{"id":30,"date":"2009-05-15T09:15:45","date_gmt":"2009-05-15T14:15:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/?page_id=30"},"modified":"2009-09-04T13:46:22","modified_gmt":"2009-09-04T18:46:22","slug":"batch-8-09-american-light","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/?page_id=30","title":{"rendered":"Batch #7-09: American Light"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Style<\/td>\nAmerican Light<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Ingredients<\/td>\nIronmaster American Light Extract Kit<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Brewing Date:<\/td>\nSunday, July 19, 09<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Primary Fermentation:<\/td>\nSunday, July 19, 09<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Original Gravity:<\/td>\n1.036<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Secondary Fermentation:<\/td>\nn\/a<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Bottling Date:<\/td>\nSaturday, July 25, 09<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Final Gravity:<\/td>\n1.009<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Release Date:<\/td>\nLabor Day Weekend: Thursday, September 3, 09<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Alcohol by volume:<\/td>\n3.60%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Final Release Name:<\/strong><\/td>\nNasir’s Light Headed Beer
\n<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Summary:<\/p>\n

This is the first batch using a malt extract kit from Iron Master.\u00a0 All of the various beer styles from this Manufacturer have the same basic picture of a ship yard in the late 1800’s\/early 1900’s, with only the name of the beer style changing.\u00a0 Iron Master appears to have quite a good reputation among home brewers.<\/p>\n

I started this batch about 5 weeks out to time the release for the Labor Day weekend in September. I consumed the very last bottle of the previous batch while brewing this batch, so I will be going through a week long dry period.\u00a0 Yes, overlapping batches ARE a good thing.<\/p>\n

July 19, 2009 7:00PM :: The instructions for this kit call for emptying the malt extract kit directly into the fermentation bucket, then adding 5 pints of boiling water and the 1Kg of sugar, stirring, then diluting to 6 gallons with cold water.\u00a0 I am not a fan of raising the temperature of a plastic bucket above 120-140 degrees, whether it is food-grade plastic or not.\u00a0 So I boiled 5 pints of water in the brew pot on the stove, removed it from the heat, then stirred in the malt extract kit and the corn sugar.\u00a0 I cooled it in an ice bath for 15 minutes, then added it to 3 gallons of cold water already in the fermentation bucket.\u00a0 I added more cool water until the bucket was at 6 US Gallons, as directed.<\/p>\n

Once this was done, I took a temperature reading: 93 degrees.\u00a0 This was above the temperature for safely pitching yeast (90 deg).\u00a0 I covered the bucket with the lid (less airlock) and set a timer for 20 minutes. That lowered the temperature to about 92 deg, so I waited another 20 minutes, which brought the temperature down to 88 degrees.\u00a0 I pitched the yeast, sealed the bucket, and put in the airlock.<\/p>\n

I am trying something new with fermentation: I am using the swamp method, in an attempt to lower the temperature of the bucket a few degrees.\u00a0 Basically, the fermentation bucket is sitting in an 18 gallon plastic tub, with 2 inches of water at the bottom.\u00a0 I soak a bath towel in the water, then wrap it around the bucket.\u00a0 I use two small bungee cords to hold the towel around the top of the bucket, and the bottom of the towel lays in the water at the bottom.\u00a0 Basically, I re-soak the towel once a day to keep the upper half wet, but the bottom half of the towel will stay wet because it wicks the water from the bottom of the tub.\u00a0 As water evaporates from the towel, it lowers the temperature of the fermenation bucket.<\/p>\n

July 20, 2009 8:30AM :: Fermentation is active.. large burst of bubbles, spaced about 8 seconds apart.\u00a0 The towel is wicking the water nicely, and the bucket is cool to the touch.\u00a0 Off to a good start…<\/p>\n

July 21, 2009 5:30AM :: bubbling cycle has not changed.\u00a0 Thought I would need to resoak the towel, but the water is actually wicking right to the top of the bucket.<\/p>\n

July 22,2009 10:30PM :: the bubbling cycle is well over one minute, so the fermentation appears to be complete.\u00a0 Gravity reading 1.012<\/p>\n

July 24, 2009 7:30PM :: Gravity 1.009.. hmmm, strange considering the yeast shows no sign of activity over two days.\u00a0 Will wait for another reading.<\/p>\n

July 25, 2009 9:00PM :: Gravity 1.009 again, so I bottled it. \u00a0 The beer has a very smooth taste.\u00a0 I decided to use the remaining carbonation tabs for this batch.\u00a0 Produced 52 12oz bottles, and one 28oz Grolsch-style bottle I found at Ikea.\u00a0 It uses a plastic versus ceramic sealer (with vinyl versus rubber seal), but at $2.99 it’s worth the cost to experiment.<\/p>\n

July 30, 2009 (PM) :: Put a bottle in the fridge, and tried it after an hour.\u00a0 It has a very light, smooth taste, and there is a slight lambic after-bite.\u00a0 Very drinkable.<\/p>\n

August 16, 2009 (PM) :: Put a bottle in the fridge, and tried it after two hours.\u00a0 The taste is improving with time.\u00a0 The lambic after-bite has gone down slightly, the carbonation was good but a bit mild.\u00a0 There seems to be some inconsistency in carbonation, as some bottles show signs of bubbling and pressure, while others do not.\u00a0 Not sure if there is an issue with the seals when capping, or something else is going on.<\/p>\n

September 3-4, 2009 :: The final two weeks of conditioning really smoothed out the taste quite a bit.\u00a0 I received good feedback on the taste of the beer.\u00a0 The Ikea bottle experiment proved successful: the lid provided an excellent seal.\u00a0 So I will be buying some more of those the next time I go there.\u00a0 The only negative was very visible trum on the bottom, since the bottle was clear.\u00a0 I really like this style of beer and look forward to making it again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Style American Light Ingredients Ironmaster American Light Extract Kit Brewing Date: Sunday, July 19, 09 Primary Fermentation: Sunday, July 19, 09 Original Gravity: 1.036 Secondary Fermentation: n\/a Bottling Date: Saturday, July 25, 09 Final Gravity: 1.009 Release Date: Labor Day Weekend: Thursday, September 3, 09 Alcohol by volume: 3.60% Final Release Name: Nasir’s Light Headed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":19,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-30","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bitsofgenius.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}