Day in the Life 4- day 2 means gas!

Well, I got everything cleaned up from the brew yesterday.  Got the 5 gallons into the basement.  Seems to be a steady 63-65 down there.  But I don't have a thermometer down there to really tell, but it's cool.

Left the beer alone last night and checked on it this morning.  I saw this:

BUBBLES!!!

I created that.  Well.... I just mixed up the ingredients for the yeast to eat and they are LOVING it.  The last 15 minutes was 6 lbs of malt syrup.  Prime ingredient for yeast to eat so they are having a buffet and producing a lot of gas.  Not sure if that's good or bad, but I'll roll with it.  Really excited.

Day in the Life of a Brewer Day 3- BREW DAY!

The time has come.  Spent the night in Iowa City after taking Isabelle and her cousins home.  Went to Big Grove Brewery in Solon, IA.  Had their Boomtown, a cream ale and another one of their ales.  Both very good.  To top it off, I had an amazing prime rib french dip sandwich that was one of the best sandwiches I've ever had.  The conversation, laughs, Old Fashioned, and Tenacious D made for a great night.

But I kept thinking about the brew.  Rushed home early to get some groceries for St Pats and get the brew going.  Finally got it going around 10 am.  Was done around 1 pm.

9:45- took some time to get the propane hooked up to the burner.  Turn LEFT instead of right.  Stupid gas fittings.

10am- measured 2.5 gallons TAP water from kitchen sink.  Poured into a nice tall turkey frying pot.  No risk of boil over in my opinion in this thing.  Got the burner lit and water heating.
Opened my specialty grains and got the mesh bag around it.  Missed a corner apparently because a bunch poured out onto the garage floor.  Opps!  Got that tied off and into the water for steeping.  Probably steeped 10 minutes before it got to 170 degrees.

Reached 170 and got the grains out.  Got the temp up higher and added dried malt per directions.
Stirred light crazy as I brought it to a boil.
Boiling.  Time for hops.  Added first round of hops.  Nice soft boil and lots of stirring.  No boiling over! Yay!  The aroma was so nice.

45 minutes into the boil and added my second hops and 6 lbs malt syrup.  Returned to a boil and finished off the hour long boil-fest.

Cut the heat.  Put the lid on and got the pot into a big pile of snow.  Added a sanitized thermometer to monitor temp.  Stayed in snow about 45 minutes to get down to 100 degrees or so.

Followed instructions and added 2 gallons cold water to fermenter bucket (already sanitized with Star San, lid too).  Poured in wort through funnel topped with a metal strainer.  All sanitized with Star San solution.  Topped off with more cold water from tap to make 5 gallons.  Sealed it and rocked back and forth to aerate.

Felt side of bucket and no warmth at all.  Pitched the yeast.  Sealed with the lid.  Put air lock in the top.  Carried fermenter to the basement to sit for 2-4 weeks before bottling.  Steven says the secondary fermentation isn't necessary.  Need to look into it.

Photos:

Now... we wait.


Notes:
- Used tap water
- Mesh bag will fall off specialty grain bag. Be careful with this next time.
- Is my digital thermometer low-temp?  Need to get a newer higher temp one for next time.  Also dropped Terry's thermometer on the garage floor.  Need to get him a new one.

Day in the Life of a brewer 2

Went and saw the Lego Batman movie with Isabelle, Emma, Patrick, and Will.  We all loved it!  Stopped at Cold Stone before picking up Ella and heading home.  I'm not going to lie, during much of the movie all I was thinking about was getting my beer kit from Northern Brewer and getting started. When the movie was done I checked my email and saw it was delivered!!

Go home and took some photos before inventorying the box. Everything was there.  Put the yeast in the fridge until tomorrow morning.  I think the plan will be to smack the yeast, take the Selby's home, get Isabelle at noon from a play date and rock this thing.  Now that it's actually here, I'm freaking out a bit.  This cost me $50 and I don't want to screw it up.  So I'm basically going to read, and re-read, and watch about 10 videos, and re-read the instructions again.  :o)

I'M FINALLY HERE!!!!  WOO HOO!!

Instructions for first batch

Instructions for the Phat Tyre I'll be brewing soon.

http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/beerkits/PhatTyre.pdf

Day in the Life of a brewer 1

Decided to get into home brewing after being poked by Terry over the years to give it a try.  It was one of those things festering in me for some time now.  My students keep asking me if I know how to make meth, thanks Walter White, but saying I can brew beer is pretty cool.  The science is very easy to understand, but I have a feeling there's a lot to this iceberg than what I've read so far.

I'm very excited.  I understand the chemistry and don't think there's anything I can do wrong other than not keeping everything clean.  That and I'll probably shake things up too much, and will be waiting to let stuff settle back down, but that's OK.  I'm not Anheuser Busch here.

3/9/17
Bought from Northern Brewer Homebrew Supply
Phat Tyre Amber ale  http://www.northernbrewer.com/phat-tyre-ale-extract-kit
Wyeast 1762 Belgian Abbey II
Priming sugar



3/11/17

Went to Terry's to pick up some equipment
1- plastic bucket fermenter with lid and spigot, has "siphon less Fermenter on side"
1- plastic bottling bucket with lid and spigot, has "Ale Pail" on side
1- air lock bubbler
1- metal boiling bucket
1- plastic stirring spoon/paddle
1- metal strainer
1- plastic funnel, fits on both plastic buckets
1- netting/cloth to add to straining
1- hydrometer
1- floating thermometer
Box of caps and other small equipment, spare parts
2 cases of bottles, 48 total
1- length clear plastic tubing for siphoning

Borrowed propane burner


Went to MidwestSupplies.com and bought some Star San sanitizer.  Wishing I would have just bought it from Northern Brewing.  Oh well.

3/12/17
Continuing to read from Northern Brewer on how to actually do this.  Using this: http://www.northernbrewer.com/learn/home-brewing-101/
Found another site, http://howtobrew.com that is really well written and easy to follow.  I may spring to buy the book to go along with it.  The site may be good enough.

After reading, I'm finding the siphon hose from Terry to not be too adequate.  Not that siphoning by mouth is all together bad, I'd rather avoid transferring germs that way.  Plan to stop at UBrew Tuesday and get a racking cane to make siphoning easier and cleaner.

3/13/17
All the equipment is cleaned.  Used blue Dawn dish soap.
Still reading up on the steps to do this.  Just don't want to screw up :o)  But I know the kit I have and the resources I'm using will be perfect.

Made a list of things to get:
ice
gallons of water since ours is pretty hard
spray bottle for Star San spray.
Racking cane- stop at UBrew to pick one up and check out their inventory