Bottling Day! In case you can't tell from the picture above, I decided to name the inaugural beer batch after the dog. Specifically I named it "Professor Shelby McBarkface Nut Brown Ale." It's a mouthful, I know.

A brief and pretty pointless history on the name:
We've talked about breeding our yellow lab, Shelby, in the past. Since she's a purebred lab, if we were to breed her we'd want to have her registered with the AKC. When you do that, you get to give your dog an 'official' name that stays on the record. Because simply "Shelby" is clearly a nickname, I came up with Professor Shelby McBarkface as a strong candidate for official naming purposes. While we haven't bred her yet, I think its also an excessively long, but entertaining name for a beer as well. And there you have it...

Below are some pictures from the process. There aren't many action shots because I was home by myself when I bottled. For now, the beer has to sit in the bottles for 1-2 weeks to carbonate. I'll let everyone knows it tastes when I crack the first one.

Part 1
Part 2

The first thing everyone told me (and everything I read about brewing beer) is that cleanliness is critical. My kit came with some packets of C-Brite cleaner, so I cleaned my fermenter, the brewpot, and the various pieces of plastic that I'd need (airlock, etc.). After feeling pretty good about the sanitation going on, I put 1.5 gallons of water in the brewpot and fired up the stove to bring it to a boil. It turns out that 1.5 gallons takes its sweet time to boil. It probably didn't help that I didn't have the cover on the brewpot, but about a half an hour later (I don't remember if it was actually that long, but it felt like it) the water finally started bubbling.

I took the water off the heat and added the malted barley (it was one can of malt extract and1 1 lb of dry malt) and brown sugar (In case you don't recall, I'm making a Nut Brown Ale kit from NFG Home Brew Supplies). Side note: Charlie seems to be pretty against adding supplementary sugar if you can avoid it, but since I don't know what I'm doing and had already spent the money on the kit, I just followed the directions. I guess time will tell if it has any real effect on the flavor. With the ingredients thoroughly mixed, I put the pot back on the heat and brought the mixture to a boil. Next, the recipe called for the addition of some finishing hops. While the malt extracted was also hopped, my understanding from reading is that the addition of finishing hops adds some of the aromatic characteristics of the hops to the taste of the beer (as opposed to the bittering characteristics of the hops added earlier in the malt extract). I'm not a huge fan of hoppy flavors, but again I don't know what I'm doing so - follow the directions... 15-20 minutes later, the wort (my brewpot concoction) was ready.

After cooling the brewpot in an ice bath (hadn't heard of this before, but the recipe called for it), I poured the wort into the fermenter with 3.5 additional gallons of cold water and 'aerated it' by stirring vigorously. Then I waited till the mixture was below 75 degrees (it was actually just about there already after the ice bath and cold water in the fermenter). Now I added the yeast - the little buggers responsible for converting the sugars in the malted barley and brown sugar to booze. Now it was just about time to wait. I closed up the fermenter and topped it off with an airlock.

The recipe called for the beer to be moved after about 7 days of fermentation to a secondary fermenter (usually a glass carboy). I have read that the main reason for this is to get the beer off of the yeast cake (a pretty tasty sounding name for the yeast that are done with their business and have settled to the bottom of the fermenter) and for that reason improve the quality of the beer. I have also read, and discussed with friends, that this process is likely unnecessary for beers fermenting less than a month. In fact, you run a pretty big risk of contaminating the beer during the transfer process. As a result, I decided to skip this part of the directions (that would've been todays job). I guess we'll know in another couple of weeks whether or not that was wise.

One more week until its bottling time. I've already warned Leslie that she's going to be my helper during that part of the process. I'll have my act together then and make sure to snap a few pictures of us screwing up. I have to say though, its tough watching that bucket, not knowing whats going on inside. Until then, we wait...

(Read Part 3)

Longer Explanation:
In the good ol' days everyone had anonymous access to commenting on markpude.com. Abused by some and enjoyed by most, it was one of the things that made this website fun in the days before TwitBook and YouSpace. Most noticeably since switching to popular open source publishing software, WordPress, I started getting smacked in the face with spam comments. So I shut 'er down. I basically said you have to make an account, have that account approved by me, and get a signed letter of the President of the United States before you could post comments. Not surprisingly, in 2+ years of this setup not a single comment has been attempted let alone approved.

Since I'm dusting this thing off, I figured I'd give the newest spam filters another try as well as see if this 'Web 2.0' thing is going anywhere (does anyone even say that anymore? I don't think they do...). So instead of making an account on this site, you can log in with your Facebook credentials and leave a comment. One less password to remember in this world. It's all legitimate and open source software created by someone that knows more about what they're doing more than I do. The bottom line is, I don't keep your info, I don't check your info, but you still get to tell me how I'm being stupid/wrong. Check the plugin out, Simple Facebook Connect, if you're concerned for your privacy and general well-being. Otherwise, enjoy, and comment on my posts already, dammit...

P.S. - There is the obvious 'next step' desire to cross pollinate the Facebook comments with the markpude.com comments. The guys over at ottopress.com say they're working on it, so look for that sometime in the future. Until then, look at is a feature. With a minimal cut and paste operation, you get to have your clever/witty/pretentious comment seen in twice as many places while only having to think it up once!

Yes, I got a homebrew kit for Christmas.  I have to give Leslie a lot of credit for doing as much research as she did and getting what appears to my untrained eye to be a pretty nice quality set of equipment.  She got me the Gold Homebrew Kit and a Brown Ale Ingredient Kit. The equipment came in time for Christmas, but the ingredient kit did not. Fortunately she also got me some reading material, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian. I started reading through the book, its really a pretty interesting read - He gives you lots of useful information and tips but keeps it light and entertaining at the same time.

After reading a few chapters, I was too eager to wait for the ingredient kit to come any longer. I charged onto the interwebs and found a cool homebrew shop in Leominster, MA, NFG Home Brew Supplies. Leslie and I went to check it out on Sunday before the Pats game. Its literally the second floor of somebody's house and its packed from floor to ceiling with anything you could ever think of needing for homebrewing. The owner was there and was really helpful in telling me what I needed to brew my first batch of beer and answered a few questions I had that my book hadn't addressed. Any time I get into a new hobby, I worry about snob-nosed weenies that have been doing it for years giving noobs a hard time for wanting to join them. To my delight, that was not the case (at least at this shop) with homebrewing!

After heading home with the missing peices (namely ingredients, a Nut Brown Ale kit, and a brewpot) and finding the Patriots up 24-0 at half time, I went into the kitchen to fire up the stove. Following Charlie's advice - apparently you're supposed to drink homebrew while making homebrew (store bought will do if its your first batch) - I poured a pint of Gardner Ale House Winter Lager and began my adventure.

To be continued...
(Read Part 2)
(Read Part 3)