2012 In Review

Each year I like to do a little review of some of the data we keep about our brewing. This year, surprisingly, was pretty similar to previous years in the amount of beer we brewed, but our costs were higher overall as we bought the kegerator and all the parts that go along with that. This was the first year in which we have had to dump a beer. Because I didn’t clean the new kegs well enough, we had to dump a Schwarzbier and a Brown Ale. I counted those beer’s volumes, but not as separate batches of beer.

2012:
Beers Brewed: 19
Gallons: 94.25 gallons
Cost/bottle: $1.61
Cost/bottle (ingredients only): $0.62

Last year’s cost/bottle: $0.97 (ingredient only: $0.60)

Overall, not a bad price for good beer, when you consider that a decent 6-pack of beer is running about $9/six pack.

For 2013, I don’t think we have any specific brewing goals in mind. Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with our beers right now. I think that several of them could use a tiny bit of tweaking to take them from good to outstanding, but time’s not really on our side right now. Our friends and family enjoy our brews and that is what’s most important. Hopefully in the Spring we’ll be able to add a little variety to the lineup with something malty (like a Dubbel) and something refreshing for the Summer (like a Saison).

#teamDietrich

Last brew of 2012

It’s December, and the residency will be calm for the next week and a half, so I had some time to make a quick post and update everyone (if anyone is still reading after the hiatus) on what’s been going on at Rowdy Reptile. Over the past 3 months I have completed rotations in the Surgical/Trauma ICU, Emergency Department, and the Cardiac ICU; needless to say, I haven’t had any time to think about beer. The family has been so busy we haven’t brewed a beer in over 4 months! We knew not brewing for that long would eventually catch up to us, and it finally did last week. Previously, we had the Porter, BPA, and Gatorbait Pale Ale on tap and everything was fine. Then the Pale Ale kicked. A few days later the porter was empty, and 1 day after that the BPA kicked.

No beer on tap? At the Dietrich’s? Maybe the Mayans were right…..

Anyway, we’ve got a few bottles of the Saison left and plenty of the RIS and First Snow to last for a while. However, all 3 of those are big beers (7.3, 8.9, and 8.9% alcohol) and none of them are hoppy. And you always need at least 1 hoppy beer, right? Right. #America.

With family coming into town, and the relative “break” in the residency, we will have time to squeeze in a brew day on the 23rd. We are planning to make our Double Pale Ale (now for the 4th time) with the only modification being in one of the hops. Amarillo hops are now $3.80/oz (normally they are about $2), so I subbed those out for Falconer’s Flight. We’ll still keep the same timing on the hop schedule, and then dry hop with an ounce of Falconer’s Flight. Hopefully this one will be ready to drink by mid-February.

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10 gallons: Belgian and American Pale Ales

With the limited time we have for brewing these days, having the ability to make 10 gallons in one session is quite a luxury. The same amount of time and effort yields double the beer. The hardest part though, is having to deal with fermentation.

We only have 1 dedicated fermentation fridge, so the other batch we make has to be fermented with a yeast that is a little more forgiving. Belgian and saison yeasts do fine at higher temperatures, so we'll do the BPA in a swamp cooler inside the house and try to keep it around 68.

We buttered with centennial (the store was out of Amarillo) and then used cascade in the boil. We'll dry hop the American one with probably Columbus and hopefully they be ready to drink by Cooper's first birthday party next month.

While brewing I also kegged the porter today. This was one where we used all English ingredients and English yeast. The sample tasted very good today, and it clocks in at a respectable 4.25%. This will be a good session-style beer and I can't wait until its carbonated.

The hops are also doing well. It seems that the Newport has more hops, and larger sized cones too. There isn't enough on either to make a beer with, by we'll drop them in some pints when they are ready.

Busy life

Life is busy right now. Working as a resident so far has me pretty busy, and I can only imagine how much busier it is going to get in the next few months. With the little free time I have (only 4 days a month) I want to spend as much time as possible with my family and I hope to brew at least 1-2 times in order to break even with what we consume here at home.

I think some people out there are reading this, and I just want to say thanks and hopefully you'll stick with us through this year. I wont be able to post as much, probably only when I brew, but I will try my best to post as often as possible. I'll probably do more 'mobile' posts on my phone, but with the drawback of not having photos display as well.

Updates: the hops are looking good. A decent amount of cones on the bines, but not even close enough to brew a batch of beer with them. Next year should be a good year though.

The double pale ale is gone already. That was a good brew once it finally got carbonated and we are going to have to make another one soon.

The black IPA is tasting just OK; a little harsh, but decent, and not as good as last time. I think it is because of the soft water her not being suited to darker beers, but that will hopefully be something we can get used to for the future.

The saison is really really good. We'll have to make another one of those again soon.

The porter is almost done fermenting, and the sample that I had was very good. I think that one is going to be a good beer as well.

#TeamDietrich

English Porter

Today we brewed our first true English-style ale: porter. It's hotter than sin outside as I brewed today, the heat index was 103, and I am wondering why I decided to pick up the ingredients for a porter? I now remember that I was planning on brewing this in late September to have for a nice October-time porter. Oh well, who doesnt like porter on a hot day with some good barbeque?

After brewing in the heat and having previously brewed in the very cold (feels like 103 vs ~24) I was tyring to think which one I would rather do again. In the very cold, you can just put on a coat, hat, and gloves and be reasonably warm. In the heat, you can just go inside to the A/C while the boil is going and come out for your hop additions. The biggest difference I have seen though, is that when it comes time to cool. Super cold outside (i.e., snow everywhere) > super cold ground water (~33 when you add the snow) = super fast cooling. Super hot outside > super warm ground water (+78) = long, long cool time, and you still dont get down to much less than 85. However, when you are cleaning up, you cant get hands wet in the cold temps, so you have to clean up inside. If this isnt an option, I can imagine clean up would be rather difficult. In the warmer weather I can just go spray-crazy with the hose and clean everything up very quickly. So it's a toss up with the weather. If I had to pick, I would pick right in the middle. Cool enough outside to where you can hang out, but still warm enough to where you dont have to worry about getting wet and freezing......but who really cares, you make beer either way.

I am very interested to see how this recipe turns out. We've never really paid that much attention to where ingredients come from when making certain styles. We typically use American specialty grains in most beers, with the occassional Belgian specialy malts (e.g., Special B, melanoiden, etc), but we have never used English malts. Today the grist is ~80% Marris Otter, 15% English Brown malt, and 5% Black Malt- all malted in the UK. I've heard to make authentic British ales, British ingredients are a must, so I'm very hopefull that this beer will be really tasty. I doubt I'll ever compare it to a version with American ingredients, but I hope I like this beer enough to not want to go back to US malts for English-style ales.

The mash smelled awesome today, I love the smell of the mash of dark beers. The chocolate, roast, coffee/espresso, and bready aromas will hopefully make it into the final product, and as you can see, it will have a nice dark head. The OG was 1053, modest compared to our average brews (the Black IPA was 1070) but the ~5.1% alcohol is high compared to traditional English session-style ales which usually hover around 4.3-4.6%. If this one turns out well I imagine I'll make another more traditional, i.e., low alcohol Enlgish bitter or something in the future.

