El Bait Shop-Beer Genius and my pale ale attempt.

I recently learned of a new and exciting thing going on at my favorite bar El Bait Shop.  A bar in downtown Des Moines that has a large selection of craft beers from around the world. The people at El Bait Shop have had an exciting new way to be able to try new beers created for them. Fresk Interactive  two German brothers Stefan and Thomas Hansen created the Beer Genius for El bait Shop. At the El bait shop, the beer genius works as a kiosk, that allows people to be able to chose their beer first on color light, medium, dark, then on hops low medium or high, and finally alcohol low, medium, or high. This new addition the El Bait shop will make it easy for new craft beer enthusiast to be able to sift through the over 300 different beers that El bait Shop has to offer. Not from Iowa, can’t go to El bait shop, well the beer genius is also available as an app. allowing you to be able to chose a number of beers no matter where you are at. It is an awesome and exciting thing going on here in Iowa. The local news station also did a story on the beer genius you can find that here at KCCI. 

I currently brewed a pale ale over the weekend. Using a recipe again I found on www.howtobrew.com. This time I decided to make it a little better and I steeped some specialty grains. Hopefully this will make the beer turn out even better than the last one, which after conditioning longer has turned into quite the beer. The whole process went a lot smoother than the first time and the beer is fermenting away and it will be ready to go in a couple of weeks. Check in with ya later. 

Trip to Peace Tree and tasting the First batch

 A professor once told me that the people that become great and make a big name for themselves, those outliers in our world like The Beatles, Steve Jobs and Donald Trump had to put in over 1,000 hrs into their craft to be at the status they're at. Well Sadly enough as a young home brewer I can't brew all day everyday, but I can do things to learn more about the craft. So to bring more knowledge to my growing bank of information I decided to take a trip over to a local brewery Peace Tree Brewery. So I grabbed my good friend Logan Woster hopped in my Ford Ranger and we were off to Knoxville.
We walked into the brewery and the taproom was true sign of what Peace Tree is about. It was cool and sleek and made you know you were into the right place. A friendly face met us behind the bar, John one of Peace Trees bartenders directed us to the brewery where Joe Kesteloot the Brewmaster was just beginning to transfer his new beer a Belgian Blonde from the brew kettle to Peace Trees new 40 barrel (1240 gal or 13,226 12 oz bottles of Beer). We finally introduce ourselves to Joe, a motley looking guy that epitomizes the look of a Brewmaster with a Peace Tree baseball cap and a goatee that easily would measure seven inches long. Joe began our informal tour of the brewery by showing us his mill that breaks the grains open and measures out 20 lbs of grain before transfers them into the lauter tun. He showed us the rest of the process from  the lauter tun to the kettle and onto the fermenter. He explained the problems they encountered with their bottling machine that uses CO2, electricity and air pressure all at once. The one thing I noticed was the passion that Joe had for brewing and for Peace Tree. We finished up trying a couple different beers on top and baught a growler to take home with us, both of us kind of stumbled out the taproom. It was an interesting experience that I can't explain in the short space that I have here but if you have a chance to go to Peace Tree do it. Their tap room is open Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

My first home brew

Now that we had tried some really good beer from Peace Tree. I decided it was time to try the beer that I had been waiting for in anticipation for a long time, MINE. My beer a Brown Ale had been conditioning in the bottles for about a week now and was ready to drink I popped the cap on my first bottle. I poured the bottle out into a glass it was a dark honey color, and sadly enough was fairly cloudy. It smelled somewhat sour and yeasty, not at all what I had hoped. The first sip of the beer was yeasty and ended very bitter, too bitter for what I had expected from the style.  Overall I was very disapointed, but after doing some more reading,  I found out I might not be completely SOL. One issue could be that my beer still hasnt conditioned enough. The yeast hasn't had enough time to settle so the beer tasted yeasty. I have obviously still been drinking my beer and have noticed the beer getting a little more palitable. I guess only time will tell on whether or not the beer will eventually taste better. But if all else I got an O.K beer with a good amount of alcohol.

Bottling Day

So, I come back to you after completing another exciting step in the brewing process, bottling. This is one of the steps that I have been most excited about, because it is one step closer for me to be able to finally DRINK MY BEER. My beer was on a two week fermentation schedule so it was awesome to see it finally get to this step. My beer had stopped showing signs of fermentation about three or four days before I had hoped to bottle, so I was pretty sure It was time.  I had been taking any free time that I had while my beer was fermenting to clean and take labels off of all the bottles. I had been saving longnecks (must be pop off) bottles before Christmas, so I had more than enough bottles ready to go for the whole process. I tried many techniques to take the labels off but decided the best way was to boil some water and place the bottles in the water. This along with some light scraping and rubbing got the labels off with ease.  I purchased some bottle caps, dextrose priming sugar, bottle scrubber and a racking cane from Beer Crazy In Urbandale IA.  http://www.gobeercrazy.com/  They have a large selection of brewing supplies along with a nice selection of craft beers. On the morning of bottling I used BBrite cleaning solution along with my bottle brush to clean the fifty-six 12oz bottles that I had ready to go along with two 24oz bottles. I then sanitized all of the bottles and let them air dry. 

 After sanitizing all my equipment, it was time to transfer from my fermenting bucket to bottling bucket, but first I had to mix my priming sugar. Priming sugar is used for carbonation in craft beers. I started a pot of water on the stove to boil, after it had started to boil, I mixed in the priming sugar covered it and let it cool in the fridge.  I used priming sugar that was pre measured for five gallon batches which made it nice.  After my priming sugar had cooled I poured it into my bottling bucket.  I filled my racking cane (siphoning unit) with sanitizer and siphoned some into a bowl. I then used the clip on my siphoning hose to stop the flow, I placed the racking cane into the fermenter and siphoned the rest of the sanitizer into a bowl and then began letting my beer flow into my brew pot, which I was using as a bottling bucket.  After the beer had mixed well with the priming solution and I let the little bit of sediment that had gotten through settle, I began to bottle.  With my racking cane, came a bottle filler that is spring loaded to allow for easy bottling. I manned the bottle filler and my good friend Keith McCarthy manned the capper. The bottle filler allows you to fill the bottles to the brim and then when you take the wand out there is perfect room for carbonation. Keith used bottle caps that we sanitized before hand, to cap the bottles. We ended up with forty-three 12oz bottles and the two 24oz bottles.  It will take about a week for the bottles to condition, then they will be properly carbonated.  I did taste the un-carbonated beer and was disappointed that there was a slight sour taste, which could mean wild yeast. But we will find out how everything taste after conditioning. Sorry for the lack of pictures didn't have my camera with me at the time.

The First Hiccup

So the other day I opened my closet to check my fermenter, to find the bucket covered in foam and partially fermented beer. Talk about a mess, wow. I have came to the conclusion that I had filled my fermenter too full. By doing this there wasn't enough room for the fermentation to take place, and therefore it escaped through the easiest spot, the air lock. I originally had hoped  that the first mishap was going to fix itself. But when I woke up the next morning I found the foam starting to slowly leak back through. To correct this I emptied a small amount of the partially fermented beer out, I know I had  to waste beer, but it seems like it has fixed the problem thus far. The only other reason and one I hope didn't happen, is I acquired a wild yeast or gusher bug. The wild yeast, the way I understand it would not stop fermenting until there was nothing left eating away at all the carb protein and sugars in my beer leaving me with not beer but lame alcoholic water. This isn't all wild yeast, some will just change the flavor of the beer. I hope that neither has happened, we'll find out when it comes closer to bottling time.