So I swung by Zach & Russ' last night at about 1am to check up on the beer. Well, the beer is black. It also doesn't appear to be bubbling, swirling or churning.

Why is the beer black? I don't know. Black beers, like Guinness, get their dark color from a small amount of dark malt mixed in with the normal malt. We used the same malt we've always used. In the past, our fermentation has looked like dirty orange juice, but this time our beer is black. I am frightened.

Tomorrow, I will dry hop the beer, then add the gelatin on Thursday and bottle on Friday.

Some of you may have this seen this story on Yahoo! News about a beer batch in Iran that went bad and has, so far, killed 22 people. The most important graphs:

"TEHRAN (Reuters) - A toxic batch of homebrew alcohol has killed 22 people in southern Iran and put scores more in hospital, local officials said Tuesday.

"Alcohol is officially banned in the Islamic state. But those determined to break the enforced sobriety can purchase smuggled imports on the black market or buy locally made spirits.

"Some of them died after days of suffering in hospital," Hossein Ali Amiri, a judiciary official in the southern Fars province, told state television.

"Amiri said 93 people had been hospitalized after drinking the brew, which doctors suspect may have contained methanol, which is toxic."

What most amazes me is the number of people who partook in the batch. Over 90 people had some of the moonshine. That's quite a client list.

This whole event underlines the fallacy of prohibition. While I greatly sympathize with Islam's prohibition on alcohol as part of an unhealthy and unclean lifestyle, making it illegal clearly has its own unhealthy side effects. I'd be interested in seeing a report of how many died during prohibition in the United States because of A) bad moonshine or, B) violence stemming from the creation and distribution of illegal alcohol. After all, organized crime got its start in this country running beer rackets in big cities like Chicago and New York. Is there an organized beer-crime racket going on in Iran today? Is there a Muhammad al-Capone out there? These are important questions. I'm calling the State Department right now.

In the meanwhile, I would like to note that our beer has, so far, killed not a single person, and only made evenings more enjoyable for all. The third batch, by the way, is going well. We're moving to the secondary carboy in a day or two.

Adventure!

Russ informs me that the fermentation is coming along nicely, however, thanks in part to my roommate Chris, Hedgehog Homebrew Co. Is now sans racking cane. While this part is not mission critical, it would be nice to have one, or even better, an autosiphon, to transfer beer from primary to secondary fermenter. Naturally, this calls for a trip to our favorite store, the Homebrew Outlet in "Sacramento". Sac is in quotes because the Outlet is basically in Carmichael. That being said, Russ and I would appreciate a ride out there and would reciprocate your kindness with beer. Before getting yourself into this, make sure you know where the Homebrew Outlet is.





Homebrew Outlet
5528 Auburn Blvd
Sacramento, CA

I've posted some photos via a program called Hello. I'd give them a free plug, but they plug themselves already (see icon at end of each photopost). More photos to come whenever we get our hands on a digital camera.

Arlen uses the handy spigot to transfer beer from the primary to secondary fermenter. After talking to the guys at the homebrew store, we decided this wasn’t such a good idea. By using the spigot, we were transferring the trub. For some reason, we thought the trub was necessary. This is before we knew what trub was, or that there was even such a word as trub.

Trub is a fancy word for “crap that sits at the bottom of your fermenter.” This crap is mostly composed of spent grain, dead yeast and other solids that precipitate out of the beer. Note: trub is gross.

To avoid trub suckage (a technical brewing term) we now use a racking cane. What may sound like something they use for punishment in Singapore is basically a stainless steel, or in our case plastic, tube with a plastic cap on the end. The racking cane is set gently on top of the trub and then used to siphon beer between fermenters. The plastic cap keeps out things we don’t want, such as hop leaves and gravity ensures the solids stay at the bottom of the fermenter.

After transfering the beer, we fill waterballons with the trub and save them to throw at people we don't like.
 

This is our enamleware kettle. It probably holds five gallons, but we never boil that much wort at once. In the future, we hope to have a large, stainless steel kettle heated by a large propane burner.

In this picture, it is filled with iodated water to sterilize some equipment.
 

This is our secondary fermenter, a five gallon glass carboy. The orange thingy is a handle. A five gallon glass carboy is heavy when full of water, and given our propensity to spill (water not beer) everywhere, often slippery.

The thingy in the top is an airlock stuck in a rubber stopper. The airlock ensures that the yeast will not be able “breathe” oxygen and be forced into anaerobic respiration, thereby generating CO₂ and alcohol.

The green things floating in the top are hop pellets. 

For those of you interested, Joseph pointed me to a great brewing supply store. The Northern Brewer offers just about everything any homebrewer could dream up, including stainless steel conical fermenting, brix refractometers and a full line of draft beer supplies.

Well kids, we're back in action. Brew batch #3 started about four minutes ago, after a quick run to H20 for Less and the Nugget to try out a new water supply.

We expect this batch to be awesome. It's finals, and some beer is in order. With any luck we'll have a good five gallons ready in no time and give it away. Looking for some brew? Let us know!

Anyway, more blogging on batch #3 to come.

Well, the first stage of fermenting on batch #3 has begun, and it's looking great. I have high hopes for this batch, the temperatures and specific gravity were much more in line than previous batches, and so far nothing has spilled anywhere too bad. We should have a nice batch ready to go in about two weeks. Unforunately I will be out of town in San Diego, and won't get to enjoy any of my own tasty product unless Arlen sends me down some. What that means is that we'll have a ton of extra beer, so if you're in the Davis area and want some beer for free, let me know!