 The hops are doing well too. As you can see they've climbed as far as they can go and are now climbing back on themselves. Next year we are going to have to put some really trellis' up so that they can actually grow higher than 6 feet, but we've got plenty of time to figure that all out. This year is all about root growth, so once the roots are settled, then we can have the hops climb.

 In this picture you can see the small flowerly-like thing and although not I'm not 100% sure what it is called, this will eventually turn into a hop cone. There is a decent amount of these on both plants and more are sprouting up everyday. It will be another 5-6 weeks before I think any cones will be large enough to use and I think we'll just make a simple pale ale using all of our home grown hops. We'll have to see which plant looks like it will produce more to determine when we'll make that beer. If the Centennial is going to have a lot more cones, we'll probably make the beer in August so that we can use the fresh hops to dry hop the beer with. On the other hand, if the Newport is doing well we'll have to wait until the harvest time to brew a beer so that we can use the hops in the actual boil.

No planned brew date for the next beer, but I imagine it will be the black lager. With the Porter on tap in the future, I hope to have the black lager in a keg actually lagering in the fridge for a couple of months before we put it on tap. After that will be the last brew we have the ingredients for, the Dubbel. I am planning to do another purchase and plan out our next few brews which will likely include the Belgian Pale, Brown, and probably another Saison (which was bottled the other night and tasted awesome).

#TeamDietrich

Saison

Tonight we bottled the Cottage House Saison that was brewed on the 4th of July. The yeast did a very good job of attenuating as the beer went from 1064 to 1004 for 7.8% alcohol. Definitely not a session beer, which is worrisome because the samples were tasting very very good. It seems pretty easy drinking, so we'll have to be careful with this one. I think I could smell the lemon zest that we added as the beer has a nice bright citrus aroma, with a little bit of spice, maybe from the yeast, maybe from the pepper. Either way, I'm very excited about this beer and I think it's going to be a great summer beer.

On Sunday after work I'll be brewing the English Porter. It's a simple recipe with only 3 grains and hopefully it will also be a quick turnaround beer to finally get something on our 3rd tap. I'll post some more about that beer on Sunday as well as some photos of the hops.


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Short Update

Life's been busy; very busy. As a result I havent been able to post as much as I would like. Either way, we've made a couple of beers and now have 2 beers on tap.....sort of; more on that later.

First, the hops are both doing very well. I will post a picture in the next couple of days, but needless to say, they've both reached the top of their respective trellis. The Newport still only has 2 bines, but they are already producing some small burrs that will eventually be hop cones. The Centennial probably has 6-8 bines and about 3 have reached the top. It is a much fuller "bushier" plant compared to the Newport, but it too has a few burrs.

On the 4th of July we brewed a Saison for the summer. I found a recipe online called Cottage House Saison that has been very well received. In addition to the normal malts (wheat, caramunich, pilsner) there is the zest of 1 lemon as well as 1.5 tbsp of fresh ground black pepper. We added both at the end of the boil so hopefully the aromatics will still be around in the finished beer. We are planning on cold crashing later this week and then bottling next weekend.

Next weekend we'll also brew our British porter. We have a ton of light colored hoppy beers and I thought a nice porter would be a good change of pace. That one should be ready to drink in about 3 weeks as well.

As for the beers on tap (Double Pale Ale and Black IPA) we've had some trouble carbonating the Double Pale. It has been on gas for a few weeks now and it's probably at 50% of where it should be. The heat wave could have been the problem in that the fridge couldnt stay cold enough therefore the set pressure on the CO2 tank would have been inadequate. But now that its cooled down I would expect it to carbonate more appropriately. We'll see when we take a pull or two in the next few days. It's still tasting good enough and the dry hop is coming through really well. A little bit of carbonation will help lighten it up and make it much better and I hope we get it right before we drink the rest of it.



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Black IPA

Busy weekend, so this will be a short post. We've finally brewed the Black IPA again and hit numbers similar to last time. The original gravity was 1.070, which if it ferments as well as the last version, should result in about 7.2-7.5% alcohol. We used some of the yeast from the Double Pale Ale for the Black IPA and will save the rest for future brews. We are going to rush this one through a bit, similar to the Double Pale, and will hopefully be drinking it in about 3 weeks.

The Double Pale is sitting in the garage at 30 PSI and will stay there until tomorrow morning at which point I'll take it off the gas and then put it in the kegerator on Wednesday night. We dry hopped with an ounce of Citra and 0.5 oz of Chinook. We havent used Citra before so we are looking forward to seeing what kind of aromas we get out of that hop.

We also took a quick sample from the Raspberry RIS and have decided to let it go another 3-5 days before we bottle. I was going to finally get around to cleaning the keg that we stored the RIS in and discovered that there was a decent amount of beer still in there (I dont how we didnt get it out when we racked it to the carboy). When I found the beer I quickly put the lid back on the the keg and hit with CO2 to seal it. I am assuming it's still clean, and not infected, so when we bottle, I'll just add it to the rest of the beer that was on the raspberries. No plans yet for the next brew, but I'll bet we do something in 3-4 weeks.

Hop Update

The picture above is of the Centennial pot and as you can see, it is doing very well. We now have trained 4 bines on to the trellis, 2 of which were trained just yesterday. There is another bine growing that is becoming pretty long as well that I havent decided whether or not to prune it or just let it go up the trellis too. We added some basic fertilizer this morning and hopefully that will help with the leaves looking a bit discolored. So far not too many bugs either. I think I've seen a wooly aphid (?) but I've sprayed the underside of the leaves and the bine itself with a water/soap mixture and that seems to be working in keeping them away for now.

The Newport has also had a lot of growth since the last update. I think that the one bine (farthest right) is a little bit taller than the Centennial, which had about a 2 week headstart. There is only 2 bines on the trellis, which may be why they can grow so much faster, because the plant is only focused on 2, and not 4-5 bines. Either way, I'm pleased with the progess so far, and the Newport seems to not be attracting as many bugs as the Centennial. It's still a long summer, but hopefully both of the plants will make it through and give us some hops to use in the Fall.

Thankfully the Double Pale Ale was cold-crashed last night. On Saturday we'll dry hop/keg it and hopefully by the following Saturday we'll finally be drinking some beer on tap again. It seems like it's been a long time since the kegerator was in action, and hopefully, we wont run into this problem again in the future.

Raspberries and Empty Kegs

Bad news first: we're out of kegged beer.......We'll let that breath for a second.........

