Team Sea Donkey

Josh picked up a B3 stout extract kit that we brewed about week and a half ago. Seems like this was the best brew day yet and I’m looking forward to kegging it this weekend. we got a good o.g. reading since I finally picked up a hydrometer beaker (worth the 3 bucks). I’ll post the gravity and alcohol content once keg it. Anyway, this has by far been the smoothest brew day yet. Good beer and good times will be flowing from Mark’s house next week when we have 2 home brews on tap.

Finally, a successful finish to the Christmas Ale. This was an extract batch which we had a few problems with during the carbonation process.  Hey Donkey’s listen up, “Place the Co2 quick connect on the spot labeled IN!” I take full responsibilty for the….um….hiccup that we had when attaching the Co2. After Josh and Rod had to smash off the “quick” connect with a hammer and chisel, people who are smarter than I (Mark and Tuts) suggested placing the connect on the post labeled “in”. What do ya know, it fit perfect and we were back in business. We increased the pressure to 25 psi and let the uncarbonated beer sit in the fridge for another week. After a week the beer still hadn’t carbonated. I went down to More Beer and sought the advice of the pros. They had the solution….Release the carbonation and let the beer warm to room temp. Then start the forced carb. process over by cranking the regulator up to 35 psi, flipping the keg, shake 30-35 seconds, and let it sit for 1 hour. After letting the Co2 absorb for an hour release pressure, and set at desirable psi. overall, this was a frustrating/fun batch I learned a lot and every donkey stepped up to the plate to lend a hand. i still need to make some minor adjustments to achieve correct volume (about 1.9-2.2), probably lowering fridge temp to 35 degrees and increasing pressure to 5 psi should do the trick. The good news is that the brew tastes great and is getting us drunk, success!

“You kept your head on a swivle. That’s what you need to do when you find yourself in a vicious cock fight.”

-Ron Burgandy

I (I meaning “Makiko and I”) received a Sake Brewing Kit for Christmas from Jason and Lisa. It is really easy to start with the kit. All you do is add the Yamatodamashii (rice, koji, yeast, and citric acid) with water and keep it at around 100 degrees aerating it occasionally for 6 hours. Then after 3 weeks you need filter the Doburoku (Sake with Rice) to just leave the Sake. I have completed that process and I just need to wait another week or two for the sake to fully mature.

This is a 1/2 gallon batch. If this batch comes out good I would like to try some more, but the shipping is out of control. It comes from a Japanese company, then gets shipped from the mainland. Maybe next time I am in Japan I can stock up on it and bring a case back to Hawaii. I was curious about creating my own Yamatodamashii in the future, and thankfully I found Mutsuo Hoshido’s step-by-step guide to making Sake. He has even gone through the trouble of converting the measurements into our inferior measurement system.

 Update: So, the results are in… Too Weak. Well I tasted this batch prematurely and it just didn’t taste right, it had a slightly sour taste to it. I waited another two or three weeks and tasted it again. It has definetly smoothed out from the first tasting, but it is quite weak in alcohol content. I do not have the tools to find out the alcohol content, but I would say it is about 20% weaker than any other Sake I have tasted. I filtered it one last time today from a suggestion of a friend, and went ahead and bottled it. Anyone want some weak sake?

I am sure you have heard of fermenting your beer, then breaking it down into 5 “small” batches. Well yesterday, I took this to a whole new level with the Mini Batch. I am really interested in brewing my own beer, however I live in the middle of the Pacific far away from the other Donkeys (except Da) and I cannot participate in the brewing festivities. I have a studio apartment that is quite small and is extremely limited in the way of storage. My great thought is that I will purchase the ingredients for the regular 5 gallon batch, but I will make it 5 times in small batches. I should have googled the fact that 64 fluid ounces is only a half gallon before I came up with this great idea. Well needless to say, I had to break my batch up one more time to have 10 micro batches.

I am brewing a Red Hook IPA clone. For the full 5 gallon process the recipe is as follows:

1. Grain: 1 lb. Crystal 40, 0.5 lb. Munich

2. Malt: 8 lbs. Pale Liquid Malt Extract

3. Hops: 2 oz. Northern Brewers (start of boil), 1 oz. Willamette and 1 oz. Cascade (30 minutes after start), 1 oz. Cascade (55 minutes after start), start cooling wort at 60 minutes.

4. Liquid Yeast: White Labs 001

I followed along quite well however about 40 minutes into the boil I noticed that the wort level in the kettle was quite low. I don’t know how good of an idea this is, but I added another 4 cups (1/4 gallon) of bottled water at this point. My reasoning was that I am going to have to add more water to fill up the fermenter, so why not do it at this point so it could have more of the hoppy flavoring. In hind site, I think that next time I should start with 12 cups (3/4 gallon) of water. Anyways, other than that I think the process went pretty smooth for this mini-batch. So, anyone want to share a 40 in a couple weeks :). Please let me know if you have any suggestions on how I could have improved this. For my first batch, I think it went relatively smooth. I had such a great time doing it and I look forward to make a lot more batches (and hopefully on a larger scale).

By the way, if anyone reads about this please do not mention it to my better half. She isn’t really into the beer thing, and thinks it is a waste of time, I cannot wait to prove her wrong, but in the mean time I have to keep it on the DL. I have stored most of my equipment and ingredients up high so she cannot see them, and I built a false wall to hide the fermenters :p Don’t worry about her reading this, it is at the bottom of a long block of text about beer, she will never make it to the bottom.