Beer!

Ugh, it's been a month since my last post. Sorry for such a long delay, but I've been preoccupied with finding a job and getting my portfolio site setup.

My husband's hobby of home brewing is starting to rub off on me. This past month I brewed two beers: one we call Gwenirium Tremendous (a Delirium Tremens clone) and an organic brown ale (a test batch for the organic chai ale for my sister and her boyfriend).

The Gwenirium Tremendous was brewed a couple weeks ago (I think?) and we bottled it into beautiful 750ml Belgian beer bottles, complete with corks and cages. The beer is in our attic "cellar" working on it's carbonation, in the meantime I will work on designing labels. I hope to have it all put together to send out for the holidays, and will hopefully be fully (or mostly) carbed in time for consumption on Christmas!

The organic brown ale doesn't have a name yet because it's still a wee little one. Last week I brewed a three gallon batch using grain instead of DME (that's dry malt extract...what you get from grain, then dried). The brewing went very well and my original gravity was almost spot on.

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Original gravity is a measure of the sugar content before fermentation (density of fermented beer - or wort in brew terms - compared to the density of water). With this number you can determine the approximate amount of alcohol after fermentation and how much residual sugars there will be. Lower sugar...less alcohol. More sugar and either the yeast will consume most of it to make a high alcohol beer or the yeast won't be able to consume it all and quit, leaving more residual sugar. All depends on the yeast strain. That's my limited knowledge of gravity...read more here.

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The organic brown now resides in our closet and is mostly done fermenting. We had a taste of it tonight and it has a very pleasant brown sugar taste to it. Not sure what we'll transfer it to when it's done...bottle into 12oz bottles ooooor perhaps put it into our little corny keg to keep on tap in out mini fridge. Now all I need to do is come up with a name for it...any suggestions??

Sorry...no photos this time. Fermenting beer is not very photogenic! I'll post photos of the Gwenirium Tremendous when I have labels on 'em.

Next post will most likely be Christmas related...my mother-in-law is kidnapping me to help with holiday prep work which will involve food, food, and more food!