From frozen pops to beer!

Last week I made frozen fruit pops.  They were OK, but probably would have been much better had I used the old fashion recipe of frozen strawberries and a heavy sugar syrup. Instead, I used fruit and fruit juices and made healthy fruit pops. While healthy is certainly better for you, it's rarely tastier than the real stuff.

This week I'm brewing beer. I'm sure I read somewhere that it's actually healthier to home brew since you don't have to worry about how to keep the beer drinkable while it sits on a store shelf. Certainly sounds reasonable to me.  I won't know about taste for another three to four weeks.

Yesterday was Day #1.  Of course, I started with a kit - everything a beginner could possibly need to brew two cases of beer, right down to bottles and bottle caps.

I read all the instructions front to back as well as the Beginner’s Guide to Home Brewing. A few things still didn’t quite make sense so I went to YouTube and watched a dozen or more videos on home brewing.  There were literally hundreds, but I soon found my favorite – craigtube.com.  Craig has over twenty years home brewing experience and a keen sense of humor.  Not only that, he really seems to love what he's doing and especially what he's making. So I followed Criag’s example: put on my Corona baseball cap, opened a beer and went to work!

The first step in beer making is to sanitize all your equipment - anything that will come in contact with your brew. A no-rinse sanitizer came in the kit, so all I had to do was mix the packet in water and then pour it into the fermenter bucket, put all other items in the bucket, close the lid and gently swish the liquid all around. I loved the fact that I didn't have to rinse.

Next was to start the brew!!  

Just so you know, real beer is made from malted barley, hops, yeast and water. While there may be additional ingredients depending on the type of beer, these are the four main ingredients and are basic to most recipes.  I found it especially interesting to read in my handbook that Germany is probably the spiritual heartland of real beer and actually has a law in place that dictates the use of these four ingredients by all brewers. So, it's real beer I'm brewing here!

Anyway, per instructions,  I put 1 1/2 gallons of water on to boil and then slowly added the malted barley and hops.  The directions then said to boil for 20-30 minutes.  The mixture had a tendency to foam up and over the top,  so I had to keep turning the burner off so it would subside.  This happened a couple of times, but I did manage not to let it run over.  I'm already thinking though that I need a bigger pot before I brew my next batch.

I set up my fermenter bucket downstairs in my basement since the temperature down there runs somewhere between 65 and 75 degrees.  I didn't know at that time that the ideal temperature for fermentation is 65 degrees, but I did know that it was probably much too warm upstairs. I had to put 3 gals of cold water in the fermenter and then pour the hot malt mixture into that, so I knew I'd never be able to fill the fermenter upstairs and then carry it down the steps. The problem I did run into though was I then had to carry a very hot, very full pot of malt mixture from the kitchen, through the house and down the steps. Without a doubt, I need a bigger pot. I'm thinking too, that I should probably just do everything downstairs to begin with.

Here's a picture of my malt mixture:

I managed to get the hot malt liquid downstairs without incident and poured it into my fermenter.  The next step was to add enough liquid to bring the level up to 5 gallons and then sprinkle the yeast across the top. However, while my instructions didn't say this, I had heard somewhere on YouTube that the temperature of the liquid had to be around 75 degrees before pitching in the yeast so as not to kill the yeast.  So I checked the temperature of my mixture, now referred to as "wort" or unfermented beer, and it was 100 degrees.  So I waited about 10 minutes and checked it again.  It was still pretty close to 100 degrees. Ten minutes later, it still hadn't changed much.  So I looked up my friend Criag on YouTube.  What Craig does is check the temperature of the wort before he adds the additional water and then adds the water in increments, checking the temperature between each so that based on temperature, he knows whether to add cold or warm water. It was too late for me to do this so I just had to wait it out. What I'd done was fill my fermenter with water before I'd even started boiling my malt mixture, so that by the time I was ready to pour in the hot mixture, the water in the fermenter was probably pretty near room temperature. Had it been really cold, I wouldn't have had to wait so long to get the temperature down where it needed to be.  Next time, I'll do it Craig's way.

Anyway, live and learn.  I did finally get to sprinkle my yeast over the top of the mixture, which then called for another 10-minute wait.  Lastly I gave my unfermented beer a good stir and then placed the airtight lid on the top and inserted the airloc. The airloc is a one way valve that allows the release of the CO2 that builds up when the yeast start working on the sugar.  This is where the alcohol comes from as well. The instructions called for a little water in the airloc so I should be able to see it bubble a little bit when fermentation begins.

I checked on my beer before I went to bed and the bubbling had begun.  My beer was fermenting!! I was brewing beer!!

Day 2: I didn't sleep well last night. I got cold and woke up worrying about my beer being too cold.  I went to check on it and it was still bubbling away.  The temperature in the room was 67 degrees.  So I went back to bed. 

I checked on it again when I got up and it was fine.  Then when I checked later this afternoon, the bubbling had slowed almost to a stop.  I panicked!  All the information says the bubbling will go on for 2-3 days.  What was wrong? Did it get too cold, or maybe too warm?  I know there is no leak because I can't even get the lid off.

So I went back to the computer and searched for my answer.  Turned out, I was not the first to have this problem   The answer was right there and pretty much said that counting bubbles is useless - that it actually has little to do with what's happening in the fermenter. It just means that the largest amount of fermentation is over and there's not a lot of excess CO2 that needs to be vented out. It also had this cute little cartoon that I printed off and taped to my beer bucket.

I haven't been back to check on the beer since.