It started with a tour of part of his 50 acres of land. Yeah, 50 acres. That was pretty cool, especially to see an orchard in the making. Then we ate some great food and got down to business… tasting.

I’m still very much a novice when it comes to tasting, but I think I’m definitely whipping my palate into some semblance of shape. We started with ‘spiked’ examples, and I was proud to nail the diacetyl example right off the bat. Of course, it tasted like the cider had a few tablespoons of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter and three or four Werther’s Originals in it, but catching it at all is reason for celebration in my book.

While I’m not at all well versed in styles of beer, at least in my mind I think I identify more with British styles than American. I assumed it would transfer over to cider as well, but the British examples were my least favorites. Elizabeth and I liked a sparkling cider from Quebec the best, and in general I thought the sparkling examples tasted better than the stills. I assume that’s more because of being sparkling than a trend in quality, but it’s good to know for the future.

I had never had perry (fermented pear juice) before, so it was a good learning experience. They didn’t taste as much like pears as I thought they would, though the host pointed out that most people equate ‘pears’ with ‘Bartlett.’ Some had definite pear aroma and flavor, and one had a great balance of not being dry without being sweet. It seems like it’s fairly hard to find perries, so while any chance to try multiple examples of a style in succession is a great learning experience, I may not have this sort of chance again for a while (if ever).

The downside, of course, is that I’m going to take a sip of my next cider (which I really need to transfer to secondary) and say, ‘Oh god, that’s mousy!’

One of the people wrote in about using spent grains to make dog biscuits. I imagine they’re a regular at Homebrew talk, because that’s where I got the recipe from and they used ‘LHBS’ for ‘local homebrew store.’ There really isn’t an easily linkable thread for it, and they don’t give it out or link to it on BBR, so here it is for posterity:

4 cups spent grains
4 cups flour
1 cup peanut butter
1 egg

Mix it all together, form into cookie shapes and bake at 300-350 for half an hour. I flipped halfway and then let them dry our more with the oven door cracked open.

(I got the recipe from fratermus on the forums, and I think he got it from somewhere else, so as much as my librarian citation chip is going off right now I’ll have to attribute it to [Anonymous]. No, not 4chan.)

Elizabeth seemed offended that I didn’t make them into bone shapes. It’s gotten rave reviews from Suzie, Belle and Isabelle so far, and my next batch will also find its way to Taylor and Boomer, so it seems to be pretty popular. You can eat them too, by the way, but they don’t have much flavor.

I’ve been wanting to go all grain/partial mash for a bit, and bought a 5 gallon cooler for the purpose. As I was reading up on what to do I briefly worried that I had gotten too small a cooler for going AG; while this is true, my brewpot is also too small for AG and so I’ll have to be content with doing partial mashes until I can get a suitable turkey fryer for outside AG batches. It’s still going to give me better beer and help me feel like I’m actually “brewing,” so it’s fine.

However, as my exuberance depletes my raspberry wheat supply I realized that I need to brew again; this desire is compounded by wanting to flex my PM muscles. Ideally, I’ll brew this Saturday but I’m not sure if I’ll be knowledgeable enough by then; I don’t want to totally screw things up. Then I realized if I don’t do it now, next weekend I’ll have to balance the urge to brew against that shiny new Halo 3 sitting in my 360.

Decisions, decisions…

It still has a bit of an “off” taste that I’m attributing to “extract twang,” meaning it won’t be a problem in future brews as I’ll be going partial mash using dry malt extract from now on. Additionally, there’s not much head retention, but you know what?

I brewed beer.

The porter, though… it had a little carbonation, and wasn’t as sweet, but it still needs a lot more time. If it’s not ready next Monday I’ll have to store it longer and try one periodically.

I’m thinking the wheat needs a new label. It doesn’t “fit” as well as the smoking monk does for the porter. We’ll see.

Also, there’s been a cider chugging away for a week and a half now. It’s got the potential for one hell of an abv.

God, I hope they’re green.

The wheat, which had no specialty grains steeped, started as what I can only (inaccurately) describe as “flavorless”: not medicinal, but not really like beer I’d say. It finished with a strong raspberry flavoring (rather than raspberry) flavor. I’m hoping/expecting — with good reason, I think — that the two will blend together, in which case I think it will be a fine beer. Not great, but I was never expecting it to be; just very good. On the plus side, it was well carbonated (gotta love wheat yeast) and had a great color.

The porter, on the other hand, was flat. It was also too sweet, which I’m assuming is the unfermented corn sugar’s doing. I’m hoping the yeast is just taking a little bit to start up again, and that it’s not caused by me forgetting to stir the bucket as I bottled. As long as it carbonates, and takes the sweetness down a few notches, it will be delicious. Again, not award winning, but this is my first damn brew so I’m cutting myself a lot of slack. It’ll age better than the wheat, so I have no problem storing it until it tastes better.

All in all, I’m cautiously optimistic. I don’t want bad beer, as I’ve promised it to quite a few people. But I don’t think it will be: it may be par, or slightly sub par, but even then its recipients (myself included) aren’t well-traveled connoisseurs and I’m sure it will turn out just fine.

From my first brew, an extract with specialty grains porter from Niagara Traditions:

Oddly enough, it looks as though the wort is boiling when the malt is in there, which means I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Oh, what a difference three weeks (and some Papazian reading) can do!

I then racked the porter to secondary and picked up an all-extract raspberry wheat kit. When I bottled, I was much happier with the porter, but we’ll see how things go after bottle conditioning.

In talking with some people from Homebrew Talk, I was told that a large cardboard box could help insulate the fermenters from heat and also serve as a light barrier. I realized that I still had a large cardboard box from last Halloween, and so Shouty the robot (also seen in certain YouTube videos — specifically part four and part six) was repurposed:

Two weeks after the wheat was brewed, and three after the porter, I suckered Elizabeth and an unsuspecting Shannon into helping me bottle:

I now have close to 10 gallons, in liter flip-tops and 12 ounce bottles, sitting in my basement. I’m going to taste a bottle a week for the first two weeks, and then start handing them out to friends and family after three weeks. Oh, and drinking some myself, of course!