Beer Update

This has nothing to do with me taking the LSAT...

I bottled my Lager style ale Tuesday, using table sugar as priming sugar for the little yeasties (as per Mr Beer instructions). First I drew out an ounce or so and gave it a sniff and a swig, to see how two weeks in the fermentor had served my little concoction. The test sample tasted like warm, flat Miller, and while that sounds like a horrible thing, it's actually good news. You see, the Mr Beer 'Cowboy Lager' is essentially an American lager clone type beer, so it should seem similar to Miller, and it hasn't carbonated yet, so it should be flat, and it's been sitting in the fermentor at 69 degrees, so warm is OK too.

There was enough beer to fill the 8 liter PET bottles that came with my Mr Beer kit, and still a little left over to try out a glass 12 oz bottle with my new capper and some over-run caps that I picked up here in town at the local brew supply store. (Over at the corner of Cassat and San Juan, on the west side...funny little place with some very 'sedate-(d)' guys working there, place is called "Just Brew It") The 12ozer got a small amount of trub in the bottle, but I think with conditioning that shouldn't be a problem. I'll probably pop that one early though anyway, because I originally bottled it because I wanted to use the small test bottle to learn about how the conditioning process works out over time. Anyway, the priming sugar is doing it's thing, and the PET bottles are firming up to the touch, evidence that the little yeasties are in there going to town and pooping CO2 and carbonation is taking place. 12 oz glass bottle hasn't popped either, so my capper and the caps seem to be working ok too. All 9 of the bottled beers are conditioning in my big cooler, where if they leak, or full-on rupture, they will only make a mess on each other, and not all over my house.

I started the next batch in the Mr Beer too, as I've now got enough glass bottles and with the caps and capper from the shop, I can bottle that batch when the time comes. I didn't want to start the second batch until I had all the supplies to finish the task, through bottling. The next beer is an Octoberfest recipe from Mr Beer, with no Booster, but rather a second can of extract, this time blond UME. I also added steeped cinnamon and honey to the wort. It smelled great, and within 24 hours I had a nice layer of krausen on the surface in the fermentor. Looking good!