cdh

Well said, Rich! The meal was fabulous all the way through. I'm envious that you got to taste every dish, but I was quite contented with what I picked. The lobster bits and truffle oiled mac and cheese was stellar... and the soft shell crabs were perfect for the season. It was a pleasure spending time with everybody and putting faces to some of the eG handles I've been reading for years.

Should be on the way Real Soon Now. And, as a tip of my hat to the changed seasons, I'm thinking of replacing the last recipe with something that is more summery than a big dark abbey ale. I'm thinking something in the wheat family, which are much better summer beers. Maybe a Saison, maybe a Wit. I'm leaning towards the Saison, since its yeasts like to ferment in temperatures as high as the 90s.

It isn't possible. Pearl barley is just the starchy energy stores.... the thing that germinates isn't even there anymore. It would be like trying to plant white rice.

Hmmm... where in the 'burbs could Joel Assouline move his foie gras distribution operation to? Luckily city council only speaks for the city proper. Maybe he should partner with Moore Bros over across the river. That way we could pick up fine wine and foie all under one roof... and they certainly have room for a refrigeration unit over there.

Those coffees are worth it if they can find some suckers to pay that price. Maybe somebody who hates coffee but has to impress a coffee lover with their taste, or somebody who just feels like showing off... I'd not pay it even if it were the best coffee anybody on earth ever produced... but then again, I can find coffee that makes me happy for a hell of a lot less money than that.

Well, Pbgh is reasonably close to Maryland, Ohio and West Virginia... are there no sources of raw milk reasonably close to the borders? Us easterners had all sorts of reasons to cross state lines for fine liquid consumables until recently... maybe your hunt for raw materials will have to follow the same route.

Glad to hear more reports of success! The bread trick is not something I've ever played with, though may have to now... Let us know how it turned out. As to the amberness of your beers, they will lighten some when the yeast that are in there carbonating them drop to the bottom of the bottles. The color does appear to have uniformly darkened amongst all of you, however, which makes me wonder why. Must be caramelization during the boil, but since it was a full boil it shouldn't have darkened much... hmmm.... I guess now would be the time to reveal a trick for extract brewers to keep their beers as light as possible. That trick is called late extract addition. Add 3/4 of your extract in the last 10 minutes of your boil. That way very little of it will have the chance to caramelize and darken during the boil. Doing this will require recalculating your hops usage, however, which is another trick I should explain. I generally use an online calculator to do this calculation, like the one at http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator I'll probably need to take some screenshots to properly explain the technique, so if you'd like to play with the recipe calculator, go ahead. I'll explain the details of what you need to deal with the late extract addition in a while. Congratulations to everybody on the successes so far!

That kind of enameled pot should be just fine. The thing I like about the Brazillian pots is the thick layered base, which does provide a little extra protection against hot spots that can caramelize your wort while it is boiling... but that is not really a huge concern, particularly if you're aiming for more amber-colored brews.

Interesting connotations you note. Very different in my experience on the other side of the Atlantic, however. "Supper" is uncommon in modern metropolitan American usage. The only places you see it today are in "supper clubs" that try to play on their anachronism. To my farming relatives, all of whom were born between 1899 and 1915, "supper" was a light evening meal consumed after a heavy midday meal that was called "dinner"... Supper was what you had after a hard day's work on the farm. To them, I think, "lunch" was the posh meal. I wonder if that set of terminology was specific to the central New Jersey area, or more widespread amongst agricultural Americans of that era...

Yes, indeed. That recipe is for 2 gallons. Scale everything proportionally and you'll be fine. 1 lb extract and 2.5 oz each grain per gallon, etc. I'll show you how to use online tools to calculate your hop needs once you figure out how big your boil will be. Even if you're going to do a concentrated boil, you're going to need a much bigger pot than you've got if you want to make more than 2 gallons at a time. Even with a 20 quart pot, you'll not really be able to do a full boil of a 5 gallon batch because it needs the headspace for the foam to expand into... The Walmart Tramontina pots are a good deal, so check into them if you've not gone shopping yet. You'll need a bigger fermentor too, so your homebrew shop should sell you a food grade 5 gallon bucket for something in the neighborhood of $10.

Congrats on the successful bottling! Looking good. The beer should lighten and clear some as the yeast munch their way through your priming sugar and then drop out of suspension. Did you do a concentrated boil? That could have darkened your beer a bit, but it shouldn't end up quite that amber. Feel free to use the margarita bucket. It would make for a fine bottling device after a good soak in a sanitizing solution. That's the kind of inventive spirit brewers are known for. Good thinking!

That's exactly what I do. Works just fine.

Are we certain that Fuji is closing? If so, then when?? If the township did exercise eminent domain, there should be some mention of it happening in the public record. Anybody have a pointer to it?

It's not wort anymore... the yeast have worked their magic and it is beer now. Glad that it smells good to you... I was hoping for a crowd pleaser recipe.

