Bottling Notes, Hefeweizen (Saturday 07mar2009)

Bottled today, after 13 days in primary.  Used ~ 1 1/8 cups of corn sugar aiming for ~ 3 volumes of CO2.  

Ended up with forty three 11.2-12 oz. bottles and seven 16-16.9 oz. bottles.

Finals measurements on this beer were:

OG ~ 1.050

FG ~ 1.012

% ABV ~ 4.9%

Cals/12 oz. ~ 164

The beer smelled good, with that typical hefeweizen clovey smell.  It had a nice mildly sweet flavor to it and I'm thinking it will be quite tasty in a week or so.

bottling plan

since I haven't calculated bottling sugar amounts yet, i went ahead and calculated for ~ 3 volumes CO2 (based on Jamil's recommendation).  For my approximate volume and bottling temp, that equates to about 1 and 1/8 cup of corn sugar (~6 oz.).

Fermentation Notes, Hefeweizen

Visual signs of fermentation were present between @ 12 hours after pitching (seen as foam/bubbles in the drum tap).  Has a nice bready/fruity smell coming from the fermentor.

The temp is higher than i'd like ideally, being around 76 to 78F, but unfortunately I am climate limited in this aspect (or monetarily limited in that i'm not gonna run up a ginormous electric bill try to keep my fermentation cool).  Maybe this will lead some some wild smells and tastes, such is the excitement of brewing.

After a couple more days, i'll check the gravity, but i'll still likely let it sit for 2 weeks before bottling just to accelerate the conditioning process and let the yeast clean up after themselves (which may be quite a job considering the fermentation temp).

Brewin Notes, Hefeweizen (Sunday 22feb2009)

Recipe is as follows:

6.0 lbs. Wheat liquid malt extract

1.0 lb. Wheat dry malt extract

1.0 oz. Sterling hops (60 min)

Safale WB-06 Bavarian wheat yeast, 1 packet

Fairly simple brew day, first one since I've moved.  Only thing of note was the extreme foamyness of wheat DME while coming to boil.  I just removed the pot and stirred it down and resumed as normal.

Rehydrated the yeast in ~95F water for 15 minutes before stirring and pitching into the slotted ladle-aerated wort.

Fermentation temps are gonna be in the 70s, because I live much closer to the equator now and can't afford a monster A/C bill.

OG: 1.050

Brewin Again!

Damn, its been a while.  First time since moving way down north.

Anyhow, here's the plan:

Gonna brew Hefeweizen tomorrow, from extract, a Northern Brewer kit to be exact.

I'm gonna scrub out my equipment with soap and water because it's been so long and who knows what is or isn't living in my stuff.

Oatmeal Stout taste

The oatmeal stout is quite delicious.  It has an interesting maltiness, probably from the munich extract, and a delicious coffeeish/chocolately roasted taste.  The body is fairly thick for a small beer also, I dig it.

Bottling Notes, Oatmeal Stout (Thurs 17 jul)

Plan to bottle my partial-mash oatmeal stout tonight. Going to use 9/16 ths cup corn sugar to achieve approximately 2 volumes C02...

Bottled tonight. Since I didn't want to open a 2 lb. bag of corn sugar just before moving, I substituted 1/2 cup cane (table) sugar for the 9/16th cup corn sugar. There seemed to be some kind of film on the top of the beer in the fermentor, but it was very thin and oily looking, unlike the previous membrane I had on my infected beer. I'm thinking it was some of the oils natural present in the 1lb. of oats used in the grist. Smelled nice.

I ended up with 49 twelve oz. bottles.

OG ~ 1.044

FG ~ 1.015

% attenuation ~ 65%

% abv ~ 3.8% (3.9 counting priming sugar)

calories/12 oz bottle ~ 150