Topic: Watershed
I tried some of the malt extract beer that I had added the water to after I had already made and bottled the beer with too little water. I was hoping that it would at least be OK, but it was great. It was fantastic. I am amazed.

Now I have found out that I was doing something similar to what is called "high-gravity brewing". I had accidentally calculated a recipe that was too high in fermentable stuff and sugar, and too low in water. That is what you do for "high gravity brewing", and then you add the water later. The recipes and instructions for figuring out the proportions seemed a little complicated, so I will have to save them in case I ever want to do it again on purpose.

Topic: Barley Flakes
Now that I have found out that I have to add so much more water to make beer, I have to calculate how to make much smaller batches. We only drink less than a quart a day and I have run out of bottles to use.

Here's the recipe and directions for a quart of beer I am making out of barley flakes:

Beer, 1 quart
----------------------------
4 Tbls barley flakes
2 Tbls sugar, and later 1/2 tsp sugar
1 Tbl molasses
1 quart (946 mls) water
active yeast
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I put the barley flakes, molasses, 2 tablespoons of sugar and water in a non-metallic saucepan and brought it to a boil. Continue at medium boil for 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly. Cover, set aside and let cool. Afterwards, it occurred to me that I could have used only a cup of water to boil with, and then added the rest of the water to cool it down so I wouldn't have to wait so long. I'll do that from now on.

When it had cooled down to warm, I transferred it to a glass jar and added some yeast sediment.I covered the jar with a piece of plastic cut from a grocery bag and secured it with a rubber canning ring.

Topic: Mead
I want to try to make a "mead" using table sugar as the main fermentable, and adding honey for flavor after most of the fermentation has taken place.

Recipe:
200 mls sugar (13 Tablespoons and 1 teaspoon) white sugar,
a quart of water (946 mls),
a drop of lemon juice (for acidity)
yeast sediment from another batch.

I poured the "mead" (sugar water) into a wine bottle with a bubbler airlock on top to watch the fermentation, rather than relying on just the amount of time it has been fermenting, as I had been doing with everything else. In the end, it will probably come out about the same. When the bubble shows 3 bubbles a minute coming out of the airlock, that is when it is considered to be ready to bottle.

Topic: Chocolate Oatmeal
I bottled the Chocolate Oatmeal beer.

Topic: Raspberry Framboise
I added the raspberries to the framboise. 400 mls frozen, reduced to 200 mls when they thawed out, I mixed it with 200 mls water. I was going to boil it, but then I changed my mind and added them raw

Topic: Raspberry Framboise
I want to start a Belgian Raspberry Framboise to have this summer. I won't be able to keep it in bottles the full 6 months it needs, but such as may be... it's either that or not have it at all.

Raspberry Framboise, 1 gallon
----------------------------
1 gallon water
7 Tablespoons, 1 teaspoon whole wheat flour
5 Tablespoons, 1 teaspoon barley flakes [*1 cup of flaked cereal = 2/3 cup of flour]
10 Tablespoons of sugar

active yeast
----------------------------

I'll give it a day to start fermenting, and then I will add the raspberries tomorrow.

Topic: Bread Beer
I bottled 3 pints of the bread beer. I added 1 teaspoon of cane molasses for each pint bottle, and added a small bit of yeast sediment left over from the Rice Beer (Saki) that I bottled yesterday.

Topic: Rice Beer (Saki)
I bottled the rice beer (Saki). There was way too much, after I had to add so much water to it, so I bottled 4 liters as wine.

Topic: Bread Beer
I added a liter of sugar-water to the bread beer for good measure, although that wasn't done to a specific recipe so it is harder to guage proportions than in the other brews -- I just took the stale bread and covered it with water. Next time, I should grind the stale bread into a flour consistency first so I can measure it by the tablespoon.

Topic: Watershed
I boiled a pound of sugar in a gallon of water, and then went through all my bottles of thick beer and added the sugar-water in a ratio of 5 parts of thick beer to 8 parts of sugar-water.

