Paulaner from yeast starter

This weekend I'll be brewing another batch of Paulaner clone. Last time, i put a little of the wort back into the yeast tube and it grew some more yeast. So last weekend, i created a starter, just a couple of cups of water with a cup of DME and that bit of yeast. It's grown a lovely deposit of yeast since then and I'm going to pitch this weekend's batch with that yeast. Let's hope it's good, alive and uncontaminated.

Low-Alcohol beer

A co-worker doesn't drink alcohol for religious reasons, so he asked if I'd ever made non-alcoholic beer. I never had but now i was curious. I found a great article on the subject and decided to try it on my next batch.

This past Saturday, a new batch of Red Ale was ready for kegging, so i put 4 gallons in one keg and put the last gallon in a pot in the oven. After about 30 minutes I took it out and kegged it. On Sunday I did a taste test and discovered that while i could tell the difference and the normal batch tasted better, without the A/B test, the second batch still tasted great. But it's definitely not non-alcoholic, just low-alcohol. May have to leave it in the oven longer. But hey, that's quite a bit of alcohol calories removed from the beer.

The wrath of Chili

This past Saturday we had some friends over to share brews and taste the Chili beer. One or two brave souls drank full cups of the stuff. Most either just had a taste, or diluted it with my Pale Ale (same recipe, no chili). Basically, we finished off one keg of Pale Ale, went most of the way through my Hefeweizen keg, had some other home brews, but only drank four 24oz. bottles of the Chili beer. It's gotten really hot. I think those two cases are going to last a while.

In the meantime, i started a fresh batch of Red Ale, and hopefully that'll be ready by the time the Hefeweizen is gone.