Tag Archives: craft beer

Rat Fest at the Corner Brewery

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Mary and I had the privilege this past weekend of attending Rat Fest at the Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti, Michigan. It was an event that featured nine local brewing guilds, each making four different types of beer for everyone at the event to sample. That’s 36 beers we got to sample!

This year the brew clubs were The Ann Arbor Brewers Guild Hopheads, The Ann Arbor Brewers Guild Yeasters, CraftBeerinMi, Brighton Home Brew Club, Detroit Draft Divas, Motor City Mashers, Muskrat Mashers, The Sons of Liberty, and The Ugly Mug.


from Corner Brewery

We got to vote on several categories and Mary and I both agreed The Motor City Mashers had the best all around selection with their Salty Dog Grapefruit Gose, Peanut Butter Cup Stout, Winter Spice Ale, and Toasted Coconut Porter. Some of our other favorite brews were the Twice Baked Potato DIPA from the Sons of Liberty and the Bombs Away Stout from the Brighton Brew Club.

Sons of Liberty
One of our favorite logos from the Sons of Liberty Homebrew Club

Trevor

Gingerbread Stout

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I posted last spring about brewing and bottling my first batch of beer, an Oak-Aged I.P.A., and it came out great.

I’ve finally gotten around to giving it another go, but I may have gotten a little overly ambitious with a gingerbread stout recipe I found online. The brewing process seemed to go fine, but there were A LOT of ingredients, and while bottling, the siphon kept getting clogged up with the molasses and ginger. It only ended up filling five, 16-oz bottles, two fewer than last time.

Despite the struggles, I’m not ready to call it a failure, because if the beers I did make taste as good as I hope, it’ll all be worth it.  Even if they don’t, it was a good learning process and I’ll be ready for the next batch.

gingerbread stout

Trevor

Bottling Beer

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It’s about three weeks ago now that I began brewing my first batch of beer, which meant yesterday was the bottling day. I spent my morning prepping by watching instructional videos on the internet and finally got everything ready to start bottling.

If you’ve never brewed beer before and are considering doing so, let me just warn you that the bottling part isn’t easy. You have to siphon the beer from the jug to a pot or bucket, and then again from the pot/bucket to the bottles. To siphon, you have to fill the tube with sanitized water, making sure to cover both ends. Then you have to attach a rod to one end of the tube, place the rod in the jug, and the other end of the tube over a cup. The idea is that once you uncover the end of the tube, the water flowing out will work as a sort of suction to suck the beer out through the rod and tube. So once the water finishes flowing into the cup, you move the tube over the pot/bucket for the beer to flow into. For some reason or another, it just wasn’t making a strong enough suction to get the beer flowing. It took me quite a bit of time and a very messy kitchen to get the beer to siphon correctly, but after about 10 tries it did finally work out all right.

empty bottles and full jug
Before bottling. I used Grolsch bottles since they have swing-tops and are easily re-sealable.

empty jug
My empty jug, post-siphoning. I was hoping to get a picture of the actual siphoning process, but I unfortunately only have so many hands.

full bottles
My full bottles of Oak Aged IPA, now being stored away for 2-3 more weeks before they are drink-ready. I ended of using 7 or the 9 bottles I had available.

Trevor

Home Brewing

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I received a home brewing kit for Christmas this past year, and finally got around to making my first batch the other day, an Oak-Aged I.P.A. I’m already a bit nervous about how it’s going to turn out, but only time will tell I guess.

ingredients

It seems a lot of kits make about 5-gallons, but the kit I used is a bit smaller and does just one. It may be less beer, but it made the whole process much more manageable for me and I could use just a regular pot for the wort.

wort

It is now fermenting in my basement and in another five days, I’ll need to add the oak-aged chips. About two weeks after that, it’ll be ready for bottling, and then eventually drinking. I already found a place called Hopman’s in Waterford, MI that sells all sorts of brewing equipment and ingredients for my next batch.

fermenting beer

Trevor