Miller Lite Homedraft Experiment!

So I've seen these Miller Lite Homedraft bottles around for awhile now, and the other day I decided to pick one up. Don't worry I didn't drink the Miller Lite, that was graciously donated to the city of Fairview water treatment center. After dumping out the bads, I gave it a quick rinse with hot water. Luckly I had 16 bottles of my latest Pale Ale in bottles. I just popped the caps of them and poured them into the homedraft bottle, being very careful not to create to much carbonation in the process. I let it set for a few days and tested it out, and it work great. I now have beer on tap without the trouble of a kegerator. This is the only way that I will store and dispense my beer from now on!

Bottling 2 Batches and Brewing the K.C. Wheat

We bottled 2 batches of beer on Saturday, the Honey Wheat and the Irish Red Ale. All together they equaled 96 twelve ounce bottles and 4 twenty-two ounce bottles. Add those to the 44  twelve ounce bottles of the Northwest IPA and we have 144 bottles of beer, not counting the 5 gallons of wheat that was made on Saturday as well.

We also made a Boulevard Wheat Beer clone. I was brewing and bottling on about 4 hours of sleep. The only mistake made during that time was a hop addition about 25 minutes too early. It should make it a tad bit more bitter than the beer we were aiming for.

We also sent two of the previously bottled beers, the Northwest IPA and the Irish Red Ale, to a homebrew competition in Bend, Or. The competition is in the beginning of June. I have a good feeling that both beers should place in their respectful categories. I post an update after the competition to tell how the beers did, as well as what the judges thought.

This Weekend's Batch!

Welsh's Wheat
6.5 lbs. Pale Malt
3.5 lbs. Soft White Wheat Malt
.5 oz Magnum Hops
.25 oz Simcoe Hops
Wyeast 1010 American Wheat


ABV 5.8%
IBU 19
O.G. 1.060
F.G. 1.015


This is a clone of a very popular Kansas City Wheat Beer.

Bottling

We bottled the West Coast Pale Ale yesterday, and I will say bottling with another person really makes it a quicker process. I filled and Jeff capped. It was a little crazy with a three beer switch, but we handled it very well. We moved the Pale Ale from the carboy to the bottles, moved the Honey Wheat to the empty (sanitized) carboy, and moved the Irish Red to another (sanitized) carboy. After doing a gravity check on the Honey Wheat we decided to hold off until Wednesday of this week. The Irish Red will be bottled on Sunday. We sampled each of the three beers during movement, other than being flat they each tasted really great!

There are a couple of competitions at the end of the month that we will send at least two of the beers to. Don't worry there will still be 144 bottles of fresh home brew at the Brown House. We have another batch planned for this Saturday and it will either be an E.S.B. or a Wheat beer. Which ever one we choose to do it will equal a great weekend.

Another beer quote that I like and thought of yesterday, comes from Free State Brewing in Lawrence, KS.
"Things don't seem to go as well without beer."

The World of Home Brews

Here are some of the beers that I have made over the past 3 years. 

 Award winning Irish Red Ale (Oregon Gardens Homebrew Competition 3rd place, Kansas City Irish Festival 3rd Place, Douglas County Fair 1st place)

 Kansas City Wheat Beer Clone (Douglas County Fair 1st place)

 Midnight Irish Ale

 Old American Ale

Scottish Ale


If you want I can post recipes for each of these beers!

Irish Red Ale and secondary transferring

Well, today I brewed an Irish Red Ale and transferred two batches of beer to the secondary fermentors. Let's just say I didn't think far enough ahead. My father in-law and I had two primary fermentors at our disposal and they both had beer in them. I started an all-grain batch before testing the gravity on the two batches to see if they were ready to be transferred over. We had a Honey Wheat and a West Coast Pale Ale, the honey wheat was about about 1.025 and the pale ale was about 1.015. I went ahead and transferred them both.  I know that I will have to watch the honey wheat to make sure it doesn't blow it's top.

While I was getting ready for the all-grain batch, I spilled water all over my in-laws' kitchen floor. It really got stressful for a minute and then I remembered a saying from the guys over at Basic Brewing: "Relax; have a home brew!" Well, I didn't have any home brew on hand so I just had a microbrew. After that everything just went a lot better. There was less stress and it really became an enjoyable brewing day! I can't wait to see how all the beer turns out and will keep you posted!