Emergency Medicine Brewing Alliance

It’s about time to get together and teach the new interns how to brew.  And, with the resident retreat coming up end of September, we have plenty of reason to drink.  So, if you’re interested, let me know and we’ll put it on the calendar.

So we now have our second coldbeer on tap in the kitchen.  First we had an all-grain ESB, which turned out fantastic.  I tried to improvise too much with the recipe of a common bitter and got too high of an original gravity, clocking in at 1.055.  So I called it an ESB instead of a bitter.  Had a couple parties at the house, including a WordPress meetup, and reviews were all good for the ESB.  I thought it had a very sweet, malty finish to it, with just enough bitterness up front to make it easy to drink.  Kelly loved it, which shows that it wasn’t too aromatic or bitter.  Overall, a great first kegged beer.

The next beer on tap was another bitter, this time sticking closer to the recipe and actually sticking to common bitter specifications in the end.  This one had an OG of 1.046.  Brewed it with John R one crisp winter morning when they came down for the day.  We made a double batch and he took his back to Memphis to bottle it.  His comments upon tasting it when secondary fermenting…  ”Mmmmm… tastes like malty Cheerios.”  Once kegged, definitely a little too bitter.  Still great maltiness (hence the Cheerio taste) but Kelly didn’t really dig this one quite as much due to the excess bitterness.  And I agree, a little too bitter, but overall a C+ or so.  Slightly above average, and a hell of a lot better than Bud Heavy.  We used (for a 10 gallon batch) 3 ounces of bittering hops (EKG and Williamette) and once ounce of aroma hops.  I’ll continue to tweak this recipe a bit, and will keep you posted.

Trying to figure out a way to easily post recipes to this blog.  I’m married to a WordPress designer, my brother is a WordPress designer, and I had a WordPress meetup here at the house.  I think with their powers combined, someone can point me in the right direction.  Until then, keep close notes on your brew days, and we’ll figure a way to share them in the near future.

I’m initiating two new brewers this afternoon.  Hopefully their first experience is enough to keep them coming back for more.  Two different Extra Pale Ale kits, both extract.  One from the local store AlaBrew, and one from Northern Brewer.  May the best recipe win.

The first all grain bitter is officially kegged.  Much, much easier than bottling, so I recommend everyone’s significant other be ask cool as mine and purchase them a kegerator.  Basically, you just shake a bunch of sanitizer in the Corny Keg, siphon the beer into it, and leave it at low pressure (10-12 psi) for a week, and you got delicious beer on tap.  Hopefully delicious, not quite sure yet since we haven’t tasted it.

The only issue I had was with converting my kegerator from a standard keg to the Corny keg.  I put the gas valve on the beer input, and it got stuck.  So we had to be creative in how to remove it.  After about an hour of tugging, soaping, lubing, etc, the hack saw finally made its appearance and made short work of the project.

So, listen to the guy at your local homebrew store when he tells you the gray goes on the gas.  That would have made life easier.  But now that it’s straightened out, I should be enjoying a nice homebrew on tap whenever I want.  Come on by starting Friday, and we’ll drink a bitter.