Tompopo Brewhouse & Winery
On A Whim SNAFU Brew – first batch of 2009
Brewed on the afternoon of May 16, 2009
A beer of questionable antecedants, made from a 5-lb bag of malt extract left over from a kit meant to produce a red ale. I bought it about a year prior, forgot about it, then found it again as I was cleaning up my basement supplies. I boiled the malt in my trusty enameled kettle, filled with two and a half gallons of store-bought drinking water, for thirty minutes, then threw in a bag with 1 oz. of Cascade hops (rated at 6%) and kept boiling for another twelve minutes. Why twelve? Because I like the number twelve. This really is beer on a whim.
I hosed down the kettle in the kitchen sink until it was cool to the touch before funneling it as energetically as possible (a whole bunch of foam spooged out the neck) into a waiting carboy that was already half-filled with another two and a half gallons of drinking water. Checked the thermometer to confirm that the temp was a comfortable seventy-two degrees before I pitched a packet of Wyeast 1098 British Ale wet yeast into the wort. Wiped the carboy clean with a damp rag, hoisted it by its brand spankin new plasticized steel handle (picked up at Brew & Grow) and carefully ferried it to its new home in the corner of the basement.
Sunday, May 17, 2009 : 7:00 am
It's alive! Crept down to the basement to find those telltale patches of foam coalescing at the top of the wort that confirm the yeast are alive and well and fermentation is underway. The wort's a little cold, though, only sixty-two degrees.
2:00 pm
No longer worried about the cold basement slowing down fermentation. Wort has such a thick head of foam that will have to switch from fermentation lock to blow-off tube before I hit the hay tonight.
4:00 pm
Pulled the fermentation lock off and replaced it with a blow-off tube when the foam rose all the way up the neck. Temp a solid sixty-four degrees now due to either fermentation or the seat cushion I put under the carboy to insulate it from the cold concrete floor, probably a little of both.
Monday, May 18, 2009 : 5:45 am
Fermentation is very active this morning. The wort has a thick, dark head of foam on it and the blow-off tube is blowing lots of bubbles into its mug of water.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
The head of foam on this batch has begun to fall back so I disconnected the blow-off tube and put it back on a fermentation lock, which is still busily going blip ... blip ... blip about once every three or four seconds.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Time to rack the beer!
There's a thick layer of junk called trub on the bottom of the fermenter. It's leftover gunk from all the ingredients that get thrown into the soup pot during the boil, and a layer of yeast that's gone into hibernation now that the first stage of fermentation has ended.
It doesn't hurt much to leave the beer sitting on this layer of trub, but a lot of brewers like to move it from one container to another, called “racking” the beer, to help it clear up. Some brewers think the beer tastes better, too, and a good friend of mine, who never produced a skunky batch that I know of, would always rack his beer, so I'm going to give it a try with this batch and probably the next batch, too.
I use a glass carboy as a first-stage fermenter, rather than the white plastic brew pail so many home brewers seem to prefer, because I like to watch the process. It requires me to siphon the wort from bottle to bottle, though, which is a pain in the ass. I can see the advantage to using a brew pail with a spigot at the bottom. I think I'll have to give it a try soon to see just how much easier it would be, and if I'd be missing anything by going through the first stage with an opaque fermenter.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Bottled the beer tonight. There was just the eentsiest teeny-tiny little bit of a hitch getting it into the bottles.
After bringing a pan of water to a boil and stirring in a cup of malt extract, I siphoned the wort from the carboy into a brew bucket but forgot to choke off the vinyl hose to keep the tube full of wort. I didn't even realize what I'd done until I got the bottles into position and realized there wasn't enough wort left in the pipe to start the siphon. My Darling B tried to encourage the wort on its way by bending the cane over to keep the slow drip going, but there was too much air in the tube. It just wasn't going to happen.
Then B broke the cane. The fates were laughing at my attempt to bottle beer tonight! Laughing! Luckily, I had another cane in the basement. I washed it out and, while I was doing that, B suggested I leave some water in the cane to start the siphon going. Brilliant! We filled a bottle with the watered-down beer, then went on to bottle the rest of the batch.
Or almost. Somehow, probably because, oh, I don't know, we're stupid, we figured that if I washed out a half-dozen six-packs, that would be enough to hold five gallons of beer. That's because we were working on the premise that there are sixty-four ounces in a gallon. I don't know how many times we both said, “Let's see, sixty-four ounces in a gallon ...” over and over again. How can two people be so clueless? Early-onset Alzheimer's is the only explanation we've been able to think of.
So with a little less than two gallons of wort left in the brew pail I had to run downstairs to bring three more six-packs up and wash them out as quickly as I knew how. That went pretty well, actually, and there were no more hitches. After letting them drip for two-three minutes we got the bottles filled up in a hurry, then stood in the kitchen smacking ourselves in the head again and again for the sixty-four ounce gallon thing.
Most ironic: We have one of those goofy old-fashioned ceramic jars on the countertop right next to the sink that has this helpful chart on it: 16 oz = one pint; two pints = one quart; four quarts = one gallon ... and so on. If it had been a snake, it would have bit us.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
We chilled a bottle of SNAFU Brew before dinner tonight and sampled it as we ate. We feel confident in our assessment that it's not ready to drink. Tasted all right, but was flat as piss on a plate.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
We sampled another bottle of SNAFU Brew. That was the first batch of the season that we bottled two weeks ago; the bottling session started out bad and quickly got worse with every step. We were delighted to find that the brew tastes pretty good!
Sunday, June 28, 2009
We popped open a couple bottles of the SNAFU Brew last night to drink while we were playing a game of Risk. It's been almost a month now since we bottled it, so I figured it had to be close to ready, and it was. Everybody liked it. It's got plenty of fizz and a taste that's sweet and nutty. I'll bet anything it'll get better and better the longer it's in the bottles. I'm going to set a couple of six-packs aside to give them a few more months to condition themselves, but the rest is good to go right now.
The Risk game ended in a draw when Tim refused to respond to B's attack.
© 2009 Dave Okonski
