There is a chance I’m making too many presumptions, but I trust everyone remembers that Vigilante Brewing Co is my own name for my very new homebrewing company I started just a little while ago. Maybe there will come a time when I don’t feel the need to tell everyone who Vigilante is, but I really don’t foresee that time coming very soon. So far I have only really brewed one complete beer: Happy Amber Anniversary. However, I am currently a little ways into getting my second concoction into bottles. Even though I’ve gone through this process once, I realized approaching bottling time that I have a few questions regarding some of the things I will need to do when bottling this one. I’m hoping I can get a good idea of how I should go about finishing off this brew.
Question 1: What is the best way to filter the beer when moving it from the secondary to the bottling bucket? This is really the 
biggest question I have. This beer has more sediment in it than my previous bottle. Plus, I had to dry hop this one, so it contains even more hops floating around in the secondary. I’m trying to figure how best to make sure all of that junk doesn’t get into the bottles. I was thinking of making some type of filter at the end of the tube with cheesecloth or something, but I’m not sure if that is the best way to go about it. I’m also concerned about getting to much air in the beer when trying to filter it. What are some methods that have worked well for some other people before? I just want to produce the best beer possible.
Question 2: What is the best way to clean used bottles? The bottles I used last time had never had liquid in them. Therefore, I used the dishwashing machine, without soap, to sanitize them. I read somewhere that the heat cycle can be used to sanitize the bottles. This time, however, I’m concerned that I need to also clean out all of the garbage that may still be in the bottles. I rinsed the bottles after using them, but I am sure that are still things in there that need to get cleaned out. How do I make sure I get everything out? Also, along the same lines, how do I best get the labels off the bottle? I have some ideas for this one, but I want to see if there is something I haven’t thought of.
Questions 3: Why do I have to add a second batch of yeast three days before I bottle? The previous batch I made sent you all of the ingredients and you just pieced them together. This time I’m following a recipe and buying all the ingredients myself. It’s really essentially the same thing, but there are different instructions to follow that I didn’t need to do the last time. Is there anything I should keep in mind adding a second batch of yeast, and should I be concerned about any additional stuff to filter out adding the second batch? I’m not sure why I’m a little worried about screwing this batch up. I think it’s because I paid for all of these ingredients this time, and I feel like it’s kind of more my baby!
I think this covers all the questions I have about my upcoming brew. I want to make sure it’s amazing, and I’m most worried about getting a lot of sediment in the bottles. Any advice you have for me will be appreciated, so I hope I get some good feedback. Help Vigilante Brewing Co become the next best thing in Washington DC!
always have something from them in my fridge. I love their regular line-up. They have some great in your face IPAs, and they manage to head in the completely other direction with rich malts and coffee flavors as well. My favorite beer from last year was their 15 year release. I actually still have a bottle that I think I’ll be opening this weekend, and I have been thinking about it all week. They are collaborating machines as well. It’s quite impressive how they consistently collaborate with breweries from all over the country. I think I check them out every week because I manage to forget how amazing some of their regular releases are. I spend so much time picking up their collaborations that I forget their line-up is still awesome. Plus I’m paying homage to them with my next release: Pretentious Hopster.
Founders Brewing Company – If you have read my blog before, you’ll know I end up reviewing a lot of different beers out of Founders. I think they tend to be one of my favorite because they have some of the biggest and most flavorful beers that are out there. There is one beer that put me over the top on them. I of course enjoy their stouts. Imperial, Breakfast, Canadian Breakfast, and Kentucky Breakfast are awesome beers; however, it was the Devil Dancer that really caught my eye. While I love big coffee and roasted notes, I will always come back to big hops in the end. Devil Dancer is a big triple IPA, and it will have you wondering how they managed to get the beer to smell and taste so herbal. Unlike Stone, I don’t really remember consuming a lot of their standard line-up. I think I instead manage to consume most of their specials most of the time.
Dogfish all the time? It is always done out of love! I want to love everything I get from them. Before succumbing to my inner beer geek, Dogfish was my bread and butter. Then, after fully investing myself in analyzing and brewing beer, I have found myself frustrated by them so many times. They push boundaries! No one is going to deny that; however, I can’t give them props for a lot of what they do. They use ingredients I don’t care about, and they focus on things that just don’t matter to me. Read beer gimmicks from earlier this week. In the end, I love a lot of the standard brews they do, and they do produce some good specialty brews once in a while too. I mean, if I appreciate Stone for producing so many new and specialty brews, then I definitely need to give a big thumbs up to Dogfish for their ability to always try new things too.
