Paul’s Brewsletter

Mardi Gras in New Orleans is a truly unique and fun party.  People come from all over the world to experience Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans.  I made this beer for the first time several years ago and it is popular with people who try it - it is on the lighter side, so you can enjoy more of it as you watch the parades roll by.

Ingredients

3 gallons of your favorite bottled water
1 package of Booster
1/3 oz of Galena Hops
1 can West Coast Pale Ale
1 pack Liquid Yeast (Ale Yeast) - this is optional.  A lot of beer mixes come with a packet of dry yeast, but the liquid yeast makes for a better taste.  I’ve tried both and prefer liquid yeast.

Directions

1) At least one day before brewing, put one of the gallons of water in the refrigerator to chill it.  Also, if you’re using the liquid yeast smack pack, take the packet out of the refrigerator and break the inner pouch by placing the packet on a flat surface and pressing down on the packet with your hand until you feel the inner pouch break.

2) Sanitize the beer barrel (preferably with One Step).

3) Put six cups of water (from one of the bottles you didn’t put in the refrigerator) into a pot (2-3 gallon size is preferable, so you have room).  Add the Booster to the water.

4) Stir with a spoon until the Booster is blended.  This will take a little while, as the Booster can get a little thick when it hits the water.  I usually press the Booster against the side of the pot with a spoon, rubbing back and forth to get the Booster to dissolve.

5) Once the Booster is completely dissolved into the water, bring the mixture to a boil.

6) As the mixture gets close to boiling, take the gallon of water from the refrigerator and pour it into the Beer Barrel.

7) Once the water/Booster mixture gets to a boil, remove from the heat and add the West Coast Pale Ale.  Stir until mixed.  This is now known as your wort (Pronounced “wert”).

Pour the wort into the beer barrel.  Add water until the water level reaches 8.5 gallons on the barrel.

9) Add the yeast.  Wait five minutes, and then stir the wort thoroughly.

10) That’s it - you’re done until its ready to be bottled!

Homemade beer is the best beer in the world, by far. Have you ever tasted anybody’s homebrew? If you have, you probably thought it was darn good. Let me tell you that when it is your own, it is even better. In fact, it is incomparable to anything else on the planet.

I am a beer lover and long-time homebrewer. There is no other hobby that is as satisfying as this one. I have entered many, many homebrewing competitions and have won lots of blue ribbons for my beers, including at my local County Fair (which is a huge one). In fact I had so many ribbons that I finally threw them all away and stopped entering competitions. Now I just brew what I like and drink it while browsing the internet or watching television with my wife. Yep, life is good for homebrewers.

Listen, anyone can make beer on their stove - and I mean really, really good beer. You don’t have to take it to the level that I did. If you enjoy beer one-tenth as much as I do, then I highly recommend that you at least make one batch in your lifetime, just so you can say you did it. Having brewed a batch a beer changes a person, for the better, and forever. You will then be one of my brethren.

You are going to need some simple pieces of equipment: A large pot to brew in, a big food-grade plastic bucket with a lid to ferment in, a small plastic “airlock” and rubber stopper that goes into a hole in the bucket lid, bottles and caps, and a basic bottlecap crimping tool. It also helps to have something to stir with; a big wooden spoon will do nicely.

There are only four ingredients in beer: water, malt, hops, and yeast. Malt refers to malted barley - for your first batch you will simply use packaged “malt extract.” Hops are best purchased in pellet form; they look like rabbit food. A package of dry brewers yeast costs about one dollar. Water can come from any source, but at least two gallons of it needs to be sanitized. Those 2.5 gallon water vessels from the market work nicely.

Homebrew is typically made in 5 gallon batches. This will fill two cases worth of bottles. Take my advice and go for the large, 22 oz. Bottles, as this is less bottling work. You will need 6 total gallons of starting water with about 2.5 gallons chilled in a sealed container. The plastic bucket should be a 6 gallon size. Over half a gallon of water will evaporate while you are brewing.