Ok. We're back: We were worreid it would happen and it did. With the hiatus in brewing because of the move, the lapse has finally caught up and our kegerator is empty. The brown went about 3 days ago and the Belgian went last night. Fortunately, we've got a decent amount of dubbels and rye saison's left to last, but only 6 steam beers and no hoppy beers. The Double Pale has been in primary for 1 week now and is probably finished fermenting. We'll let the yeast clean up after themselves for a few days and then we are planning on cold crashing on Wednesday this week. After 3 days at 38, we'll keg it and add dry hop with 1oz of Citra and 0.5 oz Chinook. We'll leave it at room temp for 4 days (normally I like 7, but we need to rush things), then into the kegerator, then hopefully by next Wednesday it will be close enough carbonation-wise to start drinking.

Now good news:

We've finally gotten around to adding the raspberries to our Russian Imperial Stout. I could not find the canned raspberry puree this year, so we got about 3 lbs of frozen raspberries and let them thaw in the fridge. We then put them in a half gallon of water and raised the temp to about 160 F to hopefully pseudo-pasteurize as well as mash them up a bit to get the juices flowing.

The beer is now sitting in the shower (the garage gets a little too hot during the day for my tastes) and will stay there for 7-10 days. We'll sample it after a week and then decide when to bottle. I think this year we might have to do something different than normal to avoid the overcarbonation problem we had last year. My guess was that the bottling yeast ate the sugars in the raspberries which resulted in the excess CO2. It looks like there is a small amount of bubbling going on now, which could mean a little bit of fermentation (which I doubt because the beer has sat so long the yeast are probably pretty dead) or its just some extra gas escaping.

Next up is the Black IPA a week from today and then probably the week after that we'll do the Saison. I dont have the ingredients but I think we should brew the Belgian Pale again as it seems to be a crowd pleaser.

Double Pale Ale & Hop Update

Yesterday we brewed our 3rd installment of the Double Pale Ale. Everything went pretty smoothly considering it has been about 3 months since we last made a beer. Having a hose around was definitely an improvement and allowed me to clean up outside instead of the kitchen, which Elise appreciates greatly. Unlike my last post said, I did actually brew just outside the garage instead of the back yard. I decided to stay in the garage because all of my equipment is right there and I can just bring the hose around the side of the house to where I need it. This side of the house is also a bit more shady and therefore cooler which doesnt hurt.

I wasnt sure how the change in elevation or humidity would effect our boil off rate, so I turned the burner up a little bit and ended up with 4.75 gallons instead of our normal 5. Other than that minor issue, our numbers were similar to previous versions of this beer which is nice to see as it means we are brewing consistent beers.

We haven't exactly decided when we are going to brew the Black IPA, my guess is probably the weekend before I start working. If that is the case we will probably be down to 1 beer on tap, or even 0 before the new beers are ready. During our graduation/baptism weekend with all of the guests in town we drank a lot of beer and killed the Schwarzbier and Double Pale and put considerable dents in the Brown and Belgian Pale Ale. I'm hoping we can have the Double Pale on tap before we completely run out, but it will be a few months before we've caught up again and have 3 beers on tap together.


I snapped a couple of shots of how the hops were progressing:

Above is the Newport. It is growing a bit slower than the Centennial (below), but it has 1 good bine going that in a week will probably be long enough to train on to the trellis.

The Centennial is growing very well so far and I have been able to train 2 bines on to the trellis. Once they were put on to the trellis they seemed to start growing even faster and they probably make a complete rotation every 1-2 days depending on how much sun they get. I have high hopes for the Centennial giving us at least a couple of ounces of hops to use in a beer, the Newport on the other hand may only give us a couple of cones. We'll see


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Aaaaaaand, we're back

We've officially made our first starter in North Carolina and Rowdy Reptile Brewing is back in business. We have a two-car garage, and next to the door going into the house is a cabinet/counter top that is a perfect spot for the stir plate. We set up our shelves to the left and can easily store all of our brew equipment on shelves. I dont think we will be brewing in the garage any more as we have a nice yard now so we'll be doing most of the brewing back there so the dogs can run around while we brew and we'll also have access to a hose. Our old place didnt have a hose, so we are very excited about how much easier it will be to brew with a hose instead of having to go up and down a flight of stairs for every drop of water we need.

On the other side of the door we set up the fermentation fridge and stacked our cases of empty bottles. The white board on top of the fridge was originally in our kitchen, but since we've gotten a bigger one, I am going to use this one as a "What's Fermenting" board. Now that we're in NC, we'll also have to start getting stickers from breweries here to add to the fridge and expand the collection.

Our first brew will be our Double Pale ale, but a little different from previous versions. The homebrew store here was out of Amarillo hops, so we will be dry hopping with a hop we havent used before called Citra. Shockingly, it has lots of citrus aspects, so it shouldn't be too different from Amarillo.

Since the homebrew store here is much smaller (and therefore the selection of grains is smaller) we've decided that we are going to plan more of our brews in advance and buy the ingredients online. The online place only does grain in 1 lb increments like the store, but it is a bit cheaper, and the hops are much much cheaper, so we will be able to make up the shipping costs there. We are looking into ways to store the small/random amounts of specialty grains that we will have left over, and I'm sure with the random assortment of grain/hops on hand, we'll inevitably do some "kitchen-sink style of beers."

So far we have planned for the Double Pale Ale later this week, then the Black IPA next week. After that we have ingredients for a schwarzbier, saison (with lemon zest, honey, and black pepper, yum!), dubbel (that we'll age on some figs from our fig tree), and a British-style porter for our Fall beer.

Homegrown Hops

In the last post I mentioned that after finishing the kegerator shelf, we would be looking for a new 'brewery project.' Well, what better project than starting our very own hop garden.

Hop flowers that are used for brewing come from female plants. Males produce too many seeds and are therefore undesirable for brewing. And even though hop plants can reproduce sexually, they can also be propagated asexually. Female plant root systems after the growing season can be cut to yield rhizomes, which when planted will grown into a clone of the parent variety.

Normally, when people order rhizomes they are delivered in March/April-ish. We decided a little later than this to grow hops, so they have only been planted for 10 days so far. Also, as a result of the late ordering, the selection was somewhat limited.

We are going to start with 2 plants this year: Centennial and Newport. Centennial is an American hop that Elise and I really like. It has a medium alpha acid content but is mostly used for its citrusy, piney, dankness. Newport is a relatively 'new' hop comparatively. It has a high alpha acid content making it a good bittering hop similar to one of its parents, Magnum. It was bred specifically for its resistance to downy mildew and therefore will hopefully grow well in North Carolina.

The first year we wont get too many cones as the plant is focusing on root growth, but hopefully by the 3rd year we'll get a couple of pounds of hops per plant.

Next year we'll also probably start growing some Cascade and Chinook to round out the 'farm.'

The first picture is the Centennial plant's first buds peaking through in the planter. They were planted about 10 days prior and hopefully the Newport isnt too far behind. Below is a picture of the rhizomes. As you can see, its is much thicker than a normal root, and has lots of off-shoots (the purple/white things below the twisty tie are the sprouts coming out).

Brett B

Yesterday was my last day of rotations and Elise made beef Tagine to celebrate. Made with cinammon, red pepper flakes, and lots of hot smoked Hungarian paprika I thought a Brett B, with its funk and tartness, would go well with the meal. It did. I decided to take a picture of the brew as well and do a review as I need to start actually reporting our results.

