Cameron Stokes’s Blog

Brewing slowed in recent months but we kicked it back into gear a few weeks ago and now have 2 brews fermenting.  Our first foray back into brewing was a 1 gallon all-Simcoe IPA.  This was our 6th brew and the first using Simcoe hops.

Here’s the recipe:

• Recipe Type: Extract
• Yeast: Safale S-04
• Batch Size: 1 gallon
• Boil Size: 1.5 gallons
• 2.00 lbs light DME
• 0.33 lbs Crystal
• 0.375 oz Simcoe – 60 min
• 0.375 oz Simcoe – 15 min
• 0.25 oz Simcoe – 5 min

We changed three other steps in the process.  The first was to add the steeping grains once the water reached 150 F instead of starting it in the cold water.  The second change was dumping the malt extract in prior to the water boiling.  This allowed us to control the boil better and not have to worry about boilover as much.  Our last change in the process was to wait until the hot break to add the hops.  This led to a longer boil time but again helped to control the overall boil.

The IPA sat in the primary fermenter for 10 days when we racked it to secondary.  In between the primary and secondary it tasted incredible.  All previous homebrews have been ok but nothing spectacular.  This batch was the first that made me say “Wow!”  It’s been in the secondary for 2 weeks so we’ll likely bottle it in the next few days.

Two weekends ago we brewed a full 5-gallon wheat beer.  We followed the same new techniques as with the Simcoe IPA but also decided to control the fermentation temperature which we had not done previously.  The fermentation bucket has been sitting in a cooler for 9 days and we’ve been cycling frozen water bottles every morning and night keeping the temperature between 66 – 70 F.  We’ll take a gravity reading in the next couple days to monitor fermentation.  The plan is to split the batch and keep half for a straight wheat beer and make a peach wheat out of the other half by racking to secondary and adding 2.5 lbs of fresh Georgia peaches.

I’m excited to taste each of these once they’ve conditioned, particular the IPA and peach wheat.  The next batch will be a stout.

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.

A friend and I decided to take our hand at homebrewing beer. After doing a bit research we found a local wine making and beer brewing supply shop, Wine Craft of Atlanta, and decided to venture over and check it out. The shop owner, Rick Adams (and his wife Peggy whom we haven’t met yet), was extremely helpful and put up with our countless questions on how homebrewing works, what to buy, what not to buy, etc., and we left with a beer starter equipment kit and an English Pale Ale ingredient kit. I’m usually one to buy everything online to save some money, but not knowing exactly what to buy Rick’s advice was priceless and his prices were roughly the same if not cheaper than the stores online, especially when not having to pay for shipping.

Fast forward a couple weeks, the kit had been sitting idle since we bought it and we finally made time for brewing. Making the wort took a couple hours, meanwhile our house smelled delicious and reminded me of all my trips to the Sweetwater Brewery (brewery photos are here).

Wort

After making and cooling the wort (which required an emergency trip out to pick up ice), everything was moved to the primary fermenter and left to ferment. The initial gravity was 1.041. After a day of expecting “vigorous fermenting” I became worried when our airlock didn’t seem to be doing much. I emailed Rick asking for help and then realized that we forgot to add water to the airlock. Rick assured us that everything would be fine we just needed to take a gravity readying to see where we were in the process. The gravity reading of 1.015 meant everything was on course, and we let it sit for another couple days. After about 5 total days in the fermenter, and a final reading of 1.015 it was time to bottle.

Bottling began by taking inventory of how many bottles we had collected and realizing we were short (we needed about 2 cases worth). We grudgingly drank a few more beers, proceeded to sanitize the bottles and equipment, and bottled. We setup an assembly line of a filler, a passer, and a capper. We ended up with 40 12 oz. bottles and 3 22 oz. bottles filled with what will hopefully be some delicious English Pale ale.

I hereby name this brew, The First Stab.

Delicious Beer.(We need some white-label packs.)