It's beer!
But not Guinness. We're not that skilled yet. Psh. Way to make me feel bad.
So Scot has been researching beer making for a while now, and we finally went out last week and bought a starter kit.
The little yellow box on the bottom is a beer ingredient kit for a summer ale, which is our first venture into a homemade brew. It gives you everything plus all the instructions, with a difficulty level of easy. Schweet. Let's do this!
First, we put the grains into a filter bag of sorts.
..and steep the grains in the water for about 20 minutes.
Next comes some hops. (They're stinky.)
Boil and stir for a while..
..and then dump in some lemon and orange rinds for flavor.
Once the brew is boiling for a bit, we move it into an ice bath in order to get the temperature down to somewhere close to 70 degrees.
Once cooled, we pour the batch into our "ale pail", along with another 3ish gallons of water to equal a whopping 5 gallons.
Yeast gets sprinkled on top..
..then the cover and airation valve gets put on top.
Last, but certainly not least.. we wait!! The brew is supposed to ferment in the ale pail for up to 7 days, then we can do an optional second fermentation in a carboy before bottling.
I must say that I am super duper excited to see how our first batch of beer turns out.. and hey, if we prove to have a knack for this, maybe we can brew our own beer for the wedding?!
Anyone else out there try this? Any tips or advice??
10 comments:
I got nothing! But making your own beer looks super fun. And Scot looks like a little kid waiting to open his Christmas presents in that last pic. :)
My husband just brewed a beer a few months ago. He made a double chocolate stoudt. It was DELICIOUS. His next is a Magic Hat #9 type recipe, which I'm really anxious to try. And speaking of brewing for the wedding, we did our own wine and bottled them for favors!
so cool! Great idea! I have never been able to acquire a taste for beer - I'm bound and determined to one day!!
Can't wait to hear how it turns out! Brewing your own beer for the wedding is a great idea.
I love that you brew the beer! Chris totally brews our beer and i always watch. You're so rad.
Fiance's best friend brews his own beer similar to this. While I'm not much of an ale drinker, it's not bad. The guys love it! Let us know how it turns out!
whoa... no way!!!! that is awesome!!!!
So...when should I come over for a sample?
Why are you so frackin' cool!?! I love this!! I am so sad I can't drink beer (damn this pregnancy... in the most joking way possible) because I LOOOOOVE beer!!!
A lot of our friends do this and Pete has been thinking of it. I heard its pretty expensive though, where did you get your kit from?!
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