Be Good Not Bad : Web Design :: Brian Warren : Denver, Colorado

Aaron and Casey left on Friday, and this weekend Anna and I cleaned and relaxed. We had a great time with the guys, and it was sad to see them leave.

Also on Friday, Paul and I started our second batch of beer. This one is going to be a slightly hoppy version of an American amber ale. Boy were we in true form brewing this batch.

First of all, while steeping our bag of grains, we accidently let the steeping bag get too hot and it melted to the bottom of the pot! We moved the mixture into a new pot and tossed the bag.

Next, we brought it to a boil and threw in our hops. Immediately it boiled over creating a mess on the stove. We cleaned up and things seemed to calm down for a bit. We thought our troubles were behind us. After boiling for the correct amount of time, we needed to strain everything out and put it into a big glass bottle. In the past, we used the steeping bag as our strainer. Alas, our bag had a hole melted in it, and was sitting in the wastebasket. Rats.

We used a pasta strainer, along with a dishtowel (both sanitised) to strain out the hops and grains. This didn’t go very well, as the dishtowel needed to be constantly wrung out by hand, and the liquid was just boiling minutes ago.

Anyway, it was quite an experience, and I’m sure it will render incredible beer, so we’ll have to replicate that process, somehow, so as to make it again in the future.