8-Bit Ale debrief

My first homebrewing project is complete. I've had a few of my 8-Bit Ales by now. Though I look forward to having more, I'd like to let a few of them continue to condition in their bottles over the next few months. I also want to give some away. More and more, I wish I hadn't had to dump so much of it. But that's water, or maybe beer, under the bridge.

What did I learn from this whole process? For one thing, I learned that Charlie Papazian was right. Relax. Don't worry. Have a homebrew. Lots of things went wrong, and I overreacted to every one of them. Somehow, when it was all over with, I still had good beer to drink. Next time, I swear I will be more willing to go with the flow.

It'll help that I now have the answers to so many of the elementary questions that concerned me at the beginning. I'm confident about how to sanitize my equipment. I won't stress my hydrometer readings, or my wort temperatures, quite as much. I know what kinds of caps I need for my bottles. (Okay, I am still a little mad about that one.) I can concentrate on the recipe.

At times, I doubted that I would ever undertake another homebrew, but now I can't imagine not doing so. There's a sense of pride that comes from sipping a delicious beer of your own design, and a sense of fulfillment that comes from having crates full of them in your basement. The next one will still be a malt extract brew, but I'd like to get a little bit more ambitious with the recipe. I'm thinking a porter sounds tasty.

That wraps it up for now. Whenever I start homebrew batch #2, I'll be sure to chronicle it right here. And the next batch will be even better, because a Second Draft is always an improvement.

Beer!

Judgment day. 11 days after bottling, it was time to crack open my first 8-Bit Ale. I worried. Of course I worried. What might have gone wrong in the interim? None of the bottles had exploded, which was a positive sign that meant the beer hadn't over-carbonated -- but it could also have meant that the beer under-carbonated! Nope, I can't stop worrying for a second.

But I was encouraged by the first pour.

The ale built up a nice head: white, foamy, substantial. And it didn't dominate the glass. Within a few minutes, it had receded a bit, and held that form until I started drinking it.

In appearance, the beer was as promised, an amber ale. Slightly hazy and golden, it appeared free of sediment and rich in color.

I spent a few minutes peering into my mug, holding it up to the light, and smelling it. But there's no substitute for the real thing. Time for the first sip.

And it was... good! Not mind-blowing. But good. It's drier and more bitter than I had expected, and, if I'm using the term right, bready. Drinkable and refreshing, I'd compare it to Brooklyn Summer Ale. I wish the finish had a little more body. Overall, though, I'm happy with how it came out.

Now I really wish I hadn't had to throw half of it away.

Capsized

Look, I know I get frustrated about small things. Instead of stepping back and acting rational when something doesn't work right, I drop F-bombs. Patience is not one of my virtues. Still, it's gotten me this far.

Despite all that had happened in the course of homebrewing, when I probably overreacted to some things that may not have really gone wrong, here I was, bottling away, thinking that soon I'd have an enormous quantity of beer to drink that I had made myself.

Well, I'm not sure what happened, exactly, and if it's anybody's fault, it's the fault of the folks at Beer and Wine Hobby in Woburn, MA, whom I previously described as "fine."

Remember how my homebrewing kit was a gift? When I opened it, I remember my in-laws mentioning something about a mix-up with the bottles. As a result, Beer and Wine Hobby had replaced a box of 12-ounce bottles with a box of 22-ounce bottles for no charge. Fine with me, considering that I didn't have to pay for any of it in the first place, and I will always drink 22 ounces of beer over 12 ounces if given the choice.

First, I filled and capped my smaller bottles. This worked great. It took me a few seconds to realize that the bottle capper took a little more force than I'd expected, but within minutes my 12-ounce bottles were capped and looking superb.

When I placed a cap on my first 22-ounce bottle, I realized something was wrong. It didn't fit. It didn't come close to fitting.

So I got angry. My saint of a wife started looking things up on the internet. She discovered that you can actually cap a 22-ounce bottle with these caps and this capper, but it requires reversing some plates on the capper. We couldn't find any instructions for doing this, save for a cheery "It's an easy adjustment!"

