Firecrotch Red Ale

I mentioned it in a previous review that I had brewed a red ale when bottling the special ale Jimbo and I made, but I never got to write a full review of it. I kept putting it off, but now it's ready, so I might as well combine the brewing and tasting posts into one.

I wanted to make a red ale that had some bite to it, so I took the "Mr. Beer" recipe and put my own twist to it. The original calls for just using the Bewitched Red Ale HME and Mellow Amber UME, but I wanted to boost the alcohol content from 4.6% to 6%, so I used the last packet of Booster I had left. Also, I added an ounce of Cascade hop pellets, which I boiled for ten minutes, which according to some calculations should put the IBUs around 50. This brew sat in the fermenter for 15 days and sat in the bottle for 2-3 weeks. Let's see how it turned out.

Appearance: A dark amber red that is pretty clear, extremely bubbly and alive, with a ton of head, I might have to start cutting down on the amount of sugar I put in during carbonation, even though I'm putting in the recommended amount.

Smell: Hops, hops, and more hops, this brew has a strong floral hop smell, along with hints of sweet malts in the background, and a tinge of caramel.

Taste: Wow, that's good stuff right there, great hop bitterness and flavor, not overpowering the usual red ale malt flavor, but enough bite to really satisfy most hopheads (except for maybe Jimmy, but I have to remind him its not a super duper ultra DIPA aged in Cascade hop barrels).

Mouthfeel: Light but not watery, a little tickle from the carbonation, relatively smooth, a tiny bit of alcohol aftertaste.

Drinkability: This is the brew I had wanted to make since I started a couple months ago, and it couldn't have come out any better. It is easy to drink, even at around 6% abv the alcoholic taste isn't strong, and the balance of hops make this an easy winner in the red ale category. There are a few tweaks I would make to it, maybe use a different secondary unhopped malt to add some more sweetness, add some finishing hops to create a more complex scent, and use less sugar during carbonation. Overall, I give it a 7.5/10.

Serving type: Bottle
Glass type: Sam Adams glass

Jimmy & Mike's Special Ale

Holy crap, alert the media! We are blogging again after going through a period of just Twittering when we drank at bars, took shots off of girls, and took dumps in our favorite shitters. I think it's only appropriate that the first post should be of the newly finished collaboration ale between myself and Jimmy. I have other posts lined up, but I wanted to do this one first.

Appearance: A very dark amber/brown color that is crisp and clear, however, the lacey head created by the pour looked at first like it would be creamy, TONS of head, so much so that after I took the picture it almost started to overflow, I have to keep drinking the head a few times to avoid spillage, this brew looks sooo much better than the crappy pale ale I made in the first batch.

Smell: A deep sweet caramel and nut malt fragrance greets the nose on the first sniff, as I go in for a second whiff searching for some hops, I am left empty handed and slightly disappointed.

Taste: Wow, that was better than I expected, with almost no hop scent and flavor I was wondering if the malts would be too dominant, but the sweetness is just perfect, the aftertaste is nothing noticeable and/or detracting from the beer, which is all we could have hoped for, and even on a positive note, there's that slight bitterness we were hoping for as it warms up!

Mouthfeel: Well carbonated, light and smooth, but surprisingly not watery, a pretty unique combination that is making it difficult in how to classify this brew.

Drinkability: The more I drink this beer, the more I enjoy it, which is a good sign in the drinkability department. Based on our calculations, this brew should have just about 7% alcohol, but you would never know from having one. Prior to bottling, it did have a little alcohol sting, but that has mellowed out nicely after two weeks in the bottle. With the combination of sweetness, light mouthfeel, and low alcohol taste, I think this could be a great session beer for craft brew drinkers. In fact, I kind of wished we had brewed more than 2 gallons, maybe we might have to make a second batch of this recipe with some slight modifications. I'm going to give it a 7/10, which we should be very proud of. The real test will be to see what the other Hopheads think, and possibly others.

