Because of the increase in grain and hops I'm always looking for a way to save some $$. Not every beer needs to be an award winner to taste good and satisfy a thirst.

A little over a month ago I brewed a Brown Ale that closely followed an Anderson Valley beer recipe. A few months before I'd saved the hops from a pale ale boil by vacuum packing them and freezing. My thought being that the 1 oz at the 60 min boil were finished and kaput, but, there was still life and vitality in the hops used in the 15 min, 5 min and flameout (steeping). That was a lot of expensive hops I was going to toss in the trash.

I won a "bottom of the barrel", thick, granular, dark, old container of LME amber at a COHO meeting and it has been sitting in the fridge for 4-5 months looking for a project. It was a little less than full. I had some third generation Wyeast American 1056 sitting in the fridge with an airlock on it. It had been there for about a month too long.

I knew that I'd never be able to make a pale beer with all the potential flaws in what I was about to do, Soooo with nothing really to loose here is what I did:

I ran a 2nd running sparge through the Mash Tun (no cost). The hot liquor still had some color in it so I sparged with water under 170 degrees in an effort to leech out the sugars and not cook out the tannins in the husks. I sparged until the color went away.
I started a second boil in my old aluminum pot on my stove in the house and tossed in the amber LME (no cost) and used hops (no cost) at 60 min.
I added an oz of my home grown and vacuumed pack hops from last season (no cost) at 30min and 5 min.
I used Irish moss and a tablespoon of gypsum,
I tossed in two mex sugar cones ($.50).
I boiled for 75 minutes
I cooled it to 70 degrees and tossed in the yeast (no cost; actually 1/4 cost of a Wyeast smack pack).
I sat the two carboys next to each other to compare the fermentation rates. The temp's ranged from 66 - 72 degrees. The extract brew started rocking about 8 hours; well before the "all grain" did (ah the power of a quart of yeast, even old yeast!). I bottled the both today. They started and finished within a couple of points of each other as a FG.

So at this point I have a couple of dollars invested in 5 gallons of beer. The SG was 1.061 and FG was 1.017 after a month in primary (7 days) and secondary (21 days).

The taste test at bottling was that this will be a good but not wonderfully great beer, very drinkable and comparable to some commercial lighter brown ales maybe; more like an amber on the darker side. I'll bring a bottle next meeting.

I know that there is a limit to what can be reused but with a little forward thinking there is no reason that we can't squeeze a few extra gallons of beer from our boil and pocket some money to boot!

Bill