What the HECK is THAT? This weekend, my next-door neighbor and I began our first home brewing quest. We spent the entire afternoon outdoors -- building a turkey fryer, boiling water, adding ingredients, etc., etc., etc. So, instead of reviewing a new beer this week, I thought I'd give you some eye candy. Ashley took most of these photos of us as we tooled around with all our materials. I also took some video, which I'll be posting sometime in the near future.
We're not experts, so before I give instructions or write a witty how-to posts, I want to see how our first batch turns out. We're both using kits for this first round, mine is "Hop Scare I.P.A." and his is "Bavarian Wheat" . . . both should be tasty.
We spent much of the first hour just building everything. I'll explain all the parts and pieces another day. Good news: It wasn't too terribly difficult. Then we moved onto the more exciting stuff, like our ingredients. Boiling. Stirring. Waiting. Well, that part wasn't so fun.
You could even smell the hoppy goodness from across the street. That's when we gained yet another neighbor.
Like I said above, it was a gorgeous day and a good time . . . but took longer than we thought. Now everything is fermenting in our basements. We can't wait to move onto the next step -- and even move on to our second batches.
Anyone else out there enjoy home brewing? We'd love your tips, tricks, and any other suggestions! Just leave a comment or email us at neverhomemaker@gmail.com.
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5 comments:
We just bottled an espresso stout! I'm not the brewer, but the trusty "capper" so I don't have brweing tips, but the biggest flop we had was when we went back to taste the VERY first beer ever made, a year later, and it tasted like dish soap- whoops. For some reason we must not have known about food grade sanitizer. At the time, being the "first" one we thought it was fantastic hehe.
Once you get past the kits and into your own recipes it's a lot of fun! We also eventually bought a pony keg and keggerator for when we don't want to sanitize and bottle 40+ beers. Good luck!
We're on our 3rd beer now. First we did an American Ale which turned out pretty good - we were impressed for a first try, then we did a Red Ale which was excellent, and now we're waiting for a funky German beer to finish up in the bottles before they can be drank. The IPA is next!
Biggest tip: Don't rush anything. Our first batch we did everything on the first day possible. (For instance they say to transfer it from primary to secondary fermentation in 7-10 days, we'd do it at 7.) But on our other batches we'd wait a little longer and that seemed to make them better and clearer. Also, the longer they're in bottles the better, but post 6 months and they skunk since they aren't pasteurized.
Good luck & happy brewing!
These pictures are really cool =)
I thought of a tip for helping to slash grocery bills.
We love to shop at discount grocery stores, where the products are cosmetically damaged or a tad expired. There are often great deals for way cheap! I actually wrote about some of our favorite finds on my blog, ahealthyendeavor.blogspot.com
=)
Isn't home brewing fun? My husband and his buddy were brewing all-grain (no extract) beer in our garage for a while. They had some zany contraption built so they could do up to 10 gallons at a time. Fun stuff and you gotta love freshly brewed beer on tap at home.
Very interesting! My husband and I want to start brewing this year...I'll definitely be following! :)
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