Tarantular

I thought that perhaps I should write a new pust since I just popped in over at the Weblog and made some comments on the Tuesday Hatred. It's been quite a while since I checked in over there, so I figured maybe I'd get a little more traffic than usual.

As I shiver a little in my office/babyroom I thought about Adam Kotsko and wondered if his legs were itching yet.

Speaking of itching . . . [dead end segue]

Beer.

It's good.

A person who says they don't like beer should be forced to drink beer until they like beer.

I just brewed and bottled what is called an Affligem Abbey Tripel. This beer originates in Brouwerij De Smedt, Opwijk, Belgium. I've never been to Belgium, but I like words ending in edt and ijk.

Yes, I brew my own beer.

And this makes me Mighty.

The Affligem rings in at a whopping 8.5% alcohol content.

Yea beer!

I've been brewing for 2 and a half years and this is the first Begian beer I've tried my hand at. The first beer that I brewed this fall was a barley wine. It has 9% alcohol but is supposed to stay in the bottle for a year. Realistically, it won't make it that long if I know myself. I figure at about 6 months or so (or sooner?) I'll need to "see where it's at". Inevitably this will lead to a, "Hey that's not bad," to a, "I'm too damn tired to go to the store and buy beer. Good thing I've got the barleywine in the cupboard."

Anyway, I wanted to mention that Affligem Abbey because I used a new method of introducing the yeast to the wort. Usually I'll just dump my packet of [dry] yeast into the bucket of cooled wort and let it do it's thing. This time, however, I made what is called a "yeast starter."

I overheard this guy at the brew store talking about the importance of using a yeast starter when brewing beer. He stated that anyone that is serious about beer competitions uses a starter. I thougth to myself that I wasn't really interested in contests, but if it makes my beer taste better I'm all about it.

With this beer I used a packet of liquid yeast--something I have only done once before with limited success. Liquid yeast packets have a little poutch in the middle called the "activator." You smack this thing, break it open, and then it activates the yeast. I let the packet stand at room temperature for about a day and a half. It expands as the yeast starts working, so it's kind of cool.

After the yeast is ready you boil a solution of
1/2 cup of dry wheat malt extract
8 ounces of water
2 hop pellets (any variety)

You boil this for 10 minutes and then let it cool to below 80 deg. F

I sanitized a 24 oz. bottle (you can use 12 oz.), taking care to sanitize the outside and the mouth of the bottle.

I poored in the cooled solution, followed by the liquid yeast and put in a stopper and airlock. [for those of you novices, an airlock is a cool little doohicky that you put on top of an airtight container and it bubbles when fermentation is taking place (basically, releasing oxygen).]

My book tells me that activity should begin within 12 hours, however mine seemed to take a little longer.

At any rate, I brewed my beer as usual (although the ingredients in this Belgian beer are a bit different than what I usually use) and when I was ready to add the yeast, I just dumped my yeast started in the cooled wort [your cooled batch of brewed beer].

I only just bottled this on Sunday, so it'll be about a month before I try one of these (2 weeks?). I'm excited to see the difference the yeast makes in quality, and to try my first homebrewed Belgian beer.

Beer, it's what's for dinner.