Ovaltine Beer - Week 3 Synopsis

Day 15- I transferred the beer to secondary last night. This morning, there was no activity in the air lock, but plenty of normal-looking krausen.

The Beer in its new home- notice the muddy brown color
 This is the opaque beer I've ever made (or seen).  

The residue in the old fermenter. Yummy.

Day 21- No activity all week. Sorry for the brief post. I'll start taking gravity readings next week.

The morning of day 16.

Radical Brewing

Last night, Radical Brewing: Recipes, Tales and World-Altering Meditations in a Glass arrived. I spent a couple hours sipping a beer and reading it. I'm really enjoying it so far. The author is very funny and engaging. I'll write a full review when I'm done.

On another note, I was going to make my Apple Pie brew today, but the ingredients I ordered from Austin Homebrew on Tuesday didn't get shipped until yesterday. I love their shop - good selection, competitive prices, and flat shipping, even on heavy items. However, their turnaround times often leave something to be desired. Oh well.

Review: Stiegl Radler

Every once in a while, when I encounter an unusual enough beer, I'll buy it out of morbid curiosity. While I'm in no way an experienced beer judge, I thought I'd share with you a review of my newest acquisition, a .5L bottle of Stiegl Radler. 




This beer was advertised as a "Beer with Lemon Soda Malt Beverage Speciality." Reading the back label, it says it's 50% lager and 50% lemon soda. Now I've heard of a shandy, but never had the dubious pleasure of trying one, let alone a premixed one such as this.

After pouring, the first thing I did was swirl it, then take a smell, while pretending to know what I was doing. It smelled... lemony. There wasn't much else. It wasn't sweet smelling like soda or lemonade, more like lemon juice or lemon-scented cleaner. This did not increase my anticipation for tasting it.


Nonetheless, I braved a taste. The flavor is dominated by lemon soda. It doesn't clash with the beer taste, just completely overpowers it. The only thing the beer does is mute the sweetness of the soda. This results in a drink that isn't sweet enough for a soda, but way too sweet for a beer. Worst of all, to me, the sweetness doesn't even taste like real sugar, more like splenda or sugar substitute. I have no idea if this is the case, as the ingredients weren't printed on the label.


The aftertaste wasn't as bad as I'd feared. A bit malty, with a hint of lemon at the end.

After a few sips, the sweetness got overwhelming and I started to feel sick. This may also be because of my aversion to lemon-flavored alcohols brought on by an unfortunate incident with lemon vodka in college. Or it may be because the lemon soda just wasn't very good.


I would not drink this again, especially not .5L of it. I do think I'd like to try the lager by itself, from what I could get, it doesn't seem bad.


It's an interesting concept, maybe one I'll try and replicate this summer - hopefully with better success than they have. 

Ovaltine Beer - Week 2 synopsis

Day 8 - Slowed down a bunch, to 30 spb. There's also a ton of krausen built up now, to the top of the bottle. Hopefully it doesn't go over before I have a chance to set up a blow off tube tonight.

Also, got a $50 bonus from work for helping make it a "great place to work!" I did this by bringing in and sharing my beer. Awesome. What to spend it on...

Day 9 - This morning, the krausen built up enough to completely clog the top of my fermenter. I scraped it out with a butter knife, got about 2 tablespoon's worth. The krausen is really weird - waxy and much thicker than usual. Probably from the wax in the whoppers. I kind of regretting adding them now.

When I got home, I got another tablespoon's worth of wax krausen.

Day 10- Cleaned out more krausen. Maybe time to transfer to secondary? I set up a blow tube as well. Not really a lot in terms of bubbling, though.

Day 11- The blow tube has made a huge difference. The krausen no longer is blocking things up, though it has made its way up the tube- that won't be fun to clean. Smaller bubbles are forming rapidly now, like 1-4/second. Is it because of faster fermenting or the smaller hole? I suspect the latter.

The blow off tube setup

Day 12-  Still a lot of rapid bubbling. Nothing new.

Day 13- The krausen made its way to the water jug and had clogged everything up this morning, so no bubbles. I rinsed it out and started it up again. Bubbles are slower today, maybe 1 bubble every 1-2 seconds.

