Bottling Day: English Brown Ale

Continued from Sunday

Smells great, tastes malty

Five days after transferring the brown ale to secondary, we went ahead and bottled it. We got to play around with a few new toys this time. The first of those being our new sanitation solution Star San. After delabeling all the bottles and a few squirts of the solution, we were ready to fill.

Hydroponic system dismantling + tomato plant removal

Friendly and bigger cabbage

Fearing the worst, I prematurely stopped my balcony hydroponics operations. This was a multi-step process, since a few of the cabbage plants downstairs were still growing strong. I didn't want to lose them during the freeze. So I decided to remove all the tomato plants from the right side of the upstairs balcony and plant the cabbages there. In doing so, I harvested the remaining tomatoes that the plants decided to grow in this cold.

Everything I want to do requires a license

I'm going to do a bit of a follow up post of an article my brother did a while back.

Keep the homebrew at home: The brewers will thank you

I like to make things. Production is in my nature. Being an entrepreneur at heart, I always want to sell people stuff. Anything I can get my hands or make on, can potentially be a money opportunity. However, a lot of items people produce cannot legally be sold without going through a bunch of red tape.

English Brown Ale to Secondary

The yeast cake at the bottom

1 week ago we brewed our English Brown Ale. Today we moved it to secondary. My roommate and I agreed that this was this was the best tasting homebrew we've made so far. The final gravity came out to be 1.012, giving an ABV of 4.1%. The next time we make this, I think it'll be able to be bottled immediately after fermentation is complete. Since we don't dry hop this one, it doesn't really need secondary fermentation.

Winter is Coming: Forecast week of December 1

Forecast from weather.com

The forecast tells me that the growing season is coming to an end. Starting Tuesday it is predicted that the temperature will drop below 32°F at night (that's 0°C for you non Americans). I'm predicting that some of my warmer crops that made it through fall, like my tomato and pepper plants, won't make it. I'm more worried about my hydroponic garden though. I've seen the pool at my apartment freeze over and I don't want that to happen to my plants. The ice could possibly damage the pump, airstones, or even the plastic bins themselves. I don't want to explain a waterfall to my neighbors below me if the bins do burst. The best possible option might be just to harvest everything now and drain the bins until warmer weather comes again.