{"id":70,"date":"2013-12-21T03:46:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-21T03:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/wordpress\/?p=70"},"modified":"2013-12-21T03:46:00","modified_gmt":"2013-12-21T03:46:00","slug":"i-brewer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/2013\/12\/21\/i-brewer\/","title":{"rendered":"I, Brewer."},"content":{"rendered":"

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I’m on the eve of creating my third and fourth batches of beer after successfully brewing batches one and two in November and December. I have a few buddies who brew beer and until I had access to a couple of carboys, I’ve been reluctant to move forward in brewing my own.<\/p>\n

In November, Dwayne from Yellowknife visited and he’s been making beer for years so I asked him if he would guide me through my first batches. He happily agreed. I picked up a little bit of equipment from Wine Kitz<\/a>, just down the road from me, and 2 beer kits: Brew House India Pale Ale<\/a> and Brew House Stout<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We cleaned the equipment by sterilizing in boiling water, mixed the malty water with more water for a total of 19 L (supposed to be 23, but we wanted to make stronger beer) and then yeast. Easy!<\/p>\n

To make the beer a little more personal, I added a bit of ingredients. The IPA was already hopped, but I boiled a 1\/2 oz of cascade hops and added the water to the beer. I also added the peels of one small orange thinking it wouldn’t make much of an impact, but maybe a little complex note. A week later I added a little mesh bag of another 1\/2 oz of hops to add aroma (this is called dry hopping).<\/p>\n

To the stout I added a bunch of spice: 1\/8 cup of allspice, 1\/8 cup of cardamom, 1\/16 coup of cloves.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We set up the airlock by running the tubes from the stoppers into a bucket 1\/4 full of water. For the next week a steady stream of bubbles and foam poured through the tubes – what a racket and mess. Fortunately, it wasn’t too loud and no one complained about it being in our crowded little kitchen, though Lukas dropped a stuffed animal in the soup and Amber dropped toast into it. The mess was contained too.<\/p>\n

When the main fermentation was done – about a week – I moved the 2 carboys into our cooler storage area and put little airlocks into the stoppers and cleaned out the stinky bucket. 2 more weeks of slow secondary fermentation and the beer was ready to bottle.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Though we collected bottles for 2 months, we still didn’t have enough, so I had to spring for a dozen self corking bottles to make sure we had enough. Wine Kitz<\/a> even lent me their bench capper for the night. I spent the evening putting 35 litres of beer into bottles and spent the next 5 days cleaning up as much as I could after work.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My assessment? Well, I’m certainly just starting, so I never expected to make an award winning brew.<\/p>\n

The stout is too spicy, but I am enjoying it. I find it is mellowing out day by day, so in a couple weeks it will probably be as mellow as it’s going to get. Great dark colour though.<\/p>\n

I really like the IPA. It could be hoppier, but the orange peel adds another kind of bitterness which I like too. I have plenty to last me a long while. The best part is the pride I can take in producing it myself.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“Zaakistan Peel IPA”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“Riches Spiced Stout”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m on the eve of creating my third and fourth batches of beer after successfully brewing batches one and two in November and December. I have a few buddies who brew beer and until I had access to a couple of carboys, I’ve been reluctant to move forward in brewing my own. In November, Dwayne … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,30],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-admin","4":"post-70","6":"format-standard","7":"has-post-thumbnail","8":"category-beer","9":"category-zr"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zaakistan.com\/dir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}