That list appears to be more an enumeration of beers with a big marketing budget than anything else. That is a list of famous beer brands, which from a Forbes POV might be quite cool... but there are plenty of better beers in the world.

You've got many more toys than I've got... The wort chiller is neat, but I continue to be happy with the results of dropping my kettle into a pond after it's done boiling. And my collection of swing-top bottles has kept me from getting into the whole kegging thing. I've been quite pleased by the new generation of dry yeasts, though I prefer more character than the US-56 produces... I've been happy with S-33, T-58, Windsor and Nottingham, though the Nottingham was a little non-descript for my ester-loving tastes.

Elie- 1- Yup, rouse the sediment on the bottom. Foam on the top doesn't matter, don't worry about it too much. 2- The foam is not the only thing protecting the beer, so don't worry that it is dissipating. CO2 is denser than air, and hence falls. Observe the gasses coming off of dry ice. That principle means that all of the CO2 that got produced by your yeast and came out of solution is now sitting on top of your beer. It will take some time before it diffuses out through the room and comes to an equilibrium distribution. Your beer should be safe for another few days.

Your situation sounds just fine. Fermentation begins with a big burst of activity as the yeast multiply and go on a feeding frenzy. That goes through most of the available sugars in your wort. After that finishes, the yeast keep on playing the role of little chemical reactors, and clean up after themselves by finishing any uncompleted reactions. The first part puts on a good show, while the latter does not. But both aspects of the fermentation are important to getting a good tasting beer. So a few days to a week of showy foam, followed by a week of seemingly little going on is exactly what you should be seeing. You're on track. As I'd mentioned above, rousing the yeast would be a good thing to do midway into the ferment, as lots of them have settled to the bottom. So give your fermentor a tilt and a swirl to bring some yeast back up into the beer so that that can play their role more effectively.

The NYTimes tasting panel meets the Lambic style and comes away impressed. Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/03/dining/03beer.html Audio bits: http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/dinin...RE/blocker.html Asimov's blog topic: http://thepour.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=27#more-27 Great introduction to a style of beer that doesn't get nearly the attention it deserves.

Another thought... Now would be the time for everybody to give their fermentor a bit of a jostle. Rock it back and forth a couple of times or gently swirl it. This will rouse the yeast that have settled and give them another bite at any remaining sugars in there. They should settle back down by this weekend.

You should aim to bottle it this weekend sometime. Provided it is someplace out of a draft, it should still be protected from oxygen by the blanket of CO2 it made while fermenting... but since this is an open ferment, you want to get it bottled shortly after it finishes producing CO2, as it will eventually dissipate and let oxygen near your beer.

Just wanted to check in and see how things are going... It seems that everybody is about a week and a half into their ferments now, right? If so, I'll aim to get the next lesson posted by this weekend so that you can get your beer bottled. We just need to let your beer finish fermenting before we bottle it, so I don't want to provide temptation to take a shortcut by giving you bottling instructions before it's time. So, everybody out there who is brewing along and hasn't commented, let me know how far into the ferment you've gotten.

We're not worried about contamination because the dish towel should be impenetrable to all of the little airborne beasties out there. They are a lot bigger than air molecules. You might be more reasonably concerned about oxidation, however. The reason for the airlock is to keep oxygen away from the beer as much as to keep beasties out. Oxygen is not beer's best friend, and can shorten the life of a beer. However, while the yeast are doing their job in there, they are making a blanket of CO2 that rises from the beer and keeps the oxygen away.

I'm back from my jaunt to TX, and it's good to see reports of progress. Elie, your picture looks just right. The layer of foam on top is just what you should be seeing. That means that your yeast are getting enthusiastic in there and doing their job. Your beer will appear much lighter when the yeast get done and drop out of suspension. Much of the opacity of your beer is the trillions of yeast cells still hopping from sugar molecule to sugar molecule. Rombot, sounds like you're on the right path too. As to proportions, that really depends on the style of beer you're trying to brew. To avoid the metric conversion, it is the specific gravity of the wort that is important... This is a 1.068 beer, which is going to be somewhat richer and stronger than most mass market commercial beers. There is a wide variety of styles out there, and some of them are meant to be stronger than this, and many are meant to be weaker. See here for examples.

Indeed... those resources say that yeast produces the phenolic compounds... and you need the chlorine in the water to make them react and form Anbesol flavored beer. All of this is going over the heads of the intended audience here, though. This course is for folks who have never brewed before, who don't know if they want to drop hundreds of dollars on the hobby, but are still interested in seeing what they can make. While having a stainless conical brew sculpture would be incredibly cool, I don't have the thousands of dollars to drop on that kind of toy... The aim of this course is to prove to the world that you can make fine beer without one. I'm editing to add a quick reference to an interesting article on yeast from the same source as Scoop's reference... For those who want to learn more about yeasty considerations, have a look at http://byo.com/feature/1098.html.