Bottling: The less glamourous side of home brewing

Read any home brewing blog and you'll see lots of posts about beer recipes, grain, hops, brewing techniques and indeed talk about tasting the beer when it's been made. What you won't see so much about is the bottling of the beer. Bottling must be the most hated task of the home brewer. Compared to the fun of planning the recipe and brewing the beer it's just tedious, it's the last finishing step that has to be gotten out of the way before you get to the good part which is drinking the beer.

It has to be done though and this week I bottled my polar beer which I brewed back in January. It's been sitting almost unnoticed in the shed getting nice and cold.

I've developed a bit of a system to deal with the pain of bottling. I put a load of bottles to be sterilized into a plastic box. The plastic box means I don't get sterilizer all over the kitchen counter as it can stain it. I then use a funnel to pour the sterilizing solution into the bottles until they are full. If I'm using swing tops I then close the bottles and leave the solution to do it's work. I then rinse them until there is no smell of sterilizer from them. I don't usually leave the bottles to dry though I suspect I should.

I boil up the recommended amount of sugar with water and let it cool. I pour it into a sterilized better bottle which acts as the bottling bucket. Using a sanitized tube I transfer the beer from the primary fermenter to the bottling bucket.

At this stage I usually need help to move the full better bottle up onto the table. I then attach a bottling wand to the tap of the better bottle. Bottling wands really help with not losing the will to live while bottling.

I get all the bottles and caps I'll need together on some newspaper and then put a bucket under the bottling wand to catch any drips. Then I bottle away and hope that it doesn't take too long.

Usually I measure the final gravity of the beer. This time however I forgot to take a sample before I put the sugar in so the reading I took is wrong. Ah well I'm sure it fermented out and the required amount of alcohol is present. Very precise I know.  

I usually have a husband helper to close the bottles if they're flip tops and cap with crown caps if needed. I can recommend a helper as it speeds up the process and you also have someone to talk to. Some people recommend opening a home brew from the previous batch when bottling and this is also very sensible advice. For more on bottling see Barry's excellent guide to bottling.

I don't know even blogging about bottling is getting to be as tedious as the act itself. So that's enough of that. On to the results of the sneaky taste of the beer. I can't wait to taste this beer when it ages a bit more and is fully carbonated. It's nice and clean with no yeast profile which is what I was looking for. It's malty but I couldn't fully work out what was going on with the malt from the taste I had. I was impressed by the hop profile, it's got a lovely bitter hit just at the end and no real flavour or aroma. All in all it's looking very promising for the polar beer.

Aran Brew featured in Mail on Sunday article

I discovered that Aran Brew was featured in the Irish Mail on Sunday yesterday. I did an interview with Caroline about home brewing a while ago and had almost forgotten it. The article is published in full on the Bibliocook blog here. Great to see an article about modern home brewing dispelling the myths that it tastes awful and is only for people making beer on the cheap. She also captured the sense of community and enthusiasm that goes along with home brewing. It's such a fun hobby and I think more people should try it out.  

If you've just come to this blog and are wondering why all the posts seem to be about knitting and where the hell is the beer, well here's a link to all the posts tagged with brewing and a link to those tagged with beer. My most recent brew was an alt beer called Polar Beer and I'm going to bottle it this week. From the preliminary tastes I've had it seems to have turned out really well.

I'm also going to use this post to link to Ireland's newest micro brewery Dungarvan Brewing Company. I know the people who have set up this brewery and they are true beer enthusiasts. They were home brewers originally and are now living the dream by setting up their own brewery. The beers will be featured at this years Franciscan Well easter festival and I'm really looking forward to tasting them especially the copper coast red ale.

 

Aran Brew is two! Blog Giveaway.

It's been a long cold winter and spring has been slow coming in this year. On Thursday evening when I found myself with some spare time I decided to dye some yarn and fleece. I wanted to cheer myself up with some spring colours. I wanted to capture the colour of a daffodil bud just before the flower bursts out. I ended up with this.

I'm really happy with how it turned out. It's such a lovely fresh spring green colour. The yarn is from Cushendale woolen mills and it's a lovely sock yarn spun from Irish fleece in a traditional woolen style. I visited the mill in Graignamanagh when I went walking by the river with my Mum and aunt recently. It's a lovely village in the first place and the mill makes it even better to visit. Unfortunately I forgot my camera so I can't show you photos of the place or even the glorious sunshine and views we had when we walked by the river side.

