Following up on my previous post about homebrewing beer, it is about time to mention batches #8 to #12 that we've been making since March. As before I'll link below to the GoogleDocs that we use for keeping logs.

But first let me mention the most important thing I've learned since that last post: water adjustment. Looking at the analysis from our own deep well I found a good explanation for why our light-colored beers had a harsh and unpleasant bitterness to them; turns out that our water has a high rest alkalinity, causing a too high ph-value of the mash which in turn causes this astringency. The best compact explanation and adjustment calulator I've found so far is this one, in German though. The link has our water values pre-filled, so you can easily see that we would have needed to add 7ml of lactic acid to the mash water to compensate the alkalinity for a Pilsner like our #5.

When it comes to equipment I've only made a few minor improvements, like lautering into a newly-bought 3l-beaker instead of the boiling pot. This shortens the time until boil because the heat can be on as soon as the first beaker is emptied into the pot on the stove. It also eliminates the critical moment of liftig the full pot up onto the stove - dropping it, or one of the handles to break off would result in 27 liters of sugar solution being spread all over the kitchen floor, not a pleasant thought. On the other hand, we now have to be careful to not let the beaker run full; yeas, it has happened once already.

I am also more than halfway into reading J. Palmer's How to Brew which I bought recently. It nicely summarizes what I had learned so far from various sources, it explains the why behind certain rules and practices, and generally goes into much more detail than I had expected from an all-encompassing book. Highly recommended!

Finally, the beers:

The #7 Copper Cascade Lager already mentioned last time turned out very good. Red and dark-ish, it was nicely malty and lacked the astringency of the ligher beers before. In hindsight this is as expected, since darker malts work better with alkaline water.

The #8 Weißbier was fantastic, my favourite so far. When poured without the yeast from the bottle it was perfectly clear (Kristallweizen), and very pleasant and easy to drink. Which meant it did not last long...

#9 A&K Festbier was a light Ale after a recipe that matched more or less the ingredients that I had left. It turned out nicely, perfectly drinkable, but not spectacular.

The #10 Blonde was a failure in the sense that I wanted to re-make the Weißbier from above, but messed up when ordering ingredients online; I thus had no wheat malt. But the WLP300 yeast needed to be used so I improvised the malt mixture. Recipe-wise it somewhat matches a light Belgian ale but the yeast made a "Weißbier" out of it anyway, with a clear resemblance to #8, but quite not as good. Still surprisingly drinkable.

#11 Bockbier was the birthday present to myself, trying out a stronger beer for once (OG 1.062, 6.8% vol.alc.), in the style of a light-colored German Bock. This was bottled almost two weeks ago and I just tried the first one this evening, prompting me to write this post. Because it is amazingly good! Very pleasant, not astringent (water adjustment seems to work), and hiding its high alcohol content well - the kind of stuff that is dangerous! In the sense that it is all too easy to have one too much of. I'll give the other bottles a few more days of conditioning before they go into the fridge.

#12 IPA. Finally, we also gave in to the trend and made an India Pale Ale, first time dry-hopping from day 8 to 12. I bottled it today (see picture above, together with #11) and it will stay at room-temperature for a little less than two weeks, as usual. Report on how it turned out will follow.

The next two batches are most likely to be a dark Lager (Münchner Dunkles) and a proper re-creation of the #8 Weißbier. This time with yeast starters to have the proper pitching rate of yeast cells - many of the previous beers had a too-low amount of yeast added in the beginning, according to Palmer's wisdom.

This is probably only funny to German sysadmins, but seeing those labels made me chuckle. W

This litte bat fell into an open trash bin in our shed yesterday. Luckily I heard it scratching and helped it out. It flew away after a short while, circling twice before disappearing into the forest.

It's not often that I treat myself with a fresh order of books - I've been consuming more ebooks and audiobooks lately. But after I finished Harari's fantastic Sapiens, I wanted the successor Homo Deus right away. If you havn't heard of the former, I can highly recommend it! It's a critical look at our species, from a more unbiased perspective than we are used to.

Then there is Medieval Uppland, a book that will hopefully give us some inspiration for summer excursions nearby. Last, How To Brew is the just-out new edition of what seems to be the homebrewers' bible. After skimming through it, there sure is enough detail to satisfy the needs of not-so-novice-anymore brewers. I'm currently waiting for my 11th batch to finish fermenting.

I finally managed to fix our sewing machine, so what was started when it broke could be finished. Never mind that the very cold days are over.

In November last year, two colleagues and I happened to talk over lunch about home-brewing beer; a few days later packages with equipment arrived at our door-steps. None of us had any real experience and I only vaguely remembered a good podcast (CRE 194, in German) on the subject. But how hard could it be?

