The Maibock…finally

Well, my wait is finally over for the maibock. This was really the first time I tried to actually lager a beer, and I did it old school to boot. I waited until the dead of winter, brewed the beer, then lagered it in a cave a.k.a the crawl space/basement for two months. So yesterday the beer hit the two month lager mark and was ready to be bottled.

I trudged down the ladder into the crawlspace and hoisted up my golden brown treasure. I got it ready to bottle and gave it a little taste before putting it into the bottle and it was DELICIOUS. Well, worth the wait.

Then I was in a super beer dork mode so I video some of the steps of my bottling. Then being even a bigger dork, if that’s possible I put it together into a compilation video presented for your viewing pleasure below.

Well, there it is in all it’s glory and hopefully in about a week or two I’ll have a review of it up for you. Then if it’s good I’ll have to make a special delivery to Diamond Dave and Jim The Plumber for fixing a leaky pressure reducer in the crawl space that threatened to flood out Ol’ Naps’ Glorious Maibock.

Keep ‘em tippin!

Patience & Pride

Well, this is just an update on my Maibock. A couple of days ago I had to go down in the cellar to check on the sump pump, so while I was down there I took a peak at my Maibock. It appears the lagering phase is going well, it is definitely settling out nicely and every couple of minutes or so a nice big bubble comes through the airlock.

It has been down in the cellar for just over a month and has another month to go. I’ll bring it out and bottle it around April 9th. Now I have some patience but I don’t have a ton of it, so this has been a long month and I know it’s only going to get longer.

As I was down in the cellar admiring the beer and wishing it was ready, I started to think about the patience that goes into craftsmanship. I like to think that making beer is like making a beautiful piece of furniture, you start out looking for the finest materials that will make the perfect piece. Then there is a lot of hard work in turning each piece, assembling the pieces, sanding, and finally staining the piece. This process can take days, weeks, or even years for some furniture makers to perfect the piece they are working on.

Making beer is the same process, you start out looking for the finest malt and hops, then you spend a lot of time boiling the wort and preparing your yeast culture, and finally assembling the fermenter. Then there is a period of time where you can sit back and wait, then finally you can bottle or keg the beer. Through this whole process the beer is being hand crafted, just like with woodworking. The beer takes on a life of it’s own just like a fine oak table or chair. Also, if you rush or take shortcuts, it will show in the final product whether it’s a scratched/marred piece of wood or a skunky off aroma/tasting beer. Both are processes are a labor of love that take time and patience to produce the highest quality finished piece.

But anyway I have rambled on enough about the ethereal side of making beer without actually making the point I was trying to make, but what the hell right? At least I got some thoughts out.

Keep ‘em tippin’!!!

Ol’ Naps Maibock

I know I haven’t posted in a while, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been brewing. Yep, Ol’ Naps has been brewing up something special. I have been quietly brewing up a nice Maibock. Traditionally Bocks are spring beers that are brewed in the dead of winter and lagered for a few months to to be cracked open for a spring festival. It is a German style and the name Bock actually means goat, so that’s why when March rolls around you’ll see a ton of Bocks being offered and 99% have a goat on the label.

I love these beers. I love that they are brewed to be a celebration of the coming of spring. I have had traditional Bocks, Dopplebocks (double bocks)  and triple bocks, but I have never had a Maibock. It is the same as a traditional bock, but much lighter in color but with the same big, full flavors.

This Maibock has been fermenting for two weeks and was ready for transferring to a glass carboy to be cellared for two months to be ready for the end of March. I took a short video of what the beer looks like and how I transfer below. I apologize ahead of time for the poor video quality.

So take a look and let me know if you have any comments or questions. I am always more than happy to talk beer with anyone.

Prost & Keep  ‘em tippin’

All bottled up !!

So finally I bit the bullet and bottled up my hot pepper beer. I had been putting it off for longer than I wanted to, just because it has been so damn hot as of late. Plus working with hot water for sanitizing when its already over 90 outside is just not pleasant. But luckily for me a nice set of thunderstorms swept through this afternoon and cooled everything off, so I took advantage of the slightly cooler weather and got cracking.

