Flat Beer and Dry Malt

Yesterday we made our third batch of beer, as well as did a long awaited taste test of our second batch, which was a brown.

Sadly, it seems like we did not quite get the process totally down, and we aren't naturals as we thought after our first batch that turned out amazing. So the beer itself tastes pretty good, however, it is kind of rare that we get a bottle that actually has good carbonation. It seems like most of the bottles we have tried have ended up flat, which was disappointing. So I have begun the process of shaking bottles every day to hopefully agitate the yeast and get a little bit of carbonation. It is like my own version of the shake weight.... only slightly less suggestive. :p

For our third brew we decided to make a wheat. Mainly because Eric wanted to try a beer that used only one kind of malt. This way, we will know how the malt affects the beer and thus will be able to make our own recipies. I am skeptical of this, but wheat beer is fine with me, so I went along with it.

Mainly I am skeptical because there are so many different variables in the recipies, sice as different kinds of yeast and different kinds or hops and then the extract, so I am not sure that we will be able to tell... but its a nice thought.

For this brew, we had a guest brewer, Rob Hess. We told him about our brewing after one of our basketball games and he was pretty interested and wanted to see what it took, so we invited him to brew with us, and see how easy it was.

As always we started slowly, we tried our beer and cleaned the stuff and then put the malt on the burner. Unfortunately, we forgot to .... actually turn the burner on. But once we got that going, everything went well.

This beer is much lighter than what we have made in the first two brews. We can even see the bottom of the pot!

The beer eventually darkened up as it got hotter and closer to boiling.

We took the malt out and then brought it back to a boil. And then it was time to add the extract. Unlike the last two beers that we made, this recipe called for a dry malt extract, which wasn't quite as fun as the syrupy extract, but it was certainly interesting.

It also made the beer really foamy....


The rest of the process was pretty similar and hopefully it will turn out well. Rob seemed to enjoy the process and said he made get a kit of his own. So more beer makers! Woo hoo... we are slowly making the world a beerier place!