Brewing Beer

well, its been a while since the last time i brewed up a batch. and its getting to the perfect time of year to brew too. im considering investing in a second firmenting bucket and brewing 10 gallons this time. cause lets face it, 5 gallons doesnt last me very long at all. (i would prefer a 45 to 55 gallon plastic barrel honestly) of course, i will need to buy more 22oz bottles as well cause i only have around 40 and i HATE using 12oz bottles.

anyway, what should i brew up?

im strongly leaning towards my personal masterpeice specialty, maple ale.

i have decided that i am, in fact, going to brew my maple ale (finances permitting). i have around $87 to spend on all this and the ingredents kits are usually around $25 to $30 last i knew. and i am investing in another firmenting bucket which the necessities involved with that hopefully wont be over $20. i may have to talk RD into letting my have the debit card just in case though as ill need more bottles. grant it, i have atleast 120 - 12oz bottles stacked up over the corner of the room *points back and to the left* but as i said, i dont like using 12oz-ers.

of course, we'll need beer to drink while we're brewing too! lol

bloody hell!! the price of brewing ingredients has gone up big time... last year it was like $25 for the ingredients and that was ADDING extra ingredients to it!! NOW... its $30 JUST for the basics... needless to say, i spent over $80 today on what all i got. the batch i just cooked up is an english brown ale with nothing else added. the one im going to cook up after Blakus gets here is an american amber ale that i am going to turn into a maple ale. but this time i am going to brew it in a different manner than the last 2 times i made a maple ale which should bring out the maple flavor a bit more but hopefully not be overberring(sp) or lacking thereof.

not that anyone seems to care! lol

but both of my batches of beer are ALREADY in fermentation!! they both started roughly 2 hours after they were sealed which is fuckin impressive since they usually take between 12 and 24 hours to start bubbling! Blake's on the other hand is gonna take a bit longer... he did brew a chocolate stout after all!! and anyone who knows anything about stouts knows they take longer to ferment due to the mass amounts of malt/sugars the yeast has to eat.

anyway, the both of us, after having brewed beer several times, have been looking up stuff on making our production a bit more bigger. and we've found a few handy things including a supplier who has awesome low rates and fairly cheap shipping rates especially for bulk! of course aquiring the proper cooking, fermenting, and bottling stuff could pose a different story.... but i haz ideas!

someones reading all this!
there most definatly is a chemestry to it but i really dont keep track of all the technical terms, measurements, temps, etc, etc cause im a rebel! lol hell, usually theres only 2 sets of hops that go in. bittering hops that goes in for 45 mins and a flavoring hops that goes in for the last 5 mins but my first batch had 3 different hops! i had to add an addition aroma hops to the wort 15 mins before it was finished.

i had to do emergency surgery on Blake's bucket a little bit ago. apparently his fermentation decided to go crazy and it filled up the airlock with beer and residue.... he always has something go wrong i swear! lmao anyway, i got it all sorted and put back together and it is now fermenting properly! *wipes forehead*

we should be ready to bottle on thursday or friday i imagine.

well, ive been talking to myself. and i know i said i HATE using 12oz bottles for bottling. but im thinking i may do it anyway. perhaps use twelve - 22oz-ers for each batch and the rest bottled in 12oz bottles. if im not mistaken, the last time i brewed it ended up being around twenty-three - 22oz-ers with a remainder of one 12oz bottle. so if i did my math correctly, i should wind up with around 33 bottles per batch and 66 total.

im not sure what Blake has up his sleeve or how many bottles he even has though.

Penthesilea wrote:

Hey, I'm reading this too! I haven't commented 'cause we've been yakking about it elsewhere!

Here's a thought: those 12 oz bottles might make good "sample sizes" later when you are working up a customer base.
Just thinking out loud...

after discussing financial benefits with my brother and the difference between the 22oz-ers and the 12oz-ers in regards to those aspects... 12oz-ers are the way to go for the sales price. and of course we already discussed what ye mentioned about sample sizes and working up the customer base!

*mental note to self*

invest in atleast a cheap dishwaRsher ASAP....

the fermentation should only take 3 to 5 days.... my EBA is done. my MA is clearily still fermenting. and Blake's CS is close to being done. and its been 5 days exactly to this minute for both the MA and the CS. we will defintely be bottling the EBA here soon as its officially been 5 days of fermenting at around 3pm this afternoon. we will possibly be bottling the CS this evening too. i may have to wait til tomorrow to bottle the MA.

I read this too! I just don't know anything about beer but how to drink it...lol

well, 10 gallons of the beer is bottled now. gonna try to bottle my MA tonight since it wasnt done fermenting yesterday like it shoulda been. on a positive note, a method i did spur of the moment after brewing and before starting the fermentation worked very well! we hardly wasted any of the liquid and hardly had any of the sludge at the bottom of the barrels.

well, i finished bottling my last bucket. for both of my batches i ended up with the following.

EBA: 14 - 22oz and 29 - 12oz
MA: 14 - 22oz and 27 - 12oz
(84 total for me)

Blake ended up with 26 - 22oz and 3 - 12oz
(29 for him)

anyway, as my downstairs kitchen has everything but a stove, i've decided we should utilize that area as the brewery for now til we can afford to fix up my garage.

hell yeah! of course, it sucks that Blake just got called back to work starting tomorrow... but i spose since im still unemployed i can put more time into prepping the brewery. theres ALOT of stuff to be done downstairs though. im technically gonna sort 2 rooms for this. one as the brewery kitchen and one of equal size as the fermenting and storage room of the finished product.

aye, hes planning on helping with whatever he can. of course, hes married and has 2 kids and loads of his own bills, even more than myself... but me and my brother have been doing some math today about costs and sales and we've pretty much got some more stuff figured out to help too!

Penthesilea wrote:

That's a LOT of beer -- in my experience anyway! I assume from the "thumbsup" that "more liquid, less sludge" is a very good thing. I was wondering about the "leftovers" of the fermentation process. I've done a little research into making alcohol from "field" corn for motor fuel and was wondering what you do with the solids that are left behind.

on the small scale that we're doing now, the "leftovers" in the buckets are simply flushed. they pose no threat to the environment whatsoever as theyre all 100% natural ingredients which nature has a tendency of producing and discarding anyway. but, as the buisness grows, those "leftovers" can be used in a few different ways. for instance, part of the liquidy sludge at the bottom is mostly all active yeast which can be used over and over again as most big time breweries do. of course, refridgerated storage is a must. but again, that same sludge can also used by ethenol plants to make ethenol for cleaner burning and more efficient fuels.

for more info on that, i suggest everyone contact Ghede!

im getting ansy already. i wanna sample my beers!!!

i scrounged up between 70 and 100 feet of speaker wire for the surround sound in the brewery kitchen so now i dont have to buy any of that!

(hey! music is a must when brewing!!)