Appearance: crystal clear, nice head, and a beautiful golden-yellow hue.

Aroma: dirt, funk, and an indescribable "odor" of sorts. I dont know if I can call it "horse blanket" or "barnyard" but it is close to that. I like the way it smells as it "stinks" in good, different, unique way. Elise on the other hand, turns her nose when I even walk by her with a pint; oh well, more for me.

Taste: subtle citrus, mostly faint hints of lemon, clean, and a very crisp finish. The aroma of funk/dirt does not translate into taste as this is a light, crisp, slightly sweet brew. Nicely carbonated. Pairs well with a variety of foods as the funk accentuates unique spices (cinammon, tumeric, etc) and the bubbles cleanse the palate for the next bite.

Overall: a very good beer (to some). I like this one a lot and it makes me really want to do the Biere de Marrs and 100% Brett B brews again for the upcoming hot months. The crispness lends itself towards sipping on warm summer nights and the funk pairs well with spiced dishes that Elise and I are becoming quite fond of (e.g., Moroccan Chicken, Beef Tagine).This beer is definitely out there and not for everyone, as you either love it or you hate it. This house is split, but I still think I'll make a few gallons of it because I know there are at least a couple of other people who would split a pint with me.

Desert tonight consisted of a angel food-type cake with a chocolate ganash and strawberry topping. We paired that with an old bottle of Great Divide Yeti Imperial Stout we had laying around. A very good pairing as Yeti compliments anything with chocolate in it and very good end to the day. Now it's crunch time as we've only got 19 days before we're gone!

Bottled Belgian Pale Ale

I thought I would post something on our bottled Belgian Pale Ale before they are all gone (we only have a few left). This one was different than most before it in that we used Saaz hops instead of the Amarillo/Cascade combination used in the previous 2 batches.

Appearance: brilliantly clear, maybe one of the clearest beers we've ever made. It has a nice straw color to it, and as you can see from the photo, a good amount of bubbles rising from the bottom. There is a nice head  from the pour, but is dissipates quickly into a thin lace.

Aroma: I guess I haven't had enough experience with Saaz hops, but I dont smell much of the spicy/noble hop character that is normally attributed to that hop. The aroma is mostly of grain and yeast, nothing fancy. We might need to warm them up a bit before next time to hopefully coax some more aromas out of the beer.

Taste: The taste is slightly sweet, pleasant, and overall very enjoyable. I have complained in our other hoppy/pale colored brews of not having a crisp taste, but this is quite the exception. There is a nice snap at the end providing a very refreshing brew. However, as this beer has aged the carbonation has become much more noticeable. This level of carbonation is about at the threshold for Elise and I and it is probably a good thing we dont have too many of these beers left as a couple of more months of bottle conditioning would send it over the top.

Overall: this is a great beer. We really enjoy drinking this one outside during the hot days as the refreshing crispness is a good palate cleanser. It also goes well with spiced food (e.g., Vindaloo chicken), cheeses, and just about everything else. I like the Saaz version and I'm interested to try the new version once we get it on tap to try to compare the differences in hops. I think the fermentation schedule for this beer was much better than the newest one, as it was about 4 degrees cooler. As a result, the Belgian yeast was a little cleaner, but the Belgian-ness came through after being in the bottle for a few weeks. The newest one seems just a touch estery from early samples (nothing as bad as the Tripel though), but hopefully that will subside as it is conditioning. This is definitely a good recipe and a beer that we'll be brewing a couple of time a year, especially for the Summer months.


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Steam Beer

Here's a picture of the Steam Beer that I took last weekend. I was hoping that it would have been a little better, as the the picture doesnt show how clear the beer actually is in person. We're happy with the beer though and may even make it again next year for a spring-type beer.

 In other news, we took a couple of samples from the Belgian Pale Ale and the Schwarzbier this weekend. Both are tasting pretty good, although not fully carbonated yet. I was a bit worried that the Belgian Pale may have fermented a little warm and thrown some esters, but they seem to be in check in the sample we had. The schwarz is tasting really good as well. It's nice and smooth, with just a hint of roast (I may add some more roast the next time we make it) and will be a welcomed addition to the tap list.

 We decided to hook up the schwarz now and take the Belgian Pale out of the fridge to condition/age for a few weeks until we empty another keg. I think I've mentioned it before, but I'm not sure how our Belgian's will do once kegged. They always seem to improve after about 6-8 weeks in the bottle, but if they are in the keg at 38 degrees, I don't anticipate much aging to occur. To combat that, we carbonated the Belgian Pale for a week in the kegerator, and then we'll leave it in the garage at room temperature to condition for a few weeks. Hopefully the extra time at room temp will get the beer to where we want it by the time it goes on tap.

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Kegerator Shelf: On the Cheap

So, you've seen pictures of the kegerator before with 3 kegs inside. What I havent mentioned before is that they barley fit, and as a result push up against the gas line coming into the side of the fridge. So I decided we needed to build a shelf so we dont waste the space in the back taken up by the "hump," i.e., the compressor. Since the kegs are relatively short they will easily fit even when raised about a foot off the floor of the fridge.

I was off last Friday and started searching Craigslist.org for "free wood." I found a guy with some 1" thick wood shelves that he was getting rid of so I went and got those. I then put 2 of the shelves side-by-side and screwed them into a 3rd piece that split the two above. I then found a guy who recently tore down his deck and went and got a 4"x4" post to make some extra supports for underneath the shelve. Thankfully, there is a Home Depot near our house and I took the wood down there and had them cut it for me.

This afternoon after work I came home and put the shelf in with the beams and was easily able to fit all 4 kegs in there as well as the #5 CO2 tank. Now that we have the extra room in the kegerator we can make some real lagers and actually lager the beer for 3-4 months before we start drinking them. A way of "forgetting" about them in the back of the kegerator. We'll also be able to carbonate a beer while still having all 3 taps going thanks to the small CO2 tank. I'm very excited about the increase in capacity of the kegerator and I think we've finally finished everything we can do to it.....I guess I'll have to find a new "brew project" when we get to Raleigh.

 As I said above, we did this on the cheap, here's the break down of costs:
 4"x4"x8' post: $0
10"x20" shelves (x5): $0
Wood screws: $0
Saw for cuts (Home Depot): $0
Grand Total: $0. Boom. #TeamDietrich

Beer Gun: Bottling from a Keg

Since we dont drink the Steam beer at all, and today I was scheduled to bottle the Belgian Pale, I decided to throw a curveball and keg the Belgian Pale. Since we dont have any empty kegs, we would have to free one up by bottling the contents. I had been reading about bottling from kegs and you can buy commercial "beer guns" for ~$125, but since we do this on-the-cheap, I decided to make one myself. In the picture above you can see that I just inserted a bottling wand into the business-end of a picnic tap, the little stopper (circled in red) is the key to the homemade beer gun. When filling bottles (pictured below) the stopper is in the bottle neck to create a seal. The increased pressure inside the bottle then pushes back against the foam that would be building and minimizes it. You simply fill and then periodically "burp" the excess pressure inside the bottle by deforming the stopper.

