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Brewing Beer
Tue, Feb 28 2006

Yeast

Now that I've poured the beer into the bottle and stoppered it (what is the correct word for this when it isn't made of cork?)and I have an empty 1-liter jar, I've decided to make some light ale/beer -- that which you would call like root beer or ginger ale, as it was made before it was made pumping carbon dioxide into it -- by fermenting it until the yeast had done the pumping in of the carbon dioxide. I suppose everyone knows this, but, for any who don't: put yeast in sugar (or starch, a close relative of sugar) and they will eat the sugar and excrete alcohol and carbon dioxide. That's how we make bread, wine and beer. With the bread, the excreted carbon dioxide puffs up the dough and the excreted alcohol is cooked away by the heat as it is baked. With wine, the excreted alcohol is kept and the excreted carbon dioxide is allowed to escape, and with beer, the alcohol is also kept, of course, and the carbon dioxide is trapped during the final stage of fermentation.

So, anyway, I decided I will make a bottle of raspberry ale first - what you would call raspberry soda pop except that it will be made as it was in old days by fermentation rather than by modern methods of carbonation. I got a liter of frozen raspberries from the freezer -- frozen individually as we had grown them ourselves -- and after they thawed, they occupied about half the liter measure. I'm sure you could use store-boughten frozen raspberries. Anyway, I added about a half-liter/pint to them, boiled them for awhile and then put them through the blender. Now I'm straining them through a jelly bag, which in this case is the sleeve of a flannel nightgown with the end sewn shut on one side. You can also use 4 layers of cheesecloth/muslin, which is what I used to use to strain jelly before I made the flannel jelly bag. When the liquid has drained thru I will add some amount of sugar the quantity of which I have not as yet decided on but I plan to meditate on it while the raspberry juice is draining.


Posted Charlotte O'Neil at 8:53 AM GMT
Updated: Thu, Mar 9 2006 9:26 PM GMT
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Mon, Feb 27 2006

I sampled one of the jars and found it tasted like beer ... a little fizzy ... so I decided to bottle one of the jars as is, with nothing further added to it, though it seems like I should be doing more to it. But I'll see how it turns out. The way I bottled it was to put it in a clean wine bottle, stop it with a plastic cork, and over that put a large plastic sandwich baggie, secured snugly with a sturdy elastic band. That way, if the beer throws the plastic cork out it will be caught in the baggie, and won't be spoiled by any contamination. I would just replace the cork and let it ferment a bit more. I have used this baggie-and-elastic-band trick with wine making, and I found that if it did blow out the stopper and foam out over the bottle, the baggie would trap the overflow as well and I could just pour it back in the bottle and nothing was lost.

An empty champagne bottle with a replaceable stopper would be ideal for this, because they're made to withstand pressure from the fermentation, but, as I don't have an empty champagne bottle with a replaceable stopper, a wine bottle is what I shall use. A wine bottle with a regular cork would probably work, too, though if that is what I had to use I would wrap the cork with thin plastic film before stuffing it in the bottle.

If you were doing this at home and didn't have a bottle or corks to use, you can always use a regular screw-on metal lid on a jar, however the risk here is that if the pressure builds up too much it could explode, so if I were going to do that, I would put the jar in a plastic bag (to contain the spillage) and put the bag in a cardboard box to stop the outward force, and maybe put the whole apparatus in a large plastic garbage bag as extra insurance. Then just check the jars a little more regularly to see how it is coming. If you get a big "whoosh" when you unscrew it, and the liquid is fizzy when you dirnk it, you can drink it then.)

Posted Charlotte O'Neil at 10:18 AM GMT
Updated: Sat, Mar 25 2006 8:16 AM GMT
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Sun, Feb 26 2006

Topic: Malt Extract

Here's what I did: I measured the wort and found it was 1400 mls, so I doubled it with another 1400 mls of water and added another 4 tablespoons of sugar, because it seemed like a good thing to do. They don't have corn syrup here in England, they just have something called golden syrup which is sugar syrup -- I'm not sure if it's beet sugar or cane sugar, but it's sugar -- so I just use regular granulated sugar and trust that the water I use will make up for whatever liquid would be in the corn syrup. When it clears, I'll put it in bottles.

Posted Charlotte O'Neil at 2:58 PM GMT
Updated: Thu, Mar 9 2006 9:22 PM GMT
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Sat, Feb 25 2006

OK, here's the plan. I washed out 2 1-litre jars. I will measure out 1200 mls of water (straight from the hot water tap, btw) and then pour 300 mls of water in the two jars. I will then stir up the 2 jars of fermenting liquid (called "wort", pronounced "wert", I believe) and pour 300 mls of wort into each of the two jars of water, and then pour 300 mls of water into each of the two jars of wort, now having 300 mls left each. Woo-hoo. And you thought I couldn't do the calculations.

Posted Charlotte O'Neil at 10:05 AM GMT
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Fri, Feb 24 2006

I found a recipe that calls for 4.5 gallons of water to 6 pounds of malt syrup and 3/4 cup of corn syrup. 1 US gallons = 3 785.4118 milliliters, 1 gram = 0.00220462262 pounds and 1 US cups = 236.588238 milliliters. So if I add the malt syrup and corn syrup together, that's ... Oh, I give up. I think I'll just take the fact that the 454 grams are 1.022etc pounds, this recipe calls for 4.5 gallons water to 6 pounds of malt syrup, 1.022etc pounds is almost 1 pound so let's say 1 pound, which is 1/6 of 6 pounds so 1/6 of 4.5 gallons is ................. 2839 milliliters! More than twice as much water as I used. Which is what I was beginning to expect because it was so thick and dark. I shall have to wash out two more 1-litre jars and I think I shall add 1200 more mls of water..

