Method:
Crush the malt and steep at 55 °C in 3 gal water for 90min.Filter the mixture and pour 2 gal water over the mash.
Add hops, guaraná berries and sugar and simmer at 98 °C for 60min.
Chill to 25°C, filter the mixture and pour into a container.
Add Yeast and leave sealed in the container at 20°C for 14 days for primary fermentation.
Transfer the mixture to a clean container and add 75g sugar and 2 tablespoonful yeast from the bottom of the primary fermentation container.
Bottle for secondary fermentation and carbonation and leave at 20°C for 8-10 days.
Store bottles at 12-14°C for another 14 days.
This time we have scaled up to a 5 gallon setup and tries to get more beer for the same amount of work, but it seems that there is a lot of unexpected things happen when you scale up the process.
The 5 gallon pot does not sit well on the electric range, results in the pot not heating up properly for 1 hour, after that, it finally reached 55 C and I did steep the malt in the water for 90 mins. Mixtures is then filtered, but it took another 15 mins before I give up and use the portable gas range to heat the wort, and that took about 90 minutes from start to complete.
Due to all the extra time on the heat, I am not sure if the result would be the same as before. Another note is we used cane sugar this time, the color of the mixture does not look as dark as before anymore.
2/11 Bottling Free Beer 1.0 attempt #2
Yield: 34 bottles
Pretty painless process. Just adding secondary fermentation sugar, and bottle up! Sharon wanted to be more experimental, so she added salt into two of the bottles and we’ll see what happen to those. Also, I have moved out 1 gallon of the beer into the small jug for crashing.
2/14 Bottling Free Beer 1.0 attempt #2 (crashed)
Yield: 8 bottles
Forgot to take a picture, but crashing helped on the clarity of the beer, and most of the yeast and sediment sunk to the bottom of the jug. There wasn’t much of it, but definitely noticeable.
I believe these will need a little longer for secondary fermentation to complete carbonation. I hope there is enough yeast inside each bottle for fermentation too!
Secondary fermentation note: 2/21
It's worth-noting that one of the beer bottle from the crashed batch exploded. I believe this is related to sugar not mixing well before bottling. It is more of a problem for the crashed batch as the lower temperature might have constitute to the bad mixing.
Taste:
It seems like there are some inconsistency on how the free beer taste bottle to bottle. It might be an issue of sugar didn't mix well; however, most of the beer came out nice and spicy, with wheaty after taste, but some tasted like plain alcohol.
It is important to note how much difference crashing the beer made though, out come is crisp and cool, out with the yeasty flavor, and in with a clear character that does not exist in the regular one.
