Bottling Black Christas Gingered Ale

Last night on 12/1/08 I bottled the Black Christmas Gingered Ale. It isn't as dark as I had hoped. The lady at the Beer Nut told me that the chocolate malt would make it dark enough, but, now I wish I had gone with the dark malt extract syrup instead of the light. Live and learn. Below you can see it in the carbouy. Looks pretty dark there but in a glass not so much.

In the Shot below you can see the beer that has settled out in this secondary fermentation. I moved it into the secondary fermenter on 11/7/08 so it's had a pretty good amount of time to chill. The starting gravity was 1.044 and when I took a measurement yesterday it was at 1.018, which should give it an alcohol content of 3.4%. Not particularly boozy.

Below you can see the bottles filled and ready to be capped. I had save up a bunch of 22 oz. Lev bottles (A Czech beer). All that's left to do now is make some labels. I'll try to hit up the beer nut tomorrow and see what kind of labels they have.

Black Christmas Update

I've still got the Black Christmas brew chilling in the basement. Alot of additional sediment appears to have fallen out of it. I hoped to get it bottled in the next couple of days.

So on 11/23/08 I started a new beer that I'm calling New Years on Mars. It's based off of another Charlie Papazien recipe called Winky Dinky Marzen. Here are the ingredients:

• 7lbs German Bierkeller Premium canned malt extract, unhopped light.
• 1/2lbs dark amber crystal malt
• 1/2 c. chocolate malt
• 1 1/4 oz Hallertauer Hops (boiling) 6 HBU (120 MBU)
• 1/2 oz Hallertauer Hops (aroma)
• White Labs Oktoberfest Lager Yeast WLP820
• 3/4 cup corn sugar.

So I started out by boiling 3 1/2 gallons of water for 15 minutes. I took the crushed malts and added them to a boiling sock and tossed them in for 30 minutes. The temperature when I dropped it in was 188 degrees and I kept it on little or no heat for the 30 minutes. When 30 minutes was up I removed the bag. See below

Next I brought the wert (can I call it wert yet?) back to a boil, turned off the heat, and added the canned malt extract. After that was stirred in I brought the whole deal back to a boil. I then added roughly 1 1/4 oz of the Hallertauer Hops to a boiling back and threw it in for the boil for 60 minutes. With 15 minutes left I threw in the wert chiller to the boil to sanitize it. At the last 3 minutes of the boil I threw in the rest of the hops in another boiling bag.

Then I took it outside to the deck and chilled it with a wert chiller seen below:

After the wert had chilled to around 80 degress I took it inside and added it to 2 more gallons of store bought spring water. I topped it off to 5 gallons. Dumped in the hops and agitated it for about 5 minutes.

The starting gravity was around 1.045. I'm posting this a week later and there is vigourous frementation going on.

Racking Black Christmas Ale

Last night I racked the Black Christmas Ale to the secondary fermenter, a glass carbouy. The beer had a little bit of a scum on the top of it still. The gravity reading I got was about 1.005, but, it was hard to see a clear reading because of the scum.

I used a racking wand to go from the bucket to the carbouy. Everything was sanitized using One Step.

The beer isn't quite as dark as I had expected. Probably because I went with the Light Malt Extract, by the Beer Nut's recommendation.

Black Christmas Ale - Day 6

Beer is still fermenting, bubbles about every35 seconds or so. I cracked open the lid and took a look. There is still a layer of krausen (krausen is the thick foam that appears on top of fermenting beer) on the top. Doesn't appear like it was ever very thick. Will rack in the next few days.

Fermentation Commencing

At about 36 hours I found the Black Christmas Gingered Ale to be fermenting. Bubbles are escaping the airlock every 15 seconds or so.

Black Christmas Gingered Ale

This beer is intended as a Christmas gift for my friends. It'll be bottled in 22 oz bottles to give as gifts before the holidays. This is my fourth home brew and my first attempt at making a beer without a kit. This recipe is adapted from Charlie Papazians Vagabond Gingered Ale as described in his book The Complete Joy of Home Brewing. Here are the ingredients as I made it.

Ingredients

• 6.6 lbs. Thomas Cooper "Light" Malt Extract
• 3/4 lbs. Crystal Malt
• 1/2 lbs. Chocolate Malt
• 2 oz. Cascade Hops (boiling), 10 HBU
• 1 oz. Fugle Hops (finishing)
• 2 oz. freshly grated ginger root
  
• White Labs California Ale Yeast (liquid)

Process:

• Boiled 2.5 gallons tap water for 15 minutes to purify
• Cooled for 5 minutes to 180 degrees
• Added Crystal and Chocolate malt in a sock to steep for 30 minutes
• Removed malt bag and brought back to a boil
• Turned off heat added malt extract syrup. Put back on heat.
• Added Cascade Hops and ginger in a boiling bag
• Brought back to a boil. Boiled for 60 minutes.
• Meanwhile sterilized primary fermenter, airlock, spoon, strainer, fermenter lid, etc...
• Cooled wert with wert chiller in the back yard. Chilled to about 80 degrees
• Added Wert to 2 gallons of spring water in the primary fermenter.
• Topped off with more water to make 5 gallons.
• Took Original Gravity Reading - 1.044
• Added yeast. Closed lid. Shook vigourously for 3 minutes
• Put downstairs.

Welcome

This blog is dedicated to my home brews. Just a way to keep track of the different beers I brew, what goes wrong, and what goes right.

My name is Tim and I live in Salt Lake City, UT. I enjoy snowboarding and drinking cold beer after snowboarding. I started home brewing in June of 2008 and I'm starting my 4th batch of beer.