Posted Charlotte O'Neil at 9:56 PM GMT
Updated: Fri, Feb 24 2006 9:57 PM GMT
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Thu, Feb 23 2006

Topic: Bottling

I see from my picture (on Feb. 22) that I should explain about my airlocks. If you have ever wanted to make beer or wine, you have heard about airlocks. The directions always say you have to buy airlocks. These are things you put over the fermenting liquid to keep the fruitflies out (if you don't want to end up with vinegar) and yet still be able to let the gases made during fermentation escape. This is one of the fancy gadgets you can buy that I have discovered while making wine that it is just as easy -- nay, easier -- to use a piece of plastic shopping bag over the top of the container, tightly secured by a rubber band. So that is what you see on the liter jar of fermenting beer in the picture - a piece of plastic I cut out of a plastic shopping bag secured to the jar with a thick rubber band. Anything elastic would do, however, as long as it holds the plastic firmly against the glass.

Posted Charlotte O'Neil at 8:23 AM GMT
Updated: Thu, Mar 9 2006 9:28 PM GMT
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Wed, Feb 22 2006

Here is the beer after 20 days. So far, the plan is going OK. It has been fermenting away prodigiously and it has a really strong aroma of beer. (It actually smells like beer!) I am concerned, however, that it appears so thick and hasn't cleared, even though the sediment is settling at the bottom. Not really concerned, however, because the worse that could happen on that account is that I would have to add more water. I didn't know what ratio of malt extract to water I should use when I first made it, so I just guessed. If I have to use more water, so much the better, because that just means more beer for the same cost.

Posted Charlotte O'Neil at 10:11 AM GMT
Updated: Wed, Feb 22 2006 4:48 PM GMT
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Tue, Feb 21 2006

So here's how I made the mash I intended to ferment to make the beer:

I boiled the 1200 millliliters of water with the 454 grams of malt extract, the contents of half a capsule of St. John's Wort, 4 Tablespoons of sugar and 1 Tablespoon of cocoa, then poured it into two 1-litre jars. When it had cooled down, I added some yeast to it. The instructions I had read said not to use bread yeast, but bread yeast was all I had so bread yeast was what I used.

After about 10 days, I stirred it thoroughly and then set it back to wait for it to settle. The plan is that it will "throw down a sediment", as wine does, and when it has done so, I will siphon or pour off the clear stuff on the top above the sediment, then pour it into wine bottles with some added sugar, and plug it securely with a plastic cork and wait for the residual yeast to eat the added sugar and excrete carbon dioxide to fizzy it up. That, at least, is the plan.

Posted Charlotte O'Neil at 8:04 AM GMT
Updated: Tue, Feb 21 2006 8:14 AM GMT
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Mon, Feb 20 2006

This is my beer blog. I have decided that, come hell or high water, I am going to make beer. I have been making wine for years and have wanted also to make beer, but everytime I looked for instructions or recipes on beer-making it always gave lots of technical stuff about specific gravity and measuring and math and a large garbage can to make it in and other fancy equipment and I had none of the equipment, didn't want to make it in a large amount and didn't understand the math so I would give up and not bother.

But, still, I wanted to make beer.

So, finally, one day I thought, the reason that there is so much math and mechanical gadgets in making beer is because it is made by MEN, but it used to be made by women. And, back in the days when women made beer, I was sure, they didn't make it with no sanitized carboy, specific gravity measure or fermentation locks, but they made it the way women always make stuff -- with whatever they had on hand. I decided I would make beer and would use what I had learned while researching how to make beer to actually make the beer, and not be deterred by anything I didn't have or couldn't do, and I would make it in a quantity that I had jars to put it in, rather than in a bathtub or garbage can/dustbin

I started off with a jar of Malt Extract, purchased at the health food store for #1.09, which is about $2.00 at today's exchange rate. It was labelled as 454 grams. It looked like it would be about 10 ounces if it were measured in liquid. I still have the jar and I mean to measure it in water amount as soon as I get a round tuit.

I don't even know that much about what hops are -- I assume it is some kind of plant -- but I certainly don't have any hops. Hops are used to add bitterness to the beer to cut the sweetness of the sugar in it.

However, I had read that before men made beer with hops, women used other plants and herbs to give it both the bitter flavor and aroma as well as medicinal properties, because when women made beer it had therapeutic value along with its other properties. And, of the three herbs mentioned that were used prior to the use of hops to add bitterness, one was wormwood. I don't have wormwood, but I happened to know that wormwood is very closely related to the herb that is used to make St. John's Wort, and, as I happened to have a bottle of St. John's Wort capsules on hand, I decided I would add the contents of half a capsule (not the gelatin capsule itself, but opened and poured out) for the bitter element.

Finally, as everything is better with chocolate added to it, I added a Tablespoon of cocoa and 4 tablespoons of sugar.

I had no idea how much water to add because all the recipes were for pounds of malted barley mash and gallons of water, so I picked 1200 millilitres for my first attempt. I could always add more later.

Posted Charlotte O'Neil at 3:50 PM GMT
Updated: Mon, Feb 20 2006 4:57 PM GMT
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