Well, the home-brewed beer has been brewed, fermented and finally bottled. It’s been a week since we bottled 48 bottles of brew and placed them ever-so-carefully downstairs in the basement to carbonate. So now we have to wait. And wait. And wait.
This is going to be the hardest part about this hobby. The anticipation. The not-knowing if the beer will taste like some frothy goodness on a warm Spring day; or whether it won’t carbonate and taste like ass that I’ll have to throw out like used tissue.
The recipe for this batch said to let the beer carbonate for at least 2 weeks. But everyone and everywhere I’ve looked said that it’s best to wait at least four; and the longer you wait, the better. So I may try opening up one in three weeks and see where we are.
For the first batch I decided to go with a wheat ale, a beer that both me and Brianna enjoy the most of all the styles. I think I followed the 234,348 steps fine, although I did forget to use the hydrometer in the unfermented and fermented beer, so I will really have no idea how what the alcohol content will be. If it’s drinkable, I’ll just have to drink as many as I can to get me where I want to go and compare that to some other beers. Because, you know, I only drink beer for the taste.
On a positive note, when I opened up the batch after letting it ferment for a week, it really did smell like beer, which was a good sign. It actually made the whole house smell like beer, which really didn’t smell too bad. In fact, for any of you candlemakers out there, you may want to consider beer candles. Give them to them for your husband’s/significant-other’s birthday, or for the Super Bowl. Light them up, and you can feel like your right in the stadium for the big game!
Another idea snatched from the jaws of RMV. Oh well. If my beer sucks, there's always this...
So anyways, I’ll keep you posted on the beer prospects. It’ll be a few weeks until I finally get the nerve to crack one open, but I’ll let you know how it turns out!
I’ll come over and drink your beer anytime.
I’m showing this post to Nick the Homebrew Husband right now. I think I must figure out how to make him beer candles for his birthday.
I’ve been homebrewing for ten years now. I own two hygrometers and a refractometer. I find the most reliable way to test for final alcohol content is to drink several bottles and see how buzzed I get.
Nick, that’s what I’ll end up doing. What I’ll need to do is find a baseline. For example, the alcoholic content of 1 homebrew = 5 Miller Lites. Haha! Maybe I should choose something a little more quality to compare…