It took a few bottles to get the hang of it, and I still need some practice getting a good final volume in the bottle, but overall I was able to successfully bottle 25 bottles of the Steam and then keg the Belgian Pale Ale. The homemade beer gun isnt really meant to bottle entire batches because it is a somewhat slow process: fill 6 bottles, cap 6 bottles, then repeat. The filling is also a bit slower than filling from a bottling bucket and as a result, it took me 30-40 minutes to fill and cap 25 bottles. The main purpose of the gun then is to fill a few bottles (probably 6 or less) for quick use like going to a friend's house, camping, etc. When we need some bottles, we'll just fill up a few and be on our way. Since we have a stopper that also works on growlers, we can fill those too without the mess and waste that normally comes with filling growlers (you know what I mean if you watched a bartender at a brewery fill a growler and waste a lot of beer filling the growler until the foam is gone). The best part of the beer gun was the cost. I already had the bottling wand, picnic tap,and beverage line, so I only had to buy the stopper. Grand total: $0.50.

Full Capacity

We've finally got all 3 taps up and running and Elise has drawn the art work/draft list for the kegerator. Since there isnt a whole lot of room under the taps we had to do the stats running down the side. The beers are tasting good, but we definitely drink the Double Pale and Brown waaaay more than the Steam. It's not that the Steam isnt that good, it's just that the others are so good. The Double Pale Ale is as good as I remember it last time, even with the change in hops.

Now that we have 3 taps going at the same time and seeing how long it took us to drink the Black IPA (~6 weeks) I am thinking that it will take us about 3 months to turn over the 3 kegs. That got me thinking, what happens every 3 months? Seasons, aka seasonal beers. Since we love hoppy beer so much, I'm guessing that 1 of 3 taps will likely always be something of the hoppy persuasion like an IPA, Pale, or even a Black IPA. That leaves the other 2 taps for seasonal-type brews. Since we'll be getting to NC at the beginning of the summer it will be the perfect time to start brewing for the Fall. We just need to start thinking of what kind of beers we want for the cooler, Autumn months. For Winter though, we've already brewed the First Snow, Imperial Stout, and Barleywine, so we'll likely kind of roll the Fall/Winter into one set of beers. I'm kind of leaning towards a porter/stout, maybe a pumpkin or Oktoberfest, and potentially making the Brown Ale again.

Since I had to dump that brown ale a few months back and re-brew it, we now have a bottleneck (pun intended) at the taps. I kegged the Schwarz this morning and it will be carbonating for a few days in the fermentation fridge before I cold crash the Belgian Pale Ale. When that is bottled next Friday, we'll throw the Schwarz back in there and drink it using the picnic tap. It will stay there until we free up a tap, which will hopefully be in a month or two.

Updates

With a day off from work I was able to wax dip the most recent vintage of our Anniversary Barleywine. Cant wait to try it in January 2013.



This is a picture of the resultant blow off from the RIS. I should have started with a blow-off hose, but there is one on there now at least. Even today, about 9 days after brewing, the beer is still bubbling a couple of times a minute. We'll check a gravity in a couple of week to see what the alcohol finished at before it gets secondaried for 4 weeks.

As for the 2 current beers on tap, Steam and Brown Ale, we are really enjoying both. The Steam is just a nice, simple, every-day kind of beer. It doesnt have any flavors that will blow you away, but it is a very good beer. Originally, I didnt like it that much, but I've come around to appreciate what the beer is all about. Nothing fancy, just simple.

As for the brown, it's drinking really good right now too. I still dont get much of the 1 oz of dry hops, but other than that, I cant complain about it at all. Now that it's fully carbonated it's an easy to drink and goes well with a wide variety of food. Even though the brown was kegged about 2 weeks after the steam beer, I bet we'll finish it first because it's so good and someone always seems to be drinking it.

We are going to give the IPA (I think that is what we are going to call the double pale ale) another couple of days in the kegerator before we try it at which point we'll have 3 beers on tap for the first time. With the schwarzbier planning on being kegged next weekend, that will give us 4 beers. As a result I bought a simple picnic tap (the kind that people think of at a keg-party) and we'll store it in the fermentation fridge. After about 3-4 weeks in there, we'll start to drink that one too and we'll move it to the main kegerator when a tap opens up.

Russian Imperial Stout: last brewday in Colorado

Saturday was the last time we'll make a beer in Colorado (but who knows, we may be back someday!) We made a Russian Imperial Stout, the same recipe for Cooper's beer we brewed last year. Based off what we have brewed so far, I am thinking this is taking the place of our previous "Christmas" spiced beer as we havent brewed that yet, and dont have any plans for any more high gravity "Winter Seasonals." So for the winter we'll have our First Snow, the Imperial Stout, and then in January we'll start drinking our Anniversary Barleywine.

We made a 10 gallon batch this time with our neighbor, who will be taking 5 gallons of it for himself. Since the grain bill is so large, over 20lbs for 4 gallons, we had to mash in separate coolers and then drain into the kettle. Going with the same theme of the year, this brew's gravity will be a bit less than the previous version, and will hopefully end at about 9.25%. The grist contained 1 lb of crystal 120, and 0.75 lbs of black patent, chocolate malt, and 0.63 lbs of roasted barley; all of which contributed to the dark brown/coffee colored mash you see above. The mash (and even the milled grain) smelled very good and left a nice smell in the garage throughout the day of chocolate, dark malts, and hints of coffee.

Because of the timing of the move, we wont be able to put raspberries on this batch. We will let it ferment for 4 weeks and then it will be in secondary for about 3.5 weeks before we have to bottle it a day or two before we leave. Normally, I would have liked to have it secondary for about 6-8 weeks, and then get a week of raspberries, but with the move, we dont have the time for that. Although there is a small chance that I will decide to not bottle and pack the beer in secondary on the moving truck and bring it to Raleigh to finish there. With the cross-country transport, I'm not too concerned about the sloshing around, as it will be sealed very tightly, probably with duct tape, I am more concerned about the temperatures. June is hot, and sitting in the back of a un-airconditioned truck may not be the best thing for the beer....maybe we'll store it in the Rogue as we drive. I dont have to make a decision yet, but I'm sure we'll decide in a few weeks what the plan for the RIS will be.

On another note, we have also dry hopped/kegged the brown ale and double pale ale. Before we started kegging, we would let the yeast ferment for about 2 weeks, then add our dry hops to the bucket for 10-14 days before bottling, and then waiting 2 weeks to drink the beer. Now that we have the kegs, we are going to speed things up a bit. After about 2 weeks of fermentation, we cold crash the beer to drop everything out, and then we transfer the beer to the keg.





