6) What's brewing?

We all know I need a new hobby like I need, well, a hole in the head, but I seem to have acquired one anyway.

Back in November sometime, I bought a beginner's brewing kit from the friendly and helpful people at Art of Brewing.  Along with two kits for beer - a traditional Old Ale, and a Belgian Trappist style beer, which will hopefully be something like Leffe Brune.  For those that haven't had the pleasure, this is to bitter what port is to red wine. Strong, sweet, heavy.  Yum!

So I started with the old ale.  My plan, at the time, was to get the thing fermenting (5-7 days), bottle it, let it rest at room temperature for a week or two, then condition it in the garage for another fortnight and have it ready to drink for our first Christmas at home.

For a start, this caused raised eyebrows amongst those I know who already brew.  Apparently, anything that says "Ready to drink in four weeks" or the like is to be taken with a generous pinch of salt.  And probably a shot of tequila and a slice of lime, too.  The longer it's left to condition, the better, is the general opinion.  Well, OK.  We could always crack a bottle open at Christmas anyway, and leave the rest to get juuust right for later.

Secondly, what project ever goes to plan round here?  Testing of the brew after seven days showed it had hardly fermented at all.  Uh-oh.  Well, we aren't famous for leaving our heating on loads around here, and the kitchen (where fermentation was supposed to be taking place) seemed to have gotten a bit nippy, and the whole damn lot went to sleep.

Another order to AoB got me a submersible heating element with a thermostat in it and a couple of spare lids for the fermenting tub, because now I was going to have to cut a hole in the lid I already had, which could so easily go horribly wrong...  It didn't, thanks to J and the Dremel, and after much finicking around, we got the fermentation to start up again, albeit slowly.

We bottled the stuff 5 weeks to the day after I started it fermenting.  It tasted OK, as far as we could tell, and it's been in a box in my studio ever since.  It's supposed to be 'room temperature' there; probably the less said the better, though.  It goes to the garage this weekend, and in a fortnight or two we can taste it.  If I'm very, very restrained, I'll wait till my birthday.

What I failed to mention in all this, of course, is that I panicked and bought another two beer kits in the meantime.  If this brew failed, I wasn't going to risk my lovely Trappist style, premium kit until I'd gotten one to work!!  And, of course, it was actually cheaper to buy two spare kits instead of one; that pushed me over into the 'free postage' category, you see.

Knitters: is this sounding at all familiar?

I have had to promise J, in front of witnesses, that I will *not*, under any circumstances, be starting a brewing stash!

But I am tempted to diversify into wine.

Comments

[Geodyne]

Oh my, so envious - teething problems or no!

I've wanted to try brewing for years, as has C. I'm hoping that this is the year. Hm....I can feel a surprise birthday gift for C brewing...

[The Dragon]

*snerk* to the idea of brewing stash - I can see us having that very easily especially as Dr Dragon will want to make his with hops, malted barley, yadda yadda!

[dawn]

Ah, but unlike yarn you will probably not keep it for years! The equipment might take up a bit of room though!