Sick Day Session Ale

I stayed home with my poor little boy who was recovering from a short bout with Strep.  He had a mild fever when we woke up (99.5) and didn't want to go to school, so I said OK.

This opened up the opportunity to brew.  I know, Shocking!

I had ingredients for Right Red Rye ready to go, so I brewed that.  Also cobbled together some ingredients for a pale session ale, dubbed Sick Day Session Ale.

Sean came by in the evening with some beer from another fellow who he got into homebrew- the guy did a Milk Chocolate Stout as his first beer- talk about Ballsy!  It was very nice.

Remember, your homebrews will be delicious when you start brewing because "WOAH!  I MADE BEER!!!!" The next steps to making truly world class brew are Full Boil and Temperature Control.

I never did partial boils.  This is a process where you get 2 gallons of water boiling, add extract and steeping grains, then when you are done boiling for an hour, you add the (slightly less than boiling) wort into 3 gallons of room temp water.  It creates nice beer (as exemplified by our first time beer last night) but it lacks a certain... something.

Fermentation temp control is essential for keeping your yeast happy.  Yeast don't like swinging around in temps.  There are methods where brewers increase temperature in the latest stages of fermentation to "clean up" the beer, but it should ferment out 90% of the way at a constant temp around 63-68 degrees.  Variation in theis temperature creates flavors which are apparent in beer when finished.  SOME times these are intentional flavors, and in most cases they are not.

SO- that's that. Oh, I also bottled Popcorn Pale, the NOT accidentally frozen version :)