This beer is your beer. This beer is my beer.

From California to Fort Carolina. ♫

You can get a fairly good idea of the beer color when seeing it in the clear bottle vs. the standard brown. The first iteration of the label was the result of a fantastic Saori/Bobby combo, but we still don't have a finished logo. When thinking of a logo/label what is Nijikai?

The happy maker
Friends
Tasty beer
Late nights
Card Games
We should buy a bar
Bam!

Feel free to add anything that makes you think Nijikai!

The Happy Maker

The time finally came to sample our first brew ever, the Nut Brown Ale. Most of the brew crew came over to on Saturday to partake of our creation and the general consensus was that it was awesome! Mick was less enthusiastic but agreed that it was a very decent beer. I may be a bit biased in my opinion but I think everything tastes better when you have a hand in making it!

My personal taste in beer goes towards the darker ales like Newcastle. Our Nut Brown is a classic brown ale without the (arguably) harsher taste of Newcastle. It was a smooth drinking ale that left me wanting more. Unfortunately for me, though, each investor was only allotted around 22 ounces each. So I will have to wait until we brew this recipe again.

Props go to all who helped brew the beer, Saori for the primary label design, and Bobby for refining the logo and printing all the labels. And thanks to everyone that showed up to help us enjoy this fine moment in our home-brewing history.

You might ask why am I always in the pictures? Because I'm writing the posts, dammit! If the other drinker-investors want to be in the pictures, they should write posts of their own. (hint hint)

Orangutan #1

Before buying our brewing kit, we went up to San Francisco to watch our friend Peter start a new brew. This gave us a fantastic opportunity to learn the process and ask questions. But even more important, it gave us the opportunity to sample some of his previous brews! The most amazing of these was simply known as Orangutan.

The story goes that Peter went into his local brew shop, Brewcraft, one day and asked ol' Griz to give him a new recipe to try. So Griz made up a recipe on the spot and named it "Orangutan". (Actually, it's written "orangutang" on the recipe sheet but I just assumed that was a misspelling.)

Well, what can I say about Orangutan? It. Is. ...wait for it... Legendary! This brew is simply incredible. It is a malty brown ale with hints of orange. It is classified as a "Christmas Ale" which is just a category of spiced dark ales that are often brewed in preparation for ...you guessed it, Christmas!

Compared to the other brown ale that we brewed, the Orangutan has a large amount of flavoring grains. In fact, we needed two steeping bags for the grains comprised of Munich malt, special roast malt, and carafa. To that we add 6 pounds of liquid malt extract and a half pound of lactose. During the brew, we add 2 ounces of Liberty hops.

The thing that makes this brew special is the orange. Once the wort has been moved to the fermenter you marinate an entire orange peel and heaping tablespoon of corrianer seed in 2 cups of vodka. After the two week fermentation period this "potion" is added to the brew before bottling and imparts a wonderful orange flavor to the final beer.

The only hard part of this brew is waiting to drink it because the longer the Orangutan sits in the bottle, the better it gets! Peter recommends that we wait a full 2 months before drinking. That is real torture!

P.S. For the geeks, our initial gravity measurement was 1.055 even though we were expecting a value of 1.062. Alas, we forgot to measure the pitching temperature.

Brewcraft of San Francisco
1555 Clement St
San Francisco, CA 94118
(415) 751-9338

Bottling the Baby

After two weeks in the glass carboy fermenter it was time to bottle our first baby, the Nut Brown Ale. A truly momentous day!

The first thing we did was siphon the beer from the glass carboy into the bottling bucket. This helps separate the liquid goodness from the sediment and other gunk; and the spigot attached to the bottom of the bucket simplifies the actual bottling process.

Once the beer was transferred to the bottling bucket, we added a mixture of corn sugar dissolved in boiled water. This is mixed in slowly to avoid air from getting into the brew which could contaminate it. The sugar provides additional fuel for the yeast to carbonate the beer. In just two more weeks we will be able to enjoy our creation!

