Tangled up in Brew – A homebrew update

I begin by thanking my friend Bill in New Mexico for the title of this and all subsequent updates. Readers know I am a big Bob Dylan fan (see CollegeBoy’s name…) and Bill ran across this song reference on a beer bottle cap. He just retired a few months ago and makes frequent posts in Facebook of on his blog and often mentions having a grip on a nice bottle of something. This is an inspiration to me both in terms of my retirement and having a beer or two when I do. Thanks Bill.

Now to the update. If you read this post you know we were raising questions on where to go with the brewing process were involved in. Well, we made some decisions and up to this point have been very happy with the results. Bottling is a long, tedious process, the worst in the whole home brewing situation for us. It takes hours to clean, sanitize, fill, cap and store bottles of home brew, so we were looking for an alternative,. Someday when I am retired and have a bit more time and energy, I dream of doing “corny” kegs and a kegerator (beer keg fridge) but needed something to do now. I wrote on the sub Reddit-Homebrewing and got a great idea from someone – to reuse a Miller Home Draft Kit. I purchased 1.5 gallon bottles from a brew store, bought a draft kit from a local package store, drank the Coors Light and removed the tap. Two weeks ago, CollegeBoy and I brewed our 4th edition of Blue Canary Cream Ale and put it into the fermentor and last Saturday evening, we put it into 3 mini-kegs, where it sits today. It took all of 15 minutes to keg the beer out of the fermentor and I wondered where this process had been all our brewing lives, It was fast, easy and went without a hitch. In a few more days, we will have tap beer, my own tap beer and you could see the smile from where ever you are.

Next up is to begin a second batch of beer on my own as CollegeBoy is finishing up this semester and then is headed to Manhattan for an internship. So the time has come to do one on my own and I am up for the challenge. The first order of business is to decide on what kind of beer to brew. I have my eye on two different types - “honey” ale or a Sierra Nevada pale ale clone. I am also working on a mini-keg label for the Blue Canary and when I am done, I will also post it here. Watch for the next edition of “Tangled up in Brew” (I just love that name…), a taste of the last batch of BCCA FROM A TAP!