Homebrewing

This past weekend I decided to give homebrewing another go. The last batch, to say the least, was a bit of a disappointment. My resolve to brew great beer has not wavered though. I planned on remedying the mistakes of my last brew day and in doing so, may have created new problems alltogether. To the... brewing!

Saturday, Meredith and I headed to Listermann's to pick up a new kit and some equipment. I decided to go with an IPA. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure why it's taken me this long try to brew an IPA. I also picked up a couple of other odds and ends, nothing too exciting. I did however, buy a a wort chiller. It's kind of a big purchase. I was going back and forth on whether or not to buy it but I knew that eventually I was going to end up getting one so I just bit the bullet. A wort chiller is copper tubing that cools the wort to yeast-pitching temperatures quickly. More on that later though.

The brewing process went smoothly enough. No boil overs or anything. One thing that i was supremely pleased to take note of though: The ammount of hops that went into this beer. The smoked porter that I made before only had one addition of hops, just for bittering. This beer has four, an ounce and a half of Nugget for bittering, an ounce of Cascade each for flavoring and aroma, and another half ounce of Cascade for dry hopping.

Look at all those beautiful hops!

Now the problem with my last beer was the overpowering yeasty flavor. I attributed this to either just bad yeast, or poor handling of the yeast on my part. This time around I took extra care in rehydrating and pitching my yeast. I made sure everything was good and sanitized. I rehydrated the yeast. Did my best to make sure the wort was good and aerated. But I ran into trouble anyways. Here's what I believe happened.

My new toy in action.

Earlier I mentioned my new wort chiller. A wort chiller pumps cold water through coiled copper tubing taking heat from the wort and transferring it to the water. A wort chiller cools the boiling wort quickly to a temperature at which the yeast will thrive. The quicker you can cool your wort the better As it will result in a clearer beer and reduce the chance for contamination. It's also a hell of a lot easier than lugging the brew kettle over to a sink or bathtub full of ice water and trying to cool it that way. Cooling your wort is also important because yeast need a very specific environment to be at their most productive. Too cold and they'll be dormant, too hot and they'll be killed.

In doing my best to create a hospitable environment for the yeast, I forgot one simple thing. Attempting to rehydrate yeast in water that is too hot is just as bad as pitching yeast into wort that is too hot. When rehydrating yeast you're supposed to use warm water, I fear mine was too warm. It's been nearly two days since pitching yeast and there hasn't even been a bubble of carbonation. I killed my yeast.

I don't think this is the end of the world though. I should be able to just pitch new yeast and it should still work out alright.

as frustrating as this whole homebrewing process has been at times, it's still been fascinating. Every mistake I make, and rest assured this one won't be the last, just help the next time I brew. One of these days I'll end up with something good. I hope.

HD

EDIT: So I went back to Listermann's this afternoon to pick up another packet of yeast and pitched it into the wort. Hopefully I get some fermentation soon.