The Day Before Brew Day

Two things today. Apple Cider and a starter for tomorrows Bitter.

First I will make the Apple Cider. I got the ingredients from the internet. It goes as follows:
4 gallons apple cider
3lbs amber DME
1lb orange blossom honey

Now I plan to use a 1 gallon fermenter and this is a five gallon recipe so all these should be divided by five.

First I will start to rehydrate the yeast. The yeast we are using is Safale S-04. I'm boiling up 1 cup of water for 10 minutes. After that I will cover it with aluminum and cool it to about 85F. After that we will add the water to the flask and then add the yeast. Palmer says to wait 15 minutes and then proof the yeast by adding a teaspoon of DME and then waiting 30 minutes to see if the yeast is healthy and alive. So I guess we will try that.

As far as the amounts I think I will add 1 gallon of apple juice, 3/4 lbs of amber DME, and 1/4 lb of honey. I'll add all these to a pot and boil for 15 minutes. Then cool in an ice bath ASAP. I will then pour it in the fermenter and pitch the yeast. Easy. I hope.

Ok. I added that teaspoon of DME. It's been about 30 mins. I don't see any real activity. I mean maybe a little foamy. A little. Do I think the yeast is dead? Nope. Whatever John Palmer.

Here's some pics:

On to the starter. For our bitter we will be using White Labs Burton Ale Yeast, WLP023, lot number 1023IPH7227041. I boiled up 1 pint of water and 1/2 cup of DME for 10-15 minutes. I used the amber DME that I bought for the apple cider. That made the starter a lot darker in color that I am used to seeing. Interesting.

After that I put it in the flask, put in the sink, and immersed it in cool water. Once it had cooled a little I remembered I've got some Fermaid-K so I got it and read on the internet that people use about 1/4 teaspoon per liter of starter. I've got what look like a little less that half a liter so I measured out 1/8 of a teaspoon and stirred it up.

After the starter was cool to the touch I added the yeast.

Here's a pic of the starter right after I finished and then the next morning:

Updates

First update is on my dreaded Trippel. I really didn't like. Didn't like how it looked, smelled, tasted, etc. Of course one man's yucky beer is acceptable to another. I busted this stuff out on Tuey and Kevin and they thought it was ok. I told Kevin if he liked so much he can take all of it home. So he did. And then he thanked me later. No Kevin, thank you for taking that beer away.

The birthday beer was banana beer. You would have swore I was hiding bananas somewhere in the chest freezer. I fermented that beer in primary for two weeks. I read that when it comes to those wheat beers you don't want to keep it primary all that long. We racked it into the keg and left it for another 10 days. That's when we started putting some CO2 pressure on and began to sample the beer. It was sweet. I thought maybe it needed more fermentation time so I didn't cool the keg until about three days before the party.

On party day I filled a glass and gave it try. It was banana beer. And it was sweet. Too sweet in my opinion. I think I needed more hops at the 60 min mark. I gave some to Ellie and her comment was "best beer you've ever made". Well, it's your birthday sweetheart. As long as you're happy I win. Now comes a point of contention between us. I'm not sure this beer is up to snuff enough that the party people will consume mass amounts of this beer. Ellie disagrees. She believes the five gallons of beer will be gone in under an hour. We've invited 30 or so people. That's a lot of people but they won't all show up in the first hour. I take this bet and when Kevin hears about it, he does all he can to help Ellie win this bet. He did good too. I would say he drank 2/3 of a gallon or so. Zach too. But, Ellie lost the bet. I even gave her another hour to be a sport. In the end though all the beer did get consumed. I was proud to hear comments here and there about how much people enjoyed the beer.

So what's next? I just bought the yeast and DME to make Apple cider. I think I will make it in the 1 gallon fermenter I have. It will take 6+ weeks to ferment and then a couple more weeks to carbonate. Ciders take a long time. But I wanted to make something that people like mom, Amanda, and grandma would like to drink.

Also, I bought my first 5 gallon all grain kit. So sometime this week I will need to get a mash container built up from a large cooler. Nick is coming for a visit this weekend and we are going to have some fun.