White House Honey Ale
Yesterday, I made the White House Honey Ale recipe. Things went well, although I eyeballed most of the ingredient amounts because I couldn't find my scale.Hops in the pot |
We carefully transferred the wort to the brew bucket. The recipe called for the wort to be added hot to the bucket, but I wasn't sure my siphon could handle the hot wort. So Maki and I carefully poured the wort into the bucket.
Here's the wort, ready for the the yeast.
Yeast pitched
I forgot to check the specific gravity before adding the yeast, so I checked it after -- OG = 1.061.
The next morning, the brew seemed to have overflowed the bucket, and some of the brew got into the airlock. Although it was a bit of sticky mess, the bucket still seemed sealed, so hopefully the beer will still turn out. This overflow might have occurred because I added too much malt.
UPDATE: 2013 Jul 30 -- Moved the beer to the carboy to ferment for about 14 days. A lot of hops were clinging to the top of the bucket, but the beer looked good (and smelled good).
UPDATE: 2013 Aug 13 -- Bottled the beer. Final gravity was 1.02, giving an ABV of about 5%. Unfortunately, my siphon hose had molded, ...
And so I had
to dump the carboy into the bottling bucket. Then, I noticed that the
bucket was leaking -- I hadn't screwed in the bottling valve tightly
enough. So in a mad dash, I began bottling beer and go halfway through
before I realized I had forgotten to add the sugar syrup to perk up the
yeast. I added it to the last half and hoped for the best.
44 bottles of beer on the floor.
---UPDATE: 2013 Dec 18---
I first tried the beer a few weeks after bottling. It exploded and tasted pretty bad.Today, I've tried another one, and it's decent. A bit too hoppy for honey ale, I think, but drinkable.