I bottle condition the beers I make using a small shot of sugar and/or (sometimes) some of the trub, cos that’s the only way I really have of ensuring a good carbonation in the final product. OK, it also helps the flavors mature just a tad, as well. But since I add a tad of sugar to each bottle for the conditioning process, it does mean I have a lil sediment in every bottle–some more, some less.
So, as a lil experiment, I’ve been saving the sediment in one (clean) bottle and now I’m making a “one boittle pico-brew” out of it. *heh*
Added about a tablespoon of molasses and warm water, shook. Roasted some pearled barley (cos it’s what I had) and ground it up really fine; added a little Malt-O-Meal to that and ground it up some more; funneled about a tablespoon of that into the bottle, filled it with warm water, gently rolled it around a bit to get that mixed well, then placed the lid of the swingtop bottle loosely on top. Placed the bottle in my conditioning drawer. Last I looked, the top was acting as a kinda one-way airlock letting carbon dioxide out, but seemed to settle back on down after each lil mini-burp. Nice floculant on top & I can see it actually brewing.
It may be a tad high in sugar content, what with the molasses and malted grains, but… oh, well. 🙂
We’ll see how this turns out. Even though I used some trub-heavy sediment from the bottles, I don’t expect much in the way of hopsiness, and it’ll be REAL heavy on sediment (trub, in this case)… which I’ll save when I decant it into another bottle for further conditioning.
Heck. I just thought: shoulda added some coffee to it. *heh* Maybe next time, if this turns out at all well…
*heh*
Yeh, weird. And just for fun. Not going to count as one of my “real” brewing experiments, but might just turn out semi-drinkable anyway.
And the trub? Gonna make some bread. In fact, I have some I saved and dried just for that purpose. Think maybe I’ll make some “beer bread” tonight.
BTW, you know the oldest known beer recipe used bread to make the beer. In fact, it seems from the context of the Sumerian text that’s been translated that beer was thought of as something like liquid bread (as it appears some Medieval monastic orders also thought).
Yeh, yeh, I know: I didn’t boil the “grains” to convert starches to sugars first. But… primitive beers often did not, either, and this is a VERY “primitive” beer attempt.
I promise to boil the “grains” when I try making potato beer (or “spud brew”) though. *heh*
Oh, and I got a tad behind on my schedule and haven’t made any bread tonight. And now that it’s past 9:00, I’m not gonna, either.
Next day: still bubbling away. Sniff the outgassing that’s pushing past the cap just sitting on the bottle and smells like… bread. Yummy Yeasty goodness.