Well kiddies, I'm thinking this will be my last Mr. Beer brew. I've enjoyed this process so much I'm going to take it to another level. I ran into a website that describes adding some chocolate malt to some Mr. Beer stout. Here's the link http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/adding-chocolate-malt-mr-beer-recipe-121751/.
I thought I'd give this a try. So I ordered up some stout HME from Mr. Beer along with some sanitizer and oxy cleaner and maybe some other crap I can't remember. As I recall I got two cans of the HME and no booster.
So, now my quest began to find a homebrew shop that would sell me some chocolate malt. In addition, I thought I would get an appropriate yeast for the stout instead of the generic one that is included with the HME cans. Ellie and I were going to COH to run some tests and I thought I would try to see what was in the area. Now that I think about it she was coming in from travel and I needed to pick her up at LAX and then we would go to COH the next day. After looking on the internet I found a shop called Addison's in Fullerton. Link to the wesite http://www.homebrewprovisions.com/. What attracted me to this place was the reviews I read about the shop. In the beer brewing world there is a common type of person who looks down on others who use malt extracts. These people believe anyone who uses malt extracts are not really brewing. They are known as "beer snobs". The owner of this store was reviewed as being helpful to noobs and not being snobbish. I believe his name was Eric. He was cool.
So, I pick up Ellie and ask if she wants to go to Fullerton and she says yes. When we get there we are greeted by Eric and some "brew flies". This is a new term I believe I have invented. It's a play on the expression "bar fly" which are people who hang out at bars a lot. Not to get drunk. Just to hang. I told Eric I was new to brewing and was looking to steep some chocolate malt in my next Mr. Beer brew. Oh man did he snap to. He scurried on over to the chocolate malt, ground it up, and bagged it. Again I wish I had remembered how much. 1/2 pound or 1/4 pound. We had a quick discussion about how long to wait before steeping it. I had another week to go in the IPA fermentation. Eric said that might be too long. I made the decision there that I was going to bottle the IPA as soon as I got home. Which would be a week early.
While there I got a steeping bag, some priming sugar, and some StarSan. Also, Eric and I had a little talk about what an appropriate yeast would be for a stout. He recommended a White Labs ale yeast. I can't remember which one and I'm kicking myself for that because it's important. It was either British Ale or English Ale. If your not familiar with the White Lab yeast, they are a wet yeast that comes in a vile. It's good for 5 gallons. You simply keep it in the fridge until about three hours before you're ready to brew.
Now Ellie and I had a problem. We had to keep to yeast and the crush malt cold. So we went to a grocery store and pick up one of those cheap Styrofoam coolers. When I got to the hotel room, I filled it with ice and put the malt and yeast in it.
The next day when I got home I open the cooler to find that water found its way into the bag of malt. I instinctively knew that this would ruin my malt and let out an audible, pathetic "NOOOOOOO!" Upon further inspection I noticed that I folded the bag on itself and only a very small amount of the malt that was on the other side of the fold was soaked. Lucky! And lesson learned.
The next day I bottled my IPA, cleaned the fermenter, and then sanitized the fermenter and all other equipment as before. I also sanitized a thermometer Ellie had for cooking. I should have sanitized the steeping bag. I'll remember that for next time. I took the yeast out of the fridge and set it on the counter. I figured it would be about an hour or so until I pitched the yeast and that should be long enough to warm up the yeast. Instructions say 3 hours. I'll plan better next time. I added the same amount of water as before to the metal, Teflon coated pot.
I've come to learn that stainless steel pots are the best. Aluminum conducts heat better and is lighter but it needs to be oxidized a little and I wouldn't be able to use oxy cleaners as it would remove the oxidized layer needed for the pot. No big deal. Lots of other cleaners in the world. But I'm going to use steel. End of story. This will be the last batch brewed in this pot.
Anyhow, now I bring the spring water to 155 degrees and cut the heat. I then put the chocolate in the steeping bag and put it in the pot. I put the thermometer in and cover the pot as best as I can. After about 10 minutes the temp drops to 145ish and I turn the heat back on. It gets up to 160 and I kill the heat and let the lid off and blow over the water to cool it a little. I do this again at the 20 min mark. After 30 total minutes I lift the bag out of the pot. What I should have done here was get what is called sparge water (water heated to 155 deg) and pour it over the grains to get all the sugary goodness out. That's not what I did. It would be better if I did nothing. What I did do was squeeze the bag to get the sugary goodness out. No!!! This apparently release tannins which are bad. I have no idea what tannins are or why they are bad but I understand they are bad. Bad bad bad. Oh well live and learn.
