Wort up, man

Some years back, I used to brew beer with a buddy of mine. We made some pretty good stuff, as well as some truly god-awful crap. Well, my brewing buddy moved away and I stopped doing it. Not because I lost interest or because it's a two-man job, but because a five gallon batch of beer was more than I wanted to store for myself. Not only that, but I wanted to try my hand at brewing lagers, which requires cold fermentation and conditioning. Ales are fermented and conditioned at room temperature.

Well, this past Christmas, my wife got me a Mr. Beer home brewing kit. This kit is a sort of home brewing kit for dummies in that the recipe kits are all pre-hopped malt extract recipes which sort of negates the need for any brain activity during the brewing process. But what I really liked about the kit was the 2-gallon fermenting barrel. Not only could I now brew a reasonably-sized batch of beer, but the barrel would fit perfectly on the bottom of my wine fridge, which just happens to stay at a constant, lager yeast-friendly 50F. Yes!!

The kit came with a "West Coast Pale Ale" recipe kit, which I brewed up and bottled shortly after Christmas, and was ready to drink when I got home from my business trip to Asia at the end of January. The result wasn't bad, although a bit less hoppy than I would have expected. Two of the bottles (so far) have failed to carbonate, probably because I was less than precise when measuring the priming sugar at bottling time. Of those bottles that carbonated properly, the head is a bit weak and doesn't retain very well. But the color is very nice and the flavor is surprisingly good.

With that batch out of the way, I basically tossed all the other stuff that came with the kit and cleaned out the Mr. Beer barrel in preparation for my next batch.

This blog will be where I record my recipes, brewing procedures and results for each batch of beer I brew. So here, blog isn't short for "weblog". It's short for "Brewer's LOG".