Side Brewing Notes: There are many things to learn from this batch that we/I couldn't have learned from the first batch that was a sad excuse for a pale ale. First, we need to plan our brews out better, including ingredients, calculations, etc., which is something I took with me when brewing the red ale (which I will discuss in a later post). Second, don't overthink what you are doing, and by that I mean why did we expect this beer to have any sort of hop presence when we added three different types of powerful malts and only added a 1/2 oz. of Cascade hops that we barely got to boil thanks to overflowing pots (essentially finishing hops). Lastly, we need to hone in on the carbonation, either by using less yeast during fermentation meaning less viable yeast left during bottling, or by adding less sugar. I had a bunch more things to say, but if/when I remember, I'll add a little update. Otherwise, job well done from our first batch together.

Serving type: Bottle
Glass type: Sam Adams glass

Drinking My First Home Brewed...Brew

So the day has finally arrived. Time to see if my hard work (if you want to call it that) paid off by trying a bottle of the first batch I ever made. Remember, the ingredients were sub-par, it was my first time (tee-hee), yadda yadda yadda, and whatever other excuses I can add in here. This bottle was bottled and left for carbonating in the basement at room temperate, ~66 deg. Fahrenheit, for two weeks, then put in the fridge overnight. I'll review it like any other beer, but I'm not expecting much. So I present to you....

Mikey's Pale Ale

Appearance: A very light golden yellow (the pic makes it look amber, but believe me, its yellow), extremely crisp and clear, about half a finger of head that disappears pretty quickly, hell I'm glad/relieved there is any carbonation whatsoever.

Smell: A very light and slight floral hop smell eminates from the brew, with a tinge of either citrus or something sour, I'm a little worried about the sour part...

Taste: Actually, it's not too bad, by that I mean I'm not vomitting, a light citrus hop flavor with almost no malts to speak of, which isn't surprising since if you can remember, the ingredients were the pale ale malt extract and the Booster, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale it isn't, but it's not embarrassingly bad.

Mouthfeel: Watery, light, thin, slightly carbonated, barely any alcohol sensation, but it is alcoholic at least.

Drinkability: Light, watery, thin, barely any noticeable hops, a little sour...hmmm...I've made Coors Light! All joking aside, it is somewhat drinkable in that someone might want to drink more than one to be nice to me, but I don't know how many I could have. The only difference between this beer and the mass produced light beers is a tinge of bitterness, different hop flavors, and a little sourness which I will attribute to sanitization issues, yet the sourness isn't that extreme. Actually I would almost compare this to alcoholic apple juice, like a cider. All in all, considering I had absolutely horrible expectations when sampling the fermenter, I'm pleasantly surprised it turned out ok. It also gives me hope for the batch Jimmy and I brewed. I give this a 3/10, but I'm a little biased because it's my baby! I'll have to give it to the other hopheads to sample and see what they say. Happy home brewing!

Glass type: Sam Adams glass
Serving type: Bottle

Mike and Jim's Excellent Adventure

Last Sunday (4/19/09), Jimmy and I decided to make a new batch after bottling the first set, but we wanted to be a little creative. None of this "stick to the recipe" stuff; you've got to go big or go home, we said. This...probably wasn't the greatest way to go about it, considering we sat at the table with the ingredients staring at us in the face without their flavor profiles and just thinking "Hey, that might be good". In retrospect, it turned out to be a true Frankenstein monster, but it was late Sunday night, we were beat, both had a long week of work ahead of us, and said screw it.

Our ingredients were Octoberfest Vienna Lager, Bewitched Red Ale, and High Country Canadian Draft (all Hopped Malt Extracts), 1/2 oz. of Cascade Hop Pellets, and 3 packs of Dry Ale Yeast.

