making beer

If you don't care about making beer, punt now. (Is this a common expression, or just one we use at work? Punt, as in, quit reading this because you won't care.)

So I made beer the other day. This is the fourth batch I've made, and while I'm working the kinks out, it seems like I keep adding new kinks. Keeps it interesting, I guess.

The basic procedure goes like this:

1. Go to the beer store, buy extract, hops, yeast. Theoretically you can do this a while in advance, the stuff keeps okay in the fridge, but I'm always impatient and want to make it NOW!
2. Get out your big pot (which is never big enough) and boil 2-3 gallons of water.

3. Pour in the extract. This is a sweet syrup made from barley, it looks kind of like honey.

4. Get it boiling again, add some hops, and boil for 45 minutes. Clean up the mess from it boiling over after you add the hops, because it's going to boil over. You think it won't happen this time, but it will. It always does.

5. Add some more hops, boil for 15 minutes.

6. Turn off the heat, add the rest of the hops, wait 10 minutes.

Okay, that's it. Well, sort of. Now you've got 3 gallons of really hot pre-beer (it's called wort), and if you add the yeast, it will die. So you need to cool it, which is non-trivial. I usually put the pan in the sink and fill it will ice water.

Okay, we're cool, pour into the fermenter (big old 6 gallon glass bottle), fill the rest of the way up with water, add some yeast, and wait a week.

That's the easy way, the way I've done the previous 3 batches. But that was too easy, not adventurous enough. So this time, I ditched the extract syrup, and used grain.

Grain is how the big boys do it. You buy about 10 lbs of malted barley (from the beer store), soak it in hot water for an hour, and then drain the water into your pot, continuing with the boil like before. Sounds easy, right? Well sure, kind of. The main complication, if you ask me, is that you're now boiling 6+ gallons of water, instead of 2-3. My pot holds 7 gallons, maybe, so it's a tight fit. Plus, you try getting 6 gallons of water to boil on your stove. So I bought a turkey fryer kit, which consists of a big propane burner, a bit pot (the forementioned 7 gallon pot), and some useless accessories.

Aside... I don't plan to fry a turkey. I though it was dangerous, then I watched a Good Eats episode about it, and now I KNOW it's dangerous, so forget it.

But the propane burner is several times more powerful than my stove (it's about 50,000 BTU), so it makes short work of boiling. And since you're outside now, or in the garage, the mess from boilovers is less of a big deal. But still, let's face it, really annoying. 6 gallons in a 7 gallon pot is way way too full. So I guess I need another pot. Anybody know where I can get a 10-15 gallon stockpot, cheap?

Next complication... It's much harder to cool 5 hot gallons (I boiled off/spilled a gallon along the way.) down to 60 degrees. So I made a nifty chiller out of coiled copper tubing. You submerge the chiller in the hot wort, run some cold water through it, and voila! Well, not quite...

Stay tuned for further adventures in beer and some beer gadget pictures.