Dragonfly Ranch

Washing and sanitizing the bottles. The contraption is a bottle-drying tree, with a spritzer on top that sprays a disinfectant solution into the bottle when I push down.

We check the specific gravity with a hydrometer. It’s 1.015. Anything
less than 1.020 means we’re ready to bottle, so we’ll be washing
bottles today and bottling tonight. The beer in the test cylinder is
drinkable — it actually tastes like flat beer.

The brewing kit came from William’s Brewing here in the Bay Area
(http://www.williamsbrewing.com). It contained everything except the
bottles. We diluted their malt concentrate in tap water and boiled it
in the huge kettle they sent — it barely fit on the stove. We added
hops during the boiling. Then we cooled the liquid (it’s called “wort”
at this stage), put it in a plastic tub, added yeast and set it in the
shower stall to ferment. That’s the photo in the previous posting. It
needs to sit at 60-65 degrees for 12 days before bottling, and the
downstairs bathroom is perfect for that. For once we’re glad that the
ground floor is chilly.

The clear plastic frammis on top of the fermenting tub is an airlock.
Carbon dioxide is released by the fermenting beer. It bubbles up
through water in the airlock, and the water barrier prevents airborne
microbes from getting into the beer and spoiling it. Sometimes I go
watch it. Every five to ten seconds the carbon dioxide builds up enough
to release a burp of gas through the water. That and the whiff of
alcohol in the shower indicate that the yeast is happily doing its part
in the procedure.

It struck me how close brewing is to breadmaking and that beer is
essentially liquid bread. The ingredients are the same — water, grain,
flavoring, yeast — and the processes require the same careful timing
and attention to temperature.

Chester and Kai were wary of the monster at first, but they checked it
out and decided it wasn’t a threat.

I’ve heard of monster trucks, but this is the first monster car I
think I’ve ever met. Yesterday at Point Isabel.

Our latest project: home brewing. Arlin bought a kit for my birthday
and we spent Wednesday evening cooking up a 5-gallon batch. It’s now
fermenting in the shower stall downstairs.

Chester will sometimes indicate he needs attention. Thi one of the
ways he will do that.