About a week ago I brewed my second batch of beer. I had a little snag, but nothing too bad! Overall, everything went well, and now the beer has bubbling away in the fermenter for about a week.
I've had a few people criticize the fact that I didn't have any pictures on my blog. So, I took a lot of pictures on brewday and I'll share them here! Here it goes!
These were the contents of the kit that I ordered from Northern Brewer called "The Innkeeper."
I got about 2.5 gallons of water into a pot and began to heat it.
I steeped the specialty grains in the water to extract color and flavor.
Once the temp of the water reached 170ºF, I removed the specialty grains. If you leave them in too long, it can extract the tannins out of those grains and make the beer taste bad (or at least not good).
After the bag of grains was removed, I brought the water up to a boil. After that, I removed the water from the eye and added the malt extract. This recipe called for a dry malt extract (DME), liquid malt extract (LME), and corn sugar. After this addition, the mixture is called Wort. I couldn't really take a picture of this since I needed both hands to stir it. This is where I hit a little snag. While trying to bring the water back up to a boil, I got distracted by taking pictures, and my wort boiled over a little bit. I didn't lose a lot of wort, but it did make my final gravity a little lower than it should have been. Anyway, I just took the advice of Charlie Papazian: "Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew!" Since I didn't have any homebrew yet, I just did a little breathing exercise and carried on with the brewday.
So, after I got the beer back to a boil, I put in the first addition of hops. I know that some of you might be thinking, "Wait, that's not hops, that's rabbit food!" But it's definitely hops. It's just not the iconic hop cone that you are used to seeing. These are hop pellets, which are dried, pressed hope cones. Most brewers don't use whole hops unless they grow them themselves. Now, that's not to say that you CAN'T use whole hops and you can also buy whole hops, but they are just not as readily available.
I had my trusty assistant Kenny take a picture of me adding the hops to the boil. I did this three times over the 60 minute boil with three different varieties of hops.
After the 60 minute boil was done, I had to cool it as rapidly as possible. I did this using an ice bath in my sink. Something that would work better would be a Wort Chiller, but I just can't quite afford that yet. Soon!
While the wort was chilling, I sanitized everything that would be touching it from now on: funnel, yeast package, airlock, scissors, and the carboy (I sanitized everything, so if I left something out of this list, it's not because I didn't sanitize it). This is the sanitized carboy. The foil on top is a sanitized piece of aluminum foil to keep any microbes or whatnot out. The foam inside is the leftover foam from the StarSan. It is completely safe, and I was able to pour the beer directly on top of the foam. Don't Fear the Foam!
This is where I couldn't really do much with my camera since I needed about 6 hands to do everything else. Basically, once the wort was chilled, I poured it into the carboy. I took a gravity reading, and it was about 1.038, which was less than what it should be. I'm attributing this to loss of fermentable sugars and water due to the boilover. No big though, it will just have a little less ABV.
So, after I got all of the wort transferred, aerated, and measured, it was time to pitch the yeast. This is a pic of the yeast I took before I started brewing. If I had taken it right before I pitched it, this bag would have been swollen. That's because this type of yeast has an activator in it to proof the yeast. However, I was so focused on making sure everything else went right that I forgot to take a picture of the swollen yeast packet! Sorry!
I then put on an airlock and put it in my closet! The other carboy is the Irish Red Ale that was conditioning in the secondary fermenter.
So, it has been fermenting for about a week now and it's still going strong! In about a week, if it's ready, I will bottle it!
Today I'm going to be bottling that Irish Red Ale. After I bottle, it will take about 2 weeks to condition and then it will be ready to drink! I'm excited! I'll let you know how that goes! Until then, "All for brew, and brew for all!"
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