At this point I stick my nose in the pot and it smells like coffee. No kidding. Nothing like a Hershey bar at all. More like what Ellie drinks every morning. It smells great! Now I bring the whole thing up to boil. I take it off the heat and stir in the two stout HMEs. I added one gallon of cold water to the fermenter and then poured the wort into the fermenter. This is the first time I got all the wort in the frickin hole. Yeah for me. Added the rest of the water, checked the water temp, and then came to adding the yeast.
The White Labs yeast vile is good for a standard 5 gallon brew. Since Mr. Beer is 2.5 gallons I figure let's go with half a vile. As I look at the vile, the yeast has settled nicely and there is a fluid which I would guess is some special yeasty auger or vitamins or something. If I remember right the instructions call for the vile to be shook up. So I shook to bejesus out of it. I held it over the fermenter and opened it to a pleasant carbonating sound. I later read this is good as it signifies healthy yeast. In my case though the vile overflows and I freak out a little as I tip a little into the fermenter. Long story short, I end up with about 2/3 or 3/4 of the yeast in the fermenter. What happens now? I don't know.
After stirring the wort up aggressively to aerate the wort, I close it up and put it on the fridge. With some trepidation I sample the wort. Wow! It was delicious. It would drink this wort just as it was. It was sweet and coffee tasting. If the wort started like this I can only image how good it will become in a couple of weeks.
I've sampled the wort now every few days. Amazing just how much the taste changes as the days go on. On about the third or fourth day the sweetness taste went away and the coffee taste overwhelmed. This coffee taste mellowed as the days went on. Before bottling it tasted ok.
I wanted to age the beer longer but Kevin wanted to drink it on Super Bowl Sunday. So, I bottled it 9 days before on a Friday. I didn't want to just add corn sugar to the bottles and then put the beer in it as the sugar is not sterile. So, I sterilized the bottles, caps, and the Mr. Beer sugar measuring device. I put a cup of water into the same old crappy pot as always and bring it to a boil and start to add corn sugar to it. This was a pain in the ass. I was too lazy to determine what 2.5 teaspoons times 7 (the number of bottles I expected to fill) turn out to be in cups. So, I used the Mr. Beer measuring device. 14 scoops. But it's still wet from the sanitizer so the sugar just sticks to it everywhere. I'm not even sure how much of the 14 scoops I got into the bottles. Also, 14 scoops is per the Mr. Beer instructions which call for cane sugar. You need more corn sugar than cane when priming. So, long story short, I might have undercarbonated the beer. After boiling this up I open the fermenter and quickly add the priming solution.
I've got two problems here. I REALLY didn't want to open the fermenter and expose it to germy germs. I justified my actions by rationalizing that at this point the beer is exposed to the world just same as I bottle it so what the hell. Second problem is that we really don't want to aerate the beer at this point. So, how am I supposed to mix in the new priming solution. I read somewhere on the internet to just get a spoon and gently stir it in and wait 20 mins or so until the yeast settles again. What I did do was let it sit for 15-20 mins while I sanitized the bottles and caps. I figured the boiled priming solution would mix in ok. We'll see. I then filled the bottles and put them up on the fridge.
The last thing I did was clean out the fermenter. It appeared there was a little more yeast than the last time. Perhaps this is from me adding too much to begin with. Couldn't know for sure. It was smelly. No bad smelly. Sour smelling.
It's been a week since I bottled the beer. It doesn't feel as pressurized as the other bottles and now I'm worried we'll be drinking flat beer for the Stuper Bowl. I think I will put the beer in the fridge tomorrow. On Saturday I'll have one to see if it is even drinkable for the big game.
Up next I will be buying proper equipment. I'll write more about this later. Also, I think I will write these blogs about the brewing experience during the actual brew in the future so I don't have to remember what went down.
Peace in the middle east!! Seriously, Egypt is revolting.
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