The Blue Canary Cream Ale Report

As has been reported here and on the CSA Podcast , CollegeBoy and I have endeavored to make our own home-brewed beer. It has been an unmitigated success across the board.

A quick summary – we purchased a basic brewing kit from Midwest Supply which came with everything we needed to begin. We also purchased 24 16 oz bottles and 3, 1 liter bottles for putting the beer into. We chose cream ale as the first beer to do, mainly because it is said to be an easy, straight forward recipe that gives you the time to figure out the rhythm of brewing. We have made 3 successful batches of this beer, christening it Blue canary Cream Ale, a tip of the hat to They Might Be Giants and their song “Birdhouse in my soul” which has been the inspiration for our podcast title, and now our beer. This brings us to the next step of our brewing experience.

Of all the hassles of brewing your own beer, the one that takes the most time and energy is cleaning and sterilizing the bottles and caps. The solution is to go directly to a tap system but these can get to be expensive. The question is 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 4 hours to clean, prep, fill and cap the supply. 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. This is the direction I believe we will head toward.

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. I have research this and it is a cheap, easy to use step in the overall process. Inexpensive too, so this will be included in our next order. This brings us to the next issue.

We have now used a kit three times to make the same beer. The kit is for what is called Liberty Cream Ale. 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. Thus we are going to make the same beer a fourth time, using a different process, directly into a keg from the initial wort. If all goes well with this procedure and process, we will branch out to a second beer. One being considered is honey ale. It would be similar to the cream ale but gets its priming sugar for carbonation from some honey. We will use the kits honey the first time but there is some room for experimentation in using say, a local honey – clover or other type. I expect New Mexico has some good local honeys too so I am looking forward to this variation.

Finally, we have found a great Reddit source of information, the homebrew sub topic. I am planning to write there soon to ask about the mini-keg system and other easy beginner recipes to help keep us moving forward. Until then, we are happy to drink our current homemade beer and enjoy the satisfaction of our accomplishment.