These are a few of my favorite things… my beer

Here is a little visual guide to some of the beers I’ve made since I started brewing. Click on each beer to get more details if you are that way inclined

Cascades Pale Ale

Vanilla Whiskey Porter

All Grain hefeweizen

Amber Ale

American Style Wheat Ale

Nut Brown Ale

Doublenut Brown Ale

Dry Hopped Pale Ale

Extra Special Bitter

Honey Weizen

Irish Red Ale

Irish Red Ale mark 2

Mild Ale

My Kegerator Project….

I think there comes a point in every homebrewers life when you think, “God Damn but bottling sucks”
It takes a looong time to clean, sanitize and fill upwards on 2 cases per batch of beer you make. If only there were some way to make this easier.

And then like manna from the heavens you see draft systemns, kegerators, keezers, cold boxes….whatever you call them, but now they are everywhere. Like the cartoon hungry wolf who sees everything as a steak, now no matter where you look, faucets are appearing. In mail boxes, on cars. It’s a sign, you can’t ignore it anymore, you have to start kegging.

But holy crap, fridges are expensive…..or so you thought.
Dear Craigslist,
I love you, you’re awesome. Thanks for the fridge
Gavin

And then it begins. I got a fridge from craigslist… cost $0. It’s an older model, side by side, and needed some cleaning, but for that price, you don’t mind it.

Start with this…..

Old and busted Fridge

First thing you need to do is clean that bad boy. It’s not new, and it wasn’t yours, so you get out the bleach, the oxyclean (rip Billy Mays!!!) and the elbow grease and you clean that thing until it’s like new.

And now you are left with this doorless looking thing…

Doorless wonder

Now we transition this monstrosity from “fridge” to “Kegerator” (note the use of capital letters, because a fridge is just a fridge, the Kegerator is much more than that, therefore that K gets to stand upright)

First you need to tape off the doors and sand them gently, clean all the loose debris from the doors. Spray your undercoat (or paint, I used spray for the primer and the finish here since it wasn’t a huge area to cover).
Let it dry, spray again.

Now your door looks like this…

Doors were cleaned, sanded and primed

Next it’s on to the top coat. For this I’m using chalkboard paint. I’m doing this for 2 reasons.
1. I’m going to be brewing different beers, so I can just write above the tap what’s in each keg.
2. It’s common in brewpubs to have your beers listed on a chalkboard, so why not

Here is what the taped and coated door looks like…

I applied 3 coats of chalkboard paint to the doors

Next step is to remount the doors onto the Kegerator…

Chalkboard paint applied and doors back on the fridge

The Kegs and fittings have arrived. After doing some measuring, I can get a couple of five gallon kegs and a 5 lb Co2 tank in the bottom. Whats even better is I can get, when the time to expand comes, 2 more kegs on top. I will have to make a more sturdy shelf to set them on that the ones that come on the fridge, but that’s a ways away yet.

Kegs fitted in place…

Measuring the inside of the fridge for space

And now the final piece, and the most important piece. The faucets.
I drilled the holes with a 1″ hole saw (you can use a 7/8″ also, whatever you have) and spaced them about a fist width apart. There are several type of faucets you can use, I’m using Perlick 525’s because they are forward lean no drip faucets…..and they were on special. Which is a must if you are trying to build on a budget.

Faucets on the fridge….

Faucets on the Fridge

A close up of the faucets…

Close up of the Perlick 525s forward lean no-drip faucets

So, there was only one thing left to do (well, two, I still have to install a drip tray), test the chalkboard paint to see if it actually works.
You will have to forgive my terrible writing, it is absolutely brutal, but it was only to test the actual paint. I’m sure it will be elegant and awesome soon.

I’ve installed a bottle opener on the other side of the fridge as that door looked lonely.

Last photo, I promise….

Testing the chalkboard paint

And that’s all there is to it… Easy right?

Extract recipe: Hoof Hearted Ale

Ok, so I never claimed to be a mature brewer. Brewing is about fun, and making good beer. But why not have some fun with the naming of your brews (go on, say the name out loud).

This is another extract brew, it lets you familiarize yourself with dry hopping which is just another little step in expanding your skills as a brewer. Enjoy, and feel free to leave feedback, or ask questions if you have any.

