Topic: Oat Beer

It occurs to me that caramel is toasted sugar, so, instead of buying a caramel bar to add to the oat beer currently brewing, I toasted a couple tablespoons of sugar under the grill. (Btw, this stuff looks and tastes *exactly* like butterscotch, so I suspect that butterscotch is just toasted sugar. Be careful not to over-toast it if you want it for candy. For beer, the burnt/bitter taste that overcooking adds would be OK.)



I put the caramel into the bottom of a jar and added a pint of oat beer. The oat beer is still quite thick ("gummy"), flattish (it has a little fizziness) and sweet, so pouring it over the caramelized sugar is going to make it sweeter and possibly thicker.

Topic: Recipes
Since the first batch of malt beer was a success, I will start another batch and then make a half-gallon a week of malt beer from now on. I will continue to experiment with other types of beer.

I started the second batch of malt beer using yeast left over from the ginger ale and from straining the oat beer. I measured the jar of malt extract I bought from the Health Food Store and it was about 12 ounces. Here is my recipe:

] 1 jar of malt extract (454 grams or about 12 ounces)
] 2600 mls water
] the contents of 1 capsule of St. John's Wort.
] the contents of 1 capsule of hawthorn berries
] a pinch of black pepper
] 1/4 tsp vanilla
] 5 Tablespoons of cocoa
] 10 Tablespoons of sugar
] yeast from previous batches of beer

I mixed half the water and everything else together in a saucepan and stirred and heated it until everything dissolved, then I put it in large plastic container and added the rest of the water. Checked to make sure it wasn't too hot, then added the sediment and liquid from the ginger ale and oat beer for yeast, (about 12 ounces of thick liquid).

Covered it with a piece of plastic, secured with a thick rubber band, for an airlock, and put it on the kitchen shelf so it will be easy to get at. I'll stir it once or twice a day for 3 days and then set it out in a warm spot for another 5 days.

Topic: Oat Beer
The oat beer seems rather thick -- "gummy", as it is called. So I decided to filter it through a flannel jelly bag in the hopes of making thinner. Then I learned that, of all the sins I have committed against "proper" beer making, this is probably the worst. By filtering it through the bag, letting it drip out through the air, I am re-introducing oxygen to it, thus stopping the fermentation. So I've decided I am going to look for a chocolate caramel bar and melt it down and add it to the wort and then I'm going to call it "double chocolate caramel oatmeal stout" instead of "oat beer", since I'm sort of starting over again with it.

I also found out that in making oat beer it is much better to use flaked or processed oatmeal rather than whole-grain or cut oats, and instant or quick oats would be best. Which is good, because I used flaked oatmeal because that is all I had.

Topic: Malt Extract
A small amount of beer had been left in a plastic bottle with a screw-on top. When I opened it, there was a mighty whoosh. Tasted it and it tasted fizzier and less sweet, but no less potent, than when we drank most of it last week. Must look into this secondary fermentation, how long it takes....

......time passes, I RTFM on how to make beer on the net......

Aaahhh...... you brew the beer *1* week and then keep it in the bottle *3* weeks. Well, well, well. That would brewing it for 3 weeks and keeping it in the bottle for 2 days produced a flat beer. I wonder where I got that impression? Well,I guess I have to go hunt up some bottles and jars to move my beer into.

Topic: Malt Extract
We enjoyed another half pint each of the malt beer again tonight. This process seems to work best: let the beer set down a sediment and get as clear as it's going to get, which in this case is not very clear. Pour a pint into a bottle with a tablespoon of sugar, screw top on tightly and wait two days. Serve cool.

Cloudy ale is better than pure clear ale, anyway. OK, I say this after I tried to remove the cloudiness, but it is still true. First, the yeast is still swimming around, metabolizing, making esters, which are chemicals that add different flavors to the beer. Second, this cloudiness is brewers yeast, the stuff you buy from the health food store because it is high in protein and B vitamins. This is what made country ale a full meal to the medieval peasant. So cloudy ale tastes better and is better for you. I shall try to accept that and be happy with cloudy, real ale.