We then take some nylon leggings and add our dry hops and put that into the keg. The keg is then left for a week to dry hop at room temperature. We do this at room temperature because if we did it all in the fridge, the cold temperatures would make the process very very slow. By doing most of the dry hopping at room temp, we allow the hop aromas to come out, and then by keeping the hops in the keg while in the fridge it will slowly build up as well as last a lot longer.



The brown ale was put in the fridge on Saturday morning, and based off a few samples, it will likely be fully carbonated by the following Friday. The beer does taste very good though, nice and malty, although I'm not getting as much of the hop aroma as I thought I would with an ounce of hops. Still a very good beer though, and we are excited to try the double pale ale this weekend too. The picture above is the Double Pale ale connected to the 5 lb CO2 tank while it dry hops. If you look at the left side of the top of the keg you can see a small white piece of teflon tape which we use to essentially hang the bag of hops from. Because we dont want the dip tube to become clogged with the hop bag, we susped the bag a bit off the bottom with the teflon tape (which looks and feels like a linen-type material).

#TeamDietrich

Belgian Pale Ale

Yesterday we brewed 10 gallons of our Belgian Pale Ale. A friend from school is just starting to get into brewing beer, so we invited him to come see all grain and help brew a batch of beer. That way, he can see what we do, and then get 2-cases of beer out of it.

This time, we went back to the original recipe Elise wrote in 2009. The last batch we split the crystal malts into a combination of 60 and 10, instead of just crystal 60. Elise's recipe also calls for Amarillo and Cascade hops, whereas the last one used Saaz, a European hop. We're still using the same yeast, the Westmalle strain, so it will be interesting to see how different this new one is from the previous batch.

Side Notes: the steam beer is on tap and is carbonating. It's probably 85-90% there, and should be fully carbonated by the middle of next week. We will be kegging the brown ale today and will be dry hopping in the keg. We'll keep the keg at room temp for a week for the hop flavors to get into the beer, and then we'll put it into the fridge. Because the fridge is so cold, the hop flavors will last a lot longer in the beer, but they'll also take a bit longer to peak, which is why we are giving the hops a week at room temp. In the 7-10 days we'll also keg (and dry hop in the keg) the Double Pale ale. Looking forward to trying both of those beers on tap!

Black IPA

Well, it finally happened. The Black IPA is no more. Went to take a pull from the kegerator tonight and it started spitting foam right away. The saddest thing about it is that we made a couple of beers (brown and Schwarz) in plenty of time where they would be ready to step in when needed, but now we have nothing to drink. I guess we'll have to speed up the steam beer a bit to hopefully get it going by his weekend.


...when I say 'nothing to drink' I mean nothing on tap. We still have plenty of bottles and the IPA and brown are tasting pretty good now. The rye saison is also finally carbonated and that is tasting pretty nice as well

Steam and Schwarz

We took samples from the Steam and the Schwarz beer's today. The steam tastes really good, nice and light, a bit of hoppiness. The schwarz doesnt taste as good this time around but I am also trying it about 3 weeks sooner into the process this time than last time. I put the steam into the fridge to cold crash today with plans to keg it on Wendesday or Thursday of next week. I am still undecided if this beer will benefit from a week of conditioning at room temp or if we should just put it into the kegerator and quick carbonate it so we have something to drink when the black IPA kicks (which will be any day now). The black lager wont be kegged for about another month, and it will spend a week or so cold crashing prior to that.

Double Pale Ale; Barleywine Bottling

On Saturday we successfully brewed 10 gallons of our Double Pale Ale (technically we should classify it as an IPA, but whatev) with our neighbor while he brewed 5 gallons of an Old Ruffian Barleywine clone on his system. We started early, and after 5 hours, he had 10 gallons of beer and I had 5, so it was a very productive use of our time. This is our fist time using Faloncer's Flight hops, which is a blend of 4-5 Pacific Northwest Hops. I think it's Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, Sorachi Ace, and maybe something else. Either way, it will contain a nice citrus aspect commonly found in American Hops as well as some piney/spicy/dankness. Very excited to try this one in 6 weeks.



We also bottled our lastest vintage of barleywine. Elise and I did it after we put Cooper to bed, so it was nice to have some company while I bottled. We filled only 7 bombers this year, as opposed to last year where it was all bombers. We thought by filling more 12 oz bottles, we are more likely to actually drink it because we dont have to commit to as much strong beer in one sitting. After the 7 bombers we filled an additional 18-12 oz bottles and we are planning to wax dip them pretty soon. Last year they didnt get any wax until the Fall, but with the move coming up, we'll get them done much sooner this year.



With the flurry of brewing that has been going on the last 6 weeks, we've had to start labeling every batch to keep them straight. Before we bottled the barleywine, we had 4 different beers in primary and 2 differnt beers in secondary, so it was getting hard to keep everything straight. We only have 2 more brews planned, and by the middle/end of April we should have 3 beers on tap for a little variety.

First Snow

Today was racked the first snow to secondary. Since we had a little more than 5 gallons we put about 0.75 gallons into a jug and will add a Light French Oak wood spiral to the jub about 14 days prior to bottling. Last year's Oaked First Snow was a little too "intense oak flavor" for some, so we'll tone it down a bit this year and try to find a happy medium. The beer finished at 1022 (down from 1090) for 9% alcohol. Less than last year's 10.1%, but still respectable. For whatever reason, this year most of our repeat brews have been about 1-2% less alcohol than the previous years. Hopefully it is just a fluke in the 2 beers it has happened (Snow and BW) and we'll get back to normal next month when we brew the Imperial Stout.

We've also drank all but 2 of the First Snow's from last year. With rain in the forcast next week we are planning on finishing those as we have to say goodbye to Elky and pack him away until next winter.

Tomorrow is our Double Pale Ale with Falconer's Flight, followed the next weekend by our Belgian Pale Ale. Two weeks after that will likely be our last beer brewed in Colorado. With plans to move around the first or second week of June, we want to make sure everything is bottled before then. We might try to squeeze something of lower gravity in, but I doubt it.

Everything else is sitting nicely in the garage. We plan on bottling the Barleywine on Sunday, and hopefully this year we'll wax dip soon after that. We have 3 empty kegs waiting to be filled and hopefully by the 2nd week in April, they'll all be filled with the Steam Beer, Schwarz, and Brown Ale.

Tragedy At the Brewery

It's been a while since my last post and a lot has happened around the brewery. First, we brewed a California Common (aka Steam Beer) 2 weeks ago. It was a relatively straight-forward brewday and a very simple recipe. Only 9 lbs of 2-row and 0.9 lbs of crystal 60 along with a modest 2 oz's of northern brewer hops. This beer also used the California Lager yeast, and as of today, is out of the fridge (that was set at 55 degrees) and is resting in the garage (about 63-65 degrees) until we keg it on the 27th. Hopefully, it will be a nice, crisp, easy drinking beer for the spring time.

