Amber Ale In

Last Sunday I brewed up an Amber Ale beer. Unlike the previous Brewer's Best kits that I had used, this was a very generic Amber. So I cooked it up as usual, making good progress on the time. The only real change up compared with previous batches was that at the end, I first reactivated brewer's yeast in a half of cup of water, let it stand for about 10 minutes, then added it to the wort. Stirred and then capped it off.

I got really concerned a couple of days later when I noticed that the water-stopper was not bubbling. At all. No bubbles to me translates as to no CO2 gas, means no fermenting beer. Did I brew it too fast? Was the yeast DOA? What was going on? I emailed friends and family and got some good advice, like stir it up and get them microbes moving.

I popped open the lid the next day, and immediately noticed that the smell of alcohol was there, so something was definitely going on, just not sure what. I mixed it up a bit while I was at it. By Saturday, I cracked it open again to catch a whiff, which nearly knocked me on my ass it was so strong. Gave it one more day for good measure, and bottled it all up last night.

The color was distinctly lighter my last batch, almost like the color in the picture above, despite it being an Amber Ale. I did use a bit more water than usual this time - around 5.25 gallons - so it is a bit more watered down. Unfortunately, while cleaning up after the initial brewing, I dropped and shattered the hydrometer, so there was no way to get a good reading this time. I'm just guessing it's going to land at the 4.0 to 4.2 % alcohol range.

Anyway, I swigged a bit of the leftover after bottling, and as raw as it still is it's got a nice bing to it. Excited to see how this translates 3 weeks from now!