I just looked back at my post history there and have discovered that next week Aran Brew is two years old. It doesn't seem like it, maybe that's because I've had so much fun writing this blog and documenting my adventures in brewing, knitting and all the other crafts I try. I love seeing comments and hearing that people like reading what I write. There is another reason to celebrate this week, the blog has made the (not so) short lists for the Irish blog awards. Congratulations to the other fibre related blogs on the list, Dublin knit collective, She knit up that ball, Clasheen and Etsy Ireland. Also congratulations to Live at the witch trials, The Beer Nut and 9 Bean Row. Well done everyone. I'm going to the blog awards in Galway so expect a report on that.   


Anyway back to the yarn. Do you like it? Would you like to have it? Yes? Excellent! I'm having my first ever blog giveaway of this skein of yarn in celebration of the blog being two and the blog awards. All you have to do is leave a comment telling me why you love spring and what you'll do with the yarn. I'll announce who has won next week.

While I had the dyeing stuff out I decided I might as well dye some of my alpaca fleece. I grabbed a load of fleece from the bags in the shed. I figured I'd wash the fleece and then dye it all in one go to save myself some time. It worked really well and I'll be doing this from now on. The dyes came from Kemtex in the UK as part of their starter kit. I just dunked the fleece in the pot in laundry bags and sprinkled some dye on. It didn't look like it was going to turn out ok as the water was pretty murky and grey looking. I presume the alpaca wasn't completely clean. I took the fleece out and rinsed it and hung it to dry not expecting much. But when it dried I was really surprised, it turned out to be this lovely soft blue colour reminding me of a blue sky on a day with a few clouds.

I also dyed some silk hankies and have just started to spin them on my Zebisis drop spindle. I love silk, it's amazingly shiny fantastic stuff.  I've got lots going on at the moment so expect some new posts about what I'm knitting, the opening of the crochet coral reef, bottling my alt beer, some brewing plans and some fun beer tasting.

Raised Hackles

After reading Deb Menz's book Colour In Spinning I wanted a hackle. What on earth is a hackle I hear you ask? It's a slightly scary, well very scary looking piece of equipment used for blending and combing fibres. They're particularly good for blending combed top which is one of the most common types of fibre you can get. They're also quite expensive. I was reading a thread in the art yarn spinners group on Ravelry which had a link to this tutorial where someone has made a hackle themselves cheaply.

Being financially challenged at the moment I decided it was worth giving it a go. It wouldn't cost much and would be a very useful piece of kit if it worked.

First I needed a load of hair combs. These were surprisingly difficult to find. I even checked the Afro-Caribbean shops on Moore St to no avail. I do think they thought I was slightly mad looking for a load of hair combs since my hair is very short. I found that they sell all kinds of tat on Moore St these days though. Eventually I found the right combs in Dunnes Stores and I grabbed five of them.

I got some metal self tapping screws and some clamps from the DIY shop. I found a piece of wood in the back of the shed that would work as base to screw the combs onto. All in all it cost less than twenty euro.

Dave was enlisted to help and he drilled two holes in each comb then screwed the comb onto the wood while I held the comb in place. It was pretty easy and didn't take very long. The real question was, would it work? 

It always amazes me that you can learn all sorts of things online that you never could without the internet. I don't know anyone person who even knows what a hackle is let alone someone who knows how to use one. You Tube however comes to the rescue with this video.

 

I lashed on the fiber like in the video. This is a selection of merino that was part of a mixed bag from The Yarn Room.  I used this fiber before when I carded it with some alpaca and got a nice fuzzy yarn. Actually I just looked back through the blog and I seem to have forgotten to write anything about that yarn. Ah well I'm sure it will show up here soon having been turned into a hat or something. 

I put different colours on in layers building them up until the combs were full. I then pulled the roving and threaded it through my diz. Now I hear you ask, what is a diz? Does spinning require you to learn a different language? Sometimes it feels like it. A diz is used to take fiber off a comb or hackle. It's just something with a small diameter hole so that the fiber comes out the same width when pulled through it. Lacking anything else I used a bottle opener that was handy.

 

Something magic happens when you pull the fiber off the combs. It all gets blended and mixed up together. I think the colours when mixed are much nicer than the individual ones. I pulled off all the fiber and rolled it up into two big balls. I'll spin these up on the wheel soon. 

The hackle was a success for something we knocked together so quickly. I think it will only work on prepared fleece as too much tugging on the combs would probably break them. I want it for blending fiber and it's perfect for that. So now that I know it works for top I'm going to start blending some of the fiber I have with fun stuff like angelina, silk noil, ribbons, sequins etc.  