As for the tragedy: The people I bought our kegs from told me the kegs were "clean" and just needed to be sanitized prior to use. I sanitized and then filled with our schwarzbier and brown ale. The brown ale was sitting in our garage to condition/bulk age for about 1 week before I put it into the fridge and hooked up the gas. Being that I am not very patient and just want to taste a sample of everything, I took a sample of the brown ale on Friday night. Terrible. It tasted soapy; very soapy. I thought that was odd (seeing as I though the black ipa had a similar taste, though not as strong as the brown ale) so I took a sample from the black lager. Even worse. Undrinkable.

I went to the garage again and opened up the only empty keg to see if there was something inside that could be giving this off taste. When I smelled the inside, it smelled exactly like the off flavor we were tasting in the beers: a bit medicinally and very soapy. We came to the conclusion that whatever the kegs were "cleaned" with were not properly rinsed out and as a result, the flavor was now in our beers. We think that since the black IPA was so hoppy, that it masked the flavors to some extent which is why it wasnt as noticeable. However, in the brown, which is less hoppy, and the black lager which is barely hoppy, the flavors were much more pronounced and made the beers undrinkable. Since they were undrinkable, we had to dump them.

I think I died a little inside as I dumped 10 gallons of beer down the drain on Friday night. They were both really good before going into the kegs, especially the schwarzbier, and we had such high hopes for them. The black lager was the hardest to dump as we brewed it early enough to allow for it to actually lager for 6-8 weeks before drinking. The brown was to be the replacement for the black IPA as that keg is getting closer and closer to kicking.

As a result of the fallout, Elise let me make both the brown and the schwarz simultaneously on Sunday. Luckily, my neighbor now has his own mash tun and boil kettle and I was able to do side-by-side batches and get everything done in about 4.5 hours. There were a couple of mixups with hop additions, but nothing that would make much of a difference in the final beer. Now we have about 5 weeks before the brown ale will be ready to drink and hopefully we can drink the black lager in the middle of May.

50th Brew

Today we brewed our First Snow Winter Ale, and not only was it Valentine's Day, but it was also Rowdy Reptile's 50th batch of beer. We've come along ways from our first batch. Starting out with partial boils and extract batches we are nowing brewing all grain and we have much much more brewing toys. Things like grain mills help us save money, a 12 gallon brew pot allows us to brew up to 10 gallon batches, oxygenation kits and stir plates allow us to make better beer by treating the yeast better, and having the ability to keg and drink draft beer allows us to not have to bottle as well as looking pretty badass.



It was a solo brew day today as today is my last day off before I go on interviews and then when I return it's back to the real world and rotations. Due to the size of this beer (22 lbs of grain + 7 gallons of water to strike with) I had to mash on our work bench in the garage. Normally, we mash on the ground, then lift the cooler up to the bench to lauter the sweet wort. However, since I wouldnt have been able to lift the cooler, I did everything up on top today. The only issue was adding the crushed grain to the water as I couldnt pour and stir like I normally do. Instead, they grain was just added in sections, about 25% at a time. As you can see from the picture we about maxed out the mash tun with the grain/water.

I switched up the boil length this time and increased it to 90 min (from 60). I am hoping that by adding some boil time, we'll increase the efficiency by allowing us to use more water initially. However, I ended up with about a half gallon more wort than I anticipated, so the gravity was a little lower than last year (1090 comapred to 1099 last year). If I would have been able to boil off that extra 0.5 gallon, we would have been almost identical to last year's gravity. This year should clock in around 9.5% alcohol, which is still good enough for a winter-warmer ale.



Normally to save time, while the boil is going I will empty out the mash tun and then clean the cooler. I put the spent grain into a garbage bag and then go inside to clean the cooler. I normally leave the dogs outside while I'm gone because they are usually pretty well behaved. When I came back down the garage I found Bailey with her head in the back eating some grain! This is even after they each got a small portion to munch on.



We also put the black lager into secondary and sampled it. It finished at 1015, for 5.25% alcohol; the sample also tasted very good. The color was "browner" than I thought, although it looks black while in the carboy. We'll secondary it for about 2 weeks to clear it up a bit more and then we'll keg it and put it into the fridge to lager it properly. I'll be very excited to try this one in a few months.

We'll be bottling the Dubbel soon as well. I'm looking forward to trying it to see what difference the homemade candi sugar will make. Even though the sugar was pretty dark, it didnt lend as much color to the beer as we wanted, and it is therefore much lighter than we would like. But right now I'm more concerned about the flavor of the beer as color is pretty easy to adjust in the future. After that we'll be bottling the barleywine and then brewing our last beer using the Cali Lager yeast. After the steam beer we will need to make our Russian Imperial Stout for next winter, and then finally, I will be able to brew the Double Pale Ale with our neighbor again. We bought the hops for that beer at the same time as the Black IPA, so everytime I open the freezer I'm reminded about that beer.

As for the Black IPA, I think it is finally carbonated and it tastes pretty good. Elise and I have been noticing a "soapy" mouthfeel and subtle flavor to the beer though. This could be due to the brewing water or potentially carbonic acid. When people try to carbonate kegs very quickly you can get a build up of carbonic acid intially, but it dissipates after a week or two. If they flavor goes away, it will likely be the carbonic acid, but since it's a mouthfeel sensation as well, I think it is most likely the high amount of carbonates in the water. I've ranted about that before, so I'll leave it alone for now.

Brown Ale

Today was a quick brew (less than 4 hours from start to finish) and we made our Brown Ale again. This is now the 5th time we've made this recipe and the only thing that changed this time was a substitue of Columbus hops for Chinook at the 60 minute addition. Both are high alpha hops (creating similar IBUs) and I doubt we'll be able to tell the difference. We'll dry hop this with 0.5 oz each of Centennial and Columbus and will keg this beer hopefully in about 4 weeks.

After the snow storm dumped 15" of snow over the weekend I had plenty of snow to use with our immersion chiller and was able to cool the beer down very quickly. Normally, we use about 16-20 gallons of water to cool a batch down (we save 11 gallons by using a 5- and 6-gallon carboy to store water until the next brew). However, today we only needed about 10 gallons before the beer was chilled to about 65 F.



As usual, the dogs received a bit of grain to munch on.



Next week we plan on making our First Snow Winter Ale followed up in a couple of weeks with a Steam Beer. Both of these beers will use the California Lager yeast from the Schwarzbier batch. We will secondary the Schwarz the day before we brew the Snow in order to get the yeast. I am also leaning towards getting 2 more kegs so that we can keg the Schwarz and properly lager it in the fridge until we serve it in the end of May. Hopefully by then we'll have a couple of taps going and will also have the Steam on tap with the Schwarz as we planned on drinking these on the weekend of Cooper's baptism.

Draft Beer

We finally received the new faucet from the online retailer and were able to successfully pseudo-carbonate the Black IPA. It's not completely carbonated yet, but it will hopefully be completed in about 7 days as the keg equilibrates with the CO2 tank at our desired carbonation level.

