Verkenbrau 1.0

1st Brew!!
January 28, 2009
Verkenbrau 1.0
Golden Halo Cerveza from Main Street Brewing in Hillsboro (kit)
5 Gallons
6lb Breiss Pale Malt Extract
1 oz. Tettnanger Hops (for boiling) 1 hour
½ oz. Tettnanger Hops (for finishing) 12 min
½ oz. Tettnanger Hops (aroma) 2 min
1 pkg. Danstar Nottingham Ale Yeast

Boiled 3 gallons of water, boiled malt & hops for 1 hour. Added finishing & aroma hops. Strained out hops into 1 gallon of Fred Meyer mountain spring water frozen into ice & one gallon of water.
1/28/09 Added yeast at 78 degrees, approximately 7 hours after boil. Fermented in upstairs bedroom in 8 gal bucket.
2/2/09 Airlock bubbles every 60 seconds.
2/3/09 Airlock bubbles every 90-180 seconds. Racked beer to secondary fermenter (5 gal glass carboy). Wrapped in towel & stored in living room.
2/13/09 All perceptible activity has stopped. Ready to bottle.
2/15/09 Boiled 1 cup corn sugar in 1 pint water, siphoned beer back into primary, primed beer & bottled into 53 12 oz bottles. Had one glass & shared one w/ Alex. Tastes very light & clean. Very good.
2/27/09 First bottle! Chilled in fridge ½ hour. Head was nice & foamy, fully carbonated but not over-carbonated. Very drinkable. Light bodied, crisp & a little on the sweet side. After taste is not as clean as I would like, is a bit tangy? Overall, excellent. Had five bottles! Looking forward to Alex’s opinion. Some bottles appeared to have a cloudy film on the interior, possibly a result of removing the labels w/ washing soda & not rinsing enough? Or not sterilizing bottles long enough? Doesn’t adversely affect taste on bottles I’ve tried so far. Might be too discriminating on first batch. Going shopping tomorrow to start batch 2.
Feedback from friends—Alex really likes it, comments on how clean it tastes. Nick seems to like it quite a bit. Rob says it’s better than Tacate. Shawn liked it well. Jan from work loved it, said he’d love me to make some more & share. Said it was light, crisp & exactly the kind of beer he loves to drink. Josh said it would make an amazing summer beer & was good to see a light homebrew. I’d love to make this for the summer.