Last Updated: 20 August 1999
Here are the brews produced so far in the nano-brewery of Bailey&Wells:
The first beer we brewed, on my 29th birthday, the day Kathleen gave me the equipment. It was really, really good. I was very pleased with the result. The 2-carboy system really does a great job of filtering out a lot of the yeast sediment.
English Special Bitter,
Estimated Alcohol Content: 4.3%
Brewing History
Brewed: 12.18.93
Racked: 12.25.93
Bottled: 1.1.94
Ingredients
3 lbs Amber DME
2 lbs Light DME
2 c Crystal Malt, 60L
2 tsp
Gypsum
1 tsp Irish Moss
1¾ oz Norther Brewers Hops, alpha 7.7
(bittering)
½ oz Kent Hops, alpha 5.7 (finishing)
1 packet
Windsor Ale Yeast
¾ c priming sugar
5 gal fresh West Concord tap
water
Acknowledgements
Brewed from Alternative Beverage's Traditional recipe and kit.
Thanks
to BWB for initial grew-gunk stirring and bootstrap six-pack.
Many thanks to
SSS for calming advice and immoral support.
Thanks from RAW to KMB for a
wonderul present: the homebrew kit!
Very Important Quote
"Relax. Don't Worry. Have a homebrew."
---C. Papazian
At first I didn't like this one as much as the first one, but then I realized that it was better not to drink it too cold.
Irish Dry Stout,
Estimated Alcohol Content: 6.2%
Brewing History
Brewed: 2.8.94
Bottled: 3.8.94
Ingredients
1 can Stout Malt Extract
3 lbs Dark DME
1 c Black Patent Malt
1 c Flaked Barley
1 lb Roasted Barley
2 tsp Gypsum
½ oz
Bullions Hops, alpha 11.7 (finishing)
1 packet Dry Brewer's Yeast
¾
c priming sugar
5 gal fresh West Concord tap water
Acknowledgements
Brewed from Alternative Beverage's Original recipe and kit.
Very Important Quote
"Beer is a good family drink."
---Mrs. Child, The
American Frugal Housewife, 1832
"Beer is Food."
---Rena
S. Wells' refrigerator magnet
Righteous Real Ale
Our good friends Sue and Thomas were visiting from Sweden so I couldn't resist attempting to transliterate the name of the beer into Swedish. The beer turned out really well, too. I also deviated from the label style established with the first two beers. (I've since switched back to the "traditional" style.)
From the label:
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Another real winner. I took a couple of six-packs to a children's birthday party (Aiury Gregory Fonseca Cavallo's 1st, to be precise) and they were a big hit (with the adults, that is).
Brewing History
Brewed 5.11.96
Racked 5.19.96
Bottled 5.27.96
Ingredients
2 cans (3kg) Hopped Light Malt Extract
1/8 lb roasted barley
1
oz Cascade hops
2 packets M&F Ale Yeast
¾ c priming sugar
5 gallons fresh West Concord tap water
Acknowledgements
Brewed from Chalie Papazian's recipe, with adjustments for available malt extract can sizes, as suggested by the kind folks at The Modern Brewer, Somerville
Very Important Quote
"You can't be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an
airline---it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear
weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER."
---Frank Zappa,
The Real Frank Zappa, 1989
Now this really is a weird beer. Read the label, below, for a hint of the story. Some folks really like this beer. I think it tastes, for lack of a better word, strange. I'm not sure I like it. And, as the Märzen came hot on its heels and was much more to my liking, we have (as of 25 June 1997) more of this beer left than of the one that came after it.
Brewing History
Brewed 11.19.96
Racked 11.16.96
Bottled 11.24.96
Ingredients
7 lbs Light Malt Extract
1 lb light MA honey
½ lb crystal
malt
½ c black patent malt
2 oz Cascade hops (boiling)
1 oz
freshly grated ginger root
6 in stick of cinnamon
grated peels from 1 orange and 3 strange fruit...
