Dabbling in Home Brewing

Andy and I have talked about brewing our own beer for the past year and finally got inspired to start after our trip to Minnesota in May. There were so many small craft breweries and home brewers in that area that we decided to go ahead and take the leap. We are setting up this blog to record our journey into home brewing so that either Andy or I could update everyone on the process. This first blog entry covers our journey over the past 3 months of home brewing.

 

Andy got busy right away researching what all was involved and which kits were the best regarding quality and cost. Our kit arrived June 22nd, and Andy started brewing the first batch on June 23rd. Andy debated about whether to brew the batch exactly as instructed or whether to start experimenting with ingredients and spices right away, but in the end it seemed like the best decision to go ahead and follow the recipe to learn the technique first. 

For those that don't know there is alot of sterilizing involved and it is not a quick process. It takes a lot of effort and time to prep and clean all the equipment and to brew each batch. Andy even has a brew log to keep up with all the recipes, steps involved, and observations of each measurement taken, tastings, bottling dates, etc.

Andy's first brew is a basic lager-style ale that came with the kit we ordered. It was a pretty basic recipe and wasn't too complicated for him to learn. Once the brew was cooked, he transferred it to a container called a fermentor and the beer sat for a week and a half. Andy drew samples every few days and watched the temperature in the room surrounding the beer to figure out how long fermentation would take. This time could vary based on temperature, moisture, etc. 

Once he deemed that it was ready, he started to bottle the brew. First you fill each bottle with brew, and to carbonate in the bottles you add sugar drops to start the carbonation process and cap each bottle. The yeast feed on the sugar over the two week period. Just the bottling took about 1.5-2 hours and is very tedious. 

We debated for a few months over whether to buy a keg to help cut out some of the extra work required to bottle, and after bottling 2 batches and collecting about 60 bottles in addition to buying several dozen, we decided to go ahead and buy a keg system. Boy are we glad we did! Using a keg cuts down on the wait time. It only takes a day or two to carbonate fully after you add the brew to the keg; so you don't have to wait for the carbonation in the bottles which can take 2 weeks. AND it tastes so much better! Here is our keg after we set up room for it in our fridge in the garage. This is now the beer fridge.

The keg with a CO2 line cost about $200 to get started but it is well worth it. Highly, highly recommend a keg system. We are thinking about adding a second keg so that we can have two brews for drinking at the same time and we won't have to rush to finish one batch in order to put the next one in as we are brewing only a few weeks apart per batch.

There are a lot of supplies that come with a starter kit, and you will purchase many additional components as you start brewing future batches; so we ended up cleaning out a whole walk in closet in our study to store the brewing supplies and bottles while they are carbonating. This is a real commitment as far as space, money and time is concerned. Even though we have a keg now, Andy still bottles a few of each batch so that we can store them and compare several batches to each other a year down the road.

We tasted the first batch after letting it sit in bottles for 2 weeks. Andy's thoughts were that it tasted "not bad, not great but definitely drinkable." We tasted the beer each day and it seemed to get more carbonated and it tasted better the longer we waited. Tip: chill the beer really good for a few days versus just a few hours in a fridge before tasting and it changes the taste for the better. 

We brewed a second batch as we were waiting on the first batch to carbonate. The 2nd brew is a Smashing Pumpkin recipe from Northern Brewer out of Minnesota. 

This time we added a few ingredients of our own. We bought canned pumpkin and an additional 3 pounds of grains from our local home brew store, Midsouth Malts in Memphis TN.

 

We roasted the pumpkin in the oven for 10 minutes and added that along with the grains to the rest of the ingredients shown here. 

I actually got to help with this batch. Andy showed me the ropes and let me help as we cooked for a total of 6 hours on this brew. This one definitely took more time and involved a lot more cooking on the stove. 

Here are some of the steps: 

Combining all the grains into a cheesecloth and then steeping those grains in water and boiling for over an hour.

 

You can see how the color changes as we added the roasted pumpkin to the water and steeped it for awhile. 