Ingredients:

Specialty Grains:
1 LB Briess Crystal Malt – 60 L

Malt:
6 LB Briess Pilsen Light DME

Hops:
1 oz Nugget – 13% AA @ 60 minutes
1 oz Cascade – 5.9% AA @ 10 minutes
1 oz Cascade – 5.9% AA @ dry hopped

Yeast:
Wyeast 1056 American Ale Yeast

A couple of notes

Some people prefer to use all DME, Dried Malt Extract. A very general rule to convert Liquid Malt Extract to DME is multiply by 0.8. So in this instance 6 x 0.8 = 4.8 lb DME, so round up to an even 5 lb if you like

With an American Pale Ale, or India Pale Ale hop choice is going to be both important and personal. The Cascade hop is very popular for pale ales, but use what you like. I have made a variation of this with Centennial hops, but thought it was just too much hops, for the amount of malt used in the recipe. I like hops, but not to the point where they are turning my eyes back in my head

As with hops, the yeast is also something that comes down to personal preference, and what you want to come through in your beer. I’ve made other pale ales using the Safale US-05 dried yeast with excellent results also. I simply prefer the Wyeast 1056 based on past use

Dry hopping is not something to be intimidated by (even though I was the first time I tried it). I use pellet hops to dry hop, and just throw them straight into the secondary fermenter. I do recommend transferring to a secondary, as you don’t want to leave the wort sitting on the yeast cake for too long in case you start to get off flavors

I like to dry hop for about 10 to 14 days, and then bottle. That will give time for the pellets to settle at the bottom, so you don’t need to use a hop bag (although do by all means if you like, I prefer to keep it simple, keep it easy)

And here is a picture of the final product

A simple, tasty, Nut Brown Ale

This is an easy recipe for an English style nut brown ale. I haven’t brewed a batch since starting this blog, but intend to do so next week, so I will have a step by step pictoral on the brewing process.

Our very good friends had their first child in August, so I named this batch for him. The end product is worth waiting for.

Baby Jack’s Nut Brown Ale

Ingredient List:

Specialty Grains

0.25 lb Dingemans Special B

0.25 lb Simpson’s Chocolate

0.25 lb Dingemans Biscuit

0.25 lb Briess Special Roast

Fermentables
6 lbs. Gold Malt Syrup

Hop Additions
1 oz Argentina Cascade 3.2% AA @ 60 minutes

YeastSafale S-04

A couple of notes

Some people prefer to use all DME, Dried Malt Extract. A very general rule to convert Liquid Malt Extract to DME is multiply by 0.8. So in this instance 6 x 0.8 = 4.8 lb DME, so round up to an even 5 lb if you like

The Argentina Cascade is not at all like the American Cascade hop commonly used in Pale Ales. It is more mellow, and makes a pretty decent substitute for Goldings type hops, which given the hop shortage is why I used it in this ale

Finally, the yeast, like anything in brewing is personal preference. I like the S-05 dried yeast. You can use Danstar Nottingham or Danstar Windsor dried yeasts if the S-04 is not your yeast of choice. Alternatively, if you prefer liquid yeasts, Wyeast has an excellent range, including their London Ale (1028), British Ale (1098), Thames Valley (1275) or British Ale Yeast II (1335).

Brewing is about making what you like, so experiment, enjoy and Relax, Don’t Worry, Have A Homebrew

And here is the end result, in the bottle and in the glass

My “brewery”

Brewery is a stretch. Since this is my first beer related post, I’ll give a little background on my set up.

I brew either partial boil on my stove top, or if the weather is nice outside, I’ll brew in my Keggle

This is my outdoor set up. I use a keg with the top cut off with a plasma gun, and a ball valve installed at the bottom to drain.

As for the fermenting, I have three 6.5 gallon Ale Pails, a 5 gallon glass carboy, and a 5 gallon better bottle, which is made of PET plastic. The other thing you are seeing in the photo below is my bottle drying rack. I learned the hard way one evening that air drying bottles on a counter can cause a domino like disaster. So the bottle drying rack was immediately bought.

And as a final introduction to my setup, here is my logo.

Madra is the Irish word for dog, and this particular dog is Jake. He is the undisputed leader of the house.

So, that’s my “brewery”. I’ll be posting more on projects, recipes and any tips or ideas that come up along the way