The Blue Canary Cream Ale Report

As regular readers of this blog or frequent listeners to the Podcast of Record Countless Screaming Argonauts (available for free on iTunes or listen from the website http://csapodcast.blogspot.com/) know, CollegeBoy and I have been brewing our own beer on occasion. We had done two previous batches of a Cream Ale and gave it the moniker Blue Canary Cream Ale (BCCA) after the They Might Be Giants song, “Birdhouse in Your Soul.” Well, we completed brewing batch #3 a week before Christmas, bottled it on Christmas Day, waited 14 days for it to naturally carbonate and popped open our first bottle on Saturday at about 2 PM.

I am here to report that it was a complete success. It is a creamy, flavorful ale, double hopped (once during the boil and second, 10 minutes before yeast is added), with a golden color and fresh taste second to none. We will be celebrating with a steak dinner tonight with twice baked potatoes, broccoli with cheese and MillieJupiter's first homemade beer bread (no we did not use the BCCA, we save that for drinking).

CB and I have now generated a list of questions which we will endeavor to answer over the next few weeks including

1. Do we move up to brewing in a draft container so that we have a tap beer. Currently we brew in 5 gallon pails and then bottle from that but it takes almost 2 hours to clean, prep, fill and cap the batch. There is an inexpensive kit that allows for the beer to be brewed in 1.5 gallon batches and have a tap adaptor so that you can put it directly into the fridge – like a mini keg.

2. One issue with the homebrew is the fact that it is a bit cloudy. That doesn’t harm the flavor at all but esthetically it is not the best. I understand that there is a seaweed extract that is used to clear the beer. We have to research this.

3. We have now used a kit three times to make the same beer. We are feeling experienced enough to try another kit beer that gives a different taste. However we don’t want to make too many changes at once such that if there is a problem in a future brew we can pinpoint the issue.

We are heading to the Reddit homebrew sub topic to ask these questions as we plan our next move. Until then, we are happy to drink our homemade beer and enjoy the satisfaction of our accomplishment. If you are in the neighborhood, stop by and enjoy a taste of a craft beer. But come quickly, we only have about 35 bottles left...