I Brew (much of) the Beer I Drink

Having been publicly shamed, I suppose it’s time to start writing about the beer we make right here in our apartment.

This is a typical view of the brewery operating at full capacity. One batch in the primary bucket, one in the secondary carboy, and a bunch of bottles in the boxes on the left. Those are my dress shirts hanging at the top left.

We got started at the start of August 2010, when Martha decided she was tired of listening to me talk about wanting to start brewing and walked me down to Brooklyn Homebrew so I could pick out which equipment kit I wanted as a birthday present. A week later, we made our first batch (an unspiced saison using one of the store’s ingredient kits). Last weekend, we made our 15th batch, a creation of our own involving peat smoked malt, honey, heather and pink peppercorns to commemorate Walpurgisnacht. With four exceptions, the majority of our beers are partial mash batches, as we don’t have the space right now for the additional equipment required for proper all-grain batches. Three of the four all-grain batches we made were one-gallon batches done as experiments with styles such as barleywine and triple IPA that would be rather expensive as five-gallon extract batches. All of these were brewed simultaneously with a five-gallon batches to minimize the extra cleanup required.

Here’s a list of what we’ve made so far. Many of them are mere memories now, having been enjoyed by us and our friends and family. Beers listed by batch number. These are all partial mash 5-gallon batches, except #12, which is all-grain.

1. Magpie Saison – August 2010. Partial mash batch brewed from an ingredient kit. 6.4% ABV, 20 IBUs. Our friend Suran declared it the first beer she ever liked, which was encouraging.
2. Labor Day IPA – September 2010. Partial mash American IPA brewed from another ingredient kit. Brewed on Labor Day weekend, this started our tradition of naming IPAs for events that share their brewdate. 5.9% ABV, 63 IBUs.
3. St. Aedan’s Ale 2010.  Brewed October 2010. A Belgian strong dark ale based on an ingredient kit, to which we added Lyle’s Black Treacle, brown sugar, raisins, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg. Made as a Christmas beer and named after my nephew.
4. Guy Fawkes IPA. An English IPA brewed November 2010 and aged on oak chips in secondary. Learned the hard way that four weeks on an ounce and a half of oak chips is way too much time. The best way to drink this was mixed half-and-half with the Labor Day IPA. 5.4% ABV, 40 IBUs.
5. A nameless brown ale made in November 2010 from another recipe kit. Easy drinking stuff that was a big hit at Christmas with my family. 3.8% ABV, 14 IBUs.
6. Fat Ethel Chocolate Stout. Stout brewed with cacao nibs in December 2010. Named for our portly tabby. The last beer we made from a Brooklyn Homebrew ingredient kit. 4.7% ABV, 24 IBUs.
7. Monty the Nose’s Bathtub Gin Pale Ale. Made on New Year’s Day 2011, this is the first recipe I created from scratch. A pale ale brewed with juniper berries, orange peel, coriander, cardamom, and hyssop. Named for our other cat, a tuxedo whose loathing of all things alcoholic leads us to believe he must be a Prohibitionist. 5% ABV, 30 IBUs.
8. Moonlight Battle (Double) IPA. Brewed January 2011. Based on a recipe for Pliny the Elder, this was our first highly hopped beer and first experiment with heavy dry-hopping. Probably my second-favorite beer so far, after the juniper pale ale. 7% ABV, 78 IBUs.
9. Teddy Ballgame Old Ale. Brewed January 2011. An old ale that was plagued by errors at every step — I measured grain in kilograms rather than pounds, repitched yeast for the first time, and pitched way, way too much yeast. Ended up having an unfortunate medicinal quality to it. 6.4 % ABV, 54 IBUs.
10. Bitter, Mike? Brewed February 2011. A best bitter named for a line from the British TV comedy Spaced. Hugely drinkable session beer that disappeared from our apartment very, very quickly. 3.8% ABV, 29 IBUs.
11. Brookklyn Burton. (That’s not a typo.) Brewed March 2011. Inspired by Pretty Thing’s November 15th, 1901 KK Burton Ale, this recipe was cobbled together from a number of sources, including this Barclay Perkins 1928 KK recipe. I made my own invert no. 2 sugar from Lyle’s golden syrup and blackstrap molasses. 7.4% ABV, 68 IBUs.
12. 1952 JW Lees Best Mild. Brewed March 2011. Another historical recipe, which I followed fairly faithfully. Since it was a fairly small grain bill, I decided to make an attempt at a full-size all-grain batch. It turned out quite well, though I overshot the target gravity in the end. Very sessionable, though the cumulative sweetness after three pints or so is a bit much for my tastes. 4.1% ABV, 26 IBUs.
13. Monty the Nose’s Bathtub Gin Pale Ale. Brewed April 2011. We liked the juniper pale ale so much that we decided to make it again.
14. Battle of Lee’s Mill Double IPA. Brewed April 2011. Once the warm weather hits, we can’t make English and American style ales without an abundance of diacetyl and other off-flavors that may result from high fermentation temps, so we figured it was time to lay in a properly hoppy beer for the summer time. Similar to batch 8, though lacking in Simcoe. 7.2% ABV, 98 IBUs.
15. Walpurgisnachtbier. Made last weekend, still fermenting. American blonde ale with honey, peat smoked malt, heather and pink peppercorns. O.G. 1.052, 21 IBUs.

In addition to those beers, we’ve also done a handful of one-gallon batches. The first was inspired by a need to use up the extra grain we had on hand following by measurement issues for batch #9. That turned out well, so it seemed proper to play around some more.

1. Conversion Error Ale (batch #9.2). Brewed at the same time as the Teddy Ballgame Old Ale, this turned out to be the better of the two beers by far. If forced to pin a style on it, I would guess ESB. 5%ABV, 65 IBUs. Very tasty.
2. Point Two Baby Barleywine (batch #11.2). Brewed at the same time as the Burton ale. Inspired by JW Lees Harvest Ale, this has nothing but Maris Otter malt and East Kent Goldings hops. Have yet to open up a bottle, though the sample for testing gravity was mighty tasty. 8.9% ABV, 54 IBUs.
3. Baldy Smith Triple IPA (batch 14.2). Based on a Pliny the Younger clone recipe and brewed alongside the Battle of Lee’s Mill double IPA. Still getting loaded up on dry hops in secondary.

And there you have it. 

If you’re interested in the recipes for these, many of them are up on my Hopville profile page.

At the moment, there are roughly 24 gallons of beer in my bedroom closet. This is not a bad thing.