White House Honey Ale

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.

 

Steeping the malt grain

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.