I pulled out the carboy and placed it on counter to transfer it to the bottling bucket, and this is what the bad boy looked like:

Just look how thick that sediment layer is, and I still have peppers floating awesome. So I transferred the beer to the bottling bucket and started bottling it. Once I had it in the bottles, it was time to add the final touch.

  Yep, the finishing touch is a big ol' kiss from Don Enrique. I took one of those lovely red ladies and dropped it into each bottle before capping it. So now the beer can age and soak up more heat from Don Enrique's little friends.

Now with my clutch of beautiful brown 22.5 fluid ounce bottles filled and capped, I can relax for a week or tow before its ready to taste. So lets wait together, who knows I may have my beer tasting party yet.

Still Bubbling……

Well, I just checked on my chili beer fermenter and it is still happily bubbling away, even after a week of hot and heavy fermentation. So I will just let it keep chugging.

As I sat there staring at the bubbles running through the airlock, I started thinking about carbonation, and the question hit me. Which is better natural carbonation or artificial/force carbonation? Now depending on who you are, how you like to brew, what kind of beer you like, and numerous other questions you could be on either side. In the beer world this question can draw the same kind of crazy passion as the age old question of “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

Here are my opinions on the subject, and that’s all they are just opinions. I lean much more towards natural carbonation, maybe because it is all I have ever been able to do as a homebrewer. I never have been set up with a CO2 tank and corny kegs, so I have always just primed with a little corn sugar and let the yeast finish the carbonation in the bottle. However, I don’t feel that, that is the only reason. I like natural carbonation, because it appeals to my artistic and creative side. To natural carbonate the beer, you have to add a little sugar to the beer and let the remaining yeast ferment the sugar in the bottle and build the CO2 necessary for the perfect head. So by naturally carbonating a beer, you are basically leaving the beer unfiltered, this leaves the yeast in the bottle and turns the each bottle into it’s own “living” creature. As the beer bottle conditions, the yeast finish their processes and then settle to the bottom. Now the yeast are free to contribute to their own unique flavors to the beer as it ages. The longer the beer is allowed to condition on its own yeast, the more the flavor can change and contribute to beer’s structure. So a beer that you taste weeks after bottling can have a different flavor than the same beer that is opened a few months later. The ever changing flavors of the evolving beer fascinates me and really sways me to the natural carbonation side.

Now don’t get me wrong, force carbonating has its place. When you force carbonate, it is much easier to get a precise CO2 level that will correspond to the amount of  head that the beer will have. So you have more control over the amount of CO2. You also tend to get more microbial stability in the beer if you have the ability to filter the beer. Because you don’t have to rely the yeast to produce those beautiful little bubbles, you can filter the beer and remove all of the yeast and any other type of haze producing particles, which leaves you with a brighter, more clear, and sometimes cleaner tasting beer. You don’t have to worry about the yeast flocculating out and creating that mushy sediment layer on the bottom of each bottle. Most people don’t like to see that sediment and they especially don’t want to drink it.

***On a side note, some people really don’t mind the sediment and think that it all adds to the flavor. I had the opportunity to work and live in the Riverland of Australia for a month and a half. While I was over there I made sure to try as many Australian beers as I could. It was in these beer tastings with many of my Australian co-workers, that I was introduced to Cooper’s. Now Cooper’s is a pretty decent mass produced beer company that not only produces beer but also homebrew kits. But Cooper’s also bottle conditions its mass produced beer, so there is always a nice little yeast cake on the bottom of each bottle. So before I opened my first bottle my Australian counterpart told me to invert the bottle and swirl the cake back into the beer, “It’s better that way, this is the way real Australians drink this beer, and if you don’t do this before every Cooper’s,  we’ll probably call you a ‘stupid American’”. Now he told  me all of this with a good laugh. So I drank the first Cooper’s like a real Australian, but like many things when I’m drinking I forgot to swirl the next bottle and got my fair share of ball busting “Stupid American” comments as they laughed at me. But in my mistake I got to taste the same beer two ways and I must admit, I liked it much better with all of that sediment mixed back into the beer.

