A Lull Time

Right now, I am sitting on two batches of brew. The first, the amber ale, is in the secondary fermenter waiting to be bottled. The second, a brown ale, is waiting for the first batch to get out of the secondary fermenter. The third batch is going to start on Sunday afternoon. I'm thinking about a Heffeweizen. India pale ale is a little too hoppy for me.

Hoppy is a word I learned while drinking different varieties of beer. It is a flavor which comes from hops, which are a plant which has been added to beer since time immemorial. It is believed that hops were originally used as a preservative. They give beer a distinctive edge to its flavor, a sort of bitter bite, if you will.

Hops is a plant. There are many varieties of hops, many of which are grown by brewers themselves, and many that are grown in big agribusinesses. Nowadays, they are sold in pellets, resembling processed livestock feed. The pellets are made from hops which are shredded and dried, and extruded into noodle-like shapes which breakl very easily. They are green and have a distinctive aroma, and even the different varieties have their own variations of aroma. Some hops are grown to be aromatic, to add a smell to beer, while others are grown to be more bitter in taste, to modify the didtinctive taste of a particular brew.

India pale ale, also known as IPA, is a sort of hoppy beer. It usually has an edge to it, and is an acquired taste. Many other beers are more smooth, but some people really like the bitterness of an IPA. I am not too keen on hoppy beers, but I can enjoy an IPA in a sampler at a brewpub.

Anyway, my amber ale should hit the bottles on Saturday evening, and then I can clean the carboy. I have been saving beer bottles from the various commercial brews I have been trying since I started brewing my own beer. I have about a hundred empties, which will be enough to bottle both batches that I have going right now. I have to drink a few more beers, or get some friends to save me their empties. They cannot be twist-off!

True, I have yet to taste my first home brew. But it isn't like an original recipe. I buy a prepackaged kit and follow the instructions. Those instructions say that I will have to wait two weeks at the least before I will be able to pop the top of my first home brew. I want to brew at least five batches of my own before I even think about trying to brew my own craft beer. There is a risk involved, in that you can end up with 2 cases of a nasty and possibly noxious liquid. The recipe approach is good for learning.

Right now, the amber is almost completely inactive. The brown ale was bubbling vigorously for a couple of days, and had a two-inch layer of suds on top, but now the bubbling has slowed significantly. The suds have all gone down, too. It was a lot of fun watching the bubbles crawl through the airlock, and quite relaxing to listen to them at night right before going to sleep. The sound alone is almost enough to get me started on a new batch.

Next up, I'm going to get a spigot for my bottling bucket, and a big bag of caps.