Brewing

I started a batch back in the late winter when I had my kidney stones. The first pic shows the ingredients that come in a kit. There are varying degrees of difficulty when you decide to brew. I lean towards the easy/ intermediate kits, because to move up in difficulty means the purchase of more equipment - which I'm not ready to do right now. Someday, I would like to have my own mashing equipment and be able to purchase the grains and make my own malt. In all honesty though, I am not ready for the additional steps... I need to perfect what I have at the present time. This was a Honey Brown Ale kit and as you can see there is a large jug of malt extract, honey, yeast and two different kinds of hops. What you don't see is the 5 gallons of filtered water, the extra grains for steeping and the priming sugar. The apples you see to the right were not used in this recipe... ha ha!

The second pic shows the grains steeping in a cheese cloth. The wort - as it's called now is slowly being brought up to a boil. Before the boil came on strong I removed the grain bag and added the malt extract. I then added one of the bags of hops and let it boil for about an hour. Towards the end of the boil I added the finishing hops and the honey. The chore after the boil is to bring the temperature of the wort down quickly and efficiently. I chose to submerse the pot in the sink with ice and cold water but, there are other methods which can make it faster. It's like anything else - if you have unlimited funds, there is always some doodad that makes things easier.

After the temperature comes down you can transfer the wort into the primary fermenter, add the remaining 3 1/2 gallons of water and pitch the yeast. The last pic shows the lid on the primary fermenter with the airlock installed. The fermenting wort lets off a lot of gas and it needs a way to escape - hence the airlock. I left the wort in the primary fermenter for a week and a half and then transfered it to a glass five gallon carboy. Usually you leave the wort in the secondary fermenter for a few weeks and then it's ready to bottle or keg. Well, as usual I didn't get around to bottling for more than a month and a half. Leaving it in the secondary that long is okay as long as the airlock is in place.

The wife finally had enough of seeing the carboy in the laundry room and told me to get it bottled. I use "Grolsch" style bottles if you are familiar with that brand of beer. They are the bottles that have a flip top with a rubber seal. I use these because the are larger and they are much easier to seal. I have a bottle capper and bottle caps but, trust me when I say that bottle capping is a pain in the ass. To prepare the wort for bottling I boiled a pint of water along with 1/2 cup of priming sugar. Priming sugar adds a little fuel for the remaining yeast cells in the wort. I then added the sugar mixture to the bottling bucket and transferred the wort from the carboy into the bottling bucket. I gave it a little stir and began bottling. This batch makes 5 gallons of beer - which equates to about 2 1/2 cases of bottles. The priming sugar is what carbonates the beer. Mass manufactured beers use a forced carbonation method with CO2 gases - this is also what home brewers do when they keg rather than bottle their beer.

I waited about a week and opened up a bottle. It was better than I expected. It's a dark, slightly bittered beer with a good head. The longer I let it age, the better it gets. The alcohol content is slightly higher than what you get in a mass produced beer... and these days one of them is about all I need at a sitting. Talking about this makes me want to order another kit. Cheers!