It was not an easy adjustment. It took ten minutes of improvising a chisel out of a flathead screwdriver and hammering away at it. Maybe this doesn't sound like a big deal to you, but when I use any kind of tool it's about as dangerous as Nicolas Cage running around with that glass ball of nerve gas in The Rock. You don't want to be anywhere near me.

Only after making the easy adjustment did we realize that the real problem was that these were Belgian bottles, and required corks. Do you think the fine folks at Beer and Wine Hobby in Woburn, MA, supplied corks with their upgraded replacement bottles? No. No they did not. I had several useless caps, and a dozen 22-ounce bottles of beer with nothing to seal them.

I ended up dumping half my beer down the drain. Maybe there could have been some way to improvise a seal on these bottles, but it was getting late and I was getting disheartened. I wondered -- not for the first time, nor the last -- whether homebrewing was worth it.

There would only be one way to answer that question. I had 24 bottles of 8-Bit Ale left. After bottling, they needed to sit for 10-14 days. Nothing to do, once again, but wait.

Keep it bottled up

The next day, I took another hydrometer reading. This time, it read 1.014, which was almost what I wanted to see before bottling. There were two other factors to consider:

• Starting gravity had been high enough that my delta was already bigger than the recipe called for.
• If I didn't bottle that day, I wasn't sure when I'd have a chance to.

Time to bottle!

I sanitized my bottles in the dishwasher, because my dishwasher does have a sanitize setting, and I read on the internet that you can do that. Also, the thought of sanitizing them all by hand made me want to run to the liquor store.

The downside was that this actually took a lot longer than I expected, something like an hour and a half. As soon as I starting running the dishwasher, I set about hand-sanitizing all the other components I would need. And then the Patriots-Jets game was on. I ended up leaving everything out for a couple of hours, worrying the whole time whether they were attracting wild yeasts.

At the time, I thought that this hours-long hiatus could potentially be the worst thing that could happen during bottling. I was wrong.

Boiling the bottle caps

The next few steps were easy to follow. I boiled my bottle caps for five minutes, then removed them with a skimmer. Next, I dissolved 3/4 cup priming sugar in 8 oz water. Finally, I poured the syrup into my bottling bucket and prepared to siphon.

I don't know how most people siphon, but I got an "Auto-Siphon" with my kit that impressed me as much as any basic technology I can remember since the first time I saw carbon paper. I stuck that thing into my fermentation bucket, gave it a pump, and out came a steady stream of beer. The book and the directions had advised against splashing. I didn't even have to try not to. The siphon was gentle as a summer breeze.

Siphoning from the fermenter (top) to the bottling bucket (bottom)

Once the majority of the wort had been transferred to the bottling bucket, leaving only about a half-inch or so of mostly sediment,* it was onto the next step. Here, again, I owed a big assist to my equipment. I had a bottle filler, which was an implement that attached to one end of the siphon. I inserted it into each bottle, pushed it against the bottom, and watched the bottle fill up with no splashing. When I removed the bottle filler, it barely dripped. Even with what little I still know about homebrewing, I would definitely recommend using one of these things.

My bottles were filled and I was ready to cap them. This should have been the easiest part of the whole process. Instead, this was the part that nearly ruined everything.

*The layer of sediment left behind in the fermentation bucket was something to behold. It was a good centimeter-deep layer of greenish-brown sludge. Lots of unsavory analogies came to mind. Sometimes it's better not to know how the sausage is made.

Rest stop

One of the hardest lessons to learn about homebrewing has been how much time you spend doing nothing at all. It's strange, because doing nothing is usually where I shine. After the initial boiling, cooling, and yeast-pitching, all I had to do was kick back for about a week and let those yeasts do their work.

And it was agonizing.

I'd put so much mental and physical preparation into the process, and now I found myself twiddling my thumbs. I felt like I should be doing more. So I padded into the basement several times a day, where I would cross my arms and frown at the fermenter like a concerned parent. "You doing okay in there, little guy? Everything all right?"

