Beer Two!

Once again here is a poor shot of my brew. The difference between this and the last one is pretty apparent. This one came out really pale and yellow, exactly what I was looking for in the style. It should be representative of an India Pale Ale. This brew is still sitting in the fermenter for another week or so and then I will bottle it. It is much stronger than the first brew coming in at 6.75% alcohol. That fits with the style. It is also a lot more heavily hopped. I used Northern Brewer and Cascade hops for bittering, flavour and armoma. Hopefully I got this balance correct! While there are a lot of receipes out there most of them are from an american audience and are geared towards the supplies that they can access. I am fairly restricted here in Germany as the home brewing culture hasn't taken off. Good beer here costs about 55c a bottle and so it is actually a lot more expensive to brew your own. There is one store that offers a decent selection or I could order from the UK. The postage costs from there are fairly high so only a bulk order is worth it. That means that for the time being I must be satisfied with a more alchemical approach to my brewing. I am approximating malts and hops to approach the receipe but I can't really claim to be following any.

This time I am really hoping that the yeast drops out so that I have a nice clear beer. Next weekend I also have the proper tasting of the first brew. Last night the Hobbybrau group got a taste and it went down fine. The true test is the less drinking cultured gaming friends. If they like it then it is a bigger success. I will take some decent photographs to show how it came out in the end. It is currently inhabiting most of my fridge cold crashing. The cold crashing is used to get all of the yeast to settle to the bottom of the bottle and it should clear the beer up within a few days. Hopefully it goes down well amongst my friends. I don't want to be left with two crates of beer I have to drink all by myself!