 

Ravelympics Winter 2010

Who am I to fight against weird internet memes? The knitting Olympics has been run for many years by the Yarn Harlot. Then Ravelry got in on the act setting up the Ravelympics. The idea is that you cast on at the opening ceremony and finish a whole project by the closing ceremony challenging yourself in the process. I was on holidays during the last olympics so I didn't quite get my mittens knit on time and missed out on a medal.

This time there would be no mistakes, I had put in the training and I was going to get a medal if it killed me, well perhaps not kill but major RSI was a risk I'm telling you. I decided to do two challenging projects, one spinning and one a lace shawl.

The lace shawl would be the famous and fabulous Ishbel by Ysolda Teague. I cast on the day the olympics started in The Bull and Castle pub with a pint of Galway Hooker to steady the nerves. I was there to meet the wonderful Irish members of the all conquering Ravelry group, Lazy, Stupid and Godless. I love that group of crazy beatchs. I got to meet my fibre dealer Laura Hogan too, go to her Etsy shop and she'll sort you out with a fiber fix. Kneehigh brought a date, her Mmmmalabrigo scarf, she knows how to show yarn a good time. The distractions of great conversation, a rugby match and beer were all too much and I had to start it about five times before I figured out what I was supposed to do. I then had trouble with the purl yarn overs so I put the knitting aside and concentrated on the fun day out part.

It transpires that I'm not the only one who had problems with the yarn overs and this helpful post explained the problem. I used the large holes solution and that worked perfectly. The yarn is a lovely merino, cashmere, nylon mix from Old Maiden Aunt that I dyed myself during the course I did with Lillith in Scotland last year. The stocking stitch part went really quickly and then I got into the lace. I haven't done much lace knitting before so doing a big project with charts was a challenge. When I figured out how the charts worked I found the charts much easier to follow than written lace directions. In future I'll definitely be doing all lace from charts. I really enjoyed knitting the lace. I made a couple of mistakes but I noticed them and was able to either tink back or in the case of a missing yarn over a row down I used this handy method to fix it.

I knit most of the shawl while actually watching the Winter Olympics on BBC2. I love the winter games, as a kid we had Eurosport and I got obsessed by watching ski jumping on it and I still love it. This time I really fell for the new discipline of ski cross. The first set of obstacles are called Wu-Tangs after the Wu-Tang clan, bringing some much needed gangsta to proceedings. I also got to dream about being as cool as Amy Williams and throwing myself at race car speeds down an ice slope on a glorified tea tray. In fairness the closest I'll get to emulating the athletes is by trying my hand at curling in Chamonix later this year. Here's the Ishbel blocking on my bright blue yoga mat. When it's dry I'll take some glamorous shots of it and post them up. I've been looking at it not quite able to believe I knit it in just over two weeks. I love it.

 

The spinning part of my Ravelympics was a challenge too. I wanted to spin up the lovely merino/tencel fiber that I dyed as part of my dyeing course at Old Maiden Aunt. I had ideas about what I wanted this yarn to be. The fiber is a grey/purple mixed with white. Tencel being a plant based fiber doesn't absorb the acid dyes one uses on wool based fiber so it stays white which gives a fantastic effect.

I wanted to corespin the fiber but my last corespun yarn ended up very over twisted and not looking too happy. There's a great group called Novelty and Art Yarn Spinners on Ravelry where I found a link to JazzTurtle's fantastic blog post about core spinning. I tried her technique and it worked much better this time, it's almost balanced in the end. I wanted this yarn to be bulky and thick and think. I also autowrapped the yarn with black lurex thread. Autowrapping is a fun technique where you leave a thread to do it's own thing while you're spinning so it wraps around the spun yarn at the wheel's orifice. The yarn ended up bulky weight and I have about 70 metres of it. I think it will look fab as a funky hat or cowl. I might combine it with some left over black Hulda from my Owls jumper. I named the yarn Bill Compton as I've been watching rather a lot of True Blood lately. I think it suits, it's dark and twisted and all that.

Crochet Coral Reef

 
Since finishing off my hats I've been busily crocheting coral for the Irish Crochet Coral Reef which will be exhibited in the Science Gallery soon. On Saturday the 20th Feb from 1-3pm Margaret Wertheim will be back to talk about the submissions for the reef and finalizing the project before the exhibition. Go here to book tickets, they're free.  Margaret is a fantastic speaker so if you have an interest in the project you should go along.

