Making Mead at LBC part 2,3,4

Getting ready to lift the lid off of these very tight buckets. I got this equipment form City Brewshop. Brew. Drink. Repeat.


After the initial pitching of the yeast and the initial adding of the nutrients and energizer, you have to stir the mead 3 more times and add the nutrient/energizer combination each time. I started out with the mead in the kitchen, along with my Petite Saison d'Été. The weather had been lovely and cool. Then it got hot. The kitchen soon became a very bad place for the mead and beer. In the middle of the day, the temperature rose to around 80 degrees. I moved the three 5 gallon buckets to the cellar where it ranged from 63.5F to around 67F. The mead and beer is very happy down there. I don't think it ever gets above 70 degrees in the cellar. At least, I hope not. I don't have any more places to move it. I wish I had some dry ice, I could always throw that in. It's an old wine making trick.

The golden mead. I used a lot of honey on these two buckets.

First I stir to release the built up CO2. When I did this the first time, the mead, the Dry Mead, actually hissed at me. And then when I threw in the nutrient. It really bubbled up.

Not as energetic the second time. This is from the second day. Or it may have been the third day.

Weighing out the nutrient mix I made up.

Now adding the mixture.

And as you can see, it's starting to foam up.

Stirring. This is the Sack Mead, which isn't quite as energetic as the Dry.

This is the Dry Mead and as you can see, it's bubbling like crazy.

Wow. Will you look at that head. I had to do this once a day for 3 days. I had to sanitize all my equipment and it was a little bit of a pain doing it in the cellar but I managed. The Sack Mead is supposed to be like a great Ice Wine and the Dry Mead, which I'm going to bottle condition and make bubbly is probably like nothing I've ever had. We'll see in 3 months for the Dry and 4 months for the Sweet Sack Mead. I can't wait.

A quick update on the Mead...

The Sack (Sweet) Mead I was worried about is bubbling away. Not as aggressively as the Dry but it's bubbling. The Dry is going crazy. I also just finished another Petite Saison d'Été. But this time, I put in the Styrian Golding, the entire amount, for 10 mins, .75 oz of the Saaz for 10 minutes and the rest for 2. I also added 3 oranges quartered, everything, rind and all, and a little more than a pound of pineapple chopped up, fresh. no rind about 30 minutes before chilling. I did a very rapid chill. Less than 10 minutes it was about 47F. Fast. Now it's fermenting. In a bucket. Enjoy your beer and chocolate.

I just noticed I never blogged about the Petite Saison d'Été, A shame. It is a great beer.

Making Beer at LBC Step 3, the bottling

Actually, we bottled at the Greenville Arms. First, as with everything beer, I had to sanitize everything to within an inch of its life. That's what I'm doing above.

The next step is to transfer the beer from the fermenting bucket to the bottling bucket. This is called racking. The bottling bucket has the priming sugar in it. The priming sugar is what will give the yeast that have not been racked, the live yeast, the food to make the bubbles. This is very similar to how you make champagne. With champagne and wine, you're racking off the lees, with beer you're racking off the trub. Both of these means dead yeast cells and other solids at the bottom of the barrel. This helps clarify your beverage. Don't forget, we are making real ale, live ale, with active yeast in it and it will condition as you let it age. I had four yesterday from this batch, still young but a lovely beer.



Stooping over to fill bottles, which I started out doing when I was sanitizing, got old fast.



Ah, now that's the ticket. Yeah. That's the way to go.

Look at that happy face.

After putting the beer in each of the bottles I capped.





Isn't that lovely?



What did I do with the left over yeast? I made bread. The yeast looks like sludge but I can make bread with it. I had to put in a little bit of live baker's yeast to get it to rise fast enough. I wasn't patient.



From sludge to bread and what a lovely hoppy bread it was.



Go to the City Brewshop and learn how to make beer. I'm on my second batch and will do one more before the season begins. Next year I'm going to make mead.

Finger of Hoob Recipe

Finger of Hoob, is a chocolate stout. A very chocolate stout. I am not going to teach you how to brew beer. For that, you need to take a class at City Brewshop in Brooklyn. If you know how to brew beer, please feel free to give this a try and tell me how it came out. The original recipe said an alcohol of 5.5% but because of the introduction of one pound of 74% Dark Chocolate, it came out move like 6.5%.

John modified a Milk Stout, taking out the lactose because I cannot tolerate it and we added 1 pound of 74% Dark Chocolate, one Tablespoon of Dutched Cocoa Powered and one Tablespoon of Natural Cocoa Powder. You will also notice that this is an extract kit.



Size 5 gallons
Color 47 SRM
Bitterness 27 IBU
OG 1.058
FG 1.015
Alcohol 5.5%/Volume

Our OG came out to 1.062 and FG was, I think, I lost the reading, I know, bad, bad, bad, 1.010. We had more fermentable than the original recipe, namely the chocolate.

Ingredients

Grain

1 lb American chocolate Malt 330L (crushed)
1 lb Crystal malt 60L (crushed)
.5 lb Roasted barley 450L (crushed)


3.3 lb Light liguid malt extract
2 lb Light dry malt extract
1 lb Dark dry malt extract
1 lb 74% dark chocolate (last 10 minutes of the boil)
1 T Natural Cocoa Powder (last 20 minutes of the boil)
1 T Dutched Cocoa Powder (last 20 minutes of the boil)

Hops

1 oz Perele (Bittering) (8% AA, 60 mins.)
1 oz Kent Goldings (Flavoring) (4.5% AA, 30 min.)

Yeast

We used liquid yeast, not the dry.


1 Pkg (11g) Danstar Nottingham Ale Dry Yeast.
(We used Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale)

6 Gallons of water

5 lb bag of ice (I have an ice maker and just used what I needed to use

5 oz corn sugar. We actually used Priming Sugar 5 oz.

We strained it btw.

OK. If you know how to brew beer, this should be more than enough for you to brew it. Normally, this beer required a primary fermentation of two weeks and secondary fermentation of two weeks in a carboy but we just fermented it for 3 weeks in the beer bucket. If you have any questions, please feel free to get in contact with me via this blog. More to chocolate beer posts to come. Enjoy.