American Cream Ale - started 10/21/2012

          I have wanted to start brewing beer for sometime now. I know that it has a lot more upfront work than making mead or wine but the payoff happens a lot faster as well. I have also decided to do this first batch of beer in bottles and not a soda keg. This decision was made for a couple of reasons. First I want to be able to transport the beer so people can try it. Second it will take time to get the recycled soda kegs, get them cleaned up, sterilized and ready to go. I also have to get a beverage regulator, hoses, and a source of CO2. Third reason being I have NO way of getting it cold... yet! I am going to look into a Kegerator. Love the name!

          So I bought a beer kit from Anuway Hydroponics. The kit I picked up was the Brewer's Best: American Cream Ale. It is described as 'An ale version of the American lager style. Clean, light and simple to brew. Faint malt notes with a hint of corn-like presence. An easy drinker.'

          This should be a most interesting experience. I really can't wait to see how this turns out... though the box says it will make up to 53 12oz bottles of beer... HOW ON EARTH am I going to drink 53 bottles of beer? I guess this means I will be gifting some beer to people!

American Cream Ale by Brewers Best

Contents of Kit:

• Ingredients
• Grain bag(s)
• Priming Sugar
• Bottle caps
• Brewing Procedures

Ingredients consist of:

Fermemtables

• 3.3 lbs Light LME
• 2.0 lbs Pilsen DME
• 1 lb Corn Sugar

Hops

• 2 oz Willamette
• 2 oz Aroma

Yeast

• 1 Sachet

Also will need:

• 4 gallon Brewing Pot
• 5 gallon Fermentation bucket and lid
• 1 Air lock
• easy clean sterilization solution

While the 2.5 gallons of water is boiling. I cleaned and sterilized the fermentation bucket, lid, and airlock. Once the water was at a gentle, rolling boil added the 3.3 lbs of Light LME. Continuously stirred extract into water as it returned to a gentle rolling boil. Water is now wort.

10/21/2012
So I did a small prayer and blessing over the ingredients to Hestia, Demeter, and the Nature Spirits before starting the brewing process. I followed the instructions contained in the brewing kit. Pretty easy really. Though I wasn't expecting the smell. WOW brewing beer is a little on the nasty smelling side. Once it was cooled off to room temp transferred over to the fermentation bucket, added water up to the 5 gallon mark then added yeast. Closed lid tight then put airlock on adding water to the airlock.

10/23/2012
Well I know the Beer is brewing cause the airlock is dancing like crazy! It is nice to see that the thing is doing what is suppose to be doing.

The other thing I noticed was that my brew kit talked about having a bittering hops and an aroma hops. I only had two packs of aroma hops. So we will see how it turns out.

10/26/2012
I melted 2 cups of brown sugar, let cool to room temp. Sterilized the secondary fermentation bucket and tools. Poured the melted sugar into the secondary fermentation bucket. Then moved the fermenting beer worth over. This caused the sugar base to swirl and mix well into the beer worth. Replaced the lid. Now will sit for two weeks before bottling.

11/10/2012
Bottled my bear today. 48 bottles, a bottling bucket, a filling wand, and priming sugar. It's so cool I was able to get this done today. I had a small taste and WOW it is tasting great. There is a hint of brown sugar but the beer is not sweet.

Learned something about the filling wand... DO NOT leave it in a bottle. If you do it will continue filling, all be it slowly, and you WILL have a huge mess to clean up. Here is one of the boxes that I have filled and capped. I SO LOVE brewing!!!

Now I just have to way the two weeks or so for carbonation to occur.

12/1/2012
So we waited another week to try the beer because at the two week mark it was a bit flat. Though it is much more carbonated I think it still could use a bit longer. However with that said, the beer is super tasty! even at room temp it was great. This very well might become the base for a lot of my flavored beers.

12/8/2012
Tried another of the beers and it has matured greatly. The carbonation is much higher and the taste is much better. I will be using the Cream Ale as a base for many of my flavored beers. I really enjoy it.

12/27/2012
I had one of these last night... still have about 12-13 of them. They have been sitting in the box. So the carbonation has increase majorly and so has the flavor. It tastes like a Blue Moon!!! WOW what a great flavor. Lesson learned here: time is your friend on the flavor and body of beer. Hmmm should I rethink the use of kegs? maybe those will be best used for some beers but not all?