The IPA was not a failure, but nots a success either. I learned 4 lessons from it.
1. Do not make beer with water from the hose.
2. Make sure you add the co2 early enough to not have flat beer.
3. Measure everything. Do not guesstimate how much water your adding.
4. Keep consistent and correct temperatures.
Lessons learned… Sigh
So I was looking at my perfectly aerated wort sitting in its perfectly sanatized carboy in its perfectly dark closet and wondering why no bubbles. I used White Labs California Ale Yeast WLP001. I made a mistake. I have kept my house at 74 or below since begining my cider. This is because it was hot outside and the yeast I used in my cider required as much. I failed to take into account my new yeast and its requirements along with the fact that it is now cold outside. My house had a ambient temp of 67 this morning. The yeast instructions clearly state that until it is bubbling away like a fiend the ambient temp needs to be above 70 degrees to allow it a chance to get going. Sigh. So my house is now warming up to 71 and I hope to see some action when I get home from work today. Hopefully the 67 degree temp didnt get my brew off to a bad start :I
Today we brewed a Honey Ale, moved the IPA to secondary, and moved the Cider to a keg. I had the help of my father and Leslie.
First the secondary story…
The secondary was a breeze thanks to the pump siphon. Brilliant! The IPA tasted a little weak and less hoppy then a traditional IPA. Slightly more so then the MondayNightBrewery.com guys do it. I liked it. I helped myself to a full glass of it. My father was impressed it was drinkable, but likes his with more pronounced hop tastes and smells. The Gravity was 1.01. I am anticipating a short secondary phase and then off to a keg it goes.
The cider was not at all ready to drink after about 18 days of primary fermentation. Although the Gravity was also around 1.01 or less it had a taste that let you know there was more work to be done by the yeast. Had a slight taste of bittersweet apple and a little essence of sulfer. Hopefully now that it is off the trub and in a keg another three weeks of processing will make it more palatable. My first experience with a keg was easy enough. The regulator had me at a loss fo a minute as both gauges read at zero even with the tank open. I did eventully figure it out tho 
The Pale Ale came from a kit. The only modification I had was to add 1 cup of orange blossom honey in the last 15 minutes of the boil. I will add another cup when going to keg. This brew went along much faster and easier then the last. We truley appreciated the brewometer during this whole process. Not having to remove the lid and fish out a bobbing thermometer was a joy. Boil started at 7:26pm and ended at 8:26pm. While the cooling of the wort seemed to go faster the process of getting to boiling seemed to take longer. I am sure in part to the different ambient temperature outside. The final gravity reading was 1.046 at a 80 degree reading temp. I believe this translates to over 6% exptected acohol content. As a quick test on time mending all I have also bottled two 12oz bottles and stuck them in the medicine closet to drink at a much later time to see how much better this cider will taste aged. 3/4 a teaspoon starter sugar was added to allow for some fizz. I am a little worried about pressure on the caps tho as I think I had too much beer in the bottles. :I Guess we will find out soon enough if. So if you see a post about me grumbling while cleaning out a medicine closet you will know why.
Today we invested in 4 great additions to our gear.
1. A Draft Kit. It includes a double regulator, five gallon tank of CO2, tap, tubing, and two five gallon kegs.
2. A Brewometer. A Temp gauge that goes in the brew kettles upper threading.
3. Wine Thief. To allow for getting samples for gravity checks from the carboys.
4. Pump style racking gear.
At this point we have a version of about every bit of gear we could need for brewing just about anything.
It has not yet been a week and the IPA is already bubbling at a slow slow crawl. It looks fine. Still is bubbling, but no where near as much as the cider. Hopefully all is well. I can only assume that the cider had more sugars to burn through and therefore going for longer. Guess we will see.
My father, Leslie, and I successfully got our American IPA brewed. It is now happily sitting in a 5 gallon carboy next to our cider. We started the cleaning/sanitizing phase at about 5:30pm. It was not until about 6:00pm that we were officially making our brew.
10:30pm and it was in the closet. Just a mere 5 hours lol. Hopefully next time we can get it done in atleast two hours less time. Overall I think a success. I do want the built in thermometer for the brew kettle and a lid for my sanitizer bucket. Other then that I think I will be good to go for the next try. For those interested in #’s. The triple hydrometer at 80 degrees read 1.04 / 5%. Correcting that to standardized 59 degrees it comes to 1.0424 / 5.55%. Keep in mind I have no idea what I am doing. So those numbers are most likely off by a bit 😉 I think I added too much water to it at the end. The reason I think this is because the kit says the original gravity should have been approx 1.069 with a ending alcohol by volume of 7.4%. So just a tad to much water? Dunno…. perhaps this will be a Light American IPA?
Well at this point we now have 110% of what we need to brew. My living room looks like a beer supply store with supplies equipment strewn all over the place. Now to start working on a organize place to put all this stuff in the shed. Brew time is looking like it will be 3ish tommorow. We have a Pale Ale and a IPA to brew.
Withing first 24 hours we were at 1 big bubble a second. Ambient temp has stayed at about 74 in our house. Near 48 hours later and it looks to be 1 big bubble every two seconds. There is trub on the bottom and a lovely head of foam. Yesturday there was a hint of rotten egg in the closet where the carboy is stored. Today the house had a noticable smell Not that bad tho and you get used to it quickly.
I stand corrected. It took almost as much time to brew as to clean. This was due to me failing to take the yeast out of the refrigerator early enough and waiting for the sugar & honey mix to cool back down.
After much thought my first batch will be called “Plain Jane Hard Cider” The name says it all. Not entirely much to this recipe. I used 2 different types of apple juice to give a more well rounded taste. Next time I think I will most likely do 3/2 versus a 4/1. I used the honey and brown sugar to also add to the taste a little bit but also to give the yeast more to work with when it comes to the converting sugars to alcohol thing. Overall yield should be approx 48 bottles.
Recipe so far…
4 Gallon Kirkland Fresh Pressed Not from Concentrate Apple Juice
1 Gallon Musselman’s Not from Concentrate Apple Cider
Yeast should be at 70-75 degrees for 3-6 hours prior to adding to batch
Boil the following for 15 minutes first… cool then add.
1 Cup of Florida Crystals Organic Brown Sugar
1 Cup of Wild Flower Honey – David & Lisa Lula, GA 30554
(Purchased from Jaymar Farms north of Gainesville)
Put in primary 6.5 gallon Carboy
When temp is between 70 – 75 degrees add White Labs English Cider Yeast (WLP775)
Shaken… Not stired 😉
Leave in primary till fermentation subsides. (Approx 7 days)
Game plan is to move to 5.0 gallon and perhaps add some frozen juice concentrate or just plain juice. Leave in there for another 5-7 days then package. After either putting in bottles with some starter sugar or in a keg plan is to let it sit for atleast another week to up to a month.
I have now been cleaning and sanatizing stuff for what seems like forever! Working on the final touches on my recipe for what will be my first hard cider brew. I will post pics of my creation along with final recipe upon completion.
Leslie and Rick
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