With all of that in mind I headed down to Listermann Brewing Supply. At Listermann you can buy anything and everything pertaining to homebrewing and wine making. They sell hops and barley, specialty grains, equipment, basically everything you could ever need. I'm still very new to homebrewing so I decided against an all grain brew, which is something I'd definitely like to try out in the future. I chose from one of their pre assembled kits. I thought about doing an american pale ale, or an oatmeal stout but finally chose to do a smoked porter. If this beer is a quarter as good as Stone's Smoked Porter or Great Divide's Smoked Baltic Porter I will be a very happy little brewmaster.
So I picked up the smoked porter kit and a giant stainless steel mixing spoon that could probably be used to fight off zombies if the worst should happen, and headed home to prepare to brew.
OK, so here's what you're looking at here. The big bag to the right is full of 3 different types of malt. The white tub is liquid malt extract. And the small bag on top of the tub are my hop pellets. That little bag smelled so good. If they made hop-scented cologne I would bathe in it.
In lieu of giving you guys a blow-by-blow how to on homebrewing (There are plentiful online resources that could do a much better job of teaching you how to brew than me. I won't subject you kind readers to that. Like I said, I'm pretty new at this, my advice would probably be awful) I'll just give you the overview.
The brew went well! It took about three hours from the time we turned the heat on on the stove to the time we pitched the yeast and sealed the wort off in the fermenter. I enjoyed a few Avery IPAs and Tallgrass Buffalo Sweat Stouts while brewing which made for a wonderful time. The instructions that came with the kit were very easy. If you've ever thought it would be fun to brew beer but were discouraged because you thought it would be hard, give it a shot! If you can make soup you can probably make beer. All there is to it is adding different ingredients to the pot at different times and at different temperatures. It's a deceptively simple process, especially if you're brewing with extract rather than full grain.
 |
| Steeping the malt. |
 |
| Adding the hops. |
The only issue that I had occurred post brew. I checked on the fermentation the next day and noticed that the airlock had overflowed and that there was krausen (the foamy head produced by the fermentation process) and beer had come out of the airlock and were on top of the fermenter. Now this is not a huge issue, at least right now. But it could lead to a very messy problem. But all I had to do was whip up a blowoff tube to let the excess Co2 escape without making a mess. Needless to say but this beer is fermenting pretty rapidly!
 |
| Blowoff tube. |
I had a blast brewing this beer and I cannot wait to drink it! Look for another post detailing bottling in the near future!
HD
How long do you usually have to wait for it to "ferment" ? AKA When will this beer be drinkable?
ReplyDeleteWell, it really depends on the temperature. It could take as short as a few days or as long as a couple weeks. But after it's done fermenting it has to be bottled and there's a bit of fermentation that takes place in the bottles to build up the natural carbonation. So, in other words it'll be a few weeks before I can drink them.
Delete