Remember that Elephant Ear plant we had last Summer? Here is a memory refresher.
Well, it has gone dormant, so we cut it off and de-potted it for the Winter. There was a surprise when it came out of the pot.
We only planted one bulb, but there were two of them in the pot. It is reproducing. Pretty scary.
Happy Thanksgiving to all of my readers.
We finally took delivery on our bookcases last week. We had these finished the same color as the kitchen cabinets, and they came out very nice.
These are Arthur W. Brown bookcases, made in the U. S. of A. and delivered, unfinished, to our local outlet who put the finish on them. Here is a link:
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The second batch of beer is in the bottles. I got 50 bottles out of this batch, and this time I posed them for a formal portrait before allowing them to skitter away to their crates.
You can count ’em if you want to.
The empty bottles in the back were scrubbed and sanitized along with the rest, but then I ran out of beer before they got filled.
Poor, empty bottles. Always a beer’s-maid; never a beer.
They’ll get over it.
Tonight we popped a couple of the beers out of the first batch to see how it is coming along, and the results are in:
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It will still be a couple of weeks before it is completely ready to drink, but it has not gone sour in the bottles.
Beer joy.
The next batch of beer is now bubbling happily in the carboy. I put up a batch of Honey Porter yesterday. This one has two pounds of honey in it instead of just one, so it is bubbling even faster than the previous one.
Well, I think it is bubbling faster than the previous one. But you can judge for yourself. You know the drill. Click on the bucket to hear the beer.
It is nearly a week later, and the beer is sleeping quietly in the basement under its blanket.
The thing sitting on top is a min/max thermometer which I use to monitor the temperature of the beer as it matures. We have to keep it warm enough, and we also have to keep it in the dark to keep it from skunking. In a week or so we will wake it up to see how it came out.
Well, actually, it’s 51 bottles of beer…. and they aren’t on the wall, but on the counter. Today I put the baby beer into the bottles so that it can mature into grown up beer. Here they are.
Well, OK. That isn’t all 51 bottles either since I didn’t remember to shoot the photo until after half of them were already put away. But you get the idea.
Want to see what is left in the carboy after the beer has been bottled?
Ewww!
Here’s a closeup in case you still have your lunch.
The first week of fermentation is done. The bubble activity has become quiet and civilized, so I have replaced the large hose and bucket with a simple air lock.
The baby beer is now making teenie little baby bubbles, so a regular air lock will suffice for releasing the CO2. The beer looks like it is smiling, but it is really just gas.
The air lock lets the gas out of the carboy, and keeps the air out of the carboy at the same time. Letting oxygen into the beer at this stage will make it go sour.
One more week of fermenting, and we will put it into the bottles.
You can tell that the baby beer is happy because of the burbling sounds that it makes in the bucket.
Click on the photo of the bucket to hear the happy beer.
It has been brought to my attention by more than one reader of this blog that in the image posted with my previous entry there is an unfortunate juxtaposition of the beer brewing equipment with some toilet plungers… which are visible in the background.
The implication is that this might result in some…… uh… crappy beer.
But one must remember that this brewing is happening in our new house, in which the floors are not coming up and the toilets do flush, so those maintenance tools remain unused. They are probably cleaner than the step stool sitting next to the carboy since that item is walked upon nearly daily and picks up whatever cruft happens to be stuck to the bottoms of one’s shoes. Hence any problem with contamination of the beer is avoided and we do not need to make a stink about it.
Hmmmm. Maybe I should move that step stool somewhere else.
