itsalleasy

‘Pffft’. Sweet. The wonderful sound of CO2 escaping from a 12oz amber bottle of beer being opened. Not just any beer…the first bottle from the first batch I made. Actually…the only batch I’ve made so far. Oh…and it’s good…really good. Which totally suprised me actually, considering the comedy of errors that unravelled while I brewed. As the man says: “Don’t worry…relax…have a home brew”.

I’d been looking into home brewing for awhile. I met several people who were home brewers and tried a few. Plenty of research on the web learning about the whole process only made me want to do it more. A turkey fryer seemed to be the way to go for the pot and flame to cook the beer in. So I made it known that I was interested in having one and got an AWESOME one from my in-laws for christmas. It’s a great fryer…super safe, 7 gallon capacity, automatic safety shutoff (when its too hot or tilts), it’s electric, and has a submerged heating element (ok…now you seasoned home-brew pros keep your snickers to yourself…for now).

I went out right away and got the equipment from a brew-shop(ish) (I went to Worm’s Way…which is great…just a little corner for home brew though). I got the big kit, complete with carboy (big glass jug for the non-brewer readers) so I could actually see the active fermentation. Connesiour’s “Nut Brown Ale” sounded good, so I grabbed it up, and in so doing, had the ingredients for the beer that would be my first batch.

The kit came with 2 books on home brewing…one of which was the Papazian book (”the man” behind the quote above), which has aparently been read by every home brewer. I read it…at least the first section for beginners. It takes you through the basic info and all the steps for the first batch.

One fateful friday night (January 6, 2006 to be exact), I was ready. Everything was sanitized and the turkey fryer was all setup on the counter…awaiting its time to shine. The batch got rolling with a gallon and a half of water poured by the measuring cup full (4-cup capacity). The red-light kicked on as I dialed the 150 degree temperature into the fryer knob.

Popped the top on the extract can (it was sitting in hot water to make it a bit less thick and more managable) and slowly poured/scooped the thick syrup into the warming water. It promptly sank to the bottom…completely covering the coils. (ok brewers…the snickering may commence…maybe I should have sought a bit of advice before-hand). Panic? No, not yet. I tried to vigorously stir the batter off of the coils and get it to dissolve with a rubber spatula. That wasn’t working, so I thrust my overly-sanitized hands/arms into the fryer (kids, do NOT do this at home…those coils are HOT). This was working…at least better than the spatula. I was able to get my fingers under the coils to move the goo around and away from the coils somewhat. It was beginning to dissolve, but not fast enough. The coils were beginning to scorch the extract that they were touching. Panic. Out of the frying pot and into the carboy.

The carboy was topped off with cold tap water. “Don’t worry…relax” I kept thinking, everything will be fine. Jack was helping me out and we gave the carboy a good vigorous rolling/shaking to get it all mixed up. The carboy cap sucked. It was one of those orange ones with 2 short capped tubes coming off of it. It kept leaking and I had to keep it constantly squeezed…”are we doing this right?”

Standing back I beheld the beer. Time for the yeast. Wait…the temperature needs to be below 70. At this point I was following 2 recipes: the one that came with the extract and the instructions in the Papazian book. I didn’t have everything I needed for the Papazian instructions (namely the dried extract) but I was trying to follow his advice wherever possible.

The kit came with a floating themometer, so we figured it was meant to be pitched into the carboy (sanitized first of course) so in it went. Hmmm…can’t read it through the dark beer (we felt pretty dumb here). After some looking, and a bit of ingenuity, a hook was fashioned to fish out the thermometer. Success. The kit also came with a stick-on themometer, so we held it up to the carboy and it was off the chart. The wort (”wert”…the cooked beer) was too hot. There is a huge double-utility sink in the laundry room that came with the house…it is PERFECT for home brewing. So we took the precious hot beer cider down to the sink for a nice cold bath.

It took about 2 hours to cool down to about 68. In went the dry yeast…straight from the packet. Later while reviewing both recipes I saw that I should have dissoved the yeast in pre-boiled water first. Oh well. The carboy was given another good couple of strong agitations again as I cursed the crap-cap the whole time. When we were satisfied, the carboy was moved to its final resting place in a nice dark corner on a make-shift workbench constructed with 2 saw-horses and a closet door.