In every site I have looked at they all say that bread yeast, which I am using, is very weak and will produce the least amount of alcohol of any yeast available, but all I can say to that is you can't prove it by me. I had just the half pint with supper and could feel the alcoholic effect for about an hour and a half afterwards. Perhaps it is the amount of sugar I added.

Topic: Malt Extract
I have boldly put a pint of brewing beer into a glass jar with a tablespoon of sugar and screwed the lid on tight. I placed it in two plastic bags and then put it in a plastic bucket to contain any explosion, should one occur. I put another pint into the plastic soda pop bottle as usual.

Topic: Ginger Ale
I checked the ginger ale yesterday. It is coming along well but is rather flat and his little brown flecky things floating in it. I will have to filter it once and then put it in a bottle with sugar like I do the malt beer.

Topic: Malt Extract
We had another pint of the malt beer for supper tonight. It wasn't very fizzy so I added more sugar and gave it another day to ferment. Still not much in the way of fizz, not for someone who's used to commercial beer, and no head. My partner says it tastes fine and I should look up the Campaign for Real Ale.

I checked CAMRA and the definition for real ale is that it has the yeast still in the container from which the brew is poured (check), without extraneous carbon dioxide (check) and with traditional ingredients (doesn't say what those are, and if malt extract is OK or if it has to be malted barley), so I may very well be making "real ale" Anyway, by adding extra sugar it certainly gives it more alcohol, could definitely feel it from just a half pint. I don't know if there's any way to measure the alcohol content of beer. I think I shall buy another jar of malt extract and start another batch, along with the oat beer. Also, must check on the ginger ale sometime today.

Topic: Oat Beer
I strained the mash to remove the lumps of oats, so now it is a brown liquid. It doesn't appeal to me, but that may be just because I expect it to smell like fermenting barley. It looked dead, so I added a little sugar to it. That brought it back to life with lots of fizzing and bubbles throughout, so it looks a little more appealing.

Later, when I finally summoned up the courage to actually taste it, rather than merely sniff it, it tasted acceptable. Flat, bland and sweet, but OK. Also, it felt a bit too thick and viscous (like the raspberry ale). I'm going to let it set down its sediment and then I will bottle it as I did the beer, trying to avoid pulling up the sediment. It's not going to taste like barley malt beer, but no doubt it will probably be quite strong, what with all the sugar I added.

I just have to accept and expect that it's not going to taste like beer made from barley, and I'm used to beer made from barley, and I prefer it.

Topic: Malt Extract
We had our first glass of homemade beer today. It took 3 1/2 weeks from start to the first glass to drink. It was good, it tasted like beer. I think it had more alcohol in it than regular beer, as I expected, because I had kept on adding more sugar. Although it didn't *taste* any more alcoholic than any other beer (was quite mild, in fact) but I could feel the alcohol in it after just one 5-ounce glass. It was murky, with all the brewers yeast being mixed up with it, and it didn't hold its head after being poured, but other than that, it did what beer is supposed to do. I started the next bottle by pouring in some fermenting beer I had previously bottled into the plastic bottle with screw-on lid and adding 1 teaspoon of sugar.

Topic: Malt Extract
O frabjous day, callooh, callay. The beer has re-fizzed and appears to be about half-head if I were to pour it. The sediment that falls to the bottom always swirls into the beer as soon as I unscrew the lid, so it will be a murky, filling beer. I might try ways to reduce the sediment, but that's for another day, and I think that I will put the beer in the fridge to cool and we'll have it this evening with supper. I am also thinking I may try the final fermentation in a glass jar with a screw on lid -- the pressure isn't so great that it will explode (she says hopefully), but I will need to keep an eye on it, of course.