Above is a photo of some of the coral I saw while snorkeling in Jamaica. It really made me think more about the crochet coral reef and how it's raising awareness about the disappearance of these amazing ecosystems. The coral I saw definitely provided inspiration for my own crochet. I used a lot of plastic which wasn't the easiest to crochet with but the effect is great. I like the recycling aspect of taking something that is destroying reefs and using it to raise awareness of the problem. The black coral below is made from Jamaican black plastic scandal bags. You can see some of the coral posing for pictures below. I particularly like the blue and green one that reminds me a bit of some amazing nudibranchs I saw in the National Geographic.

I made another large floppy white plastic coral which isn't pictured at Make night last week. This was also held in the Science Gallery. It was a fun night where lots of people turn up to make stuff. There were robots, electronics, origami, cupcakes and crochet. I also got to play with sugru which is one of the very best substances in the world. 

 

  

  

  

  

 

 

Irish Beer and Cheese Evening

 

I've talked before about the joys of beer and cheese on this blog. Dave happened to buy some Irish cheese in the shops and we had some Irish beer so the idea of having an Irish beer and cheese night formed. We rang some people and Thom and Séan and his wife agreed to come over for a night of beer and cheese. 

The beers were all Irish, we got a selection of almost all the bottled craft beers you can get in Ireland. There was Porterhouse Hophead and Plain; O'Hara's Stout, Red, Curim Gold and Aldi Ale; Whitewater's Clotworthy Dobbin and Belfast Black; Hilden's Belfast Blonde and Cathedral Quarter. 

The cheese came from the supermarket and Sheridans Cheesemongers. There was Cashel Blue, Tipperary Camembert, Wexford cheddar with chives, Knockanore smoked, Mileens, Coolea mature and Ryefield Goats Cheese.

All this was served with homemade brown bread, cheese crackers, chutney and grapes. Sean also brought some tasty olives and chutney. I can recommend a beer and cheese night if you don't like cooking much but still want to invite people over for food and drinks. It's really easy to prepare. All you have to do is unwrap the cheese and lay it all out on some nice plates.

We tasted the lighter beers with the lighter cheeses first then moved on to the stronger darker beerswith the stronger cheeses like the cashel blue. The knockanore smoked was especially popular, it was all gone by the end of the night. I liked the Mileens cheese a lot, I thought it went well with the Curim Gold but others didn't. That's the funny thing about beer and cheese, I could recommend lots of matches here and you could try them and be wondering why on earth I thought they went together. Much better to have your own beer and cheese evening and find your own perfect match. I usually try a few cheeses with each beer as the tastes change with each different cheese.

The best Irish beers on the night were agreed to be Porterhouse Plain, Carlow's Aldi Ale and Porterhouse Hophead. So the Porterhouse are obviously doing things right with their new bottling line. Very disappointing was Hilden's Cathedral Quarter. It really didn't taste right and we wondered if we'd gotten a bad bottle but I remembered I had this recently in a pub and it wasn't right then either. So perhaps there was a whole bad batch or maybe it's supposed to taste like this which isn't a good thing.

Thom brought along a few beers which were duly tasted. He also brought an experimental beer of his which had been left sitting on the yeast for ages. This is a big no no in brewing as it leads to autolysis which can lead to off flavours. Not so in the case of this beer, it was fantastic and I look forward to tasting a carbonated version soon. 

First Dublin Spinning Meet Up

The first Dublin spinning meet up happened last Sunday. The plan is that spinners will meet on the balcony at the Powerscourt Centre in Dublin's city centre on the last Sunday of every month. I loaded up the car with Gloria the wheel and set off. I walked in to see wheels, spindles, fibre, biscuits and many happy spinners. 

Above you can see Thread Bear's wheel Daisy in action. Also Handspunheart was there with her Louet wheel, Louie. There were many spindle spinners including the ladies from Playing With Fibre, Hooks Law, She Knit Up That Ball, Chic With Stix and others. Many of them were dab hands and a few people were just starting out on the road to spinning obsession. It was lovely to sit and spin with people who understand the obsession. I also had some lovely coffee and an oreo cupcake which pretty much made it into a perfect day.

Strangely enough with all the chatting and admiring other peoples fibre and wheels I managed to spin up the BFL fibre I dyed with kool-aid. It was agreed that due to the colours it should be called Wibbly Wobbly Wonder after the ice-cream. It's a single, sport weight and about 60 metres. Not sure what it wants to be yet but it's pretty.