On Making Beer Rookie-Style…

Our first attempt at making beer has been fraught with killings!  We’ve had a brew on the go for over a month now and the pitfalls have been numerous, not quite as exciting as the writer of our instruction sheet would have us believe.

“The night before you begin, boil tap water for 15 minutes, let it cool and store it in sanitized containers that you can put into your fridge right next to the last commercial six pack you will ever buy.  Now we know you are excited but try to get some sleep.”

For starters, brewing beer takes a tad longer than the consumption of a six pack in an average household of two adults and,

Sometimes I crave a regular lager so may leave my extra-dry-stout-with-heavy-overtones-of-chocolate languishing for a week or two in favor of a chilled Heineken.  But I’m not here to curb the enthusiasm of fellow brew-meisters eager to initiate the rookie.

That said I’m looking forward to this foray into self-sustainability done in the comfort of my own kitchen.

Off hubs and I went to the Brew Shop where one of our pastors works part time.  Yep, he turns water into beer.

He and Simon (my married son) have quite a history of thinking outside the barrel together, they have many years of brewing experience between them and have come up with some innovative recipes.

We decided to go the oats and hops route instead of a mixture straight from a can.  We’d helped our son numerous times in our kitchen over the past six years and thought we were familiar enough with the process to brew from scratch.

We heated water, soaked grains, added malt extracts and boiled the wort for 50 minutes before adding hops for 10 more minutes.

Beer2

We cooled the liquid before pitching the yeast which we promptly killed accidentally.

Oblivious of our destruction we stored the full fermenter, attached the blow-off hose and waited for bubbling to commence.

Which it didn’t.  There was no burping and no krausen.

We were sold more yeast to pitch and finally saw bubbles and foam.

After a week we prepared for racking into the secondary fermenter,

Beer

the krausen had subsided and the wort looked deliciously dark and tasty.

Into the carboy it went leaving behind a lot of sludge.

Beer3

and back it went into the cool closet where it sat, quietly settling.

The final stage involved the dissolving of sugar into a simple syrup which was then added to the wort before the final racking into a bottling bucket.

How many buckets does this process take?

“Cap and store your treasure in a controlled environment for three weeks before enjoying your first home-brew,” the instructions instructed.

After a week or two or more our beers are still flat.

Apparently the writer of our beer instruction sheet has no idea that he needed to caution us again about heat.  The simple syrup was too hot and we once again obliterated the hard working and essential yeast that produces carbon dioxide when it eats the sugar, causing a nose twitching fizz.

We turned to our beer mentor,

“Don’t worry,” he said, “the carbonation will eventually occur, it may take a while.  Have faith!”

How can we argue with those powerful words emanating from our pastor?

Fingers crossed beer lovers, it will taste all the better for the wait.

Undaunted we move ever forward onto our second batch.

Share this:

No comments so far!

elray mac

2015-01-19 15:42:40 Reply

What a great thing to bind couples together. We live and lean nd kill some yeast along the way. I would not have changed it – my beer making partner!

Leave a Comment