Batch 6 - India Pale Ale

India pale ale recipe. I used this recipe from BYO magazine, with some modifications.

Actual ingredients used:
6 lb pale ale extract (changed)
3.3 lb amber extract (changed)
.5 lb english crystal malt (changed)
.5 lb victory malt (changed)
2 oz cascade hops
1 oz willamette hops
1 oz east kent hops
Windsor dry yeast (changed)

Because my local homebrew shop was out of the correct liquid yeast, I tried a dry yeast: Danstar Windsor.

Status: Brewed 11/14, bottled 11/29.

Results: Tested some 12/10. A bit of fruity flavors for an IPA. Fermentation was amazingly fast, and this had almost no bubbles after a few days in primary. My local homebrew shop advised me to keep this in the mid 70's for the first day, and I blame this for the fruity flavor. Even with this flavor it's a good beer and quite drinkable.

OG = 1.124

Batch 5 - Light Root Beer

Skinny Tree Root Beer

I decided to try a non-alcoholic brew. This turned out to be a very simple, cheap, and quick process with good results (so far). All you do is boil some water, sugar (or sugar substitute), and soda flavor, and add it to your bucket along with warm water. Prepare and add some ale yeast (just used cheap dry Doric yeast), stir, and bottle. Wait a week and you have a carbonated beverage. Batch cost: $4 for flavor, $.59 for yeast, $2 for sugar substitute.

Ingredients:
Rainbow Root Beer flavor
Doric dry yeast
6.5 cups Sugar Twin sweetner (left a bit of aftertaste, but is worth the reduced calories)
1.5 cups sugar
4 gallons water

Status: ~40 bottles carbonating(?)

Results: Too much sweetner gave this a bit more aftertaste than expected. As of 12/13 this still has no bubbles (bottled 11/27). My guess is that despite what the instructions said, I needed more sugar than 1.5 cups for the entire batch.

Update 8/20/05: Far too much sweetner - tastes barely drinkable. I was wrong about the sugar - I clearly added too much, as they now erupt when opened.

Batch 4 - Winterbrew

This beer will henceforth be known as "Stinky the Elf's Nutmeg Chocolate Ale". In our family, Stinky the Elf plays tricks on people around the holidays. This is an example of a beer that might have been good had I followed the directions correctly and not added 4 tablespoons of nutmeg instead of 4 teaspoons. 4 tablespoons is a lot of nutmeg, and I even had to go to the store to buy more. Yes, I kicked myself after I realized what I'd done. It's drinkable, especially if you really love nutmeg, but is not the most pleasant beer I've tasted.

If I were to make this again, first I'd use less nutmeg (duh), and second I'd use powdered chocolate instead of baker's chocolate. They are effectively the same, except baker's chocolate has coco butter which seperates, makes a mess, and adds nothing to the beer.

Here's the recipe.

Status: Bottled about 50 bottles 11/13/04, should be ready for drinking 11/27/04.