It's Good to Be Back

After nearly a month on the road and far too long since smelling fresh hops and wort, I was finally home long enough to brew a batch of beer with my friend, Carl. We have amassed quite a stockpile of bottles and kegs of our creations with the intention to share them with our friends during a joint Oktoberfest and Halloween celebration, but we did not have an Oktoberfest style beer to contribute. Looking to rectify our mistake, I wrote a recipe and procured the ingredients from the guys at Jim’s Homebrew.

When I arrived, Carl had begun setting up for the brew day but was sidetracked by his hungry baby daughter, so I set to work. We had utensils and vessels cleaned in no time and we began heating up the water for our mini-mash. Once it was holding temperature, we added the specialty grains and with many pauses to stir, continued to clean brewing paraphernalia.

The mash complete, we sparged carefully and began the run up to boil. We became momentarily distracted as we were chatting and nearly had to deal with a boil over, but we were able to act in time to save ourselves from that sticky mess. Chiding ourselves for growing lax in our diligence with the time off we had taken, the incident provided us with focus moving forward. We added our extracts and returned to boil, which we held for ten minutes before beginning the hop additions.

The boil complete, we dunked the kettle into an ice bath and then transferred to the carboy and topped off with water. The final temperature was a little high for my taste, so we moved the carboy into Carl’s basement and within an hour we were able to pitch. Brewing, apparently, is not quite like riding a bike. One must continually practice to keep the mind sharp.

Racking a week later, the beer seemed to suffer no ill effects as it did not display any off flavors or aromas. Nearly completely fermented, the yeast having happily done its job was our reward for being patient before pitching.

We decided we wanted to add a little something special to this beer, as it was brewed specifically for a grand occasion. I purchased some whole hops and a hop sock at Jim’s and we added them to the keg with the beer the week following racking. I have to squeeze my tiny arms into the corny kegs to wash them as Carl fears his will get stuck. One of the few advantages to my smaller stature I have encountered while brewing. After cleaning the keg thoroughly, including using CO₂ to purge the serving lines, we were ready to transfer the beer. We then weighed out the hops and carefully added them to the sanitized hop sock and dropped it in. The large glass marble we had decided to use as a weight to keep the hops suspended in the beer proved to be adequate only to a point and the hops were left only mostly submerged. Undaunted and left with little options for other means to sink the hops, we sealed the keg and began carbonating. As I was leaving town for work once again, I left Carl to do the sensory analysis to determine when to pull the hops out.

Carl and I are looking forward to sharing this Oktoberfest with our friends in a couple weeks and rumor has it that it will be incorporated into a dish prepared by our chef friend Jesse to accompany the meal. As I will be moving to Davis shortly after the celebration, I am also looking to this as my going away party and it should be much fun.