 

We then had to work together to strain the water out of all the grains. That took quite a while. And several weeks after this Andy saw a video that said "Don't squeeze the grain bag" whoops we didn't know! Look how the grains puff up after absorbing alot of the water.You don't use the grains afterwards I just thought it was a cool pic

Here is Andy adding the malt to the mixture. Then it boils for a bit longer. Look how creamy it looks!

Andy rehydrated the yeast before "pitching the yeast" in the brew. These are terms that I'm still not 100% clear on. I think you have to have a scientific background to really grasp this process which is right up Andy's alley. 

 

Here we are taking the OG - Original Gravity to find out the potential alcoholic strength of the brew. This beer turned out to be about 7% alcohol after the final product was complete. You could feel that 7% after drinking just half the glass. Whew!

After 6 hours of cooking, it's ready to go in the fermentor!

Our 2nd beer sat longer than the first batch to mature and we moved it to a 2nd fermentor for a few more weeks. We bottled this 2nd batch on July 29th. Here is the pumpkin ale in the 2nd fermentor.

Below is the siphoning procedure that Andy does before bottling

After we opened the 2nd batch to taste it the first bottles tasted great. However, after sampling a few more they were flat. Andy had dissolved sugar in a liquid form instead of using the sugar drops for this batch to try something different than the first batch. But the mixture didn't stay consistently mixed throughout the bottling process; so the carbonation wasn't consistent. After we bought the keg, we added the pumpkin ale to the keg and it was perfect! Here are samples of the pumpkin brew. First pic is the first day from the bottled sample. Second pic is after we moved it to the keg. Quite a difference and oh so yummy! We bought several store bought pumpkin ales and compared our brew to those and we thought ours tasted better - it was more complex, flavorful, creamy and you could smell and taste the spices more prominently in ours. Maybe we are biased but we thought it was a very solid second batch and was perfect for this time of year! This beer is fall in a glass - the nutmeg and pumpkin spices are very noticeable and the smell just makes me think of a hayride in the middle of a brisk October. 

This past year has been one of exploration and experimentation as we have challenged ourselves to try as many new beers and wines as possible.

 

So far my palate has evolved more quickly than I could have ever imagined. In just one year I have developed a preference for red wine which I never thought possible, and I am starting to really enjoy the more complex and darker beers as I push myself to try new beers on each outing. Andy has always liked beer and has been adventurous with different flavors for years but he is finding that he likes IPA's more and more. It seems to be his go to beer these days. He has made me try way too many for my taste. I'm not sure I will ever be able to get to the point where I can tolerate or prefer IPA's.

Maybe one day we will earn our plate at the saucer. Andy is already over 1/4 of the way to 200. That goal should keep us busy for a while. He passed number 50 this summer and I'm at 47 brews as of this weekend. He snuck out there a few times after work and jumped in to the lead.

We are excited to keep trying more of our own home brews, and hopefully we will be able to share those with friends as we brew them. So far we have gotten some great feedback from friends whom we have shared both batches with. We have even talked about looking in to brewing our own wine as well. We will have to update you on that endeavor in the future.

Here we are drawing inspiration from our local brewery in Memphis TN - Ghost River Brewing Company. They really support home brewing and they will share their yeast with any home brewer that asks. Andy thinks he will take them up on that offer for our next brew.

Andy has already added Batch #3 to the keg on 9-2-2012 and batch number 4 is in the fermentor. He plans on blogging about the specifics of those batches soon. I started us off on this blog since it was a long one and would require more time than Andy has available. I plan for him to jump in and update as he brews since he knows more of the details behind the flavors/styles he is choosing, and he can lend some insight and suggestions to those of you who are getting started. 

If anyone is thinking about getting in to home brewing there are some good videos online that offer tips and highlight the step by step process for different styles of beers. Andy recommends BrewingTV which is created by Northern Brewer out of Minnesota. It's the company we buy kits and equipment from online and they have a vast array of resources out there as well as hundreds of brew kits to try out. 

We highly recommend them as a company and their prices and customer service are both excellent. I'll get him to blog about the best BrewingTV episodes to check out. He watches new ones almost everyday.

Cheers and stay tuned,
Heather and Andy