Brew Day!

As I mentioned previously, I received my new home brew kit that can do 5 gals at a time. This is a major step up from Mr. Beer and I couldn't wait to get started with it. But because the pain would be too great (and expensive!) if I messed up a 5 gal batch, I am going to take this very carefully, one step at a time. Instead of using the ingredient kit I ordered for 5 gals of beer, I decided to start off with a smaller batch using other ingredients I already had on hand. This way I can learn how to use my new gear and if anything goes wrong, it will only be 2 gal, not the expensive 5 gal batch.

The brewing kit came with a special edition of Zimurgy Magazine and a small book "Home Beer making - A Complete Beginner's Guide". These books explained all of the beginner's mistakes that I have made using Mr. Beer. Not Mr. Beer's fault, I was over ambitious in wanting to make my own beer. Anyway, I read these several times to understand the steps. I won't bore you with too many of the details but here is a short picture form is what I did:

The ingredients I had were

1.4 lb can of pale malt

1 lb bag of dry sparkling amber malt

1 oz of cascade hops

1 Munton's Ale yeast

These ingredients should lead to something pretty close to a style of beer called American Pale Ale, one of my favorites.

The first step is to boil the malt extracts with the hops to make a wort. Actually the first step is to clean and sanitize all of the equipment that will come in contact with the cooled wort. Boiling the wort was kind of fun to watch. The bags you see in the boiling wort are hop bags.

Once the wort has been boiled, in this case for 1 hour with timed additions of the hops, you have to cool it, faster the better. I put all of the ice cubes had in the fridge and put it into a big metal bowl and then I put the brew pot with the hot wort into it. The ice disappeared in about 2 seconds and after that I ran cold water in the bowl and around the pot. This took about 20 minutes to reduce the temperature to where I could safely transfer the wort and add (ok, I'm a brewer now, I should have said "pitch") the yeast. Ok, just pictures from here.

Transfer the cooled wort into the fermentation carboy:

Put the airlock on the carboy and we're ready to ferment. I put the fermentation ready carboy into my bath tub partially filled with water to maintain a fairly steady temperature during the fermentation stage. Only the top of the airlock is visible here. And I will be taking only showers for the next few days.

Now all I have to do is to wait several days to a week until the fermentation stops.

Can't wait to see how this turns out. Stay tuned.