Well that was a rather long side note I know, but anyway the next time you pop a top or pry off a crimp on cap, and here that familiar “psssssssssssssst”, take a minute to think about whether the beer was bottle conditioned or force carbonated and decide which you think is better. Enjoy!

Where’s there is smoke, there’s fire!!

So my hot chili beer has been happily fermenting for 4 days and I decided it was time to transfer it to the secondary fermenter. I decided to transfer it because I was following my first recipe, but also because I wanted to add a second dose of hot peppers and oak.

That was my second addition, two jalapenos, one habanero, and two ounces of american oak chips. So I washed the peppers and steamed the oak. Then I rough cut the peppers and added everything to the fermenter.

This picture is, uh, well, uh, I’m trying to think of something clever to say about looking directly down into the carboy. Right down the pipe, no right down the chute, no then all I think of is poop chute and I don’t want that image associated with this beer. Well, maybe staring into the mouth of madness, well anyway you get the idea.

So with the peppers and oak added all that was left was the add the fermenting beer.

Aaaaaaah, now isn’t that the prettiest thing you have ever seen. I think it is. So now it goes back into a cool, dark place, a.k.a the closet, to finish fermenting.

So the waiting continues, but its getting exciting, right??

Here we go again……Fire and Brimstone

OK, so the other day I received the package I had been waiting for. It was a glorious box of beer supplies for my next brew. Now I opened the box and there was the usual assortment of ingredients, dry malt, malt syrup, a pound of crushed grains, a couple of different kinds of hops, and a packet of dehydrated yeast. Pretty standard stuff, nothing to get super excited about. Just the basics for a nice pale ale. Well, I have been in the experimental mood lately, and a plain pale ale just wasn’t going to cut it so I pulled out my “special ingredients” :

1. Chili Peppers – Jalapenos and Habaneros (Fire)
2. Oak Chips
3. Liquid Smoke (Brimstone)
That’s right, another hot pepper beer. Now, just a little quick history, my first hot pepper beer, was pretty hot. I could drink one and my lips burned for days. You know that feeling after eating a bunch of atomic chicken wings, where your lips burn and tingle and nothing but sweet, sweet time can pull you out of the fetal position and settle the swelling of your lips. Yeah, it was pretty awesome!! My buddy Dinker and a select few people actually enjoyed the beer for more than a novelty.
So this is take 2 on that beer, but I am adding a few other ingredients to try and balance the heat from the peppers. So I am adding some oak chips to add a softer mouthfeel and a little bitterness. Then I added some liquid smoke, what I am going for is a smoky, grilled peppers kind of aroma/flavor. We’ll see what I get, all of the beer recipes I have found on using Liquid Smoke were a bit ambiguous as to when to add it to the beer and how much to add. Smoke flavor can be a bit overpowering if too much is used, some recipes called for 2 tablespoons, where others said that 1 1/2 teaspoons was just enough. Then some recipes said to add it at the end of the boil and others said to add it directly to the fermenter. Oh, what the hell, I had no idea what to do so I split the difference and hedged my bets. I added a 1/2 teaspoon to the boil and then 1 1/2 teaspoons directly to the fermenter. So here’s hoping for the best.
All of this was done to find the perfect backyard barbeque beer. I want a beer that is a perfect compliment to a summer barbeque. A beer that perfectly compliments a nice juicy burger straight from the grill. I want this beer to have a little heat, but some roasted/smoky notes so when you taste it, it quenches your thirst but leaves you picturing that giant burger topped with a melted slice of jalapeno pepperjack cheese.
So with some wishful thinking I put the lid on the fermenter, inserted the airlock and tucked this beer away for the night. I gave it a quick check this morning to find it happily bubbling away, so we shall see what I get. Just a short couple of weeks and we’ll give it a taste. Hell, maybe I’ll throw a BBQ and you can taste it and tell me how close I came to the perfect BBQ beer.
Until then, support your local brewers and drink local.

