It’s been quite some time since my last post.  Things are alive and well though, just very busy.  Connor has been going with Laurie to a gym and sport class at the YMCA along with an art class that he has been enjoying and I have been taking him to Father-Tot swimming on Saturday mornings.  Now with DST starting earlier it feels like spring is coming sooner.  Time to clean out the garage, clean out the shed, take the snow tires off the car…

Here’s Connor playing outside last week, he loves those golf clubs.

I also (finally) brewed my vanilla bourbon stout, just in time for, err.. spring.

I also have everything fixed up on the old VW GTI and it’s ready to sell.  I just need to take some spiffy pictures of it to put on Craiglist and it’s ready to go.

Now I just need to get the patio cleaned up, the furniture back out and the BBQ ready for another season!

Earlier this week, Tuesday to be exact I bottled my beer.  My Dad gave me a bunch of glass bottles as well as a second bottling bucket.  So I used this second bucket to prime the beer with instead of priming each individual bottle.

I don’t know if this method payed off as there is more to clean and preparation still takes quite a bit of time.  In the end I had 12 16oz bottles and 32 12oz bottles, a total of roughly 624oz of beer (4.875) gallons.

My final gravity reading came out at 1.026, a little high.  My starting gravity was 1.057 meaning the alcohol is around 4.061%.  This is calculated with ( starting gravity – final gravity ) * 131 = ABV%.  (1.057-1.026)*131=4.061. The final gravity was a little high because I think I let the temperature get a little too high during the fermentation process so not all the sugar was used by the yeast.  This means I’ll probably have very carbonated beer and hopefully no bottle bombs.

I tried a little sample from the gravity reading I took and it tasted great.  We’ll see how it is after conditioning in another week and change.

When you take your hydrometer reading you need to adjust the results based on the temperature of the wort.  Thanks to Ryan for pointing this out to me and for this link:

http://www.ebrew.com/primarynews/ct_hydrometer_temp_correction.htm

I took my reading at ~85*F.  Based on that chart I would nbeed to add roughly 0.003 to my reading.  My original reading was 1.054, so this brings it to 1.057.  Within 0.001 of what the kit estimated starting gravity should be at.

I am really looking forward to this beer to finish up.  In another week I’ll be bottling it and it will take ~2 weeks to condition it.  Cheers!

So yesterday (Saturday) I brewed my Irish Red.  A lot of “firsts” with this brew.  It was my first kit from MoreBeer, my first time doing a 3 gallon partial boil and my first time using live yeast.  All-in-all it went very well and I really enjoyed it.

I started around 2PM, but got everything together earlier in the day.  It took just under two hours to get everything done, but took longer to cool.  Once I got everything in the fermenter I still had the wort at 90*F.  So I had to wait a while to allow it to cool.  I finally pitched the yeast when it was at 82*F.  I would have liked it cooler, but it was getting late and I needed to finish cleaning up.

By the this morning it had started fermenting and by this evening there’s quite a head of foam on it.  I have 5 gallons in the fermenter and it’s looking great.  I have the fermenter in the garage and manged to get it cooled down to 66*F now.  Hopefully I can keep the garage cool, in a few days we’ll be getting in to the low 80s…

The starting gravity was 1.054, the kit estimated it should be around 1.058, so that looks good.  I’ll be able to bottle this batch with all glass bottles.  My Dad has quite a few left over from when he brewed some beer quite a number of years back.

I have more pictures here:

http://demandred.dyndns.org/photos/homebrew-051609

My order from MoreBeer.com came today!  A day earlier than expected actually.  I can’t complain.  Everything is here too and very well packaged, props to MoreBeer.com   I’ll be ordering from them again.

MoreBeer.com order

Everything looks fantastic, had to snap a picture of my order.  I am excited to brew.  I probably will in another week.  I still need to order bottle caps (morebeer was sold out) and some live yeast.  This will be the first time I am doing this type of brewing.

It’s been some time since I last brewed my beer.  I wanted to so badly do a nice stout for the winter but with everything going on and what-not I lost enthusiasm.  I kept wanting to brew again but kept holding it off.  Well today my friend Ryan informed me that morebeer.com had a sale on an Irish Red Ale so I decided to jump in.  I also bought some minor brew equipment as well, mostly because prior to this I have only done liquid malt extract brews.  This time I am doing a partial boil dry extract.  So I placed the following order:

• Irish Red Ale – Extract
• Cleaner – PBW (1 lb)
• Star San HB High Foam Acid Anionic Cleaner & Final Rinse (8 oz)
• Swing Top – Replacement Washers (25)
• 5 Gallon Stainless Steel Kettle
• Bag – 5″ x 15″ Disposable Muslin
• Grain Bag – 8” x 15” Medium

I got free shipping on everything and to top it all off I got this in my e-mail:

MoreBeer!
ORDER SHIPPED

Dear Nicholas DeClario,

Your MoreBeer! order number 123456789 has shipped.

Yay, so by next weekend I can brew.  But I’ll probably be brewing the weekend after that.  I still need to order bottle caps, they were sold out and yeast.  This kit will brew up 5 gallons for me.  Can’t wait to get started