New Logo Coming, and Other News

So here it is, June. I just put a six-pack of my second Brown Ale attempts in the refrigerator. It is a clone of Newcastle Brown Ale. The day for taste testing is coming up, possibly tomorrow. I plan on getting a bottle of the original to compare it with, and expect to post the results shortly afterwards.

Over the weekend, I took a case of my recent Pale Ale clone of a favorite Northern California brew, Sierra Nevada, on a camping trip. I shared it with several friends, all of whom really liked it. I got lots of kudos and compliments, but there was a problem. It seems ironic, since the only other problem I ever had, besides not having enough, was the initial carbonation of my first Brown Ale. I had been really worried, but after some time, it got more foamy, ubtil it was fine by the time I drank the last bottle. This time, the Pale Ale was way too foamy. You could bathe with it, or do laundry, it was so foamy. It was delicious, but foamy.

When you brew beer, you create a solution of sugar, in the form of maltose, and water, along with some impurities from hops and grains. The resulting mixture called a wort, is a very sweet solution. It becomes a food for yeast, which eats the sugar, excretes alcohol, and exhales carbon dioxide, all at the same time. The process is called fermantation, and it takes about two or three weeks.

Fermentation ends when one of two things happens: The alcohol becomes too abundant, or the sugar is used up. The yeast dies off, leaving a thick sludge at the bottom of the container. The liquid is removed from the container for bottling, leaving the sludge behind. But how do you get carbonation from the liquid if all the sugar is gone? I'll tell you: You add bottling sugar, which revivessome surviving yeast which then produces a bit more carbon dioxide, which is trapped in the solution, making it foamy and bubbly.

I suspect it is a function of how long it stays in the bottle before being chilled that determines the carbonation level. I'll need more experience with this. This is an example of how I'm learning about beer brewing, through actual experience. I have so far brewed seven batches, bottled six, and drank four completely. Tonight, I moved the Summer Ale to the secondary, and I'm contemplating the next recipe. There are six bottles of Pale, and now 48 bottles of Brown, and a secondary full of Summer Ale to be bottled.

I designed a neat logo for my That Which is Brew masthead. It is in production right now, and should be live this weekend. I have a basic logo, but I'm not done yet with the presentation of the title of this blog. I am visualizing a couple of bottles and a pub glass with the logo on them in the masthead. Anyway, check back Sunday to see if it made it on here.

That's all for now. I'll be updating for the taste test tomorrow.