Brewing German Alt

So I finally decided what I wanted to brew and it was something I had never brewed before. I have recently tried a few Alt beers from Germany and I have really enjoyed them, so I figured what the hell I would take a shot at brewing one. I looked through a few of my recipe books and couldn’t find one I liked so I decided to buy a kit. Normally, I prefer to put together my own recipes, but because it is a style that I have never brewed before I decided a kit was the way to go. So here we go:

I unpacked the kit and took a brief look at the brewing instructions and then got some water brewing. I put 2 1/2 gallons of water in my brew pot and got it heating. While it was heating up, I weighed out one pound of the supplied grains into a mesh bag.

Once the water was at 170 F, I put the bag into the pot to steep for twenty minutes.

After steeping the grains, I removed the bag allowed it to drain as much as possible then tossed the spent grains into the trash. A quick note about buying grains, if you are going to purchase them pay the extra 10 cents per pound to get them crushed because if you don’t own a grain mill it is a pain in the ass to get them crushed.

Then I brought the water to a boil and added both the malt syrup and the dry malt extract.

The trick to pouring the malt syrup is to put the entire container in pot of hot water for about 15 minutes before you need it. The water heats up the syrup making it much easier to pour and mix in the wort. There is no picture of the dry malt being added as I needed both hands to sprinkle it in and mix at the same time. If you just pour the whole bag in the wort and then mix it you end up with a lot of clumps of dry malt extract that doesn’t get mixed in well.

After all of the extract is added, I returned the wort to a frothy boil:

Once it begins to boil like this is when you start your 60 minute timer. I added 1 oz of Perle Hops at the start of the boil, then another 1 oz 15 minutes later.

I take this long boiling break to get my dried yeast started. In a large mixing cup, I add about 1 cup of 80 – 100 F degree water depending on what yeast strain it is and what the manufacturer recommends. A little tip I also use is to add a 1/2 a tablespoon of sugar to the water. Then I pour the dehydrated yeast into the cup and mix it in well.

Back to brewing, I keep it boiling at a medium rate for another 40 minutes then add 1 oz of Hersbrucker Hops for aroma.

I let it boil for another 5 minutes then remove it from heat and place the whole pot right into a ice batch in the sink to cool the water. I change the water in the sink around the pot quite a few times to keep it cold and keep the pot chilling. Once this beer was temping right around 80 F (oh by the way, all of my temperature measurement are coming from a simple calibrated meat thermometer) I was ready to transfer it to the fermenter.

When transferring the beer at this stage you want to leave all the sludgy, gross junk a.k.a trub in the pot. I like to get the most out of my beers so I will try to strain as much of the beer as I can without getting a lot of the trub into the beer.

Simple, but effective.

What’s left in the strainer and the pot.

All of this gets thrown out in the garbage. An important note about this trub and spent hops is to keep them away from your pets especially dogs. The spent hops are attractive to dogs, but they contain toxins that are poisonous to dogs.

Now that the beer is in the fermenter, my yeast is really starting to get active. It looks very foamy and almost creamy.

I pour it on top of beer in the fermenter and get the water running in the sink. I get the water to 80 F and then I use the sprayer on the sink to top up the fermenter to just over 5 gallons. Using the sprayer introduces a lot of air into the fermenter which also helps invigorate the yeast and get the fermentation started.

Then I put the lid on and add the airlock and voila, I had a beautiful new 5 gallon batch of German Alt. So to keep it in a cool dark place, a.k.a the entryway closet.

I’ll keep you updated as it progress, so let’s hope it keeps bubbling.

Sweet, Sweet Redemption

So last night, I was moving some wood into the house for one of the last few fires of the season and I came across my cases of Bock that I had made. I had put them in an out of the way, warm place and covered them with a blanket so they wouldn’t get lightstruck (a.k.a skunky) and in doing so completely forgot about them. It was like Christmas morning, I put the wood down and pulled back the blanket and there they were in all of their glory. Shiny in their brown bottles, and most likely still flat, but I figured what the hell and pulled out a bottle and put it in the freezer to chill it down.

