New Beer!

Brewed a new batch of beer tonight; Maggie’s Brown Ale. I tried a few new tricks this time in hopes of having a much clearer final product. Maybe you can tell me if I am in for a disaster.

This particular brew had a bunch of cracked grains in addition to the malts. I used a nylon bag for the grain and then reused it for my hops. I’ve never bagged the hops before, and the bag did get pretty plugged up but the hops aroma was plenty strong. When I was done with the hops I squeezed the water out and ended up with two fistfulls of clay like hops that would have otherwise been in the beer. Good, I hope.

I also let the wort settle for about 30 minutes after the boil, before cooling. Since the hops were already removed there was not much trub, but a decent amount of break still ended up in the fermenter. This will settle out pretty well I think.

Anyway, the beer looked and smelled great so here’s hoping it will taste great as well. I picked up some 1 litre Grolsche style bottles which I am going to use to bottle this batch instead of 12oz bottles. Bottling is the only part of the entire process I don’t like at all, so I think only having to wash, sterilize and fill 16 bottles instead of 54 will make a big difference, plus it’s easier to share! 🙂