something’s brewing
Something’s brewing in our house. It’s Jeff’s beer – all 40 pints of it.
Jeff’s been wanting to brew his own beer for a long time. My present to him 2 birthdays ago was How to Brew, and a promise to go with him to the Homebrew Headquarters in Richardson and get him a starter kit.
1.5 years later, we finally made it to the Homebrew store. And yesterday, Jeff hunkered down and started his first batch. The process actually seemed pretty easy. I’ll explain it, in Esther terms:
1.Sanitize a giant pot with bleach.
2. Dissolve yeast in warm water. Put more water in giant pot, and heat that up to a certain temperature. Add can of beer mix + malt sugar to the water in pot, and let it boil for 15-30 minutes.
3. Once the contents of the pot have reached the correct temperature, submerge the whole thing in an ice bath and cool to another specified temperature.
4. Pour contents of the pot into a 5-gallon sanitized container, then add the yeast.
5. Cap the bucket and then put the little stopper in the lid.
6. Give the whole thing a good shake.
Next step: wait 2 weeks for the beer to ferment, then we can bottle! Stay tuned for that post.
Has anyone else made beer before? We’d love to hear tips if you have any!
Jeff, glad to see you’re picking up this awesome hobby! It was actually during your wedding that I got the idea to start brewing.. I thought your microbrew selection was a great personal touch and wanted to do something similar, so I picked up a kit and went at it! It took me several batches to find the one I wanted to brew (also, I had to find a bride), but I couldn’t have been happier with the final result (bride and brew). Hope you enjoyed it too!
As for tips, looks like you have the two most important things down: sanitation and enjoying the process. The next important thing for me is patience. Even though you can bottle many brews after only 2 weeks, and you can begin drinking it another 2 weeks after that, its better if you wait. Most of my brews started really tasting good after 3-4months (usually 2-4 weeks in the primary fermentor, and the rest conditioning in the secondary and bottles/keg).
Have fun and let me know how it turns out!
That’s awesome! Didn’t know that you brew too. So you ended up brewing all the beer for your wedding then? Darn! wish I could’ve been there. Thanks for the tips – Jeff’s been reading his How to Brew book a lot, so if you have any more nuggets of wisdom, let him know
Also – if you’re interested in reading, I’ve got an interview with a brewer lined up for next week on the blog!
Yum…..I love beer:)
Awesome! We have friends who brew their own beer and have had pretty good success with it. Good luck on yours!
Just wanted to let you know – I nomintaed you for The Versatile Blogger award. Stop by my blog to get the scoop!
http://onetoughmom.blogspot.com/2012/08/versatile-blogger-award.html
Thanks! That’s encouraging to hear that others’ home brew turned out well. Hope they’ve been letting y’all taste test!
And thanks for the nomination for the Versatile Blogger award!
Yay! Glad you guys are starting to brew. Let me know if you have any questions!
Thanks DK! Jeff’s been meaning to call you with some Qs, so be prepared!
Great pictures! Love it! I’m home-brewing a lot myself right now–on my second batch (an Extra Pale Ale)! What kind of beer are you making? My first batch was a Nut Brown Ale. I wrote a column about home-brewing for the newspaper I was interning with for the last few months (http://stage.independent.com/news/2012/jun/26/welcome-brewers-blog/) and just started my own beer blog (emilyeinolander.com) if you feel like taking a look. I’m always down for more brewing friends and would love to bounce ideas back and forth!
Hi Emily, thanks for sharing your blog and link to your article! Sounds like you’re having fun with the brewing. What’d you think of the Nut Brown Ale? And do you use the beer ‘syrup,’ (not sure what the right term for that is) or do you use dry ingredients? We brewed a wheat beer this time. Wish it didn’t need so long to ferment!