2 packets M&F
Ale Yeast
¾ c priming sugar
4½ gallons fresh West Concord tap
water
Acknowledgements
Brewed from Chalie Papazian's "Holiday Cheer" recipe
*---help from: JSA, S&T, S&M, B&L
Very Important Quote
"A sad tale's best for winter."
---William
Shakespeare, A Winter's Tale
Our first attempt at a Lager. At first I thought I'd use the basement fridge for lagering, but it turns out that a basement-level garage during a New England winter is perfect for lagering. And look at how long it took for me to finally racking it. The beer didn't seem to suffer at all! I was really anxious about trying to brew a lager, but it worked out great. (I guess I should not have worried and had a homebrew...)
Oh, and this was the first beer with a label produced on our new computer and with a color printer. It's definitely more attractive, but beer does, in fact, smear ink jet ink!
Brewing History
Brewed 11.23.96
Racked 2.9.97
Bottled 2.23.97
Ingredients
7 lbs Light Malt Extract
½ lb roasted barley
½ c
chocolate malt
2 oz Hallertauer hops (boiling)
½ oz Hallertauer
hops (finishing)
2 packets lager yeast
¾ c priming sugar
5
gallons fresh West Concord tap water
Acknowledgements
Brewed from Chalie Papazian's "Winky Dink Märzen" recipe. Now apparently Winky Dink was a cartoon dog in teh 1950s in the first interactive TV show. But there is no pictuer of Winky Dink on the Net. He is a Mystery Dog.
Very Important Quote
"Winko!"
---Dave Barry, on the floor of the 1994
NATPE convention
This was a great success. Easy to make, easy to drink. The batch really did not last long enough...
It was attempt number two at a lager. It was supposed to be lighter than the Märzen, and it certainly was. Although it looked pretty dark during bottling it was a lot lighter than Märzen when poured and certainly not nearly as sweet, if at all. This was my first attempt without strictly following someone else's recipe. I thought using Irish malt extract (and moss) with a Pilsener yeast would be a fun mix. The name, though accurate, is mainly a pun (duh).
Brewing History
Brewed 2.97
Racked 4.97
Bottled 6.7.97
(OK, so my record-keeping is getting sloppy...)
Ingredients
4 lbs Irish light malt extract
3 lbs 5 oz M&E hopped Pilsener light malt extract
½ t Irish moss
1 oz Hallertauer hops (boiling)
½ oz Hallertauer hops (finishing)
1 package C&B True Brew Pilsener lager yeast
¾ c priming sugar
5 gallons fresh West Concord tap water
Very Important Quote
"Because TCP/IP is required for Internet connection, the large
number of diverse organizations recently added to the Internet has spurred
interest in TCP/IP."
---Craig Hunt, TCP/IP Network
Administration
Another good one. I wanted to have some homebrew on hand for a big family invasion in April 1999 on the occasion of my grandfather's 85th birthday (1999.04.14), so I came up with this one, going back to intermediate difficulty by including adjunct grains and using whole leaf hops. I wanted to use a liquid yeast, but the local supplier didn't have any that wasn't expired.
A very drinkable result, though I think it would have been better-tasting and less cloudy had it not spent so much time in secondary fermentation.
Brewing History
Brewed 1999.10.25
Racked 1999.11.dd [more sloppy record-keeping...]
Bottled 1999.03.14 [note the long second stage...]
Ingredients
5 lbs Munton's light malt extract
1 lb Munton & Fison lager grain malt
1 ½ oz Cascade whole leaf hops alpha 6.0 (bittering)
½ oz German Hallertauer hop pellets alpha 3.7 (finishing)
2 packages M&F dried lager yeast
5 ounces priming sugar
4 ½ gallons fresh West Concord tap water
Very Important Quote
"Bier löscht Durst!"
---Opa
The quote was a joke, in that I got Opa to read a piece of paper on it that read "Bier löscht Durst!" (German for "Beer quenches thirst!") just before I poured him a glass of it.