Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Sorry to be so slow to write my progress report. Friday everything arrived that I had been waiting for (see my earlier post). Saturday afternoon, I lined up everything for the boil of my wort (wort is what will become the beer after the yeast works on it). I set up a small basin in the kitchen sink with a solution of chlorine bleach to sterilize everything and took my fermentation tank (a large 6 1/2 gallon plastic bucket) to the bathroom and filled it with a solution of chlorine bleach to sterilize it as well.
The utensils used in the boil need not be sterilized because the high temperature of the boiling wort will kill any stray bacteria or yeast that comes it's way (probably a very good thing since I also make my own bread in the kitchen).I decided that the tap water from Raleigh probably wasn't the best for brewing beer and used a water filtration pitcher I have to filter the water for starters.
After thoroughly rinsing the fermentation tank, I put 2 1/2 gallons of water in it and another 2 1/2 gallons in my boiling pot (the pot is a 4 gallon stainless steel pot). I put the thermometer in the pot and brought it up to a temperature of 155 degrees (fahrenheit). The first stage of the process is to cook what are called the "specialty grains" by the company that put the recipe kit together. They are to provide both flavor and color to the finished beer. I asked to have mine crushed, so I didn't need to crush them myself before using them. The package had about 10 to 12 ounces of grain in it which I poured into the nylon boiling back I had purchased. This was lowered into the pot of water which was now up to 155 F (I tied the drawstring for the bag to one of the pot handles so I could easily grab them to dunk the bag in and out of the water to keep water flowing around the grain.
This process lasted for one half hour. After squeezing all the water out of the grain that I could, I dumped the grain into the trash and rinsed the bag out for use with the hops in the next step.The next step was to add the malt extract to the pot. Malt extract is a very heavy, sticky syrup that does not pour very well at room temperature, so I had placed the bottle of extract (it came in a 1/2 gallon plastic bottle) in a pot full of very hot water to make it easier to pour while I was cooking the specialty grains earlier. I turned the burner off under the boiling pot so I would not scorch the malt extract on the bottom of the pot as I added it. Having heated it, it poured pretty well and I got as much out of it as I could and then immersed the bottle of extract in the still hot water and got as much of the rest of it out as I could before discarding the bottle.
After stirring the pot to mix the extract into the water, I turned the burner on high to bring it up to boiling temperature (212 F). It took a while to get up to that temperature, but it eventually started a nice rolling boil. There are two one ounce packages of hop pellets with the recipe kit. Both are of the same type. One is called the bittering hops and I put them into the nylon bag and lowered them into the wort for the entire hour long boil. Their purpose is to reduce the sweetness of the beer.
It is necessary to monitor the boil continuously for a couple of reasons. First, you do not want to scorch the malt extract on the bottom of the pot and secondly, it is very easy to have a boil-over if you don't keep it stirred all of the time. I experienced a boil-over in the past and it is a real mess to clean up as sticky as the wort is. So, I cracked open a beer (or two by the time an hour was up) and kept my eye on the pot and stirred it for an hour. At the end of the hour, I added the other package of hops for the last two minutes of boiling. They are the aroma hops and give the beer the smell of hops that is so familiar. After the two minutes, I turned the burner off and removed the nylon bag containing the hops.I was now ready to put the wort into the fermentation tank. You can just pour it from the pot into the tank, but this could get sloppy with spills, so I siphoned it from the pot into the tank. This not only prevents spills, but it reduces the amount of grain and hops debris that end up in the fermentation keg as well. When I had transferred the wort from the pot, the keg was about 3/4 gallon short of being a full five gallons, so I added filtered water to bring it up to the five gallon mark. The wort has to be cooled to room temperature or there abouts before the yeast is added. Since I do not have a wort chiller (an immersion heat exchanger that basically is about 30 feet of copper tubing through which cold water flows), I covered the fermentation keg to keep stray yeast and bacteria away from it and let it sit overnight. Before ending the day, I removed the liquid yeast from the refridgerator to let it get to room temperature as well.Sunday morning, the wort was down to room temperature (I keep my apartment at about 72 degrees with air conditioning -- our summer temperature is usually about 90 F during the afternoons, so air conditioning is almost a necessity). I removed the top from the brew keg and before I opened the bottle of yeast, I took a specific gravity of the wort. It measured 1.038. On another scale, it indicated that the potential alcohol by volume was 5%. When I measure it at the end of fermentation, I should be able to subtact the value it gets to to determine the actual alcohol content. The yeast had been working in the bottle and actually fizzed when I opened it. I poured it into the brew keg and, after sterilizing the top again and inserting the air lock, I put the top onto the brew keg firmly to keep any air from entering from the outside during fermentation.There it sits now -- I looked at it this morning (Monday, a day after adding the yeast) and can see occasional bubbles in the airlock, so the yeast is working. It will sit in the brew keg for about a week at which time I will transfer it to a glass carboy for the second brew. It is now about 4 to 6 weeks before I can start to drink the beer. I guess I will have to buy beer for a few more weeks. 
