Carbon Footprint

Yesterday I quickly, well, not quickly at all, boiled up two lots of gallon trials. The first was the Smithish recipe with roasted barley (1/5 oz for 1 gallon) the second was the same but with toasted malted barley (1 oz for 1 gallon) instead of roasted. My aim is to improve my brew-day skills with small batches, and also to see if the recipes are any good. A side-by-side test of two identical, bar one ingredient, recipes should be interesting*.

On Sunday night I ‘knocked up’ a quick batch of pale ale (though it’ll be more like an IPA, I went a bit mad with the malt and hops), and I’ve racked it off into a gallon demijohn with a Quality Street wrapper placed over the top while the froth settles down! Mmm… hygienic. Nevertheless, last night it settled down enough to put on one of those plastic bubbler fermentation locks. I couldn’t believe just how much CO₂ one gallon of fermenting wort produces! The airlock is pretty much a constant stream of massive bubbles. I had to drive to the garden centre to buy two trees this morning to ease my conscience.

And then, while I was at it, I racked off a gallon of my 5gallon batch of Coopers Pilsner into a demijohn to ‘lager’ in the fridge. I needn’t have bothered. With the hot weather we’re having the fridge isn’t much colder than the front room (about 6^oC – that’s the fridge, not the front room). When the main bulk of the Pilsner is ready I’ll bottle it as usual, and set some aside in order to do more side-by-sides, but I’m expecting it to be a big waste of time, and a big waste of the bottom of the fridge, where we retire bits of butternut squash and courgette we didn’t use. I’ll probably try another lager this winter, when the temperatures are more consistently conducive to lagering (0-4^oc). At the moment it’s just too warm and I’ve misplaced my cave.

One of the things I need to work on is hopping rates. I’ve useless kitchen scales, so I’m guessing conservatively at the amounts of hops to boil. I think I need to be a bit more liberal as the Pale (bottled yesterday) has next to no bitterness whatsoever. I like bitter beers so instead of putting in little and working up, I’ll start putting in shed-loads and working down.

So, now the front room smells fantastically of fermenting booze; though the cat has started to get a little drowsy when she goes in there… I wonder how much CO2 8 gallons of fermenting wort will produce?

*For me, anyway.

This week, I 'ave mostly been eating...

Here's a short but happy update on 'the craic' this week.

• Homebrewed Smithish went down spectacularly well for my first extract brew. Sweet, malty, great looking head (about 4 inches every time... so not quite a pint) and it was appreciated by everyone, including non-Smithwicks drinkers. I'm thrilled at how well it turned out. Recipe and critique will follow soon.


• Also, fantastically, the home made cider recieved some positive feedback. The words 'ripped my insides out' were thrown around a little, in a lighthearted kind of way.


• Birds have pushed a home advantage and are now 2 - 0 up in the barley stakes, but I've sown a third lot, and I've put a big net over it. This isn't to catch the birds, but to keep them off. Though if I catch one in there, I'm not sure I can be held accountable for my actions. Disclaimer: No animals were harmed in the making of this beer, but some jackdaws did recieve a stream of verbal abuse and a shook fist.


• I got a some malty ingredients (wheat malt, whole pale malt and some Magnum hops) and Burton Water salts for my birthday, and I'm on the hunt for a 3-4 gallon tin to cook it in. My aim is to make an American IPA (with English hops... ooh, I am naughty).


• I turned 25, and recieved plenty of bottles of ale to sample (6 with the word OLD secreted in somewhere! Very clever, Richard! Cheers!). Having tried a few, I'm keen to try and make a Golden Ale (Badgers'), and the Hopping Hare was very interesting.


• And finally, I'm reading Ray Daniel's Designing Great Beers which I got from ma & pa. Surely I'll know everything now?

So, with that busy week over, and only about 10 pints left in the fountain, sorry, beer barrel, I'll settle down tonight with a beer, a book and a shotgun across my lap. Is that a jackdaw cackling or some community gardeners laughing at me from behind the cabbages?