beer me

i'm already pretty adept at beer drinking (thank you large, fun, state school with lot's of extracurricular get-togethers and lots of thirsty students).

 However...after about three years of daily walks by the brew your own beer store on Mass Ave and countless passing proclamations about wanting to become skilled at the fine art of beer making....i finally decided it was time to try my hand at brewing beer at home.  

In my particular experience, brewing beer is best accomplished with the assistance of 2 guys, 2 happy dogs wrestling/running around the kitchen floor (threatening to knock things over/trip you at each step of the process), and couple of beverages to keep you hydrated throughout (on this occasion Brooklyn lager and Sam's winter did the trick).

It's a fun -- mostly easy, do it yourself project -- with an enticing end result. (no guarantee that the final product will be either appetizing or remotely palatable -- but we've got our fingers crossed). 

There's a fair amount of equipment needed....which if bought or borrowed separately could be pricey/time consuming. instead we opted to go with an all in one, reasonably priced starter kit from the The Homebrew Emporium. 

Contents Included: "Home Beermaking" Book , Equipment Instructions, Primary Fermenter with Lid, Airlock, Bottling Bucket with Spigot, Siphon and Bottling Set-up, Bucket Clip, Twin Lever Capper, Hydrometer, Liquid Crystal Thermometer, Bottle Brush, No-Rinse Cleanser

we also purchased an IPA beer mix - as the beerman at the beerstore suggested it was the easiest not to flub up on your first try -- if you're feeling ambitious and rather confident in your abilities, or if IPA isn't your thang --  there are lots of brew choices to select from.

Good to Note: one very essential item that is not included in the kit is a pot large enough to boil 5 gallons of liquid at once...unfortunately a bathtub sized pot was not in stock in my kitchen....luckily someone's nice italian mother lent one to us.

Overall the trickiest parts of the operation: 

1. Following the numbered, step-by-step directions in good order 2. Having patience 3. Cleanliness*

* Sanitizing all equipment and keeping hands and counter spaces very clean at all times was probably the most time consuming part of the whole process. It's uber important to keep bacteria out -- everything that comes in contact with the beer batter has to stay super, super, mega clean -- which honestly makes me wonder about many of the home brews i sampled throughout my college years -- delightfully alcoholic treats which were cultivated in questionably cleanly living spaces by people who were definitely not obsessive hand washers! mmmmm mmmm tasty.

I'm going to stick to a photo montage....but if you're interested in an actual play by play of how beer is made - Here's a little BREW 101

Day One: Beer Mixing

IPA Mixings - The Starter Kit

Prepping to Steap the Grains

Steaping

Draining the grains

Boiling Hops

Adding Yeast

adding the malt mix

Air locking

Wait 2-3 weeks to allow fermentation

Day Two: Beer Bottling

This part was pretty fun - felt very official and accomplished -- was especially pleased to open the bucket and find that we hadn't totally messed up part one -- the "beer" actually looked and smelled pretty great (in reality, this means nothing....take for example vanilla extract: smells like yummy goodness, tastes like bum...)!

plus the bottling process was satisfying and gratifying and i love a good assembly line.... 

Bonus -- I learned how to accurately syphon liquid -- so if I ever need to steal gasoline out of someone's tank -- i'm good to go....

Suggestion -- instead of buying new glass bottles which can be kind of pricey -- my roommate had the genius idea to call a few local liquor stores with redemption facilities and ask if we could buy empty's that hadn't been crushed yet. one store was nice enough to put aside 50 or so bottles which they then sold to us for a whopping 5 pennies per pop. 

we found that bottles with pop tops (as opposed to screw offs) worked best for capping purposes. It added a couple of additional steps: 1. Going to get the Bottles 2. Buying a few six packs of beer while there 3. Soaking the bottles in our bathtub and  then scraping off labels -- but it was totally worth it and we also get bonus points for being green. (captain planet!)

bottle bath

Sanitized Beer Bottles

adding boiled sugar to prompt carbonation

syphoning beer from bucket 1 to bucket 2

Filling up Bottles

Performing Quality Control

cap that

What we ended up with:

wait two weeks...

Day Three: Beer Drinking: Stay tuned for the verdict on the final product!