Home Brewing (1)

After reading all those descriptions on how beer is made, it is finally time to have my own trial on beer brewing.  Initially, I think equipment and ingredients are the difficult part.  But it was lucky for me to come across the booth of "The Beer Necessities" at Beertopia in April, and this online store sells various kinds of brewing equipment and ingredient.  Good!!

I started with its small batch all-grain system, comprising a set of equipment needed for brewing one gallon of beer.  For the beer, I chose Edinburgh IPA, expecting to obtain some hoppy juice for tasting purpose in the worst case.

In the beginning, it looked like this:

The grain came as milled and packaged, and all we have to do is to add it into a pot of hot liquor (mineral water, not tap water, suggested in this case) for Mashing.

Mashing lasted for an hour, to make sure all the grist are soaked up.  Temperature has to be kept as 62-67 degree Celsius.

After an hour, and strain away all the grist residue, you get the Wort now.

Then came the boiling and addition of hops.  Adding hops could be tricky and varies depending on the style of beer you are brewing.  For the Edinburgh IPA, two hops are used.  They came in the form of extract and are easier to be handled.

The first kind of hops (A) were added at the beginning of boiling, while the second one (B) were added in four different batches during the hour-long boiling.

After an hour of boiling, you got the hopped wort (with fermentable sugar) and you are ready to add the magical yeast for the process of fermentation.

We are using a packet of dried yeast in this case.  After addition, yeast will reproduce itself in the wort in the first phase of aerobic fermentation.

Three days later, we used the air lock to keep the big jar from any more air coming in contact with the wort (or you could say half-beer), then allow it for 7-11 days of fermentation.  In this phase, the yeast would eat up the sugar, transform it into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

When all the bubbling stops, we could assume that the active fermentation also stops somehow.  We would transfer the beer into bottles (or cask if you have a spacious home!), and wait for maybe two to three weeks (wishing the beer to become more matured).

I prepared five bottles of homemade Edinburgh IPA today.  Although all the stupid mistakes made in the process, I consider my first trial of home brewing half-finished.  Why not take a preliminary taste of that!

A really hoppy juice indeed.