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I Brew Beer (Part 2)

Okay so beer takes time to brew. The truth is that nothing exciting has happened since my last post. I did, however, leave off with a cliff hanger as if something were going to happen. It's my marketing strategy. So where did I leave off? Oh yeah, beer in hand, in the kitchen, ready to go (Read Part 1 if you haven't yet)...

The first thing everyone told me (and everything I read about brewing beer) is that cleanliness is critical. My kit came with some packets of C-Brite cleaner, so I cleaned my fermenter, the brewpot, and the various pieces of plastic that I'd need (airlock, etc.). After feeling pretty good about the sanitation going on, I put 1.5 gallons of water in the brewpot and fired up the stove to bring it to a boil. It turns out that 1.5 gallons takes its sweet time to boil. It probably didn't help that I didn't have the cover on the brewpot, but about a half an hour later (I don't remember if it was actually that long, but it felt like it) the water finally started bubbling.

I took the water off the heat and added the malted barley (it was one can of malt extract and1 1 lb of dry malt) and brown sugar (In case you don't recall, I'm making a Nut Brown Ale kit from NFG Home Brew Supplies). Side note: Charlie seems to be pretty against adding supplementary sugar if you can avoid it, but since I don't know what I'm doing and had already spent the money on the kit, I just followed the directions. I guess time will tell if it has any real effect on the flavor. With the ingredients thoroughly mixed, I put the pot back on the heat and brought the mixture to a boil. Next, the recipe called for the addition of some finishing hops. While the malt extracted was also hopped, my understanding from reading is that the addition of finishing hops adds some of the aromatic characteristics of the hops to the taste of the beer (as opposed to the bittering characteristics of the hops added earlier in the malt extract). I'm not a huge fan of hoppy flavors, but again I don't know what I'm doing so - follow the directions... 15-20 minutes later, the wort (my brewpot concoction) was ready.

After cooling the brewpot in an ice bath (hadn't heard of this before, but the recipe called for it), I poured the wort into the fermenter with 3.5 additional gallons of cold water and 'aerated it' by stirring vigorously. Then I waited till the mixture was below 75 degrees (it was actually just about there already after the ice bath and cold water in the fermenter). Now I added the yeast - the little buggers responsible for converting the sugars in the malted barley and brown sugar to booze. Now it was just about time to wait. I closed up the fermenter and topped it off with an airlock.

The recipe called for the beer to be moved after about 7 days of fermentation to a secondary fermenter (usually a glass carboy). I have read that the main reason for this is to get the beer off of the yeast cake (a pretty tasty sounding name for the yeast that are done with their business and have settled to the bottom of the fermenter) and for that reason improve the quality of the beer. I have also read, and discussed with friends, that this process is likely unnecessary for beers fermenting less than a month. In fact, you run a pretty big risk of contaminating the beer during the transfer process. As a result, I decided to skip this part of the directions (that would've been todays job). I guess we'll know in another couple of weeks whether or not that was wise.

One more week until its bottling time. I've already warned Leslie that she's going to be my helper during that part of the process. I'll have my act together then and make sure to snap a few pictures of us screwing up. I have to say though, its tough watching that bucket, not knowing whats going on inside. Until then, we wait...

(Read Part 3)