So we read a few websites and ended up following the beginner's instructions at brauanleitung.de. Our equipment is for the standard homebrewers' batch size of ~20 liters (5 gallons), meaning a big pot, two plastic buckets, one for filtration, one for fermenting; a few hoses and connectors, plus the actual ingredients for our batch #1: a single hop and single (Pilsner) malt for a German-style "Altbier", that is a light ale like they were made before Lagers became popular.

The result was good. Not the most amazing beer ever (partly because we were impatient and did not give it enough time from bottle fermentation to drinking), but definitely good enough to continue! I will link below to the GoogleDocs that we used for keeping our logs; these are in a varying mix of three languages (Swe/Ger/Eng) since we all know them to some degree and gathered recipes and information this way. But fellow brewers should be possible to read the recipes anyway.

Our #2 was an Irish Red Ale. This was a big step up, following a proper recipe with four times as many ingredients as our #1. We thought it would fit nicely as a Christmas beer, and it sure did. Very malty, not much hops, almost sweet because of the liquid yeast with lower attenuation.

The Brown Ale #3 came into being through me just taking some remaining ingredients from the previous two batches. It turned out quite all right, more bitter and hoppy than #2, less malty.

Next we wanted to try a Lager, since our closet in wintertime holds a temperature of 10-12 C, perfect for bottom-fermentation. So #4 became a Helles, that is a Munich-style light lager and it went really well. Clear, great color and taste, better than the average commercial Helles I tried at the time in Munich.

Continuing in the same line, our #5 is a Pilsner. Quite happy with that one as well, on the upper end of hop and bitterness for my liking, but far from any of the trendy IPAs that go berserk on the hops. The dry yeast settled better in the bottle than the one we had for #4, so it it easier to pour clear into the glass.

For #6 we went for a Dark Ale that has some torrefied maize among the ingredients. It makes for a fantastic foam, but maybe we overdid the carbonation a little because it foams by itself when opening a bottle, and the sediment gets torn up and mixed. Fortunately it settles quickly in the glass after pouring. Another very pleasant malty ale!

#7 is Copper Cascade, another Lager, reddish this time, probably the last for this winter. This batch is about to be bottled, so no verdict on the outcome yet.

Overall the above means that I now have a little stash at home to enjoy whenever I feel like it, which is very luxurious. We have some routine in brewing and bottling now, no screw-ups yet, it is still fun and considering Swedish prices on beer, our small investment in the beginning has already more than paid for itself. We will therefore continue, maybe at a slightly slower pace than recently. Next in line are a Bavarian wheat beer and an IPA. The malts and hops are already on the way.

A few brew and result pictures

The kitchen with 30 litre pot, filtration bucket to the right.

Improvised but functional cooling

Measuring gravity

The very first result

Bottled Irish Red #2

Trying the Brown Ale #3

Transfer before bottling

Almost done, just cool-down, pitch yeast and cleaning.

Measuring the #4 Helles

Maize and roasted barley for the Dark Ale #6

Admiring the Dark Ale #6

Cool-down takes time

The Brown Ale #3 in glasses

The Pilsner #5 in glass

The box for +1 C lagering, with bottles and bucket

The Dark Ale #6 in glass

In lack of nearby prepared tracks for cross-country skiing, one can always build a small sledge with the right underside profile, put enough weights in it to match the snow, and drag it behind you.

A parcel with early presents for ourselves arrived yesterday, extending our small collection of board games with Takenoko and Codenames. I was happy to note that they come in Swedish versions, which in the case of Takenoko only matters for the manual, while Codenames is much more language-specific.

Both games are already well-known and luckily I still know a few game-enthusiasts back in Germany with whom I had the chance to test-play earlier this year. Codenames got the prestigeous award "Spiel des Jahres" in the meantime, guaranteeing even greater success.

I've been avidly listening to podcasts for many years. Nowadays they provide me with food for thought and entertainment mostly during my half-hour commutes in the mornings and afternoons; sometimes also for longer-than-usual exercise sessions.

My go-to podcasts include parts of the German podcast empire around Tim Pritlove, Swedish public broadcast shows like Sommar or Spanarna and some from the "two dudes talking" genre, like Hello Internet or The West Wing Weekly.

The most noteworthy recent discovery for me is Waking Up With Sam Harris. I've never gotten around to reading his books, and always assumed I would need no convincing anyway when it comes to his view on religion. But after so far only listening to the episodes on Israel and the introductory chapter of his recent book on spirituality, I am impressed by how sharp and precise he is in formulating his thoughts, with minimal babble and repetition; meaning it's an excellent use of my time and I am looking forward to listening through the fifty episodes that are out already.

By the way, Sam Harris has a good way of explaining the problem with AI as well.