One thing you'll notice missing is the Booster. With three cans of malt extract planned, there is no need to add the flavorless Booster since there is already enough fermentable ingredients involved. Another change from the previous batch is we will actually boil the ingredients for a few minutes. Last time, the water was brought to a boil, removed from heat, and then the extracts were added; however, I feel this did not allow the extracts to be reconstituted because the water did not remain hot long enough. So now that we plan on adding 3 extracts, we want to be sure the water is warm enough. Also, we want to have the hops being added boiled just a tad to get some of the acids released from the pellets. The order of the extracts added were as shown above from left to right, followed by the 1/2 oz. of Cascade hops. Then it was left to boil for a couple minutes to finish making the wort. We had originally planned for 5 to maybe 10 minutes of boiling, but you'll see in a minute why we cut this short.

Jimmy adding some extract, trying hard not to screw it up. He didn't.

Jimmy adding the hops. When we first popped open the bag, Jimmy popped something else...

Stirring the wort. Notice how it is ominously getting close to the top...

...aaaand we spilled the wort while pouring into the fermenter. Note: when you use more extract, you are adding more volume and need a bigger boiling pot. Whodathunkit?

Jimmy adding the yeast. Look at the concentration on that man!

Our batch is complete! Nothing to do but wait a few weeks until this monster is done fermenting.

Gut-check time: although Jimmy and I had a lot of fun making this batch together, we definitely need better planning in the future in terms of what kind of beer we are going for. Looking back, throwing those three extracts and hops together without thinking truly about what it would result in was a poor choice. I don't really have high expectations with this batch either and will chalk it up to the learning curve. However, that doesn't mean we aren't going to go through the motions and bottle this baby. I did sample the fermenter about a week and a half into fermentation, and although it tasted better than the first batch (with the alcohol definitely more noticeable this time, as expected), it's still not very good. We shall see after it finishes fermenting and bottling.

Another difference from the last batch I wanted to mention was the change from using tap water to bottled water. From what I've read the quality of water makes a huge difference and is often overlooked. I think this applies more to those with hard water, but I wanted to give it a try. Might not be able to tell with this batch if it made a difference, probably better to compare two identical recipes with the different waters, but that's for another day.

Happy home brewing!

Bottling Our First Batch

Ok, life has finally calmed down enough where I can take some time to recap our brewing adventure this past Sunday. Before Jimmy and I began brewing, we had to bottle the first batch I made back on the 4th. I had heard horror stories about adding too much sugar to the bottles and having them explode, so that was my only concern. Otherwise, with a two man team, it was an extremely easy process. So much so that we were done before we could snap any pics, so below is just our finished product.


All the process entailed was sanitizing the bottles with the One-Step cleanser, putting an appropriate amount of white granulated sugar into the bottles for carbonation (we had a chart to tell us how much for each bottle), filling the bottles with beer up to two inches from the top, and capping them. For those not familiar with the process and thinking "What the hell is the sugar for?", white sugar is added to each bottle in order to create the carbonation in the beer. The active yeast left in the beer while bottling will continue to ferment with the newly introduced sugar, where one of the byproducts is CO2. Now you can see why we were so worried about putting too much sugar, too much sugar means too much CO2 in a capped bottle means shattered glass and *gasp* spilled beer. We chose to use both growlers and 12 oz. glass bottles in order to gain experience with the bottle capper and to see if the beer favors being in one size over another. Originally, we also had plans to cold condition (carbonating while in the fridge) a couple bottles, but the idiot that I am forgot to stick 'em in the fridge after bottling. We'll do that for the next batch.

Lastly, I did sample the beer during the fermentation process thanks to the tap at the bottom. In the usual 5 gallon glass carboy, it's not advised to open the fermenter at any time as it can introduce contaminating bacteria which can spoil the beer. The first time I sampled it one week into fermentation, the beer was very cloudy, light, and a tad bit sour. I was worried that I hadn't sanitized my equipment well enough, but as the second week wore on, the sourness faded and the appearance cleared. By bottling time, it was an extremely light pale ale, but at least there was alcohol, which indicated fermentation had occured. Good enough for me with mediocre ingredients.

