Brew Day has arrived

I received two gift certificates for Christmas to Northernbrewer.com and I couldn't wait to use them, so I hopped onto the website the day after Christmas and ordered all of my supplies. I have made a bunch of different beers over the years and would consider myself an intermediate brewer, but in all of the beers I have brewed I have never brewed a lager. This is mainly because I didn't have the capacity to lager the beer. The lagering phase of the fermentatiion basically is fermentating and holding the beer at a lower temperature, somewhere between 40 - 45 F degrees for 1 - 4 weeks and sometimes longer until the fermentation is complete. However, with our new house, I have a very small basement and a crawl space. I have taken the temperature of the crawl space this winter and it seems to hold at a constant temperature of about 42 F, which is perfect for me.

Now with all of the peices in place I could finally attempt to brew up a lager. I checked around in a few books I had and decided to make a Bock, then if this beer turns out good I may try a Dopple or Triplebock but we'll see. The box of ingredients showed up New Year's Eve, but would have to wait until the festivities and the recuperation was complete before it could be opened and turned into that delicious mild brown Bock. So today was the day to open it up and start that magical transformation. Here is what was laid before me:

These are the things that will be turned into the beer that will be drank, good or bad, it will not go to waste.






















With my malt, yeast, and hops all in order I was ready to begin, so I filled my brew kettle with about 3 gallons of water and began heating it. I was aiming for 175 F, so I had time to get some other things prepared. I knew I was going to steep about 3 lbs of grains in the kettle so I needed a good way to do this. I know some brewers just add the grains to the water and let them sink/float and steep them that way, but doing it this way leads to awkwardly trying to transfer 3 gallons of 175 F water through a strainer to get the grains out before you can bring the wort to a boil and add the malt extracts. So I came up with a cheap and easier way to accomplish this, I buy a $0.59 muslin bag and add the grains to that and tie a knot in the end. Then steep the grains and when you are down, just use tongs to pull the bag out and throw it away.

Once the temperature was right, I added the grain bag and let it steep for twenty minutes.

After the twenty minutes was up, the bag was removed and the wort was brought to a rapid boil. Once boiling I added the malt extracts, both dry and syrup, and then I added 2 ounces of hops for bittering purposes. For those of you who have never seen hops, they come in many forms, from whole leaf, plugs, and pellets. Many homebrewers use the pelletized kind just for ease of use nd that is what I used. The pelletized hops look like rabbit food.

Now the wort was allowed to boil for 50 minutes, then a second addition of hops was added for aroma this time. The wort continued to boil for another 10 minutes then was removed from heat and chilled down to 75 F. The chilled wort was transferred to the primary fermenter and topped up with 2 gallons of 80 degree water and aerated as the water was added. Once at a little over 5 gallons, the yeast was pitched and added to the fermenter and given a quick stir. The top was placed on the fermenter and an airlock was added and voila you have a batch of beer getting started.

 This will ferment in this primary for 5 days, then will be transferred to a secondary glass fermenter and put in the cellar to finish fermenting for 4 weeks. I will update this beer as I progress through to the final bottle. Enjoy.