Homebrewing

About 2 months ago me and a friend decided to get a homebrew kit to brew our own beers. The first brew we made was a Stout. An example of a stout is Guinness. We have been getting extract kits which include all the ingredients and makes the process pretty simple for beginners. The basic steps that go in to brewing beer are as follows: you get a pot with about 2 gallons of water and put some specialty grains in a bag and basically seep the grains in the pot as you bring the temp up to a boil. Then you remove the grains, remove the pot from the heat and pour in the liquid malt. Malt is the fermentable part of the beer (in other words malt is what the yeast eats). When the malt is mixed in you return the pot to the heat and bring to a boil. When it wort begins to boil you add some hops. Hops are a flower that contributes a really delicious bitterness and crispness to beers. After the Hops are in you just let the wort boil for 1 hour (adding somethings at different points depending on the recipe). After your hour is up you put the pot into a sink or something with some ice and cold water in it. As the wort cools down you get the yeast ready. Yeast is complicated. There are different kinds that you can use for different brews or different ones you can use to get different tastes. Yeast comes in a dry version which requires rehydration before it is added to the wort or you can have liquid yeast which just needs to be activated before adding to the wort. When the wort is cool you pour into a big glass carboy (fermenter) and add the yeast. You have to shake the carboy for a couple of minutes to try and dissolve some air into the beer to give the yeast some oxygen. You then seal the carboy and add an air lock (a device that lets CO2 out and nothing in).

Now you have to wait for about 2 weeks while the beer ferments. To the right you can see our Stout in the fermenter. After the stuff ferments for a couple weeks you siphon it out of the carboy, add some sugar (for carbonation), and put them into standard bottles and cap them. The you let them age in the bottles for a couple of weeks depending on what you are making and then you can finally pop the top and try some.

We got our first tastes of the stout earlier this week and it was good. Not a great beer but deffinatley drink able, which is what i was hoping for. Yesterday we bottled an IPA, earlier this week we boiled the wort for a heffewisen and we have a red ale and another stout ready to be brewed once we free up a fermenter. It is a pretty fun hobby and a little less risky than biking I think :)