Here is what you do:

1. Boil 3.5 gallons of water with 6 pounds of malt extract for one hour, adding an ounce of hops at the beginning of the boil, some more hops after 45 minutes, and some more hops when you turn off the heat. Cool the pot in the sink by running water around it. Sanitize your bucket fermenter with a shot of bleach mixed into it full of water. Let that sit for a few minutes with the airlock and rubber stopper then pour out over the inside part of the bucket lid and rinse everything that the bleach solution touched with hot water.

2. Put the chilled 2.5 gallons of water in the bucket first, then pour the brew from the pot on top of it. Do not stir. Add the yeast and seal the lid tight on the bucket and put the airlock in the stopper and the stopper in the lid-hole. Put water in the air lock. After a day or two the airlock will start bubbling.

3. After a couple weeks its time to bottle the beer. Boil 3/4 cup of sugar with 2 cups of water and add it to your bucket of beer. You can sanitize a measuring cup with hot water, or just put it through the dishwasher with heated drying on. Scoop out the beer with the measuring cup and fill the bottles leaving 1″ of space in them. Crimp the caps on and store the bottles in a cool dark area for two weeks. Clean everything.

4. After two weeks put some bottles in the fridge and enjoy.

Most of brewing is cleaning and sanitation. Everything that comes into contact with your unfermented beer, and even on bottling day after it has fermented, must be sanitized. A small shotglass of household bleach mixed with 5-6 gallons of water makes an effective sanitizing solution, given 5-10 minutes of contact time.

Don’t forget to tell me when the beer is ready to drink. If I live in a nearby state, I just may come over and taste it with you.

Andrew Kasch is a beer lover and long-time award-winning homebrewer. Many of his recipes can be found on his website http://www.makeyourownbeer.info/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Kasch

Hello again - I just wanted to share a fun beer site with you.  I’m sure you’ve probably heard of the Bud Light “Real Men of Genius” and “Real American Heroes” radio commercials - I’ve come across a site on the web that lists what they claim to be the entire collection, available for downloading and listening.  Take a look - these are hilarious.  I didn’t catch a lot of these before on the radio and every one I’ve heard is great!

http://diis.net/article.php?story=budlight

Greetings - I hope your holiday season is going well. Before the beer update, a friendly word if you’re doing some last minute Christmas shopping — Mr. Beer has ecards available which allows you to send a gift certificate for Mr. Beer that can arrive the next day! Find out more here.

If you’re not worried about the arrival time of your gifts, check out the beer links portion of my brewsletter page for other gift ideas.

The Cranberry Holidaze was a success at the New Orleans Concert Band party. The 2 liter bottles worked well, and they made for some humorous commentary (”try the ‘Diet Coke’, its great”). I’ll be attending an office party at my former employer, where I’ll be bringing some more of the Cranberry Holidaze. That will be taking place on Friday of this week. I’ll be giving them some of the double barrel batch I mentioned earlier - that batch came to 3.4% alcohol by volume.

I started another batch of the Holidaze (#4 of 6), which would be for the New Year’s Eve festivities. I’m hoping all goes well and this ferments in time. I used the Cranberry Holidaze recipe and added the following additional ingredients to give the beer an extra kick:

1 can of Mellow Amber Unhopped Malt Extract

1/2 cup of white sugar

The initial specific gravity reading was 1.064 and the potential alcohol content is somewhere between 8-9%! Happy New Year for anyone drinking that hehe - the beer may take a little longer to ferment since I increased the amount of fermentables (The term fermentables refers to the items in the wort, or beer mixture, that can be fermented into alcohol. An example of these fermentables is sugar. The more fermentables in the wort, the higher the potential alcohol content is.). Its a race against the clock - will the beer finish in time for New Years?

Stay tuned…all in all, I don’t believe I’ve ever brewed this much beer in this short of time.

Have a Merry Christmas!

Paul

Last night’s beer batches bring the total to three for the Cranberry Holidaze.  Tomorrow I’ll be unveiling the Cranberry Holidaze 2006 at the New Orleans Concert Band’s Christmas concert - this is a pretty regular tradition for me to do this, so I’ll let you know how it goes.

