Oculon.org - The Blog

The Blog!

The Beer Log will cover from start to finish the making of a batch of home brewed beer by Oculon.org's very own Ocu-Master. Send comments to beermaking@oculon.org

I've split the log into two sections and because I wrote this bottom to top, you have to start from the bottom and move up. Hey, you could complain, but I'd just ignore it anyway. Click here for section one.

01:21:03

Fermenting: Day 1

Well I checked on the fermenter today after it sat in the closet for nearly 26 hours. A nice yeasty smell (like rising bread) is coming from it and the bubbles are coming out about 1 every five or six seconds. Matt has agreed to help us bottle the stuff when its done (I hope he needs directions <evil laugh>heh heh heh </evil laugh>). This is really good because we needs a third person. One to fill the bottles, a second to hold the bottle and a third to cap it. By the way, the starting hydrometer reading (for those interested) was 1.04 on the money, so we should be able to accurately tell when the beer is done.

At some point I will need to return to the Stone City Brewing co to get the bottles needed. In the interest of keeping things sanitary, we'll have to get them as late as possible, maybe saturday/sunday. Day 7 will be a monday so I'm hoping we can bottle on Sunday or so to avoid a late week night bottling extravaganza.

By the way, for those of you interested in macro brewing, Iversys has an excellent tour of the Leinenkugel's brewery.

01:23:03

Fermenting: Day 2-3

Well after all the initial bubbling, nothing appears to be coming out of the airlock. This makes sense because in the presence of oxygen, the yeast produces carbon dioxide gas (which comes out of the airlock). Once all the oxygen is eaten up the yeast makes ethanol (alcohol).

I'm a little worried though because everyone that I've talked to says that beer brewing should make a lot of 'interesting' scents while fermenting. So far things have been rather scent free, so I'm not really sure if there's a problem at this juncture. I'll have to wait until monday evening to see if the fermenting is done.

01:25:03

Fermenting: Day 5-6

I was hoping to bottle today and I had Matt on deck to come down to help but the hydrometer said no. We're looking for a reading of about 1.01 to 1.012 and the we were at 1.02 when I took the reading. I know it doesn't sound like a big difference, but considering we started at 1.04 we're over the 75% done mark. I'll give it a shot on tuesday for bottling. We have to wait because if fermentation is not complete when you bottle it, then you end up with exploding bottles, which are useful during wartime but not really in my apartment. I got 2 cases of bottles from the Stone City brewery so we're all ready to do this stuff when the time comes.

The beer did smell good when I opened it today and it smelled like booze, which is a good thing. I'm pretty excited about actually giving this stuff a try 3-4 weeks down the road. At this rate we're looking like the end of February is when this whole thing will be ready for consumption.

I also picked up some bleach for use in sterilizing the bottles. A friendly beer drinker down at the tap in the Stone City brewery told me to add a few capfuls of bleach, and run the bottles through a hot dishwasher. He said he's done it that way for years and its always worked out great.

I designed a label for the OcuBrew bottles last night. I've put a two 'concept' designs up for vote in the OcuForum.

01:28:03

Bottling

Well we're pretty sure that the fermentation is all finished. We didn't take a hydrometer reading however no air bubbles came out of the airlock after sunday which is a good sign. I wanted to make sure we had a large enough crew available for bottling today and I talked to Matt this morning:

Me: "So You're coming up to bottle beer right?"
Matt: "Well I'm a lamer and forgot and can't come tonight"
Me: "That's ok I've got the other half of MS2K to help out"
Matt: "I feel so lame"

So with the aid (and excellent photography) of the other half (that being Scott) we settled into bottling OcuBrew Brown Ale.

Here's what we had when we pulled the lid off the fermenter	The yeast setiment at the bottom of the fermenter
The Ocu-Master fills a bottle of OcuBrew	Ass Masterson carefully monitors the filling of a bottle
Scott caps a bottle	Scott happily fills a bottle
All done!	Ocu-Mater and Ass Masterson inspect a few fine bottles of OcuBrew
Quick and nible hands fill the case of bottles	The Ocu-Master fufills a threat and 'pops a cap' in Ass Masterson's ass

I tasted a bit of the leftover brew and found that it lacked any astringent flavors which means that it may actually turn out pretty good! We filtered the brew a bit with a strainer to get the larger bits of yeast et al out and we hope that it doesn't affect the carbonation of the beer (we do hope it removes any unnecessary sentiment). I'm pretty excited because I think this may turn out to be a good batch. We'll find out when I pop open a bottle in about 3 weeks to taste the first OcuBrew! I'll be sure to post a few updates before then but basically we need to keep the beer out of the light as much as possible to avoid any skunky flavors.

Ass and I already discussed the possibility of a second batch which may be an Oatmeal Stout. This is a beer that should be fairly easy to make and very tasty as well. In the mean time stay tuned for the inaugural taste test!