La belle labels

It's been a bit of a journey, this home-brewing lark. Here's a slideshow of my first eight homebrew labels.

Brew Eight - A Black Beast

Today I put on my eighth brew. No name yet, no label - they'll come with the tasting in five or six weeks' time. But I can tell you what I started with, what I did, and where I hope I'll end up.

Here goes:

I wanted to build on the success of my fifth brew, V for Victory, which really was splendid (though it lacked carbonation). I made that using a Cooper's Stout kit, mixed with a can of Cooper's Amber Malt Extract, a cup of damn strong black coffee and about a litre of liberty hop tea. This time around I wanted to experiment just a little bit more.

I stuck with the Cooper's Stout kit again, but this time bought a tin of Dark Malt Extract, which I added to 10 litres of boiling water. Mixed it quickly so the extract wouldn't sink to the bottom and burn. Once it was rolling I added about 40 grammes of Cascade hops and set the alarm for 30 minutes. Cooked up some damn strong coffee, and drank a cup of tea.

When the alarm went I chucked in 30g of Liberty hops, and gave the mix another quarter of an hour. I used wee bags for the hops, which are a wee bit like tubigribs but without the tension, dude. They make it so much easier to strain, and you get less debris in your wort. Tights are a good alternative ...

When the timer went I carefully carried this massive and weighty pot to the bath, which was filled with cold water. There was a fair bit of steam and angry water action going on. Exciting. Key thing here was to cool the mix quickly and prevent contamination from, say, letting any water get into the pot. I gave it about 25 minutes to cool. House pure stank of malt and hops.

In that time I got my barrel and stout mix ready. Because I'm a brewing maverick living on the edge I threw in 350 grammes of Cooper's Brewing Enhancer Mix 2, which I just happened to have lying around. This will up the alcohol content, but does risk making the beer too thin. I'm hopeful, however, the hopping, the coffee adjunct and the weighty malts from the DME will prevent this. Totally rock 'n' roll this.

So I mixed all that up with some hot water then poured in the wort from the pot. All 10 litres of it. Ooomph. Made a bit of a mess and created a heavy head of foam. But that's OK: you want to aerate the mix. Then I topped it up to 22 litres (the tin said 23 litres but I always brew it short), poured off a sample for a hydrometer reading, and pitched the yeast in.

The yeast lay innocently on the foam. I should have left it there probably, especially as the temperature was about 24C, but I stirred it in good and proper, ya bas. It's important, I think, when brewing to do something you wish you hadn't on reflection ...

All that was left was to store the barrel, take a reading and sample it. The hydrometer read 1.050, which is nice and high and hopefully should mean I end up with a strong, hoppy, bitter stout. I've high hopes for it. Taste-wise, it's got a long journey in front of it, and along the way those sickly, sticky sweet malts are gonna work magic with the potent, pungent hop flavours and aromas. Cannae wait.

Die Hard, Brew Harder

Homebrew number six: Die Hard

So it turns out that this brewing lark, which only a few weeks ago had me believing it was the sole reason I had been put on this planet, ain’t so easy.

I’m sad to say my sixth brew, Die Hard, is something of a disappointment. That’s not to say it’s undrinkable or even unpleasant. It’s a perfectly drinkable, perfectly pleasant homebrew. And therein lies the problem: it tastes and smells like homebrew. 

V for Victory was such a wonderful success because it didn’t taste like homebrew; it tasted like beer. Proper Beer. Beer you might get from a shop or in a pub. Beer you might pay money for (though, to be fair, it could have done with a wee bit more carbonation, while the coffee did push it towards the cardboard side, but I’m being very critical here).

So, what did I do different with Die Hard, a very popular Golden Ale kit from St Peter’s? Well, I followed the instructions and nothing else. No coffee, no dry-hopping, no hop teas, no isomerisation. Just followed the instructions on the tin and nothing else. In many ways, doing nothing was as much an experiment as hacking the Cooper’s stout was for the previous brew. Well, I ain’t doing it again. From now on it’s adjuncts and dry-hopping and boiled-up malt extracts.   

   

Anyway, first thing Die Hard hits you with is that carbon dioxide-fuelled homebrew twang; that pungent, sour aroma that, well, tastes and smells like homebrew. Thankfully, it fades away quickly, and the light hop flavour and sweet malts do come through. Not overly complex, but enjoyable enough. And unlike V, there's plenty of fizz.

V for Victory: Part II

So I finally got round to doing my label for Homebrew No. 5, V for Victory. I did labels for my previous four concoctions, and was keen to continue this tradition.

I thought it might be pretty clever to have a picture of Winston Churchill, doing his two-fingered salute, with a V mask from Alan Moore's classic V for Vendetta. For that wee personal touch I gave him the eyes offof one of the aliens from the sci-fi series V.

Pretty neat idea I thought, but it wasn't really working for me - even if I had gone back to tidy up the Photoshopping. See what I mean:

V for Victory - best review ever

'Ooh Ena, that stout is bleedin' lovely.'

Guess what?!

My first stout, my fifth homebrew ever, is utterly awesome. I've named it V for Victory.

To be fair, after a dreich January, and a long 31-day wait for it to condition, I could have drank fermented yak's pish and still thought it delicious. So I had another. And guess what?! It was utterly awesome too.

I shared some with my mum and dad. They also liked it.

My mum, whose own mum hails from Salford, said: "Your stout brings back memories of Ena Sharples and her two chums, Minnie Caldwell and Martha Longhurst, three of the original characters from Coronation Street, when it was in black and white, and they used to sit in the snug of the Rovers Return and drink half pints of stout, although one of them could have been drinking port and lemon or port and brandy."

I think that's the best beer review I've ever read. 

Anyhow, I've messed about with dry-hopping and that so I wanted to push this boat out a wee bit further. So, for you interested brewers: 
I made this with Cooper's select stout and a 1kg tin of Cooper's amber malt extract. Before adding any water I threw in a cup of strong, black coffee and a pint of hop tea, brewed with Liberty hops. Stirred energetically. Brought it up to 22 litres - slightly short the kit said for 23l. Original gravity was 1.042, and I pitched the yeast at 22C. One week later I bottled it (FG was 1.014) and left it for five long weeks. Worth the wait.

Would hoppily brew again.