Day 14- Bubbles are way slow. One every 3-4 seconds. Time to move to secondary.

The Winner is....

"A whole apple pie.", submitted by cockold. Nom!


I guess its better than a "McDonald's value meal including: Big Mac, large fries, soda, apple pie, condiments (ketchup, etc)" or "A whole chicken in with the boil." 


I got some seriously awesome suggestions and added several to The List. (You did notice my new List page, didn't you?)


I'll brew up the pie as soon as my new ingredients arrive. In the meanwhile, I've been tasting weird beers and frankensteining some new equipment, plus the Ovaltine & Whoppers beer is still fermenting, so keep your eyes open for those posts.

Pick my next "special ingredient!"

As the active part of my first brew is winding down, I'm beginning to prepare for my second brew. This month, it's reader's choice.

I will brew with the most upvoted (I'm ignoring downvotes) ingredient in this post on Reddit that meets the following requirements:

•  Must be edible or "natural", so Fruity Pebbles or a type of wood is ok, but my ipod is not.
•  Must be legal. As much as I'd like to experiment with certain substances, it's not worth my job or the risk of legal problems.
•  Must not kill me. I'm not going to mess with the weird mushrooms you found in the woods.

If you are not a Reddit member, you need to sign up to participate. It should take less than 2 minutes and is pretty self explanatory. You don't even need to give your email address.

I'll announce the chosen ingredients here in a couple days. Thanks for participating!

Ovaltine Beer - Day 7

At 20 spb. Over the last couple of days, there's been a nice buildup of krausen (maybe a bit more than in an average beer - it's hard to tell). Today it started to fall in on itself.

Also, unless there's a big demand, I think I'm going to start saving my daily notes in a log, and just posting the log once a week, so I don't bore you all.

Ovaltine Beer - Day 6

Today, we're at a whopping 18 spb! Sweet.

Homebrew Hotcakes!

In the spirit of doing strange things with beer, I thought I'd share one of my favorite breakfasts with you. As far as I know, my dad invented it, because I've never seen the recipe anywhere else. It's simplicity in itself. You take the recipe for hotcakes from the back of a Bisquick box, substitute beer for the milk at a 1:1 ratio and cook as instructed. The hotcakes tend to be a bit fluffier than usual and have a faint taste of beer. 

Breakfast of Champions!

My dad used to cook these for us 1-2 times/week. I sometimes wonder if I got my taste for beer from those breakfasts. The beer I used this week is a pumpkin ale I brewed a couple months ago. The pumpkin didn't come out in the hotcakes, maybe I'll add some pumpkin pie spice as well, next time. 

Ovaltine Beer - Day 5

Same as before-23 spb (seconds per bubble). This fermentation seems a good deal slower than 5 gallon beers. I wonder if its because the yeast isn't healthy enough, or because of the size of the batch. If I had to guess, I'd go with the latter. It makes sense to me that a smaller batch = less yeast = less CO2 expelled = slower bubbling. Any thoughts?

Ovaltine Beer - Day 4

Bubbles remain pretty steady at 23 seconds between each.

Ovaltine Beer - Day 3

Down to 24 seconds between bubbles

Ovaltine Beer - Day 2

She's looking much better this morning! Bubbles every 40 seconds or so, and my wife said she'd noticed activity yesterday, too. Of course she didn't pay attention to the frequency, so I don't know it's slowing down or speeding up.  Hopefully, speeding up

Mental note: buy a webcam, so I can monitor my beers from work.

Ovaltine Beer- After 24 Hours

So far, there's been no airlock activity, and only a small layer of bubbles at the top of the brew. I'm beginning to doubt my harvesting and pitching techniques. I'll give it some time.

Is it just me or does it smell like Chocolate in here?

The big day! Mistakes were made, fun was had, tears were shed. The final recipe I settled on, based on my stocks and some educated guesses-

Makes about 4L of "beer"-

Whoppers, Pre-Crushing

• 12.2 oz Chocolate Ovaltine (a standard container)
• 3.5 oz of Whoppers
• 1/2 lb light DME
• 1/4 lb Chocolate Malt
• 1/4 lb Black Roast Malt
• 1/2 tsp Gypsum
• 1/2 oz Fuggle hops (60 min)
• 1/4 oz Goldings hops (60 min)
• 1/8 oz Fuggle hops (15 min)
• 1/4 tsp Irish Moss
• Harvested Rogue Chocolate Stout (Pacman, I believe) yeast.

