The title of this post is a little misleading. I didn’t use a homebrew in this bread. It was my first try at baking bread, and I didn’t want to potentially waste one, so I used a bottle of Leinenkugel Sunset Wheat that someone left at my apartment. I wasn’t going to drink it (not a fan personally) and the fruity, esteriness of it seemed like it would be appropriate for bread. It was.
I got the recipe from the most recent podcast of Basic Brewing Video. It was sent in by a listener and sounded so simple it lured me to try. I would thank the listener if I could remember his name.
Here’s the deal:
3 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
12 oz of beer
The recipe actually calls for “sifted” flour, but I don’t have a flour sifter and it worked just fine. You mix the dry ingredients and beer together and then bake it somewhere between 325 and 350 degrees (I think I did it at about 335) for about an hour.
I hear this is referred to as a “quickbread” because you don’t need to let it rise or add yeast. The baking powder pretty much does the work. At about 55 minutes in, I pulled it out and spread some butter over the top and put it back in for about 10 minutes. It got a pretty good color but the consistency on the inside was slighty, and I mean very slightly, doughy. It maybe could have used another five minutes or so in the oven.
The end result was tasty, and you can kind of taste the estery, spiciness of the beer. It gave me enough confidence to use a homebrew in the next loaf. Will probably do one with a Hefeweizen and then in a week or so make one with an Irish Stout when it’s ready. Comparing how the two differ in taste might become a post in the near future.
This is not breaking news about a Stone Brewing tasting in the DC area. It’s about the private one that will take place in my apartment this afternoon. My college roommate, Steve, is coming to town, and I have in my possession two vintages of Stone’s Old Guardian barleywine, the 2008 and 2009. I plan to do a side-by-side this evening with them. As well as try my Hefe from Hell for the first time.
Although I’ve been brewing for a year and consider myself to be somewhat experienced, this batch proved that I am, among other things, amateur.
It all started fine, no boilovers, and other than the extreme amount of time it took my tiny apartment’s stove to get five gallons up to a boil, everything was running very smoothly.
Then it all started to go downhill.
I miscalculated how well my brewpot fit in my sink. I did not realize it would not sit in the bottom of it and only got about halfway down. So when it came time to take the pot off the stove and cool it, the ice bath I provided ended relatively quickly (45 minutes or so) and hadn’t done the job I wanted it to. What’s more, we managed to lose any sink stopper that might have existed, and my makeshift clogging device wasn’t doing the trick. I was losing most of the cold water through the drain. After all the ice had melted, and I was using ice packs like mom used to put in your lunchbox, it was midnight, and I decided that 80-degree wort was cool enough for me. Turns out it wasn’t cool enough for the yeast, but more on that later.
Now to that yeast-pitching temp. I knew that I was supposed to get it down to 70, I really did. But I also knew that 80 wouldn’t kill it, and I was tired. So in my temporary deliriousness, I thought it would make no difference. Wrong. Sure enough, it started bubbling away by the next morning, which was only about seven hours later. Then by the time I got home from work that day, it stopped. Weird, right? Two days later and the airlock was sitting level. At that point I knew something was wrong and consulted “How to Brew” by John Palmer, a very good book that I find myself referring to more than my other brewing books. Mr. Palmer suggested that my beer might have stopped fermenting because the high pitch temperature more or less sent the yeast into a frenzy, and they gobbled and gobbled those sugars until they died prematurely. Yeast are a lot like vampires when they are exposed to higher temperatures. At least that’s what I can figure because I was forced to watch Twilight.
So my solution? In my infinite knowledge I decided to rack the wort to secondary and re-pitch. There was a big ol’ pile of trub in the primary, which lead me to believe that Mr. Palmer had been right, and the yeast had dug into that wort faster than Al Roaker at a Red Lobster.
So after I racked it, it bubbled slowly for a day or two and calmed, all I could ask for really. “How to Brew” said I could correct some of the off-flavors that might occur from pitching too high by conditioning, which I took to mean “leave it in the secondary for a while.” It probably means in the bottle, too.
So that brought me to last night. My bottling partner fell through, and I found myself ….by myself. But, as things had been going haywire with this batch, what the hell, why not bottle by myself? Some photos of my solo work:
This was my first time using the dishwasher to sanitize bottles. Getting the labels off proved to be the hardest part. Sam Adams and Brooklyn Brewery bottles are a B%*#@! Sierra Nevada and Great Divide, however, are made de-labeling. My dishwasher sucks though. It took over two hours for it to wash the bottles on high heat, so the solo-job started about 10:30 p.m.
There was an issue with a leaky bottle filler, but other than that, no real complications arose until I tried to cap an Amstel Light bottle. (Some friends left them over here, I promise!) The things won’t crimp all the way! They start to, but then the capper kind of pops up and you realize it’s not working. I tried to use a hammer to bang down the sides of the caps, but that didn’t work.
Because I had counted six Amstel bottles in my total bottle count, then had to subtract all six, I didn’t have enough to bottle all my beer. I came up one full bottle short. So thanks to those damn Dutch, I had to dump one out for the homies.
All in all though, the uncarbonated version of this hefe was pretty good. I don’t think it will be bad whenever it’s ready.
And I do actually like the Dutch, just not their beer bottles.
Bottling the Hefe tonight. Might be a one-man operation so looks like it could take a while. On the plus side, there also might be internet waiting at my house. I might be able to stop poaching my girlfriend’s access, which has become rather time-consuming as she lives in Arlington and I in DC.
Tonight I’m going to take the labels off of my empties to get them ready for bottling my hefeweizen. I used to just sink the bottles in some sanitizer with the labels on, but I’ve changed because I recently read that the heat from a dishwasher is enough to sanitize them. The labels are therefore coming off and making bottling all that much less work intensive. The key is apparently to not use soap, which could leave a residue that would make the beer not as tasty. If you’ve got any sanitization tips out there, let me know!
So my latest batch of homebrew, a hefeweizen, has had its share of issues.
I boiled the whole five gallons, and everything was going off without a hitch last Thursday night. I put it in the fermenter, pitched the yeast, closed the lid annnnnd……HIJINX!
While inserting the airlock into the lid of my bottling bucket (which I use for a primary) the O-ring/bung/whatever-it-is in the lid popped right into my wort. With no sanitizer left because I had been using the primary to hold my sanitizer, I had to quickly whip some up, sanitize my entire arm and grab the O-ring as quickly as possible.
Many swear words were uttered as I contemplated the possible contamination my arm was imparting on the precious wort. Two days later and fermentation had completey ceased, and the water in the airlock was sitting level. Great.
I thought back and realized a true error in judgement had taken place on brew night. As it was approaching midnight I had pitched earlier than I normally would have, probably at around 80 degrees F. Fool I was. This temperature for an ale typically sends the yeast into a frenzy and they quickly eat up the sugars and die before they can fully ferment the diactyl they produce in the early part of fermentation. This usually gives a buttery taste that can be undesirable. I had forgotten in the heat of the moment of having to stick my arm into wort that I had not waited long enough.
My decision for a possible fix was to transfer the brew to a secondary fermenter and add new yeast last night. This morning the beer was slowly bubbling again so I’m hoping this new yeast finishes the job and I don’t end up doing this all in vain. We’ll find out in a few weeks.
I promise I’ll start putting pictures on the blog again.
