4th of July - Brewing Beer
Relax, sit back, enjoy a homebrew.
Brett's been brewing his own beer for over a year now and is turning out some pretty good stuff. It sounded really fun, so I decided to give it a try. Earlier this year I started saving bottles that I would need. It took me quite a few months, but I'm up to 85 in the picture below. Each 5 gallon bach only needs approx. 50 bottles, so I'm ahead of the game. First, I had to clean all of them and get the labels removed.
My army of bottles:
Next, I went to the homebrew store with Brett and purchased a brewing kit. It comes with the buckets, capper, and other tools you need to brew beer. I also got the ingredients to make a Fat Tire clone. The recipe I'm doing is part grain, part extract. The Sunday before, I went down and helped Brett brew up a full grain batch. This helped me see what needs to be done for when I had to do it.
I started off by heating up a pot of water and soaking the grain. You have to get it to a certain temperature and keep it steady for some time. The grain goes into a mesh bag and you soak and dip it like a huge tea bag.
It isn't easy sitting over a pot of boiling water for 2 hours when the temperature is triple digits. Yeah, it's 112* outside!!!
After I soak the grain to get all of the sugars out of it, then you add the rest of the extract. This is basically a big tub of syrup. Mix it into the water and then boil the whole pot for an hour adding the hops along the way. In the next picture, you can see my mash as it is really close to breaking into a boil.
Here's a picture of what it looks like once it's been boiling for a little bit and I've added the first portion of hops.
Once it has boiled for an hour and all the ingredients are added, I had remove it from heat and cool to under 80* as quick as possible. I didn't take any pictures from here out since it is critical to keep everything sanitized and I had to move fairly quick. Once cooled, I had to siphon it into my fermenting bucket. I added the rest of the water I needed to my fermenter to give me 5 gallons and mixed it up. I then pitched the yeast which will react with all the sugers from the mash and convert it into alcohol. Here is a picture of my fermenter with the air lock on top.
It has to sit in there for 2 weeks and then be siphoned off into bottles. Another 2 weeks in the bottles and then it should finally be ready to drink.
Brett's been brewing his own beer for over a year now and is turning out some pretty good stuff. It sounded really fun, so I decided to give it a try. Earlier this year I started saving bottles that I would need. It took me quite a few months, but I'm up to 85 in the picture below. Each 5 gallon bach only needs approx. 50 bottles, so I'm ahead of the game. First, I had to clean all of them and get the labels removed.
My army of bottles:
Next, I went to the homebrew store with Brett and purchased a brewing kit. It comes with the buckets, capper, and other tools you need to brew beer. I also got the ingredients to make a Fat Tire clone. The recipe I'm doing is part grain, part extract. The Sunday before, I went down and helped Brett brew up a full grain batch. This helped me see what needs to be done for when I had to do it.
I started off by heating up a pot of water and soaking the grain. You have to get it to a certain temperature and keep it steady for some time. The grain goes into a mesh bag and you soak and dip it like a huge tea bag.
It isn't easy sitting over a pot of boiling water for 2 hours when the temperature is triple digits. Yeah, it's 112* outside!!!
After I soak the grain to get all of the sugars out of it, then you add the rest of the extract. This is basically a big tub of syrup. Mix it into the water and then boil the whole pot for an hour adding the hops along the way. In the next picture, you can see my mash as it is really close to breaking into a boil.
Here's a picture of what it looks like once it's been boiling for a little bit and I've added the first portion of hops.
Once it has boiled for an hour and all the ingredients are added, I had remove it from heat and cool to under 80* as quick as possible. I didn't take any pictures from here out since it is critical to keep everything sanitized and I had to move fairly quick. Once cooled, I had to siphon it into my fermenting bucket. I added the rest of the water I needed to my fermenter to give me 5 gallons and mixed it up. I then pitched the yeast which will react with all the sugers from the mash and convert it into alcohol. Here is a picture of my fermenter with the air lock on top.
It has to sit in there for 2 weeks and then be siphoned off into bottles. Another 2 weeks in the bottles and then it should finally be ready to drink.
posted by Virgil | 7/04/2007
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