Monday, January 10, 2005

 

Finding My Way to Brewing (Part One)

I completed my first batch which was bottled on 1/3/94. I am posting this on 1/10/05 so it is just over eleven years ago that I started. This beginning was while I was stationed at West Point, NY arriving there in July ’92 and leaving in July ’95. It was an all malt extract Brown Ale/dried yeast recipe from Miller’s “The Complete Handbook of Home Brewing”. I followed his beginner section scrupulously and it came out OK. I remember that it was a little under carbonated for my taste but that was the way the style was supposed to be so I hit the mark on that point. I used thin walled non-returnable bottles. None of them broke from over carbonation but I cracked a few while capping. I never used them again, switching at that time to Miller Genuine Draft returnables. Needless to say I was pretty satisfied with my first batch as it all got drunk and quite quickly.

How did I get to that point? Well, it began back when I was stationed in the Netherlands. This was my second overseas tour lasting from January ’89 until May ’91. And so it was in the Netherlands that I took my first foray into home made alcoholic beverage making which turned out to be apple wine making.

One reason I stepped off in that direction was the presence of about a dozen old apple trees on the grounds of the home I had rented. During the first year of my tour there, I watched hundreds of pounds of apples fall off those trees and rot in my yard. I also ended up cleaning a lot of them up. Very sweet pungent smell, those rotting apples. I imagined that a number of them were in some stage of fermentation while I was hauling them off to the compost pile. How to exploit this to my advantage, I wondered?

In casual conversation with a Dutch gentleman at my work, I mentioned my apple wastage situation and he remarked that he knew a little about wine making and suggested I give it a try. This gentleman, whose name I do not recall, advised me on the rudiments of how he was in the habit of making apple wine. Apples were quite plentiful in this area of Holland and this was a hobby that he and some of friends had enjoyed over the years. He also took me to a small wine making shop and loaned me some of his equipment. End of part one.

Sunday, January 09, 2005

 

Finding My Way to Brewing (Part Two)

Not unlike beer making, the first task of wine making is to collect the appropriate bottles. I did this, like I have always done with beer making, which is to drink my way into an adequate supply of good bottles. All the while I was doing this, I was watching the apples begin to ripen and fall. I collected them into old plastic milk crates and built up a bulk supply the equivalent to the capacity of about one and half times that of a 40 gallon plastic trash can. The number of trees, length of the apple season and my commercial wine consumption all seemed to be in good harmony as I soon had the quantity I needed to start the actual wine making.

Once I had the correct quantity of apples, I was instructed to fill one of the milk crates up with a few apples and then beat them through the plastic lattice work of the bottom of that crate into the crate it was under it. I did this for a few hours until the apples had been crushed. I put them all in the plastic trash can. In this crushed state the original bulk volume was reduced to about two thirds the capacity of the 40 gallon bucket. I then added a few gallons of commercial apple juice, water and cane sugar according the recipe orally passed along to me by may wine making mentor. I then stretched a white T-shirt over the opening of the trash can and put it in a corner of my kitchen. Note that no yeast was added. In a few days, spontaneously, a fermentation began. It got quite active for a few days then subsided.

Saturday, January 08, 2005

 

Finding My Way to Brewing (Part Three)

Finding my way to Brewing, Part three
After a few more days, I strained the juice off the pulp and siphoned it into one of those large green glass wine making bottles. They are not quite like carboys, looking more like a tear drop. The capacity of the one the kind gentlemen loaned me was about 7 ½ gallons. After getting the apple liquid into the fermenting vessel, I put a rubber cap and air lock on. My advisor had instructed me to leave it like this for about a month the duration of which it continued to gently ferment as evidenced by the occasional gurgle emanating from the air lock. After this initial period, I siphoned the liquid off into another vessel of the same size and shape of the initial one. This time, I left about an inch of sediment laden liquid behind. At this point, I was to top the second vessel up the 7 gallon mark with commercial apple juice.

I was told to repeat this process for six months which I did. Slowly but surely, the wine got clearer and clearer and I was topping off with apple juice less and less each time. Also, the fermentation of the added juice was less and less each time since I was adding less and less.

At about the seven month point I was advised that I should bottle the stuff. Before doing this, I was told to infuse the wine with an additive that would arrest the fermentation. I do not recall the substance but it is something commonly used in wine making, I believe. Anyway, I added this product according to the quantity and procedure my advisor instructed. Once this was done, I bottled the wine and pressed fresh, new corks in with the corking tool that was lent to me.
I was told to wait about another three to six months and then it would be ready to drink. However, while waiting, I kept some of the white, milky colored dregs that were left behind from the siphoning. I stored it in the refrigerator and would periodically drink of that stuff. It had quite an alcoholic kick to it and it tasted tolerable. I was new at this whole business and was excited that I had produced something from the natural world that was marginally drinkable with an alcoholic effect to boot. (continued)

Friday, January 07, 2005

 

Finding My Way to Brewing (Part Four)

Anyway as my waiting time passed I would check the bottles periodically. By this time they were stored on their side in a shed outside. This area was in Northern Holland and it is very cool there most of the year and downright frigid in the winter. At this point in time I would imagine it was late winter/early spring.

