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!

Orangutan #2

Because one Orangutan just isn't enough, we've brewed another one! Besides, who would be willing to wait another two and half months to drink it again?! :-)

We did make one small mistake in brewing this one, though. The recipe calls for lactose to be added after the steeping but, oops!, we forgot. So we actually added the lactose at the end of the brewing before transferring to the fermenter.

What will this change do to the final brew? We have no idea. But everything is a learning experience.

For the technical geeks, the OG was 1.055 and the yeast was pitched at 75 degrees.

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

Triple the Yeast NOT = Belgian Trippel

Time til fermentation onset is said to be anywhere from a couple hours to 14 or so.

With our old yeast problem, you can bet I was paying pretty good attention to our fermentor, just hoping to see some movement. 14 hours came and gone...nothing :( Even a full 24 hours passed....oh noes...nothing.

I had fully written this beer, our only 2nd brew, off as a failure...until...

About 30-45 hours post pitching of the yeast, IT MOVED. "It's alive...!

I must say, it was a huge relief, but I still had so much doubt to it every becoming a good beer. Would the wort be ruined or moldy or [insert problem here]?

I brought my expired yeast vial to MORE BEER (our local brewery store) and spoke with the brewoligists there. First I notified them that all the rest of their Trappist yeast had expired too. But oddly enough, they werent that concerned. The resident brewmaster let me know, that our Belgium baby has started and therfore should be ok. He gave me the rest of the expired yeast as a consoloation prize and told me to toss them in there to add more yeast cells.

That's right ladies and gentlemen. THREE yeast a yeasting!! (Two turtle doves and a belgium fermenting, hells yaaaah)

Added the extras and it seemed to increase the speed at which the yeast was fermenting the sweet sugary wort. This is all good news.

But will the belgium baby be ok in the end? All I know is that, when I can, I will start doing Yeast starters before I pitch any yeast. (more on Yeast Starters later). I will also learn to open my eyes

and analyze my goods before purchase. That alone would have saved me all this stress and worry.

Lessons Learned.=, Knowing =1/2 battle, etc etc etc

Yeast by Yeastwest

Believe it or not, I like some Fungi. For example: Toad...you know, Toad, from Mario Brothers. He seems like a pretty stand up fellow with just right mix of respect for others and a bit of moxy to balance him out. He would be one of the few Fungus/Fungi that I'd seriously consider you know..."Good People."

But I got to say, most other Fungi (e.g. mushrooms, in all their scary disgusting varieties) just don't do it for me.

There is one very big glearing exception. I have a big soft spot in my heart for YEAST. Yeast really is the giver of just so much great. All it asks for is a little food to munch on and in return it gives us some of the most delicious things on the planet. Breads and other baked goods, while may be less in fashion lately (damn you Atkins for telling us carbs are bad), are nonetheless, undeniably delicious.

ALSO without yeast, we just wouldn't have beer, whiskey, gin, wine, and all the other alcohols to pleasure our mouths and entertain our souls.

But with all my respect for these bazillions of alcohol creating magicians, they sure have been kicking my butt lately.

Let me tell you the painful Belgium Ale story...

I pick up all of our ingredients for our very first Belgium style ale. The grand vision is to craft a Chimay White style, belgium white with some great hints of Orange. My choice of yeast to use, is what is said to be the same used by the Chimay monks in their monastry. They even label the yeast "Trappist" yeast.

All going according to plan, we set out thursday morning to get our brew on....all preperations have been made. I pull the yeast out of the fridge and what do I see....THEY GAVE ME THE WRONG YEAST! ZOMG, WTFBBQ, or any other of your other fav trite internetisms. Shat~ To make things worse, they are closed of all days...THAT DAY (thur) for an annual inventory.

We thought long and hard about using the yeast they gave us. It was the type used to create a Belgium Wit Ale (Wit meaning "Wheat"). This is the type of used if we watned to do a Belgium style Hefeweizen. But this beer has no wheat. What would it taste like using this strain of yeast? Good, not so good, great, terrible? Lots of thought went into our options and the best path of action.

In the end we decided: Let's do it the way we originally wanted to. That means, getting the right yeast.

Looks we will have to reschedule brewing to Sat. Oh well, patience is the key to good beer. I get it, I geeet it. I head over to the brewery store on Friday (they are finally open) and make the neccesary exchange. All is well in Nijikai town....right?

Uh-oh PROBLEM TWO: Saturday rolls around and I notice ANOTHER thing wrong

with our yeast. It is.....EXPIRED. That's right. I really should start paying very detailed attention to everything I buy.

It is only over by a couple weeks. But still!! I checked with White Labs yeast compay's website and they say it might be still viable, but its risky. I check there is alive yeast in the bottle by shaking it, there is some...but jeebus only knows how many viable cells are still around.

I have since learned the right thing to do would have been to make a yeast starter (more on this later as it will be something I will be adding to our brewing) to grow lots more yeast cells and ensure it would be ok.

But what did I do?? I threw it in the cooled wort and prayed for the best. Will it be enough to make the beer? Will there be repercussions or other issues from this issue. Time will tell. Man it makes it hard to sleep at night.

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!