Mikkeller Brewing Company – Mikkeller is a newer addition to this list, but they are quickly becoming one of biggest favorites. They are sure to surpass one of these breweries above them if I keep trying different amazing beers from them. There is more of a combination reason why I love this brewery. They produce amazing beer, and they have a great way of producing it. I’ve talked about it before. They are the gypsies of the beer industry. They travel all around both Europe and America using other breweries equipment to produce crazy incredible beer. I can’t say I love their specialty beers or their traditional line-up because it seems like they are always producing something new, and I can only find a handful of their stuff here and there. But, they got me to enjoy a pilsner, and I always look for their stuff at the store, so they get a place in the line-up.
understand that you will most likely be pouring the beer into some type of specialty glass (more on that later). The macro-breweries, however, have attempted to figure out ways to get you to pour beer down your gullet as fast as possible. Miller Lite has the vortex bottle. As far as I can tell, and yes I have experienced the specialty swirling action, the vortex bottle adds nothing to the actual beer consumption experience. The beer experiences no benefit from a bottle that probably costs slightly more to produce. Coors Light may be the biggest culprit of gimmicks. They have cold activated cans and labels, wide mouth cans, and even vented wide mouth cans. Evidently, they don’t believe people can tell if a beer is cold through the use of any other sense other than their eyes, and everyone wants the ability to chug a beer in under 3.5 seconds to feel like their life is complete. While I’m sure these are marketed to a slightly younger crowed, let’s not pretend you don’t have some 40-50 year old rooting through coolers to find blue mountains and wide-mouth vented cans for their slow pitch softball game. Heineken even makes their beer cans in the shape of kegs. Perhaps it is a slightly more sophisticated version, but it is still a gimmick none-the-less.
do, but they try to throw obscure ingredients together to create beers you feel like you have to try. As a lover of beer, I find myself getting sucked in all the time. It’s always a surprise to see some of the ingredients, and a morbid fascination to know what they taste like. Half, or more than half of the time, I find out why no one else is using the ingredients, but they got me to buy a bottle because I couldn’t help myself. Well they are at it again in a different way now. The Randall Jr. seems to function similar to a french press water bottle. You pour in your beer, put whatever you want to infuse it with on top, and you drink it straight out of there. You can add whole leaf hops, lime, espresso beans, or any other ingredient you think would enhance the flavor of the beer. Dogfish seems to have even accepted the idea that this is a gimmick by creating an infomercial for it. I’ve included said infomercial below. I can’t lie! The morbid fascination is kicking in, and I can’t help but wonder what this will do to particular beers. However, do I shell out the $19.99 to find out? I heard about this early last week, and I’ve been pondering ordering one for a week now!
When it comes to Alabama Shakes I, and many others, saw them coming from miles away. Different places I go for my music news have been talking about Alabama Shakes for well over a year now. Even though they have only been a band since 2009, they managed to get together and hone their sound fairly quickly. Completely blowing up a few festivals here and there, their very first full length album could be considered one of the most anticipated albums of the year. I think you should open up Spotify, or click on their video at the bottom of this post, and give a listen to them as you read through the rest of this little review. You’ll be a fan by the end of reading this post.
The best place to start with Alabama Shakes is their first single/song on the album: “Hold On”. This is the song that they are performing on late night talk shows, and they have a video for it as well. As I said earlier, Howard pours herself into many of these different songs, and it definitely comes out in full force on this song. The song starts off simple enough. The beat the drums keep, the pretty simple melody the guitars have, and the steady bass don’t deviate much until near the end of the song. It is really Howard’s voice that stands out here. She has the ability to sing, “scream”, and put emphasis on things so you can see her passion here. The lyrics of the song are pretty simple as well, but the power lies in how she sings it. She seems to be singing about struggling to make it out of some kind of difficulty. Her lyrics, “Bless my heart, Bless my soul / Didn’t think I’d make it t0 22 years old / Must be someone, up above / Saying come on Britney, you gotta come on up / You gotta hold on”, seem really personal. I especially like how she throws her own name in there as well. It’s like she wants you to know she is struggling to hold on. The emotion she contains in her voice only continues to come out even more as the song breaks into organized pandemonium near the end of the song. Watch the video below!
mind some type of 50′s sock hop song. I always manage to get the dance scene from the first Back to the Future movie in my head when I listen to this song. It’s a much more laid back song, and it’s message is simply to take it easy and have fun. It’s real catchy and much more relaxed than some of the other material. ”Goin’ To The Party” is one of the stranger songs on the album for me. It has more of a narrative to it about heading to a party. They warn or entice you to go because there is going to be dancing and a fight as well. The tempo of the song is definitely different from anything else on the album, and I do have to be in the mood for it. I can’t help but think this is a slightly comedic song. Britney warbles, “Gotta take me home now, know you ain’t drinking water / Gotta take me back, cause I’m still somebody’s daughter”. The lyrical content and delivery are just so much different from anything else on the album.