Topic: Malt Extract


I checked the beer to which I had added sugar. The ones I left outside in the cold were still flat, but the bottle I left inside -- a plastic soda bottle with a screw-on top -- was starting to get fizzy, and was very sweet. I replaced the cap and left it to continue fermenting. This should reduce the sweetness. Of course, this all has the knock-on effect of making it have a higher concentration of alcohol, though I suppose that would not necessarily be considered a bad thing.

It's still not clear, as you can see from the picture.

Topic: Oat Beer
I re-boiled the oats and 1200 mls of water and then added: 200 mls brown sugar, 1400 mls water, 600 mls sugar, 1 Tablespoon cocoa. When it had cooled, I added the yeast and sediment from some of the brewing ginger ale, along with about 100 mls of the liquid. Stirred well, covered and now will leave it to brew for about 2 weeks.

Topic: Ginger Ale

I tasted the brewing ginger ale and it is too thick, with too strong a ginger taste and not enough sugar (original recipe was 100 mls of sugar, about 700 mls water and 3 Tablespoons of ground ginger). I think I'll add 50 mls sugar and 700 mls water and see how that comes out.

Topic: Raspberry Ale

We drank the raspberry ale. It was OK, but too thick and too sweet. Next time, I will use less raspberries and more water, make a still drink out of it and then add a spoonful of sugar and yeast for a day or two to make it fizzy and see how that comes out. I had put it in a glass wine bottle with a plastic stopper in it.

Topic: Malt Extract

Checked the beer. All the malt beer is flat. Re-bottled it, adding sugar. The sugar syrup didn't seem to have any effect, but a tablespoon of regular sugar brought it fizzing back to life. Maybe we should have drank it all when it blew the cork out of the bottle.

Topic: Malt Extract

I used a length of clear plastic tubing to siphon the liquid out of the bottle and avoided picking up as much of the sediment as possible. I had bought the tubing at an aquarium supplies store long ago for an air pump into an aquarium, but never used it. I added a spoonful of sugar syrup to it and put it back outside in the cold to continue to ferment, or "condition" as they call it in "proper" beer-making.

Topic: Raspberry Ale

I checked the raspberry ale. Seems OK. I put it outside (it's snowing out) to hopefully slow its ferentation down so it won't blow its cork. It's not as fizzy as a commercial soda. I'm going to look for some empty plastic soda bottles with screw-on lids, to use for the raspberry and ginger ale, in the hopes that it could accomodate a higher carbonation pressure in the bottle which would force more carbon dixoxide into the soda.


Ginger Ale

I made the ginger ale by putting 100 mls of sugar in a liter measuring jug, filling to the 700 millilitre measure with water, adding 3 Tablespoons of ground ginger and bringing to a boil. After it cooled, I added a spoonful of yeast sediment from one of the malt beer jars I had emptied into bottles this morning. I think 3 T of ginger may have been too much because I can smell it all over the kitchen.

(I know sugar is not measured in milliliters -- over here in Britain they weigh it, rather that putting it in a measuring jug. But that's too much trouble and the amounts involved here aren't rocket science, so I just look at them in the litre measuring jug.)

Topic: Oat Beer
I took the liter of oats and water that had been soaking overnight, mixed in another liter of water and put it in a slow cooker to simmer for a day. I've decided to make 2100 mls of oat beer in three of the empty liter jars and use the fourth empty jar to make ginger ale.

Topic: Malt Extract
I bottled the last 2 jars of malt beer. It seemed kinda flat, so I added about an ounce of sugar syrup I had made to each bottle. (1 part water to 2 parts sugar; boiled for 5 minutes, cool.) More sediment had settled to the bottom of the jars and didn't get stirred up when I poured it out, so perhaps that would be a better way to go about it to get a clearer end product -- let it get flat in the fermentation jar and the dregs have all settled to the bottom, then add sugar to the bottles to be plugged up. I labelled each bottled with the method used to make it, and I'll compare the different methods when I drink it and then make up a recipe based on the results for the next batch.