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.