Topic: Chocolate Oatmeal
I poured the chocolate-oatmeal beer into the jug and added more water.

Recipe, with corrected amount of water:
***4 2/3 quarts of water***
200 grams brown sugar
200 mls on the liter measure of oatmeal flakes
teaspoon mixed spice
tablespoon of raisins
tablespoon of cocoa

Topic: Watershed
I just came across a recipe and instructions for beer-making that is similar to what I make, and I found out that I am not using anywhere near enough water, by more than half the amount of what I should have been using, in all my brews. That explains why everything is coming out so thick.

So I have increased the water and sugar in the Malt Extract I am making right now, (batch #5) so it is 13 liters, instead of 5, and I will have to go through all the other bottles of beer and add more water to them, along with some extra sugar to compensate for the extra water.

So, if you are looking back at the previous posts for information about brewing beer, disregard the recipes instructions for amounts of water used, and figure you have to multiply the amount of water by 2 1/3 (approximately) and possibly add more sugar.

We interrupt this blog to bring you an announcement. My beer-drinking partner insists that what this blog needs to give it dynamic tension is a picture of his good self drinking the beer, so, here is George drinking beer....

Topic: Rice Beer (Saki)
The rice beer is very thick. I am going to double the amount of water in it to 12 liters. I think I am reluctant to put so much water in at first because it doesn't seem possible you can get so much beer out of such a small amount of grain -- 300 grams -- less than a pound -- of rice flour making nearly 3 gallons of beer.

Topic: Malt Extract
I started another batch of beer using malt extract, batch #5. I used 2 1-pound (454 gram) jars of malt extract, so this will be double the size of the previous batches. Here's the recipe I made:

2 jars of malt extract
5200 mls water
contents of 1 capsule of St. John's Wort.
contents of 1 capsule of hawthorn berries
pinch of black pepper
1/2 tsp vanilla
10 Tablespoons cocoa
20 Tbls sugar
yeast sediment from a previous batch of beer

Topic: Bread Beer
I filtered the bread beer through two layers of muslin/cheesecloth while pouring it out of the smaller (3-gal) jug and into the tall thin glasses to finish secondary fermentation and throw down a sediment.

Topic: Rice Beer (Saki)
I am going to try to make the rice beer (Saki) today, from the rice flour that was given to me. I still can't find any recipes for making a gallon at a time, so I'll experiment. I took 300 grams of rice flour, 600 mls of sugar (as measured on a liter measuring jug) and 6 liters of water. I let it soak for awhile and then strained it, getting about 5 liters of rice liquid. I poured some yeast sediment from another batch into it, and now I'll leave it to ferment for a week.

Quince Ale
We drank a bottle of quince ale that I made about 10 days ago. I poured some brewing beer from another batch into a liter of quince drink I'd made from a syrup left over from making quince jam. I let it set in primary for a week and then racked into two 1-pint bottles. It didn't taste anything like quince jam usually tastes, but it was very good and we enjoyed it. It didn't feel like it had as much of the alcoholic content of the previous beers, but it had some alcohol in it.

Topic: Chocolate Oatmeal
I started a Chocolate Oatmeal Beer today. Recipe was:

2 quarts of water
200 grams brown sugar
200 mls on the liter measure of oatmeal flakes
teaspoon mixed spice
tablespoon of raisins
tablespoon of cocoa

I put the oatmeal in the blender and blended on high until it became a flour. Put it under the grill for a few minutes to lightly toast it. Burned a little bit on the edge. I put the brown sugar in some of the water and brought it to a boil with the spice and cocoa. The raisins I put in the blender with a little of the water to chop them up as much as possible. I put everything in containers and added some of the liquid from the bread beer.

I may get some molasses for making beer. I think it would be less expensive to use molasses and white sugar rather than brown sugar, which is white sugar with the molasses already mixed in.