freed up a keg. After that, we filtered the Doppelbock to one of the empty kegs, thereby freeing its original holding keg. Then we christened our new beer gun and bottled the Oaked Oatmeal Stout. Behold, in all its glory:

We got forty-eight 12oz bottles of this beer. It would've been more but we indulged from the keg prior to bottling. Fantastic!

After we were done bottling, we rinsed the two empty kegs, sanitized them, and then racked the Nut Brown into the kegs. Both kegs were primed with 30psi of CO₂, and we can't wait to try it! A couple days of infusing the CO₂ and then they should be good to tap! Hooray beer!

'Till next time!

Mid-week update

Yesterday evening we racked the Oatmeal Stout from the whiskey barrel into an empty keg for forced carbonation. The aroma throughout the process was absolutely delightful. We'll be bottling these on Sunday into 12oz bottles, and we'll be interested in entering this particular brew into some competitions. We made a label for these bottles, as well:

Meanwhile, we've been diligently emptying the regular Oatmeal Stout from its keg, in anticipation of needing two empty kegs on Sunday for the Nut Brown. It's a grueling task, but I'm sure we'll do well.

A great day for beer

So today we had the fine pleasure of racking our Nut Brown to secondary, which we're doing to further clarify it before we keg it. We got a great final gravity of 1.012 - 1.014, giving us around ~4.7% ABV. I do believe this wound up turning out great. Though it was flat, the flavor was exactly what I'd hoped for and the color was spot-on. Hooray for SRM calculators! Now, while we do plan on kegging this beer, we may find ourselves wanting to pass around a few bottles to friends and family. If and when that happens, here's a label for those bottles:

Simple enough to get the point across. Clearly I'm no graphic designer, but I feel it's at least adequate.

On to other happenings, we're definitely getting around to acquiring new photos for the banner image as well as for the profiles. I know those placeholder images are pretty sexy, but you'll soon have to live with disappointment as they're replaced with our ugly mugs. Sorry about that.

Anyways, on top of everything else, we finished the day with grilling some fantastic ribeye steaks and an absolutely sublime beer called "Smoking Wood" by The Bruery, out of Orange County, CA. It's an Imperial Rye Porter aged in Bourbon Barrels. 14% ABV. Wowzers! It complimented the steak (which had been subjected to its own outstanding dry rub) wonderfully. All in all, it was a great day for the beer lovers that we are.

Till next time!

Events of today's brew

Well today was a very successful brew day. We brewed ten gallons of a brown ale and discovered some more old kegs of years-old homebrew. There's some good stuff to note here, so let's get started.

For info on the brown ale brew, click here.

Before we even started brewing, we decided to take a look at the two kegs we'd found, and hooked up an exit line. Out of the first one came some delicious oatmeal stout, which was apparently the second keg (of two) that I described in the previous post. This was also absolutely delicious. Velvety smooth, nutty and aromatic. While we'd have loved to drink more of it, we resolved to put it toward topping off the whiskey barrel already containing ~2.5-3 gallons of the same brew. We'll be taking care of that in a few days.

The second keg turned out to be one of our doppelbocks. Eric insists that we fermented it in the keg, but it had to be at most a secondary. There was certainly a large degree of yeast that came out with the beer, but not nearly enough as to suggest a primary fermentation. Regardless, our plan is to cold crash this keg and pump the rest of the yeast out, thereby allowing us to enjoy this fine brew at long last.

Now, lastly, our Black IPA has been in the bottles for a week, and so it'll be ready for mass consumption in one more week. Since we're (at least attempting to be) making a resurgent comeback in brewing, we're both looking to pass around a few to coworkers, friends and family. In light of that, I devised a label that we'll be affixing to the bottles. It's pretty killer:

Anyways, nothing else to report. That's it for today, now time to start planning the next brew!

THIS IS IT!

Well, we're back! It's been a long three years but we've finally gotten back to brewing again. Granted, as of this writing, we've only gotten one brew under our belts (since the three year hiatus) with another one planned in two days' time, but we've got determination and, more importantly, our wives' support.

Tell ya what, it feels great to be back in the saddle.

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This past weekend we bottled our newest creation, a black IPA. Check out its page here.

OH OH OH. Also we found three corny kegs that apparently still contained beer. We hooked a line up to one of the exit ports and a delicious oatmeal stout came out. This was brewed SIX YEARS AGO. And it was still delicious. Well, I'd since purchased a 5 gal whiskey barrel that was sitting dormant, so we racked that stout right in. As of this writing it's been 5 days and the aroma pouring out is absolutely heavenly. Can't wait to bottle that!

Anyways, up next we're looking at a brown ale. We've got a recipe in the works (basically an extract tweak of this, and can't wait to brew!

Lastly, if you're looking for the old blog for nostalgia, here's the URL:
http://www.meatcircus.com/beerblog

I forgot the login/PW so I can't even point anyone here. Oh well.  Found it! Added a post pointing here!

Anyways, cheers to beers!