My Liquid Child
You know how new parents are, going on and on about their kid all the time. Well, don't hold it against them. A new child (I hear) occupies basically all of one's time, leaving little else for conversation fodder.
You'd think I'd have pictures of my fucking homebrew in my wallet for the amount of time I spend talking about it. So yesterday I made the IPA, with much help from Dyn-O-Mite and Briantology. As stated earlier, I got the guy at the store to hook me up with a recipe that would at least hit 7%. Unbeknownst to him, I upped the ante even more by tossing in two kilos of honey. More sugar = more alcohol.
The way of measuring alcohol potential in a to-be-fermented beer is specific gravity. High SG means thicker, denser. In this case, it's the sugar/honey/malt that makes it this way. Yeast eat this stuff and turn it to alcohol, which is less dense, so the SG goes down. I'll spare you the rest of the science lesson. The starting SG in my last beer was 1.042, which through a magical series of calculations fortells a 4.3% beer. But the starting SG for the new IPA was 1.1... so, if it ferments out as much as the last beer did (final SG of 1.01), we could be looking at something north of 12%.
We are through the looking glass here, people.
I don't know what that means, but it always sounds cool to me.
Anyway, the stuff gave me a scare at first. It sat overnight and the yeast did fuck all. I got some more from the store and tossed it in (also turned on the heat in my room), and now there's a little action on the surface of the sweet-smelling liquid. I'm crossing my fingers.
You'd think I'd have pictures of my fucking homebrew in my wallet for the amount of time I spend talking about it. So yesterday I made the IPA, with much help from Dyn-O-Mite and Briantology. As stated earlier, I got the guy at the store to hook me up with a recipe that would at least hit 7%. Unbeknownst to him, I upped the ante even more by tossing in two kilos of honey. More sugar = more alcohol.
The way of measuring alcohol potential in a to-be-fermented beer is specific gravity. High SG means thicker, denser. In this case, it's the sugar/honey/malt that makes it this way. Yeast eat this stuff and turn it to alcohol, which is less dense, so the SG goes down. I'll spare you the rest of the science lesson. The starting SG in my last beer was 1.042, which through a magical series of calculations fortells a 4.3% beer. But the starting SG for the new IPA was 1.1... so, if it ferments out as much as the last beer did (final SG of 1.01), we could be looking at something north of 12%.
We are through the looking glass here, people.
I don't know what that means, but it always sounds cool to me.
Anyway, the stuff gave me a scare at first. It sat overnight and the yeast did fuck all. I got some more from the store and tossed it in (also turned on the heat in my room), and now there's a little action on the surface of the sweet-smelling liquid. I'm crossing my fingers.
posted by the baron ash von foolishness at 1:17 AM
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