I finished what I was working on, got Ava all settled for bed and Lauren and I got settled on the couch to watch some TV. It was the perfect time for a beer. So I pulled out a pint glass, pulled the beer out of the fridge and popped the top. To my pleasant surprise there was a definite psssssssssssst. Huh, maybe the beer had finally carbonated itself, I thought, but I wasn’t going to get my hopes up. Then I started to pour her out into the glass and it was beautiful, it almost brought a tear to my eye.

Look at all of that delicious off-white creamy head. There was actually a bit more of it, but I was so caught off guard that I had to run around and find the camera to take a picture of it and by then some of it had dissipated. But just look at it, there was so much carbonation you can see bubbles clinging to the inside of the glass. Yes, that’s a patch of bubbles not a dirty glass.

I feel so vindicated and redeemed by this beer. So it would seem that I just wasn’t patient enough and had thrown in the towel a little too early on this beer. Man, am I glad that I didn’t give all of this stuff away. Sweet, sweet redemption is mine.

Well, I just thought that I would give everyone a little update. Who knows maybe I’ll do a little youtube pour of the beer to show everyone how glorious it really is. But until then I’ll let you go, I have to pull another two bottles out of the freezer to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, and because I’m thirsty, LOL.

Bock Tasting..... yeah, about that......

Well, the magical day arrived yesterday. I had waited patiently for weeks to have a nice cold Bock that I had brewed all by myself. It was my first lager, would I be victorious or would I crash and burn? Right now it looks like I am starting to slide down the crash and burn route, I am trying to correct my slide and pull it out, but only time will tell.

So here is what happened, Bock Tasting Day had come and I was all ready to crack open one of those frosty delights. My buddy Dinker happened to stop in yesterday, so I thought perfect I'll get two taste reviews on this beer. I went into my "lagering room" and pulled out two bottles. It was about 40 F in there so they were all ready nice and frosty. I grabbed two glasses and I popped the top to hear the very slightest, faintest of a hiss. Uh oh. Maybe no carbonation? So I did a rough pour and just poured the beer directly into the glass without slanting the glass. OK, there is a little life to the beer, it did produce some bubbles, but they quickly dissipated. Yep, damn it flat beer.

So here is what I think happened. After lagering for 4 weeks at roughly 40 F, I transferred the beer and bottled it. (See previous bottling blog). Everything went well, as I transferred it the beer was still lively and producing CO2 and foamy. So I finished bottling and where did I put the finished bottles? Yep, you guessed it, right back into that damn cold "lagering room". So I think that the stress of bottling plus the fact that the room got below 40 F a couple of nights shocked the yeast and may have killed them, leaving me with a flat beer. However, I do have hope. My plan of action is to move all of the bottles out of the room and place them in the downstairs where it is a nice 65 - 70 F. My hope is that all of the yeast have not died and that the gentle warming for a week will re-energize them and they will finish carbonating the beer. So that is my plan and I have scheduled a second Bock tasting for this coming weekend. So I will wait and see how it turns out.

On another note, the beer was delicious. It was a nice nut brown color with some reddish tints/highlights and tasted perfectly true to the style. The only flaw was the absence of carbonation.

Bottling day finally arrives

So after 4 long weeks of waiting, it was finally time to bottle up the Bock that I had been fermenting. So early in the day I gathered up my bottling bucket, bottles, caps and transfer tubing and set about sanitizing them for the bottling later in the day. Then finally I decided that it was time to move the carboy of Bock out of the “lagering cellar” and into the kitchen where I usually bottle. Now this moment was a very exciting moment for me, I had kept the carboy covered for the last four weeks to prevent any light from getting in which could skunk up the beer, so I hadn’t seen this baby in 4 weeks, not once, not even to peek.

I slowly unwrapped the blanket that was covering it like a surgeon removing bandages. What was I going to find? A perfect looking beer with no trace of anything funky on the top or was I going to find a busted old pair of implants gone wrong and a beer that is misshapen like the worst pair of stripper implants you’ve ever seen. So, drum roll please………… Ta Da

It was a perfect carboy of beer. All of the sediment and spent yeast had fallen to the bottom to make a fine layer of cake, and the remaining yeast were still giving the beer just enough spritz so I know that the beers will be carbonated well in the bottle.

