A bad day brewing is.......

Better than almost anything! Almost.....

OK, so it wasn't a bad day at all. A pretty darn good brew day if you ask me. It did, however, start off a little weird. At 5:11 AM I woke up to the telephone ringing. When I answered it all I could hear was a sound like someone was pushing one of the buttons. I figured it was a crank call and went back to sleep. At 5:26 AM I got another call. When I answered it all I could hear was some pretty lame music. Now I was awake. Time to brew!

Today I brewed an English Pale Ale (Think Bass Ale). And since I have my new Barley Crusher, I decided to give the grain a good crush last night.

Here's the grain waiting to be crushed.













After about 10 minutes of hand cranking the grain through the crusher (3 hoppers worth) here was the outcome.














I've been missing my Original Gravity's lately. Falling a bit short actually, so I thought that crushing my own grain and switching sparging methods to Bobby M's method might help. Nope, still a lower gravity than expected. I figure it's time to stop fighting this and time to change my recipes to meet my brewhouse efficiency (68-70%).

Again, nothing earth shattering today, but I am pretty darn happy with my new (to me) chest freezer and temp controller for fermenting. Now I've got that part of the brewing process completely under control.

In the corner, out of the way.













Here's the EPA and the Apfelwein in the chest freezer. The Apfelwein has been fermenting for a week and smells like old elephant farts! Yucko! Everyone says they get these smells while it's fermenting. Glad I didn't stick that one in the basement of the SWMBO's office! The EPA is cooling down to 65 degrees before I pitch the yeast.


















Here's the nut brown ale that I drank right after brewing and cleaning up. Yummo! The drill will be used to aerate the wort. The vodka will go in the airlock. The Leggo sculpture is something my daughter made me last night. ;-)













Here's the Columbus IPA that I kegged Thursday morning at 5 AM. Smelled like a little bit of heaven!

Apfelwein!

At this point I think I'll ferment just about anything! I've been reading a lot of homebrew forums and EdWort at Homebrewtalk posted this recipe for German hard apple cider, or Apfelwein. It seemed so easy that I thought I should give it a shot. Here's how the "brew day" went.


Here are the ingredients for this fermented coctail: 5 galons of natural, pasturized apple juice from Costco, of course. 2 lbs of corn sugar, and 1 packet of dry yeast. You're supposed to use Red Star Montrachet, but Wayne at Barley and Wine didn't have any. He recommended Lavlin #EC-1118 Champagne Wine Yeast for the same clean, crisp, dry finish that the Montrachet would have produced.

OK, um, I usually put "brewing" photos here but there was no brewing, just mixing and pouring. Here's the recipe right from EdWort:

Ingredients

5 Gallons 100% Apple Juice (No preservatives or additives) I use Tree Top Apple Juice
2 pounds of dextrose (corn sugar) in one pound bags
1 five gram packet of Montrachet Wine Yeast

Equipment

5 Gallon Carboy (I use a Better Bottle)
Carboy Cap or Stopper with Airlock
Funnel

1. First sanitize the carboy, airlock, funnel, stopper or carboy cap.
2. Open one gallon bottle of apple juice and pour half of it into the carboy using the funnel.
3. Open one bag of Dextrose and carefully add it to the now half full bottle of apple juice. Shake well.
4. Repeat Steps 2 and 3, then go to step 5.
5. Pour in the mixture of Apple Juice and Dextrose from both bottles into the carboy.
6. Add all but 1 quart of remaining 3 gallons of apple juice to the carboy.
7. Open the packet of Montrachet Yeast and pour it into the neck of the funnel.
8. Use the remaining quart of juice to wash down any yeast that sticks. I am able to fit all but 3 ounces of apple juice into a 5 gallon Better Bottle. You may need to be patient to let the foam die down from all shaking and pouring.
9. Put your stopper or carboy cap on with an airlock and fill the airlock with cheap vodka. No bacteria will live in vodka and if you get suckback, you just boosted the abv.

The outcome?


Here is the finished product with my son in the background hamming it up! It's mighty clear for a "brew day" concoction.


Here's a picture of the Apfelwein in my "new to me" fermentation chamber! Applause!!!!!!!!! My son and I just picked this up today in Turlock for as close to nothing as you can get.

This stuff will sit in this chest freezer (with temp controller of course) at 70 degrees for the next 6 weeks. 6 weeks? Yup, 6 weeks. It ferments slow and should finish out at around 0.999 on the hydrometer or at just about 8.13 ABV. Yikes, that's some serious alcohol. I might just have to invite Mark over to help drink this stuff!

And, no, I haven't built the kegerator yet. I may have to wait until next month to buy the chest freezer. I've got a broken window to fix on one of our french doors and that ate up quite a bit of funds!