The alcohol content on the most recent batches bottled dropped a little - 3.40% is what I calulated for batches 2 and 3.  I did a quick taste test and it was promising.  I’m not trying to make this batch really high in alcohol — I will shoot more for alcohol content when I try the Opus Stout in another few weeks…stay tuned!

The experience of the Cranberry Holidaze reminded me about filtering and I’d like to share a tip on that with you.  This mainly applies if you are making beer with fruit or any substance that could leave pulp matter in your wort.  I have tried bottling the fruit beers I’ve made with absolutely no filtering so any and all remaining pulp from the fruit goes into the beer bottles.  The settling that occurs during the time the beer is bottled before it is drank usually gets the pulp to the bottom of the bottle and out of your way.  However, pouring the beer will often disturb the pulp and you very well could end up with some in your beer glass.

I’ve used cheesecloth to filter beer and it has been fairly effective.  I simply cut a piece of cheesecloth and place it over the funnel I use for bottling.  The catch with this is to remember to keep an adequate supply on hand.  The cheesecloth can run out rather quickly, especially if you are dealing with an above average amount of pulp (like I had with the Cranberry Holidaze).

Another method I have used for filtering unwanted pulp remnants is a metal splatter guard.  You can buy these from a local supermarket.  Simply cut a piece of the metal screen that would act like the cheesecloth I mentioned above.  The advantage here is you get a reusable filter (for a little more money spent initially).

So tell me, have you been Christmas shopping for gifts?  You’re running out of time!  Have you been brewing any holiday beer batches?  Feel free to post a comment about a beer batch or anything else related to brewing beer.

Until next time - happy brewing!

Paul

December is here and the holidays are fast approaching. In honor of this, I am going to put my wish list for this year up. Here are the beer related items I would love to see under my tree this year. Feel free to post a comment with your favorite beer item wishes…

Beer Inside - Beer Recipe Book
What could be more fun than making beer? Cooking with beer, perhaps? Here is Beer Inside a collection of food recipes containing beer. Instant ebook download.

Brew Buddies
This is a great site with information on getting into the homebrew beer hobby. They have several books available on homebrewing and a variety of kits and recipes. Visit Brew Buddies

Mr. Beer
Beer Mixes from Mr. Beer — with a large variety of ingredients to choose from, Mr. Beer has a great selection for that homebrewer in your life. You can purchase a kit for $39.95 and get free shipping this month. How about that for a deal? — with a large variety of ingredients to choose from, Mr. Beer has a great selection for that homebrewer in your life. You can purchase a kit for $39.95 and get free shipping this month. How about that for a deal?

This was a busy beer weekend for sure. Friday evening my wife Andrea and I bottled the first batch of the Cranberry Holidaze. The alcohol content came out pretty much as expected (4.04% by volume) and the beer has a nice reddish tint to it. I put this beer in three 2-liter bottles and a few glass bottles. I will be sharing this beer with my fellow musicians in the New Orleans Concert Band at our upcoming Christmas concert on December 17th - I’ll let you know how the beer goes over.

Now, lets talk about the Double Barrel Batch. I use the expression “Double Barrel” because I happen to have two beer barrel kits from Mr. Beer and sometimes I brew two batches simultaneously, hence the term “Double Barrel”. Andrea was a real trouper, helping me throughout the process. I’ve done this double batch thing alone before and it was a real hassle - so her assistance was appreciated…thanks, sweetheart

The initial specific gravity on both batches of beer were pretty close:

Batch 1: 1.034

Batch 2: 1.036

So, we’re off to the races again. The beer took about 8 days to finish the primary fermentation, so I’m expecting it to be close to that again. If you happen to be in the New Orleans area on December 17th, I recommend you check out the New Orleans Concert Band’s Christmas Concert. And, if you stick around after for the band social…you may get to taste some of the Cranberry Holidaze!

That’s all for now, Happy Brewing!

Paul