Brewing 101

Carrie can cook. Chickens lay eggs.

But what can I make?

I decided to try my hand at brewing. I figured it would be a lot easier than baking or cooking, and beer is usually a socially acceptable gift to show up with out of nowhere. Why, I could even host a board game and beer get together!

Plus, it was raining and fairly cheap. I bought a 1-gallon kit after my minimum research suggested the standard 5 gallon kit produced 50 bottles worth (Yikes! That'd be a lot to skunk!).

Shane really wanted to help. He breathed all over my sterilized equipment when I told him to keep his hands off. I was forced to hand him the remote control to get anything done.

Like many things, the instructions for the task were much more concise and simple than the execution. I watched a video online and read the instructions at least twice before I jumped in.

Without writing a how-to-guide, brewing is not super complicated. Provided with a recipe and practice, the task feels like it could be automatic enough someone could have multiple batches in various stages. With no practice, I figured I was going to mess something up, but you have to start somewhere.

To start off, my time estimate was bad. The recipe included an hour boil, so I supposed it would take me around two hours of fiddling around, cleaning stuff, and going slowly. It took a little over three between cleaning, Shane helping, the water heating, and the wort chilling.

Which brings me to the second area I ran into trouble: Chilling the wort. The recipe said I needed to chill the pot in cold water until it was around 70 degrees F.

I filled the sink and dumped out our ice and found it woefully inadequate for the task.

The ice all melted instantly and there wasn't enough in the fridge to begin with. We don't use much ice, so all we had was what was in the dispenser in the fridge. The house was 75 degrees and the water coming out of the tap felt warmer (It is summer outside - I wonder if the outside temperature being so high is what causes some types of brews to be seasonal. Experiencing it makes the knowledge far more real than thinking about it). 

I tried to supplement cold water from the fridge's dispenser, but the fridge couldn't supply cold enough water as fast as I wanted it. I realized I was boring in more tap water at some point and stopped.

Online, it said that chilling the wort typically took about half an hour. After 45+ minutes, mine was only down to 81 or 82 degrees and the recipe called for 70. We'd already missed TKD and a quick cool down helps prevent undesirable bacteria from making a home in the wort, so I had to press on.

Getting things wrong is the quickest path to learning. I learned how to use the siphon next, but skipped the hydrometer as I just wanted to get things moving.

I probably picked up more sludge than I should have, but I loaded up the primary fermenter. The wort should hang out for 4-6 days. Then I'll have to move it to a secondary fermenter where it will rest for a couple of weeks before it can be bottled. I'll have to buy a six pack, drink, and sanitize the bottles in that time period.

Hopefully not an issue, the fermenter is supposed to be in a dry, dark, warm place. Warm was defined as 64 - 72 degrees F. Our house AC is currently set at 75. I put it on the landing to the basement and hoped for the best.

It's going to be weeks before I know how everything worked out. If something did go wrong, I'm going to have to figure out where in that long time period, too. Honestly, I'd hoped the process was less work. I plan on doing it at least a few more times, so that I didn't waste my money on the gear without using it. 

After that, I'll decide on if I want to buy a book and try to make my own recipes or not. Understanding the process well enough to create a new brew from scratch is an entirely different animal than buying a kit like I did. There was a lot of math in the big book of brewing I flipped through at the store.

Time to hurry up and wait.