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Here is the brew hibernating in my closet waiting for the fermentation to begin. In 8 to 24 hours I should see some bubbling appear in the water-lock which means the yeast has started to eat the sugars and turn it into CO2 and alcohol. Mmmm... Beer!!!
I'll be back a little later when it's time to move the wort from the primary plastic fermenter to the secondary glass carboy fermenter. Oooh, and I get to add more hops. See you then.
Yeah, clean up time!! :-( Actually, the clean up wasn't too bad. A little soap and elbow grease got everything cleaned up.
The wort is in it's "cooling-off period." The wort has to go from rolling boil to 80 degrees ASAP. Ideally you would use a wort-chiller, which is a several feet of coiled copper tubing you immerse in cold water. The wort travels through the tubing and cools to quite quickly, 20 minutes. The ice bath took around 45 minutes to get to a yeast safe 80 degrees. If I start brewing regularly the wort chiller will be added to my collection of equipment. You want to cool the wort quickly so you can get it into the sealed fermenter and away from any evil airborne bacteria that want to foul the taste of the beer.
Yeast shake anyone? The yeast is chilling out next to Palmer's "How to Brew" while the wort boils.
After getting the mash completed I removed the grains from the wort and sparged the grain bag. Sparging is a fancy name for pouring fresh water over the grains to get all of the extract from the grain bag. I was excited and then started to add the 5.5lbs of dry extract. After dumping half of the bag I realized that I was going to have a boil-over problem because I was coming dangerously close to the rim of the brewpot and still had 1 hour of rolling boil to go. So I decided to empty some of the wort from the main brewpot into my smaller 8qt pot and boil it simultaneously. At this point I added 1 oz of Kent Golding bittering hops and calcium sulfate to the wort. I made sure to divide the hops between the two pots in an effort to keep the wort consistent. Since I avoided the dreaded boil-over splitting the wort between the two pots seemed like a good solution to the problem
So before the next brew I'm getting a good thermometer. Here I had the thermometer clipped to the outside of the pot. Unfortunately I was not getting an accurate reading and ended up brewing the wort at about 10 degrees too hot for the majority of the mash. How this will effect the taste? I'm not quite sure. But next time I'm splurging for a good submersible probe thermometer.
Mmm! Here are the grains soaking while the heat gets up to 150 degrees. Doesn't that look yum?
Must kill all bacteria! Must kill all bacteria! Here are my implements of creation, hoses, strainer, pot cover, etc. soaking in a C-brite sanitizing solution to keep them free of the evil off-taste producing bacteria.
"The Joy of Home Brewing" by Charlie Papazian is considered by most the bible of homebrewing books. It really gets involved with homebrewing and inspires you to get started. "How to Brew" by John Palmer is a bit more dry and more textbook-like because it covers more of the technical matter of brewing but quite informative. Below is the recipe and instruction booklet provided by ABS for their recipe "Monticello Colonial Ale"
Laid on on my floor are the contents of the starter's brewing package from ABS. It includes a 6.5 gallon plastic bottling fermenter and a 6.5 gallon glass carboy for the secondary fermenting stage. Also included is the siphoning tube, racking cane, and bottle capper.
On my table is the 20qt stock pot I "borrowed" from my aunt & uncle along with the beer recipe package from ABS and the important jar of molasses. The brewing is almost ready to begin.
The day has finally come and I'm home brewing my first batch of beer. Here are a few pictures for posterity.
Here is the brew hibernating in my closet waiting for the fermentation to begin. In 8 to 24 hours I should see some bubbling appear in the water-lock which means the yeast has started to eat the sugars and turn it into CO2 and alcohol. Mmmm... Beer!!!
Yeah, clean up time!! :-( Actually, the clean up wasn't too bad. A little soap and elbow grease got everything cleaned up.
The wort is in it's "cooling-off period." The wort has to go from rolling boil to 80 degrees ASAP. Ideally you would use a wort-chiller, which is a several feet of coiled copper tubing you immerse in cold water. The wort travels through the tubing and cools to quite quickly, 20 minutes. The ice bath took around 45 minutes to get to a yeast safe 80 degrees. If I start brewing regularly the wort chiller will be added to my collection of equipment. You want to cool the wort quickly so you can get it into the sealed fermenter and away from any evil airborne bacteria that want to foul the taste of the beer.
After getting the mash completed I removed the grains from the wort and sparged the grain bag. Sparging is a fancy name for pouring fresh water over the grains to get all of the extract from the grain bag. I was excited and then started to add the 5.5lbs of dry extract. After dumping half of the bag I realized that I was going to have a boil-over problem because I was coming dangerously close to the rim of the brewpot and still had 1 hour of rolling boil to go. So I decided to empty some of the wort from the main brewpot into my smaller 8qt pot and boil it simultaneously. At this point I added 1 oz of Kent Golding bittering hops and calcium sulfate to the wort. I made sure to divide the hops between the two pots in an effort to keep the wort consistent. Since I avoided the dreaded boil-over splitting the wort between the two pots seemed like a good solution to the problem
Mmm! Here are the grains soaking while the heat gets up to 150 degrees. Doesn't that look yum?
"The Joy of Home Brewing" by Charlie Papazian is considered by most the bible of homebrewing books. It really gets involved with homebrewing and inspires you to get started. "How to Brew" by John Palmer is a bit more dry and more textbook-like because it covers more of the technical matter of brewing but quite informative. Below is the recipe and instruction booklet provided by ABS for their recipe "Monticello Colonial Ale"
On my table is the 20qt stock pot I "borrowed" from my aunt & uncle along with the beer recipe package from ABS and the important jar of molasses. The brewing is almost ready to begin.