Now it came time to prime the beer into the bottling bucket. Because I don’t use CO2 and force carbonate my beer into kegs, I use corn sugar and bottle condition the beer. So every bottle basically ferments its own head in the bottle and you get a slight sediment in the bottle. But it seems that people are going more natural these days, so who cares if you drink a little yeast with your beer, you already eat it with your bread, right?

This is corn sugar, it looks like table sugar but is more fermentable and thus doesn’t sweeten the beer. The tube next to it contains a hyrdometer and it is used to measure potential alcohol. You fill the tube with the beer right before you start it fermenting and then you float the hydrometer in it. The hydrometer will float at a certain level and you read the level where the beer meets the hydrometer, then you ferment the beer and repeat the process before you add priming sugar. Now that you have the two readings, you subtract the final reading from the beginning reading, do a calculation and you know what your approximate alcohol is. That being said this Bock is about 5.5 – 6% alc/vol. Not bad I thought, that’s about where it should be. Now that the math is out of the way, I primed the beer with 3/4 cup of corn sugar to my 5 gallons of beer. That’s a pretty standard amount for priming. Now I could begin filling my bottles.

I use a spring loaded tip filler, as you place a bottle up onto the filler the bottom of the bottle forces the spring tip up and allows the beer to flow out and into the bottle. You release the pressure on the tip and the beer quits flowing, sounds like a few others things I know with tips and pressure, but I digress. So here we go.

I will typically bottle six bottles, then cap them, mix the bucket to make sure that the corn sugar is all dissolved and a little air at this point helps the sluggish yeast to liven up a little, then bottle another 6 bottles and so on and so forth until the beer is gone. The tedious part is capping. You have to place a cap on the bottle and then use a butterfly capper to crimp it on, if you don’t use enough pressure you don’t get a good seal and you have a flat beer, too much pressure and you crack the neck of the bottle and the beer is unusable unless you want a trip to the ER for ground glass in your stomach. But after awhile you get a good feel for it and a good rhythm working and you fly right through it.

In the starting position.

The cap is now crimped on.

Now the beer has been all bottled and capped and I greedily stare at my clutch of brown bottles. I have a case of beer, that’s all mine, all mine I tell you. Now I only have a case because I bottle in 20 ounce bottles instead of your normal 12 ounce longnecks.  I got a deal on cases of 20 oz bottles and hell if you’re going to have one beer, you know you’re going to have another, so why mess with opening two bottles when you can open one and be happy.

So, now the clock starts to tick again, it will be at least a week before I can taste any of these, but it will probably be more like two weeks. It takes a little while for the yeast to carbonate the beer, and I’m like any other man, I am more than willing to wait for fantastic head. So until then, pop a top and keep those mugs a’tippin’. Prost!!

You put the beer in the coconut and throw the can away! Well, not really....

Well, my Bock has been happily fermenting for 7 days in the primary fermenter at approx. 57 F and today was the day to transfer it to a glass carboy and start the 4 week lagering process. So I pulled out a the carboy and sanitized it with hot water and a little chlorine. After letting it sit for about a half hour, I triple rinsed with hot water so the glass was warm to the touch. I find that if you transfer your fermenter into a warm carboy and aerate it as you are doing it, it reinvigorates the yeast and you get a better finish to the fermentation. That brings me to this little gadget:

That little piece of plastic works wonders for aerating the fermenter as it is being transferred. As the beer runs down the tubing and through the piece above, it hits the point, which displaces the stream and introduces air into the beer. Also the resulting spray also aerates the beer as it splashes. I really love using it and it was super cheap. So here is the transferring process:

So the beer was all transferred and then was inspected by my Head Brewmaster:

After Ava's approval and her awarding me a medal for in her words "Best Team Beer", I placed the beer in what I am calling my lagering cellar and will now anxiously wait for the next 3-4 weeks before I can bottle it up. So now I just sit back and wait while enjoying a cold one of someone else's and wait. I hope I can hold out that long.

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.