After about four days the vigorous bubbling in the fermentation lock had subsided. As that was my only visible sign that anything was happening inside the bucket, I found this distressing. Probably, it was a good thing: when the yeasts had run out of fermentable sugars to consume, they'd settle back at the bottom of the bucket, and my beer would be ready for bottling.

At seven days, I could wait no more. I sanitized my hydrometer and my beaker and prepared to take a sample. Although I struggled a bit with the lid, on account of being a weak-ass man, I was encouraged when the unmistakable smell of beer hit my nostrils. Not even skunked, half-empty-Bud-Lite-can-the-morning-after-a-party beer. Real, fresh beer!

It was hard to tell in the dim basement light, but when I brought my sample back upstairs I found that it looked like beer, too -- a dark, golden honey color. A healthy amount of sediment was still suspended in it, but overall I was encouraged.

The hydrometer reading was encouraging, too. The beer's specific gravity was registering at 1.016, without needing to correct for temperature. That was close to the target! The recipe called for a final gravity of 1.008-1.012. Considering that my initial sample had read much higher than what the the recipe called for, this seemed like a good sign. But it also seemed like I wouldn't lose anything by waiting a day and taking another measurement.

Back into the dark, dry basement it went. I would have to wait another day -- but not before tasting the little bit I'd measured.

Looked like beer, smelled like beer, and tasted like beer, too! It wasn't carbonated, which made for a strange mouthfeel, and it did seem a little tart on the finish, but overall I was optimistic. Or, let's say, "hoptimistic."

On second thought, let's not say that.

8-Bit Ale brewing begins

In the days leading up to my first attempt at a homebrew, my time was divided thusly:

• 40% worrying about technique
• 20% fantasizing about hops and malt
• 40% thinking of a name for my beer

On the name, at least, I'm pretty confident. I wanted something related to video games, and something that rolled off the tongue. "8-Bit Ale" fit the bill nicely. Seriously, say it out loud. "8-Bit Ale." Good, right? You want to drink it already.

Of course, the recipe I'd be following is one that thousands of other homebrewers had used. It's the one that comes with the homebrewing kit I got for Christmas, which was furnished by the fine folks at Beer and Wine Hobby in Woburn, MA. The kit included most of the equipment I needed. In reading the recipes, and Charlie Papazian's book, it seemed the major component I was missing was a stock pot big enough to boil my wort. The night before I was set to begin, I picked up a 20-quart stainless steel pot from Target, and got ready to brew.

8-Bit Ale was to be an "amber ale," one of three options included in the deluxe homebrewing kit from Beer and Wine Hobby. The ingredients were as follows:

• 2 cans malt extract (3.3 lbs each)
• 1 lb crystal malt
• 1.5 oz Hallertau hop pellets
• .5 oz water salts
• 15g yeast

To this, I would need to add 5 gallons of water. Thus began a recurring theme in my homebrewing experience: excessive worrying about possibly trivial things. Apparently master brewers take their water seriously, and make sure that the mineral content of the water is just so in each and every brew they make.

I thought about picking up some filtered water from the store, and I considered trying to filter 5 gallons through my Brita pitcher (which would only have taken about six hours or so), before deciding that I had enough to worry about, so I should use tap water. I mean, come on -- I drink my tap water all the time and I haven't turned into the Toxic Avenger yet. Let's just get started.

But, as I said, questions kept coming up. Remember when you were a kid and you were starting at a new school, there were a million things to think about, but the most important thing you were concerned about was where the bathroom was? That's how I felt when I started my batch of 8-Bit Ale. I was fascinated by the interplay of ingredients, by the chemical reactions that I would be orchestrating, and by the control I could finally exert over the beer that I would drink. When it came to the most basic logistical questions. I was terrified.

I wondered things like:

• Should I cover the stock pot when it's boiling, or leave it uncovered?
• How often should I stir it?
• Where will I sanitize my bucket?
• If I use the bucket for fermentation, what will I use to bottle?
• What the hell is "sparging?"

Just as in school, when you finally had to raise your hand and ask for the damn hall pass, eventually I needed to get started. You learn by doing, not by reading the first chapter of The Complete Joy of Homebrewing over and over.

It was time to get started.