Whoppers, Post Crushing

My brewing technique was typical for extract brewing. I steeped the grain at about 160°F for 30 minutes. Then I removed the spent grain bag and added the "extracts" (including whoppers and Ovaltine) as well as my boiling hops and gypsum. At the appropriate time, I added the finishing hops and Irish moss, then sparged.


I included some light DME, and probably should have done more or a second container of Ovaltine, but by the time I realized how little Ovaltine was actually in the container and how low my supplies are, I'd already started. I crushed up the whoppers before adding them to the mix, but this was probably unnecessary as they disintegrated pretty quickly.

Nothing too unusual in the process, except that there was tons of trub when I strained during the transfer, and the whole house smelled like hot chocolate. Mmmm... but not as good as the usual brew smell.

Harvesting yeast - the wrong way

For a special and unique first brew, I decided I need a special and unique yeast. About a month ago, I harvested some yeast from the bottom of a bottle of Rogue's Chocolate Stout. Perfect!

My ranching techniques were, I admit, not as good as they should have been. Basically, what I did was rinse out my bottle with tap water and pour it into a clean (though not sanitized) plastic Tupperware container. Then, I dumped some confectioner's sugar (for some reason, yeast seems to love the powdered sugar) into the container and shook things up. I left it all at room temp for a week, shaking it whenever I saw it (I put it on the fridge, so I saw it pretty often.) After cracking the lid to expel carbon dioxide, I put the container in my yeast fridge and left it there. Until now.

Note- this is not the proper way to ranch yeast and I am a bad person for having such poor sanitation techniques. On the other hand, it worked, so I can't complain. Haters gonna' hate.

To wake up the yeast, I sanitized a glass jar with bleach and water (See? I can learn. ). I boiled some light dry malt extract in water for a while. After it had cooled and the yeast had reached room temp, I added the DME and the yeast to the sanitized jar. Again, I put it on the fridge and shook frequently.

I was planning on brewing next weekend, but that yeast woke up fast! The next morning, when I went to shake it up, I could hear gas escaping from the jar (guess I didn't screw the top on tight enough) and there was some proto-krausen at the top.

Looks like it's time to brew!

Will it Ferment?- Chocolate Ovaltine and Whoppers

This blog's primary purpose is to give me an excuse to brew more frequently. Its secondary purpose is to help me record some fun, experimental beers done with unusual ingredients.


The plan is to do 1-2 small ~ 4L batches per month, featuring strange ingredients. If I get something good out of an experiment, I'll try to extract the good parts and eliminate the bad parts, eventually resulting in a good recipe, worthy of sharing with the world.


My first brew will contain chocolate Ovaltine and Whoppers (chocolate malt balls). From the ingredients label, in the Ovaltine, we have: 

• Sugar- good! Yeast loves it! More alcohol. No clue as to what kind of sugar, though, unfortunately.
• Cocoa- ok- chocolate in beer isn't too unusual. Can add some nice flavor.
• Whey- not so good- whey is a milk protein and I can't think of anything good that come out of that.
• Barley Malt Extract- Hey-o! That sounds familiar! 
• Beet Juice Color- Shouldn't affect taste.
• Mono- and diacylglycerols - WTF are these? According to wikipedia, "Mono- and diacylglycerols are common food additives used to blend together certain ingredients, such as oil and water, which would not otherwise blend well." Ok?
• Molasses- Yum! More sugars for the yeast. Should add some unique flavoring.
• Natural Caramel Flavor and Artificial Vanilla Flavor- Cool, maybe the flavors will come through
• Soy Lecithin- another weird chemical thing. Apparently, it prevents sticking. I hope it doesn't affect head retention. Head is always good.
• 8 Vitamins and Minerals- I won't go through them all. Food for yeast, I hope?

The Whoppers have a similar ingredient list, nothing too alarming. Here's to a good first brew!