The actual bottling of the beer was remarkably simple: fill each bottle, place cap on top, and push down on the capper to seal the cap on the bottle. It's important to remember to leave a little room at the top of each bottle to allow for the additional gas produced by carbonation. If you don't, then the bottle could explode from the pressure. I don't know how violent this "explosion" is but that's no reason to waste beer to find out!

Before carbonation

The first brew has been doing its thing in the carboy for almost two weeks now. Impatience got the better of us and Bobby carefully took a little of the brew to taste test and measure gravity.

The result? We have some tasty beer! Flat beer, but beer! Bottling will happen this weekend and then after two weeks in the bottles, pure awesome (all that sterilization pays off!)

Day 3 - The Nut Grows!

Our first brew has shown signs of life. What started off as a little bubble has grown into a massive mushroom cloud of yeasty goodness.

In all honesty during Day 2 I almost mistook the first frothy layer as mold. That scared the bejeebus out of me. Mold is the enemy. The action of fermentation actually is a very good anti-bacterial and anti-mold agent. But if the yeast doesn't take, or if there are sanitation issues, no fermentation = possibilities of many bad things happening to the wort (malted barley concoction). But one look at this massive moving pillows of odd and I knew we were in business.

I also relocated the fermenting to my room. The previous location corner near the kitchen, was just too cold. The yeast wants to do its magic around 65-70 degrees. Kitchen area was holding out at 60 degrees :( In my room I can manage the temps much easier.

You can see here the wonders of ALE yeast. The yeast works top-down, as opposed to LAGER yeast that works from bottom up and is a bit more finicky. It mainly likes a much colder and very constant temperature.

To think this disgustingness will soon be so incredibly delicious.

I see lots of brown clumps in the bubble top. I am guessing this is due to not enough mixing of the yeast and the wort. When we threw this yeast, we merely shook the carboy container for a few minutes to get air into it. On our new brew we will make sure it gets better mixed and much more oxygen will be added creating a better beer.

Nut Brown Ale #1

Our first brew was the Nut Brown Ale recipe we bought as part of our home brew kit from MoreBeer! in Los Altos. The description of this beer from their website states:

Our Nut Brown Ale has a richer, maltier, less bitter flavor than the American Brown Ale. Victory malt provides a nutty, biscuity flavor. A very full, robust beer.

The Nut Brown Ale recipe uses 8 pounds of Ultralight malt extract; 24 ounces of steeping grains including Crystal, Caravienne, Victory, and Chocolate; and 3 ounces of Glacier and Willamette hops.

The plan was to start the process between noon and one o'clock. Many people showed up from that time or throughout the afternoon. We spent the afternoon brewing the beer and designing logos for our brewery and beer labels. But the bottling process is two weeks away and drinking four weeks away!

Being our first time brewing, the entire process took longer than initially expected. The first problem we ran into was providing enough heat on the stove to raise the water temperature to the required 170 degrees when steeping the flavoring grains. A single burner on the gas stove was insufficient for the large 8 gallon kettle; but once we straddled the kettle across two burners, everything was super green and the rest of the brew process went well.

During the steeping process, the water temperature didn't reach 170 degrees during the allotted time due to our single burner issue. So we steeped longer than specified in the recipe. At this point in our experience, we have no idea how this will affect the final taste of the beer. But the rest went without a hitch and we ended the day by transferring the wort to the carboy for fermentation. (I will post pictures of the fermenting brew later.)

For the more technical geeks out there, the Nut Brown Ale recipe had an estimated original gravity (OG) of 1.062 and our first OG measurement before fermentation was 1.053. And the average temperature of our fermentation location is roughly 65 degrees.

Waiting to enjoy the fruits of your labor is the hardest part when you first start brewing your own beer. But once you start the process and continue to brew on a regular basis, you'll have a steady stream of beers ready to drink.