Brewing!

Dip into home brewing and your life will never be the same!
- Charlie Papazian

See photos from our first brew HERE:

Well, I guess our life has changed. We cooked up our first homebrew batch on Friday evening. Tom, Erich, Rich and Belinda came by to give Melissa and I a hand in mixing up the ingredients as well as drinking a few commercial brews (we'll have homebrew next time) and eating some beer brats.

The process can be a bit intimidating with all the tools, ingredients and instructions, but as Charlie says, "Relax. Don't worry. Have a homebrew!". We followed his advice the best we could. Fortunately, Tom was able to stop by for a while. He has brewed multiple times before, so his knowledge and experience was very valuable to our first attempt. He also brought some of the fresh hops he has been cultivating at home for us to add to the batch. It's going to be a Hoppy Mutha! More than six ounces of hops in this one, including Tom's.


Our first recipe is from a kit that Rich and Belinda got me for my birthday. It's a Northern Lights IPA and includes the following ingredients:

Grains:
8 oz Cara Hell
6 oz Victory
6 oz Cara Pills (Dextrin)

Malt Extract:
6.5 lbs Light Liquid Malt Extract
1 lb Light Dry Malt Extract

Hops (pellet):
1 oz Columbus
1 oz Cluster
1 oz Amarillo
1 oz Cascade
1 oz Centennial

Hops (whole from Tom):
1 oz+ Cascade


So, you mix that all together in a specific order with certain boil points and temps and you get your wort. Then the wort is chilled and transferred into a fermenter. Best to use a glass carboy. After transfer, you pitch your yeast. Without the yeast, you'll have no alcohol. The yeast feeds off the sugars from the grains and malt over the next week or so. Then it's time to bottle or keg. I think we will keg into the conry keg Melissa got me with the kit. It will go into the small refrigerator I bought and we will have delicious home brew on tap. Can't wait!

Cheers to our first brew!!

Interested in homebrewing yourself?
Check out the following links to get started:
http://www.beertown.org/
http://www.stompthemgrapes.com/
http://www.greatamericanbeerfestival.com/
Joy of Home Brewing
I am a craft brewer!