I got a little impatient with my first homebrew and cracked one open on Easter. It looked like beer and tasted like beer, that’s the good news. Bad news is that it certainly wasn’t fully carbonated and tasted a little “green”. Slight cider taste and what there was for a head, dissipated in a few seconds.

The other good news is that it had only been in the bottle for a week so it can only get better, right? I just need to wait it out and keep brewing to fill up the pipeline. A healthy pipeline is one cure for homebrewing impatience!

Speaking of brewing, my second batch (Bewitched Amber Ale from Mr Beer) has been in the fermenter for over a week and should be ready to bottle this Saturday. Bottling should go a lot faster this time as I installed a new spigot that will take a bottling-wand attachment. Also, this will be my last Mr Beer keg 2.13 gallon batch (for a little while). I have a 5 gallon kit ready to go this weekend and I’ll be brewing an Irish Stout.

I’ve also been building out some wooden beer crates to house all these bottles. Cheap as hell to make at about $5 each at most. Depends how cheap you can buy 8′ pieces of 1×3 and 1×2 strapping/furring strips.I just got them at about $1 each on sale at Home Depot. The instructions are dead simple: 12oz Beer Crate – by UncleDavid.

I was only able to find 1×3’s when I went to HD, the instructions call for 1×2 and 1×3 but it works fine the way I did it. They would look better with the mixed sizes though.