What you’re looking at are the balances of 3 recent batches. Where’s the rest? Well lets first go over what these batches are. On the left we have our first ever batch of Apfelwein. A dry, German apple cider. Easily the cheapest and most delicious alcoholic beverage we will ever create. Total cost to us: $1.00 for the cheap, dry wine yeast. Other ingredients are Apple juice and dextrose (corn sugar). Fortunately for us, I work at a place that has plenty of apple juice concentrate and dextrose thus the lack of cost factor. For reference, the cost of Dextrose is .31/lb (x 2lbs) and apple juice concentrate is about $5/gallon. One gallon concentrate makes 5 gallons single strength so technically the cost of making this is $6.62. Cheap enough to have numerous batches going on all the time. Let’s get on it boys! Mix the ingredients together, pour them into the carboy, lets sit a minimum of 4 weeks. Longer is preferred.
In the middle we have Red Ale #4. For me, its red ale # 1, but the recipe was from my brother Nate and his homebrewery, Flightless Bird Brewery. This is his 4th attempt at creating a West Coast style, house red ale. Think Northcoast’s Red Seal Ale (sort of.) Mine tastes like a big red IPA. Bitter throughout, especially at first, but there’s enough extract in there to sweeten it up and make it go down surprisingly easy. I will tweak the recipe next time and use more than one hop variety and a slightly different hop schedule, but this one is good.
And on the right, a less than fully attenuated Blonde Ale. Too sweet, apple-y, and not a dry enough finish. But 3 gallons were consumed via keg at our annual Halloween party and no one complained, at least not to me. What was supposed to be a blonde ale actually came out looking like Sam Adams’ Oktoberfest in color. Orange. Not a repeat brewing offender, although if the yeast finished doing their job, which my opinion is that they didn’t, this could be a good beer. Not giving up on brewing a Blonde. I’d love to have one on tap all the time.
So that is the story of the three little beers. Okay, 2 beers and one knock your face off 9.5% apple cider wine that cost next to nothing to make . There’s still about 2 gallons of Red Ale #4 on tap in the basement and about 20 or so bottles of Blonde. So come over and pour yourself a glass. Oh, and there is still 2 gallons of Apfelwein on tap also, despite having poured pitchers of it a few weekends ago while playing Beatles Rockband. Good combo, fyi.
In the basement right now? Mish’s Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone which is at 4.5% and tasting mighty fine…ready for secondary and dry-hop. And my 5 gallons of Claus Haus Pale Ale (first attempt) at about 4.5% and tasting good, but young. Racking both to secondary this weekend.
In other news, overnight temperatures hit -15 Degrees windchill thus rendering my garage fridge next to useless. As a preemptive strike, Eric and I moved all the beers plus the 2 kegs and CO2 tank into the basement. We finally got the chance to bust out the Monster fridge and put it to use also. Check out the setup above.
I really wish you were my friend. I would love to be doing this in my basement.
I have my wife to thank for this liberty. She’s kind enough to let me use all this space and puts up with our shenanigans on brew day, bottling day, or drinking day(s). Always looking for more friends who enjoy beer so if you are in the Chicagoland area?