Omega Participants: Your Beer Has Arrived!

October 24, 2008

(This is an update for participants in the 2008 Fermenting Revolution course at the Omega Institute.)

Hi folks – your homebrews should have arrived by now. But I hope you haven’t drunk them yet! It would be best if you could let them settle for a few days in the fridge because the trip will have shaken them up quite a bit. You want to give the yeast a chance to settle. Then pop ‘em open and enjoy! I’ve been drinking some samples at home the past week or so and been quite enjoying them.

Feel free to email me questions or feedback. Thanks again to all of you. I hope you enjoyed the course. By the way, if you did enjoy it, it would be great if you could tell Omega that. This was their first time hosting the course and I’d certainly love to do it again so feedback from participants would be helpful.

All the best in all your sustainable beer brewing and drinking endeavors. Cheers!

Leave a Comment » | beer tasting, homebrewing, Organic, GMO, Sustainability | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by beeractivist

Omega Octoberfest: First Taste

October 3, 2008
Omega Octoberfest

Omega Octoberfest

(This is an update for the participants in the 2008 Fermenting Revolution course at the Omega Institute.)

Our Octoberfest has been in the bottles a week now, so I popped one open to have a taste and guess what: it tastes like . . . wait for it, wait for it . . . an Octoberfest!

It is still a bit young though. The body needs to firm up a little and the appearance could stand to clarify a bit. I think the honey we added may have thinned the body slightly since honey boosts the alcohol level without adding malt character. But given that we used a California style ale yeast for a lager style beer, I think we still managed to achieve the crispness of an Octoberfest.

I’m travelling all next week, so I’m going to have to figure out whether I can get these in the mail to you next week or whether it’ll have to wait an extra week. In either case, this beer deserves another week in the bottle so even if I get it off to you this week, you should let it condition at least until the end of the week. Keep checking back here for updates to find out when this glorious amber liquid will be shipping out for your mailbox.

Leave a Comment » | beer tasting, homebrewing | Permalink
Posted by beeractivist

Omega Octoberfest: It’s In the Can (er, bottle)

September 28, 2008

(This is an update for the participants in the 2008 Fermenting Revolution course at the Omega Institute.)

Fermentation slowed down to an occassional bubble this evening, so I racked the beer off into a bottling bucket, clean and sanitized a slew of bottles, pitched some boiled dry malt extract, and bottled enough of these beers in champagne style bottles so there’d be one for each of you.

Here are some pictures of the process, in the order that they occurred (more or less).

First clean the bottles, then sanitize 'em.

First clean the bottles, then sanitize 'em.

Boil 1.25 cups of organic dry malt extract with 2 cups water for 20 minutes.

Boil 1.25 cups of organic dry malt extract with 2 cups water for 20 minutes.

I use an 'auto-siphon' to rack the beer out of the fermenter . . .

I use an auto-siphon to rack the beer out of the fermenter . . .

. . . and into the bottling bucket.

. . . and into the bottling bucket.

I use a tube with a spring loaded release valve on the tip to release the beer into the bottles.

I use a tube with a spring loaded release valve on the tip to release the beer into the bottles.

I bottled into champagne-style bottles so I finished them with corks, gold foil, and a metal cage. Fancy, eh?

I bottled into champagne-style bottles so I finished them with corks, gold foil, and a metal cage. Fancy, eh?

I’ll let these condition in the bottle for a week or so. Then I’ll try one just to make sure nothing went awry, and then I’ll send ‘em on their way.

By the way, yesterday I brewed a ‘kitchen sink’ beer. My neighbor popped by with a bunch of ingredients he had laying around. I gathered together some random things I had and we came up with a recipe for a beer that uses ‘everything but the kitchen sink.’ And actually, we used that too!

The highlights of the brew were some homegrown hops my neighbor grew this year, some honey from my beehive, a bunch of mugwort, and some juniper berries. We’re going for a woodsy, autumnal stout. Here’s a picture of the hop cones from my neighbors little hop farm.

Homegrown cascade hops.

Homegrown cascade hops.

2 Comments | homebrewing, Hops, Organic, GMO | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by beeractivist

Omega Octoberfest: We Have Liftoff

September 23, 2008

(This is an update for participants in the Beer, Brewing and Sustainability course at the Omega Institute.)

Great news. I checked the fermenter early this morning and found it happily gurgling away, strong and steady. The thermometer strip still read 74 F. but our California style yeast was doing its job.

Our next step will be to monitor for a slowdown and eventually stop to the bubbling, then we’ll rack off into the secondary fermenter. I expect that within the next 4-6 days so check back this weekend for another update.

On a side note, the honey we used in this beer came close to being the only honey I would see this year. As I mentioned, I harvested a whole box of honey a couple weeks back. Its been sitting in my friend’s basement waiting for us to extract it. Well, my friend was preparing some sugar syrup to place on the hives as a feeder for the winter and he accidentally left the stove on over night. His kitchen caught on fire! He awoke to a house full of smoke, grabbed an extinguisher and saved the house. The kitchen was lost but he and his family all got out and were fine. Oh, and the honey in the basement is fine – so maybe we’ll make a mead soon if we ever get around to extracting it from the comb.

Leave a Comment » | homebrewing, Mead & Beekeeping | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by beeractivist

Omega Octoberfest Update

September 22, 2008
We spent Friday through Sunday thinking, drinking, and brewing beer in this classroom at Omega Institute.

We spent Friday through Sunday thinking, drinking, and brewing beer in this classroom at Omega Institute.

This past weekend I led a course on Beer, Brewing, and Sustainability at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. During the class, we brewed a five gallon batch of Octoberfest using organic ingredients from Seven Bridges with White Labs’ San Francisco Lager yeast which is designed to be used at ale fermentation temperatures.

I promised the course participants I’d send them each a bottle of the resulting beer and that I’d keep them updated about the beer’s progress via this blog. So this entry is for you guys – thanks for coming to the course, I had a great time brewing with you!

The ride home to Washington D.C. from Rhinebeck was long and warm – not great conditions for the beer to ferment, but I kept it in the back seat and kept the A/C on the whole way. When I got home I placed it at the bottom of a closet and covered it with some fabric to block any extra light.

As of this morning there was no fermentation activity. Today was hot out again, with a high of 79 degrees Fahrenheit. My place is very shaded though and probably didn’t top 75 degrees F but still, that’s a little warmer than we’d like it to be.

This evening I took a look at the thermometer strip that’s on the outside of the plastic fermenter and it read on the low side of 74 F – definitely a little higher than we want, but I did see very slow bubbles gurgling up through the airlock – almost a minute in between each bubble. The temperature may be causing a slow fermentation. Tonight the weather is forecast to drop down to 59 F outside so we ought to hit the perfect fermentation zone inside the closet of around 65 degrees or so.

The thermometer strip read 74 F. around 8pm tonight.

The thermometer strip read 74 F. around 8pm tonight.

I’ll check again before I go to sleep to see if the pace picked up at all. If we don’t see some improvement by tomorrow night I may toss in some more yeast to kick it into gear.

1 Comment | homebrewing, Organic, GMO | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by beeractivist

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