I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'….

My house smells like a bar on Sunday morning…

In the past, I have committed many atrocities when brewing but, this time, the beer gods took it out on my kitchen…let me explain…

I had an idea for a Pale Ale that I would brew and give to my family at our Family Reunion in October – its called “Shirley Face” Pale Ale after my grandmother who makes a “bitter beer” face when she doesn’t approve of something (the Shirley Face)…

Seeing as my experience brewing beer has been limited to this point, thought I might have a trial-run before I unleashed “Shirley Face” on the world. After receiving the Pale Ale beer kit I ordered from Bet-Mar in Columbia, SC, I decided to make Saturday my BREW DAY. Everything started out well enough – I even had an old friend join me for the afternoon to help brew while we enjoyed a few of our own and caught up. I was a little apprehensive to turn the the electric oven’s heat too high because of my experience with boil-overs so the mixture probably cooked slower than it should but that shouldn’t have caused a problem. It finally came to a vigorous boil and Lauren and I let it do its thing and then placed it in the fermentor I made. I added the yeast a little later that evening after it had cooled to my liking and went to bed.

Fast-forward to the next morning…I wake up to find beer fermenting from a crack on the “air-tight” lid and all over my kitchen floor; this guy was less than pleased. So after hours of preparation and excitement, I had to dump 5 gallons of beer and get down on my hands and knees and clean the floor (not to mention those hard to reach spots under the stove).

Lessons learned for next time:

• buy (don’t attempt to make) a fermentor
• don’t fill the fermentor so full (think the lack of air available left in the bucket after the lid was placed on built too much pressure)
• place fermentor in a place that can be easily cleaned
• don’t let Lauren do any of the important things in the brew process

Fear not, friends – “Shirley Face” will happen; just not in the next few months…back to the drawing board…

UPDATE: So lying in bed last night I began thinking about my fermentor set up and realized the air lock I used had the cap on it and, thus, wouldn’t allow the carbon dioxide to escape from the fermentor – that’s why it burst…no place for all that CO^2 to go. And if it’s set up properly, the water in the air lock creates a passage way for the CO^2 to leak out but acts as a barrier to keep any air from getting in. If anyone knows anything about brewing and can confirm (or correct me), please do; I’m learning as I go here….

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