I had originally bought 4.5' beverage lines, but after talking with the people at the homebrew store, I found out that that length of line would be too short. By being too short, we wouldnt provide enough resistance to offset the pressure in the keg, aka: Foam City. However, I went and bought an 8' line and it is pouring very nicely now.

Another thing to consider was the fact that we are living at 5414 ft of elevation. To get our desired carbonation levels, we have to adjust our regulator pressure up 1 PSI for every 2000 ft. This was another reason why we needed longer lines to properly balance the system.

We are really enjoying the beer so far. It's hop aroma/flavor are very good with lots of citrus notes and the bitterness is nice and firm as well. Right now, as it is still undercarbonated, it is feeling like a hand-pulled beer by being slightly creamier, but as the carbonation increases, this will fade and hopefully the hoppiness will shine a bit more.

Over time we are going to slowly start accumulating more kegs with the goal of having 3 beers on tap at a time. Right now we could easily fit 3 kegs in the fridge (with the CO2 tank outside the fridge), but we could likely fit more if we build a shelf in the bottom to allow us to use the space in the back of the fridge where a hump is. If we have 3 beers on tap at at time I think we would need to have at least 5 kegs. The other 2 would be conditioning/carbonating while the others were being served. By having the other 2 kegs "on deck" we wouldnt have to wait long in between blowing one keg and drinking the next one in line. To have 3 kegs going we'll need 3 more kegs, 2 more faucet/shanks, and we'll have to get either a multiline regulator or a splitter to supply CO2 to all of the kegs. The splitter would be the cheapest and would simply split the CO2 into as many lines as we need. The only issue would be that all 3 kegs would be on the same CO2 pressure and therefore have the same level of carbonation. This would work for about 75% of the beers we brew, as they are mostly of the American persuasion. However, if we wanted to have an English- of Belgian-style ale on tap we would need to alter their levels of carbonation separately as they require higher and lower levels than American ales. This is where a multiregulator system would allow us to dial in each keg separately to our desired carbonation. This is more expensive than the simple splitters, but provides much more control.

We plan on brewing a Brown Ale tomorrow that will hopefully be ready to keg in 4 weeks to allow us something to have when the Black IPA kicks. I will be interested to see how fast it takes us to finish the keg compared to other beers. I see us using our 9 oz taster glasses for the keg more often than pint glasses, but with the ease of just pulling a pint I think we'll drink that beer more often than other ones. Hopefully it will last long enough to get the brown ready so we dont have an empty tap.

Below are a couple of screen shots of the types of regulators/splitters we would need to have 3 kegs going at once.

Welcome, Bertha

What happens when you give a homebrewer 8 weeks off, plenty of free time, the internet, and the ability to monitor Craig's List via an RSS feed on their iPhone?



























A kegerator.


I knew that I wanted to start kegging beer, but since there can be some considerable up-front costs associated with the equiipment I planned on doing it slowly. I found a way to create an RSS feed from craigslist searching a few basic words: keg, kegerator, co2 tank, and homebrew. I could check on recently added listings on my phone and I planned to just watch for deals and slowly add the necessary equipment when I found very, very, good deals. The second week of doing this I found myself focusing on finding a good deal on a CO2 tank. I was hoping for a 20 lb tank, but would have settled for a 5 lb one. Then I saw a listing for a kegerator for $150 that included the fridge, a keg shell, a keg tap, the beer faucet, a 5 lb CO2 tank AND a 20 lb tank. I picked it up that night and the keg madness was started.



As you can see, the fridge was in pretty decent shape, but I gave it a thorough cleaning and Elise came up with the idea to re-paint the fridge using chalkboard paint and magnetic primer. That way we could write on the fridge what beer was on tap as well as other beer-related info and put cool magnets on the fridge. Added bonus: it looks badass.



This is a picture of all the stuff that came with the fridge; as you can see the #20 Co2 tank is very, very large and will last us a long time before it needs to be filled. A #5 tank can push 6-8 kegs of beer before needing to be refilled, so a #20 tank should last a very long time. I am going to sell the tap and faucet on Craig's List and hopefully get $60 for both. The tap only works for full-size 15.5 gallon kegs (we will be using 5 gallon kegs) and the faucet is a little dirty even after cleaning with CLR and Bar Keeper's Friend. We'll just get a new faucet with a shorter shank that will fit a little better in the fridge door. As for the shell, I have offered it to my neighbor to use as a boil kettle if he wants it. We would need to use a dremel with a metal cutter attachment to cut a hole in the top and then a step drill to drill a hole in the side for a spigot in order to use it, but for about $40 he could have a 15 gallon kettle (buying one that big would easily cost upwards of $300). If he doesnt want to go that route, I'll again sell it on Craigslist for $40-50. If I'm able to sell everything for $100, I'll basically have gotten a fridge, a regulator, a #5 and a #20 C02 tank for $50! The #5 tanks are going for about $50 on Craigslist, and the #20 are about $80; so we got very very good deal.



After cleaning the fridge, we taped it off using painter's tape and applied 2 coats of the magnetic primer. The primer helps the chalkboard paint stick to the fridge, but also makes sure we can still hang magnets anywhere on the fridge.



We did 2 coats of the chalkboard paint the day after the primer was applied, and then after letting it dry overnight, we had a really good looking kegerator. Elise did some art work on the front and side and I'm sure there will be plenty more to come.





I have no idea why we named it Bertha, it just seemed like an good name for an older, slightly worn, less than beautiful fridge..... 'Ol Bertha

Now, our mission is to find some kegs. I have continued monitoring Craig's List and I think we are going to get 2 kegs to start with. One keg will be on tap, and the other will be a back up for when the first one is emptied. The inaugural draft will be our Black IPA, and possibly the greatest thing kegging is that we can drink it about 1 day after rack it to the keg. We will force carbonate it over night and if it all goes smoothly, we'll be drinking it the next day. The fridge will be able to easily hold the 2 kegs and #20 CO2 tank, but we can likely up to to 3-4 if we store the CO2 tank outside the fridge. This is very common and we would only need to drill a small hole through the side of the fridge to the tank on the outside of the fridge. The more I think about this, the more I want to do it, so I'll just have to figure out how/where to drill the hole for the gas line. We can also easily upgrade to more taps by simply drilling another hole in the front of the fridge. I would guess that within the next 6 months we'll have at least 2 taps on the fridge so we can have a little bit of variety.

I have been reading a lot over the past few days about kegs and how to properly dispense, store, and carbonate the beer. It's pretty interesting as there is a lot that goes on "behind the door" in order to deliver a non-foamy, properly carbonated beer. Things like storage PSI, desired carbonation, fridge temperature, height of tap related to keg, and the length/diameter/type of beverage line. All of these components are used to "balance" the draught system to properly dispense the beer. Hopefully with a little trial and error, we'll have a balanced system that pours a nice beer. Since the keg will be sitting at 38 F, it will also "cold-crash" itself and the beer will be very clear. We can also now consider lagering beers as we can just rack a beer to a keg, purge the oxygen out of the headspace in the keg, and just store it in the fridge until we are ready to drink it.