This maturation period was not without incident. For example, I failed to infuse the wine with enough of the fermentation arresting compound and so a few of the corks pushed out when pressure built up from residual fermentation. In effect, the wine was bottle conditioning which is something you don’t want to happen with only corks to keep your bottle closed. As it turned out I lost about a third of the wine this way. Because of this, I got them off of their side and would push the cork back in when pressure would build hoping this would work. I didn’t help that much as the pressure continued to build. For some reason this was not uniform throughout the batch. So, as I mentioned I lost about a third of the batch.

Also, because of this, I started drinking the wine only after a few months as opposed to waiting the full three to six months. As it turned out the wine was not too bad. It was apple wine, mind you and I expected it to be a little more sweet than it was. It was in fact, quite dry. It also had a very high alcohol content. I would say at least ten per cent. This was a very subjective call because I had no tools to measure gravity. I was judging by how it made me feel as opposed to a bottle of commercial wine of about ten to twelve per cent. The flavor was that of fairly tart apple juice with little or no sweetness to it. The apples were from old trees and were of the quality used for cooking, pressing into juice and for other industrial purposes as opposed to the finer types for eating as fruit. I suppose this had something to do with the marginal quality.

On balance it was an interesting little diversion and I was particularly pleased with it because I had obtained the basic ingredient from my front yard and it would have just gone to waste if I hadn’t used them.
All of the final steps of this adventure was coming to a close as my tour in Holland was ending. As it turned out I lost about a third to corks popping out, drank about a third and gave the rest away.

Thursday, January 06, 2005

 

Finding My Way to Brewing (Part Five)

Then it was back to the USA where I was stationed in the DC area for one year. I didn’t do much there with making alcoholic products. However, I did buy Miller’s book: “The Complete Handbook of Home Brewing”. While in DC I was told I was going to go to West Point following my year in DC. We moved there in summer ’93. One autumn day at the Post Exchange beverage shop I noticed a “Beer in the Bag” kit for sale for about twenty bucks. I bought it, brought it home, dumped the required amount of hot water in it and hung in my closet. Sure enough it swelled and fermented out. The quality of the beer was very poor. In fact, I had trouble drinking it but a buddy of mine helped me and over the course of a week or two, we drunk it off. He always said it tasted like gunpowder so we named it: Gunpowder brew”…original, huh.

It was at this point that I thought their had to be a better way. So, I pulled out my Miller book, started re-reading it and began to pull together my equipment. I found a small home brew shop no too far away, bought what I needed and went to work. So, that brings us full circle back to the beginning of this story when I completed and drank my first batch back in ‘94

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

 

Finding My Way to Brewing (Part Six, final section)

As mentioned earlier I have been Homebrewing for about eleven years. I started out as an extract brewer and after about a dozen batches started grain brewing and using exclusively liquid yeast cultures. As of this writing, I am at batch number 90. So, that’s an average of about eight batches a year. Some years I have done many more than eight and other years I have done none. Often it was my living/working situation that kept me out of it the years I didn’t brew any.

I am still doing five gallon batches but I want to go up to ten gallon batches. Right now, I live in Africa and have not been able to find the right equipment locally and ordering and shipping it here from the states is cost prohibitive, so the ten gal batches will have to wait for awhile. I am patient. I started kegging just this year, for example.

I brew almost exclusively Ales mainly because I haven’t been in one place long enough that I felt comfortable setting up a temperature controlled fridge…but one day, who knows. My forays into lager yeast fermenting is just that, a foray . I occasionally do a CA Common Beer and I have had good results when I have done them. All in all I have been satisfied with the quality and tastes of the beers I have made so far. I have never entered any competitions and have not had that much interaction with other home brewers. So, I really don’t know how it stacks up with others. Most of my feedback comes from friends and family I drink the stuff with. Most of the time, when I match the style with the person, they are very happy. I have to say that I am too.

I have brewed beer in the following locations: West Point, NY, Montgomery Al, Wiesbaden Germany (on two different tours), Port au Prince Haiti and Dakar, Senegal. One could probably surmise that I was in the military accounting for the moving around and the locations. This is true but now I am retired and I am with another part of the government where I move around a lot too.

So, the latest batch is a Weizen. I make a lot of Weizen because my wife likes them. Also, I was stationed in Germany on three different occasions. As such, I have had a lot of the real deal and I like it.

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