Beer and brewing

Here's another thing I haven't done for a few months now. No, I drink plenty of beer, I'm talking about brewing beer.

I started homebrewing the first time back in 1994 or so. It was a way to have a hobby at home with a new baby here. Cycling took way too much time away. I did 4 or 5 batches and they came out pretty good as I recall and they never lasted. You get about 2 cases per 5 gallon batch and while that sounds like a lot, well it just isn't. I could brew late in the evening, once my son was asleep. Bottling was done over a two evening stretch, one to sanitize the bottles by soaking in a bathtub full of bleach, the next to actually bottle. Each session, no matter which aspect of the process I was doing, somehow always ended up taking 2 hours.

This time around, I started up doing it as a science project for my daughter. Thinking I had all the equipment already, I'd just get an ingredients kit. But of course the years in the basement didn't do the stuff any good, and then I couldn't find a number of items so I had to go buy another brew kit. I drove out to Islip L.I. and bought everything I needed at once. We brewed the beer together, took measurements together, and she helped with the bottling. The science part was measuring the specific gravity and timing the bubbles, to show fermentation taking place. The beer was an English Pale Ale, and it was really good. In fact it was so good I started making more batches.

So far I've done the Pale Ale, an Extra Special Bitter, a German lager, an IPA, a Hefeweizen, and a nut brown ale. The nut brown was a bust but the others were pretty good. I'm running out of most of them at this point.

So my next brew is going to be ??? I may try another lager since it is getting cold again outside, which means I have the natural refrigeration needed to do one. This time I want to keep it very cold, the last one has a bit of a banana ester flavor to it because it was a little too warm. I'll have to go online and order a kit. It'll be a post-holiday thing to brew again.