I know everyone has been waiting patiently for the results of the KreamyX vs. Corn Sugar experiment.  I just checked a few bottles and they look to be carbing up nicely.  Don’t ask me how I know, I just do.

Well, there hasn’t been any bottle bombs so that’s a positive.

I am planning to put a couple in the fridge tomorrow or Thursday, (one of each priming agent) and this weekend, we’ll pop ‘em open and see what’s what.

If you are tuning in late, here are the details of this homebrewing experiment.

UPDATE:  Here are the results of the experiment!

Yesterday was bottling day for the Brown Porter and this time around, we threw in a little experiment. Bottling can be boring so we sometimes like to throw a smidge of excitement. Just a smidge.

As described in our priming sugar experiment post, we split the beer into two different bottling buckets with two separate priming sugars. One bucket had corn sugar in it, the other had KreamyX. Each priming sugar was weighed and measured for 2.5 gallons and not the standard 5 gallon quantities.

Bottling went on without a hitch. Our friend Lyle was there to help out and was rewarded taking half the bottles home.

Our final gravity was 1.016, a little high from where I wanted it to be (1.011). Then again, our starting gravity was higher than the predicted gravity: (1.052 vs 1.047).  We tasted the sample and it didn’t repulse us.

Now we wait. All bottles have been labeled as either a KreamyX bottle or not. We will crack a few open 2 weeks from now and see.

UPDATE: Here are the results of the experiment!

Oh, it’s on.  The stage is set for this Sunday.  I have purchased a pound of corn sugar for bottling the brown porter.  We are going to test the results of priming with KreamyX versus priming with corn sugar.

• Split the unfinished beer in half; placing 2.5 gallons of the beer into two separate bottling buckets.
• Prepare the proper amount of KreamyX and corn sugar for 2.5 gallons (dissolving the priming agents into two separate amounts of water, cooling them down to fermentation temperatures).
• Bottle as normal, but using the two bottling buckets.
• Condition for the same amount of time (2 weeks).
• Pour out 2 beers; one that had corn sugar as a priming agent, one that had KreamyX as a priming agent.
• Compare results.

UPDATE!  Here are the results!

There’s all kind of clearing agents out there.  I can happily report that a method worked for me.  I have always read that if you leave your beer in the fridge for a month or so, the chill haze causing proteins would settle out.

I have had beer stored in the fridge, but my haze never went away.  This time, for whatever reason, the time in the chill chest cleared the beer right up.  I did have a good cold break when I brewed.  Maybe that is part of my success.

I will take a picture soon and post it here.  We are meeting up with one of the Brew Dudes’ friends this Friday night.  He’s visiting from Iceland and I am bringing the last of the APAs.   I want to save the bottles until then.

The Brew Dudes went out for beer last Thursday night. I twittered about it. Mike didn’t know we tweet. I said I didn’t know we did either.

I also told him we are now friends with Charlie P. on Facebook. He didn’t know that either. Dude, the world is shrinking….and these were the subjects we discussed during the first beer.

The second beer we had was a Cantillon Kriek Lambic and it was tremendous. I have had some Lambics before, but this Kriek was great. Not sure if a master of pairing beer with food would have approved of my Kriek/BBQ Cheeseburger combo…but oh well. It worked for me!

Lambics are traditionally fermented with wild yeast, including our friend Brett (Brettanomyces). Not sure if this Kriek was fermented with Brettanomyces but it had a light body.  It also had a sourness that may have come from cherries or bacteria or both, but it definitely did not taste like “beer”. The range of flavors you can get from different kinds of beers is amazing…and I am glad I am still amazed to this day.

The wild yeast that live in Senne valley of Belgium give lambics have their signature taste. This concept gives me a few thoughts.

1. What would wild yeast that live in my neighborhood make my beer taste like? They would probably bring in da noise and bring in da funk…and not in a good way…but it might be a good experiment. Put that one on the ever-growing list of experiments that the Brew Dudes need to conduct.

2. Would I ever attempt to brew a lambic? You can get strains of Brettanomyces from White Labs. It might be interesting to give it a go. My hesitation comes from the fact that Brett is usually seen as an off-flavor in other beers…which brings me to thought number 3.

3. When is someone’s off-flavor someone else’s on-flavor?

I would like to get input from readers who have brewed with Brett. What has your experience been?

I was thinking of making up some “fruited” wheats in the next go around of the mash tun.

I love trying to maximize my return in the brewhouse for the amount of work I put in, also while learning something in the process of each style I brew.  To that end, I think I am going to brew up a large batch of wheat style beer and split it into several fermenters for fruit additions in secondary.  Something along the line of an American Wheat (50/50 barley/wheat) with a simple hopping schedule.  This time though I think I want to use traditional American ale yeast like WLP001 or US-05.  I’ve never brewed a wheat beer without the contributing flavors of wheat yeasts, so now is the time to learn what wheat tastes like on its own (see, that’s the learning part!).

With my current setup, I think I can mash in a batch and collect about 14 gallons of wort, boil it down to about 12.5 gallons, then split it into three 4 gallon batches.  I’ll ferment them all with the same yeast strain.  Once done I plan to secondary two of them with fruit (strawberry and blueberry) and the third I leave plain for comparison as a base beer.  I am anxious to try the fruit purees I had talked about in an earlier post.

I realized too that blending the finished beers from the bottle might be interesting too. Like a 50/50 strawberry/blueberry mix.

I’ve got to go plan the ingredient list, but hopefully I can fire these brews off soon.
I’ll post the recipe and hopefully some pics of the process.

Cheers!

This post is less of a “How To” and more of a rant/epiphany, which is coming from a discussion I had with Mike and thoughts I have had about this subject over the past few weeks.

When I started brewing, I thought it would be fun to brew with things like Molasses and Brown Sugar…because I like the taste of both those ingredients.  They taste great in cookies and other baked goods; they should taste great in beers too.

What I didn’t initially understand was that all the sweetness in the sugars would be fermented away, leaving only flavors of the sugar cane processing. 

I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I do not like beers brewed with brown sugar.  I’ve made brown ales and Old Peculiar clones and they have a cidery, winey flavor…and not in a good way.

Molasses has had the same effect on the beers that I have brewed. 

I have had good experience with maple syrup, but the maple porter recipe I came up with needs some modifications. 

I think the next sugar to try will be honey.  I have had great beers brewed with honey.

There must be a correlation between sugars with a large amount of unfermentatbles and weird flavors.