We tried to take the specific gravity reading with the hydrometer (like a thermometer…but measures how thick the liquid is relative to water, and in-turn what the alcohol content is). Without any other good ideas, we tipped the carboy and poured some out through the cap into the hydrometer flask. Took a reading of 1.030. Sounds good…time to wrap up.

The book and web say that the first 3 days is super active and the beer will actually foam over, out of the carboy. So they suggest rigging a blow-off tube. Great, maybe that is what those capped tubes on the carboy cap are for. Nope. The tubing won’t fit. Hmm…how about this drilled stopper? Perfect. The tube was shoved into the stopper and the stopper into the carboy. The other end of the tube was laid into an empty bucket so that the foam would escape into it. I later read that this should have had enough water to cover the end of the tube to act as kind of an oversized airlock…so that bugs/bacteria/random yeasts wouldn’t get into the beer. Oh well.

The hard part was done. Now the yeast would feast on the sugars from the extract and make the beer. Time to clean up the mess.

The next day there was 1 inch of foam: it was working! The next day, nothin. Hmm…that’s not right. Give it a good shake. Foamed right up and even out the top a little. Third day…nothing. This is when the blow-off setup comes down and a small airlock is put on. Over the first week I gave it a little shake once…then another about mid-way through the second week. I just never saw any activity. No bubbles in the airlock. There was the build-up of cake (dormant yeast) on the bottom of the carboy though…and it smelled good, so I wasn’t all that worried. I later read that the beer should be disturbed as LITTLE AS POSSIBLE to avoid getting too much oxygen in the mix. Man…I can’t get anything right Nothing I can do now…lets just keep going.

Bottling time came and I was ready with 2 cases of 12 oz amber bottles. The kit also came with a bottle washer that is rigged to the utility sink. I love the bottle washer. When I picked up the bottles (again from Worm’s Way) I grabbed some light dry malt extract to prime the bottles with (priming is when you add sugar to the beer right before bottling…giving the remaing yeast something to chew on…and since it is air-tight in the bottles, the CO2 byproduct will carbonate the beer). The caps were boiled and the priming extract was prepared and siphoning was about to commence.

First, the hydrometer flask was filled with beer from the siphon and a reading was taken: 1.020…hmmm…higher than I’d expected. Well…what’s it taste like? Go ahead…give it a taste. Bottom’s up. Wow…that tastes awesome! Let’s get this stuff in bottles! While the beer was being siphoned from the carboy into the priming bucket (where I had already poured the dissolved priming extract), I sanitized the first case of bottles. I love the bottle washer.

The siphon job was done about the same time as my sanitation work. So the priming bucket was moved up to the workbench and I readied the siphon for bottling. The priming bucket came equipped with a spiggot specifically for bottling. But I figured it would leave an inch in the bottom of the bottle (have since learned that if this was used as a fermenter, then that 1 inch would be the un-wanted cake anyway) so I opted to just siphon the whole thing.

Bottle siphoning takes some learning. Beer will get on the floor…but hopefully not too much. After about 10 beers (bottled…not drunk), I had the hang of it. I pulled the box full of un-capped, beer-filled bottles up onto the workbench and grabbed for my first victim. A cap was randomly plucked from the pile and carefully placed onto the bottle. Red butterfly capper in hand I married it to the top of the cap and in one swift but careful motion the levers were lowered and an audible click was heard. My first bottle was capped.

I made pretty quick work of the rest of that case, but the first bottle was set aside. Taking the advise of Papazian, I marked all the caps with a sharpie…numbered them even: 1.01 NBA -> 1.24 NBA graced the tops of the first 24 bottles (NBA = Nut Brown Ale). 1.01 (the first one bottled) was marked with a red sharpie…to distinguish it.

While that case was being capped, the other case was sanitizing, so I rinsed those and went to work on siphoning and capping them. The siphon gave a gurgle about mid-way through the 48th bottle…signaling the end of the batch. Exactly 48 bottles. I finished getting them capped and carefully placed the 2 cases under the workbench. It should be 7-10 days before they are really ready to drink…giving ample time for the carbonation to take place.

That was 5 days ago…I didn’t have the patience. I popped the top of one of the beers tonight for dinner…and man, was it good. And this isn’t like sweet-lemons good…it’s damn good. I normally drink Newcastle Brown Ale…or Boulevard Unfiltered wheat to give you an idea of where I’m coming from. It may be close, but I think I might prefer my batch over the Newcastle.

So, even with all the “mess-ups” this batch was a success. Here’s to even better batches to come.