Brewing Supplies

One thing I have learned in my adult life is drinking and online shopping is never a good idea...unless that shopping is for brewing supplies, then it's a FUCKING AWESOME IDEA! I have been meaning to buy more supplies for my Mr. Beer brewing kit, but real life has gotten in the way. They have this deal that anything over $99 will get you free ground shipping, plus I have a $100 gift card, so the goal was to go on a shopping spree resulting somewhere between those values. Below is what I ended up with:

Ptarmigan Pale Ale		11000PTA	$28.99	1	$28.99
St. Patrick's Irish Stout		10020	$9.25	1	$9.25
Creamy Brown UME		10018	$6.25	1	$6.25
Cascade Pellet Hops		CAS100	$2.79	2	$5.58
Fermenter (2 GAL) -- Beer Kit		41010	$10.00	1	$10.00
Willamette Pellet Hops		WIL100	$2.79	2	$5.58
Hallertau Pellet Hops		HAL100	$2.79	1	$2.79
Octoberfest Vienna Lager		10022	$9.25	1	$9.25
Ol' St. Nick's Midnight Ale		11000NMA	$20.20	1	$20.20
Dry Ale Yeast		12000	$0.75	2	$1.50

I have a couple of kits in there that include a few malt extracts, some hop pellets, and such. I most likely won't follow the recipes exactly, but I did want the ingredients and it was cheaper than buying individually. The plan is to take those ingredients and make my own monster creations. This may seem bold since my first batch has only been fermenting for a week and I have no idea if it makes anything decent, but then again I am a bold guy. Is bold the right word?

That Was Easy

Today was the big day to pop my home brewing cherry. Last night I had trouble falling asleep, just like the night before Christmas. I couldn't wait to get right to it, a brand new experience that was sure to present some hiccups. Truth be told, it was quite easy since the kit was idiot proof. Granted, I should wait to see how it tastes, but overall it was an easy process. Sanitize the shit out of everything, bring water to a boil, add hopped malt extract, put mixture into fermenter with water, add the dried yeast, voila! Now the hard part of waiting for the fermentation process to finish begins. Two excruciating weeks until bottling, then another two weeks for carbonation. The only thing keeping me from wanting to try some is knowing it would ruin the beer. Here are some photos of the experience.

The setup, in the middle of sanitizing everything.


Hopped malt extract and the packet of dried ale yeast. The extract pours as thick as molasses, even after having the can soak in hot water for over half an hour.


My goofy ass pouring the malt extract into the finished boiling water. I wasn't lying that the extract was thick. Side note: first time I have ever used the timer on the camera. Came out alright.


Added dry ale yeast to the wort in the fermenter. See the clear patch free of bubbles but tons of floating crap? There's the live yeast organisms doing their thing.


Sealed and ready for fermentation. A loooong two weeks until the bottling and carbonation step.

I'm not going for any groundbreaking brews on the first try, especially with ready made extracts. This recipe should produce an American Pale Ale, but a pretty weak one at that, only 4% abv. If I had used another unhopped malt extract instead of the booster pack it came with, the estimated abv would be above 6%. The hops were already included in the extract, which will produce an estimated 10 IBUs of bitterness, so this will be a pretty light pale ale, especially compared to other brews we consume. However, I didn't want to be too ambitious with the first batch, especially if I fucked up royally. Now while I wait, I begin to plan my next brew, something with a little more pop. Happy Home Brewing!

Mr. Beer Home Brewery

I won't be able to make any reviews or long updates for a little while because of other commitments, but I just wanted to give a shout-out to my bro, Justin, for hooking me up with a home brewing kit for my birthday. Everyone say hi to the Mr. Beer Home Brewery.


This will hopefully give me some practice on some simple recipes and give me some experience before I move to the big boys, which might not be for a while. Batches are made in 2 gallons at a time, and the kit includes the plastic fermenting keg in the picture, a hopped malt mix, some "booster", yeast, some cleanser, plastic bottle caps, and a brewing handbook. I already went ahead and splurged on some glass bottles and bottle capper, some nifty utensils, more cleanser, and a couple more mixes. Anybody else have experience with this kit? This will be a good indicator: if I fail at making beer with this, I'm just not born to brew. Thanks again, Justin!