Daggger
Shared on Sat, 09/26/2009 - 17:38Well it's been like a year and a half since my last blog and that's because I got bored with documenting my movie reviews. But I have a new interest and that interest took form earlier this afternoon in the form of Homebrewing! It's fun, it's easy, a little expensive but not prohibitively. And more importantly, you get beer as the final product.
Without further delay here's the recount of Daggger's Afternoon of September 26, 2009.
It starts like most activities start . . . with organization. You see here all the "crap" that goes into brewing, two buckets (one for fermenting, one for bottling) a bunch of plastic wear, a bottle capper and . . . um . . . ignore the cans of compressed air and tissues, haven't really entirely put away everything from my most recent grocery run . . . but whatever it's not in the way.
The shiny packages are ingredients: Malt extract from the malt barley . . . it's easier to buy the malt extract and just pour it in, instead of roasting and extracting yourself. You also see the Steeping Grains basically a primitive teabag ::giggle giggle:: for brewing. And my bottle capper which crimps the tops down on the bottles.
The other half of the counter top is covered in big spoon (straight out of a Seinfeld episode I'm going to guess), a bunch of tubing, thermometer, hydrometer, cleaning brush, syphon, and two bags of white powder which may or may not get me arrested and jumpy (ones a very strong non-sudsing cleaning agent and the other is the corn sugar to provide tasty goodness for the yeast to feed upon after bottling . . . yeah carbonation).
And final ingredient:
That's right a ton of bottles, 32 so far with ten more to be consumed in my fridge should be right around the perfect 40-50 range I need in 10-15 days.
Ok enough ingredients Daggger get to the fun stuff, the first step is über cleaning. Be careful not to confuse the bags of white powder!
Yeah Action shot!
I cleaned the brewpot by dissolving the cleaning solution then scrubbing, dumping into my fermenter bucket, scrubbing then transferring to my bottling bucket which I used as a storage vessel and soaked all my plastic wear in until use. Yeah cleanliness!
After cleaning the brewpot I filled with ~2.5 gallons of water and tossed in my Steeping Grains for 15 minutes at 155°.
Before:
Beginning:
After (water is actually a lot darker than the picture suggests):
Next was the ugliest, messiest and most fun part, adding the malt extract which is as thick and dark as mollases.
Now get to boiling . . . I had to turn my stovetop up to high and even then it just barely boiled but when tossing in the hops it took off:
60 minutes later I had beer while stirring often and keeping at boil . . . Look at that Sexy Stirrer!:
Next chill the boil down as fast and as cold as you can get it and toss it in the fermenter.
While at the same time waking up your yeast (yeast is a fun word to say yeast, yeast, yeast, yeast . . . ok Daggger focus) for 20 minutes in lukewarm water.
Next toss the yeast in the fermenter with the full volume of liquid and secure cover tightly, add the airlock to release any carbon dioxide while the yeast yeast yeast yeast yeast yeast feed for several days.
Just so we're clear the entire process is Clean everything, Water, Malt Extract, Boil, Hops, Continue to Boil, Cool, Add to Bucket, Add Yeast, Let sit for a little while . . . Beer! Seriously it really is that easy!
That's where I'm at now . . . productive day, and in 2-4 weeks I will have made a exceptionally tasty Oatmeal Stout . . . or so I hope . . . stay tuned!
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Submitted by Snuphy on Sat, 09/26/2009 - 18:27
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