Let it Beer

Welcome back to another taste of The Art of Caesura!

I hope the week hasn’t been too hectic, and that you have a great weekend lined up!

Last time I plied you with some of my favourite beers from the west coasts of two small Islands, this week I’d like to show you my recent U-brew efforts. For the past month I’ve been brewing a craft beer from the Mangrove Jack’s line called LordFinster (a dark English bitter-style ale). I just had my bottling day a few days ago, but let me get you up to speed on what I’ve been up to in the background for about the length of time this blog has been running.

Here is my set-up. My fiancée got me a robust plastic bucket fermenter with all the fixin’s (water seal, siphons, bottle brush, bottle caps, bottle cap capper, filling wand, hydrometer, thermometer…not to mention the actual kit with the liquid malt extract (LME), dry hops and yeast). I know, she’s a keeper!

After five days of fermentation with just the LME, glucose (I couldn’t get my hands on dextrose) and yeast I added the dry hops in a hop bag (sanitised up the wazoo). This specific yeast said to ferment for a further five days, but I ended up going for almost double that because my specific gravity was still a tad too high and my seal was still bubbling away – there was much pacing in anticipation. It was at this stage that I needed to prep the bottles. 

Unfortunately, I only had 22 x 500mL bottles, and with a magnificent 23L of beer, I was going to need to use a ton of 330mL bottles (which I was a bit loathe to do). The rest of the beer making process was great craic, but prepping the bottles was not.

In Ireland we don’t have the coveted “Oxyclean,” often lauded by North American homebrewers as the easiest thing to use to clean and strip bottles. After some thorough forum searches, it seemed that peopled used “Vanish” fabric stain remover as an alternative.

After soaking for a few hours in warm water with “Vanish” some of the labels flew straight off (in fact some were gloriously floating on top of the water (I found that many of the British ales (Wychwood Brewery, and the aforementioned Crean’s were great for this) others were crazy difficult to get the old labels off (I’m looking at you, Crabbies Ginger Beer, and Kings of Tara) requiring a dough knife, wire brush and butt loads of elbow grease.

Then I let the bottles soak in cold water overnight to get rid of any “Vanish” residue before sanitising them. Then I did it all over again three more times! It was a hell of a process, but when they were done they looked damn fine.

Bottling went really smoothly and after adding ½ a teaspoon of glucose to each 500mL bottle and just over ¼ teaspoon to each 330mL bottle to prime them for carbonation, I filled and capped them.

Apparently this beer needs to bottle condition, so I’ll leave it in a warm place for two weeks and then a cool place for a further two weeks. In a few weeks’ time I’ll have another post on the tasting! I’m looking forward to that one.

Thanks all for reading, I hope you can get behind the eclectic nature of this blog. If you would like more detail on any aspect of this home-brewing process or if you just want to talk beer, just let me know and I’ll be more than happy!

Listening: Yuppie Dracula – Smokey Bastard

Drinking: King Puck – Crafty Divils Brewing Co., Killorglin, Ireland

Watching: The Deadpool Movie

Reading: Slainte – The Complete Guide to Irish Craft Beer and Cider – Caroline                 Hennessy and Kristen Jensen

Next Week:

I’ve been sneakily continuing to paint the little dudes for The World of Smog these past two weeks while our focus has been on beer. I’ll show you what I’ve been up to…next time.