Ok so I joined the home brew club today with my very own first batch! What an experience. Sometimes I was stressing, sometimes I was bored while waiting for things to boil. I’ve helped a fellow Founding CORE Member brew up a batch about a month ago, but it’s a different experience when your going at it solo style! I did have Sigaro [another Founding CORE Member] on hand via Skype for some guidance.
Here are some pictures of the process!
Water in the brew pot, READY!
Ingredients, READY! Left bag is grains, right 2 bags are malt extracts in powder form.
Steeping the grains.
The kitchen counter mid action. The bucket and other items are sterilized at this point.
The laptop and log book, HANDY!
The wort boiling away! The bag in there to the left is the hops in a bag.
Wort into the bucket and READY for the yeast feast!
Yeast is in there...feasting...right now...
So some side notes that maybe you guys out there can learn from:
*Water spills easy, its like it wants to spill
*Pour your grains into the steeping bag over the water, you don’t loose so much of the real fine grains
*Have string on hand to hang grains | hops | thermometer from
*Put grains in after water is up to temp
*Put the grommet in the bucket lid, then put the bubbler on while the lid is NOT on the bucket, those grommets don’t float. That was the fastest I have ever sanitized my arm!
*Don’t forget to have plenty of ice on hand or a wort chiller. I had to make a store run during the final 20 minutes for 2 bags of ice. Also go with 4 bags of ice or more. It takes a lot!!!
ref: My kit | added steeping bag, thermometer and tubing to the Costco kit. Also note that the buckets are not marked with gallon levels.
Happy home brewing!
Tags: Homebrew
January 17th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Congrats on the first batch and Welcome to the obsession of home brewing!