Homebrewing - First Trial

D-Day arrived today. At 7 AM I rolled out of bed and headed downstairs to begin brewing my first batch of homebrew. A nice, dark American style Ale. Needless to say it was a learning experience, and there were some complications along the way, but we'll get to that all in good time. First things first.

My initial plan was to get all the equipment sterilized in a mixture of bleach and water and get everything laid out. Which went pretty much according to plan. Except it didn't. Getting everything sterilized was relatively easy. As can be seen to the left, all of the necessary gear, plus a little extra, fit well inside the 5 gallon fermenting pail and then got covered with a good dose of bleach and water. I let this sit for about half an hour, the pulled it out to rinse it off and let it air dry. So, first step of initial plan was good to go and accomplished.
The second step the of initial plan is where things started to get complicated. When I ordered my ingredients I made the mistake of not reading the item description completely. I had wanted to brew my first batch of beer with a mixture of grain and extracts, which is supposed to be relatively easy. Unfortunately, I ordered an ingredient kit that was comprised of all grains - no extracts. OK, so that complicates the recipe, but I can work with it. Do a little research, adjust my time schedule, no big deal. Except the devil is in the details and I wasn't paying attention again. You see, when you brew with grains, the grain has to be milled, or crushed. Otherwise all the goodness doesn't get into the mash. Its like brewing coffee. If you don't grind the bean, you don't get any flavor. My grain had not been milled. So thus began the process of trying to figure out how to get this grain so it could be used without resorting to going out and getting to big rocks and beating the grain together between them.

I managed to figure out a relatively easy solution, and it only took me an extra 20 minutes or so to get all the grain in workable order. My solution: a coffee grinder. I was able to drop the grain in my coffee grinder, give it about a 4 second spin, and end up with a relatively coarse ground grain. The downside being that I was able to grind about a half cup of grain at a time, and I had to work through 10 pounds of the stuff. Overall all though, I was able to get it ground quick, dump it quick and reload and be grinding again in about 15 seconds.

After that, I decided I needed some breakfast. So out came the nonstick, the cutting board, and a whole host of goodness. On board for the whole family was omelets with mushroom, steak, green pepper, and cheese washed down with coffee or milk depending upon taste.
With the addition of my good friend Joe showing up to lend a hand, we were ready to start the actual brewing process. First thing was to get the grain into the water and to get it heated to about 122 degrees and keep it there for half an hour. This is called a protein rest, and the goal is to get the grain opened up and the sugars in it ready to get cooked out in the next step. This was relatively easy, but I learned the first lesson of what not do to when brewing with all grain. And that is: don't leave the pot unattended for too long. We walked out of the room and started talking and after 15 minutes or so of waiting for the mash to come to temperature I came back in to check the pot. At an approximate temperature of 110 degrees, the grain had started to burn onto the bottom of the pot. So, now that my beer is going to have an extra layer of complex flavor - slightly burnt - I decided that the best course of action was to stir the post at least every 5 minutes or so. This seemed to work out the best and burning beyond this point was kept to a minimum.

So after the initial half hour at 122, we cranked the heat on the stove and got the mash temperature up to 160 degrees. This is called the sacharification rest, and it is the point in time in which all the long stranded sugars in the grain are converted into fermentable short sugars. This is all the point where you add the first batch of hops. This set of hops isn't so much for aroma as it is for flavor. For my initial addition I used two ounces of cascade hops. These are supposed to give the ale a nice spicy/citrusy taste and, eventually with the second addition, aroma. Hops added and temperature at the right level, we let the mash cook for another hour.

After that hour it was time to boost the temperature again to 170 degrees and add our second batch of hops. This final temperature boost is to stop the chemical process that converts starches into fermentable goodness. So temperature on the oven was kicked up again, and we dropped in our second addition of hops. It was at this point that Joe noticed that the hops we were using looked like rabbit food. Sadly enough, he was correct in this assumption and deep down inside I was hoping and praying that the brew company that I bought this kit from wasn't trying to pull a fast one on me. However, the nice aroma that greeted us upon dropping in the hops allayed any suspicions and on we went with the process.

Fifteen minutes at 170 and we were ready to separate out the mast and get the liquid into the fermenter bucket and let the yeast start doing its job. So first priority became how to get the grain out of the wort. We had to improvise a little at this step because I don't have a basket strainer large enough to fit a colander into. So we took a large piece of cheesecloth and folded it over itself several times and then laid this down inside a large colander that fit across the lid of the fermenter. Into this we began to slowly pour the mash. Separation went well, but I learned lesson number two of brewing with all grain. Trying to separate your mash is like trying to squeeze the liquid out of hot oatmeal. It can be done, but it not a fun task. I ended up taking a plastic freezer bag and laying it over the grain mixture. I then wrapped a towel around my hand and pressed down on the mash to separate out the wort. I had initially tried just squeezing it out using my hands, and that didn't work out so well. Namely, it burned a little.

Next came lesson three of the whole brewing process. Several websites I had read and a noteworthy TV chef had made the suggestion that when you add your wort into the fermenter and add the remaining 2 1/2 gallons of water, that the water be chilled and that some of the the water be replaced with ice. This cools the wort quickly which helps prevent cross contamination by nasty bacteria and germs and it also allows you to pitch the yeast into the wort much quicker. The only problem with this was that it worked too well. I ended up with my wort being about 6 degrees cooler than it was supposed to be to pitch the yeast. So, improvised solution number 2 for the day was created. We hadn't been able to get all the liquid out of the mash and so we were about 3/4 of a gallon short of the amount of liquid that is normal in the fermenter. Add 3/4 of a gallon of piping hot water from the spigot and the temperature came up enough that we felt safe enough to drop in the yeast. So, lesson three became: always make sure you have an extra gallon of drinking water available. We had to use water from the tap, which bothers me a little bit. Considering that we live in the city, our water tastes somewhat like the city pool. Chlorinated. I don't think that this will have any adverse effect on the beer seeing as how we didn't add that much to the whole batch. But still, you never know.

After that the only step left was put the lid on and attach the bubbler so all the gases can escape from the fermenting beer without letting in a bunch of nasty bacteria and germs. With that being done, I hauled the fermenter upstairs and stashed it in a cool dark closet. Now it comes down to waiting. I've got 5 weeks before I know if this batch was a success or not, and another week after that before I even get to taste it.

Next time, I'm definitely going to make some changes. First off, I'm brewing with extracts rather than all grain. Second, I'm stashing extra drinking water in the kitchen and I'm making sure to keep some of it at room temperature rather than chilled.

I'll keep you posted as the process comes along. Hopefully in six weeks I'll be able to announce that the experiment was a success and we can get started on batch number two.