Cameron Stokes’s Blog

Since taking up homebrewing I’ve brewed 6 beers:

1. English Pale Ale – Crap!
2. Weizenbier – Crap!
3. India Pale Ale (IPA) – First drinkable beer.
4. Brown Ale – Definitely drinkable.
5. Pale Ale – Definitely drinkable.
6. Pale Ale – Undetermined, still fermenting.

As I mentioned, the first 2 were crap, flavorless crap.  Some of them are still in my kitchen cabinet reveling in their crappiness.  The IPA was the first drinkable beer and was actually quite enjoyable.  It was the first beer I was proud to give out to others and claim as my own.

Since then, each beer has been better and better, but I’m still not brewing as much as I want; I’ve done 6 beers in almost as many months.  Brewing 5 gallon beers I don’t get enough practice and don’t get enough chance to experiment.  I can’t drink or give away the beer quick enough.  So with some inspiration from Brewing One Gallon Batches from Ted’s Homebrew Journal I decided to try a one gallon batch this evening.

I purchased a 4 liter bottle of Carlo Rossi Chardonnay to use as a fermenter (found at Kroger, Publix only carried the 3 liter bottles), after a quick trip to Home Depot I had parts for a blow-off hose, and a couple hours later the boil was done and we transferred it to the fermenter.  One fatal flaw in this plan was noting being able to take a gravity reading.  I’ll pick up a graduated cylinder before doing my next batch.

For the first batch we didn’t stray too far from a typical recipe; a pale ale made from some light dry malt extract (DME) and U.K. Fuggles hops.

One gallon batch of homebrew.

I’m excited about the opportunities this opens up; more frequent homebrews and more experimental homebrews.  I plan on learning as much as I can about brewing in the coming months.