Total cost around $250
It was a slightly dusky and not at all stormy night; the day was the 26th of December, in the good year of 2009. On this day, beer was conceived! I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Let’s go back, way back. All the way back to the 21st, when my (beautiful, awesome, smart) wife gave me a home wine making kit for tolerating her for two years. Then, since my parents were gracious enough to give me funds for Christmas, I thought a trip to The Brew Hut was in order. After all, I had to get a batch wine to make anyway, right? Well, after looking over the home brewing kit, I realized I already had most of the needed equipment in my wine kit. So I picked up a bottling bucket, a corker/capper, and a 20qt stockpot.
Next step was to decide what to make. Wine wasn’t too hard to pick; while they had a lot of great choices, I’m a big fan of tempranillos, and they tend to be a little hard to come by. Plus, they are typically pretty bold, and I’m hoping that will help cover up any minor mistakes. Beer, on the other hand, I didn’t know. While I could have selected my own grains, etc, etc I didn’t feel comfortable enough with that yet. So I asked one of the helpful guys over at The Brew Hut what he recommended for beginning brewers, and he directed me to an English Brown Ale ingredient kit. I like dark beers, so this sounded pretty excellent to me. I won’t lie, though… the massive row of hops and grains really did spark my interest. Looking forward to getting the hang of this and experimenting with recipes.
Cookin' up the wort
I arrived back at home, unpacked my goodies and took the above photograph. After that, it was a sanitation bonanza (isn’t that fun to say?) because you have to be really careful about outside crap getting in your brew. After all, the idea here is to create a perfect situation for the growing of yeasts. Which, of course, means lots of other things would love to grow in there. Your job is to be the guardian of your little yeasts, and make sure the bacteria bullies and contaminate cockbags don’t get in there and ruin this perfect wonderland you’ve created. So, after sanitizing the pot, the carboys, my brewing tools, the cats, my neighbor, the sun, and most of the Rockies, I felt I was ready…
Now, something you non-brewers might not know (and something I didn’t know until recently) was that this cooking process creates what is known as the wort. You can use that link to travel to wikipedia for more detailed info, but the summary is that wort is the liquid you get when you’re cooking up all those yummy beer ingredients. This process is a little lengthy, and while I imagine it would be quick now that I’ve done it once, you’re still looking at well over an hour (probably near to two hours) spent cooking. I was a little nervous about the temperature, and I really need to get a floating thermometer or one I can clip on the side of the pot. I kept having to take one of our shorter cooking thermometers and sticking it in there to check the temp. We’ll see, but I think I managed to keep it where I wanted. Once you’ve steeped your grains, added your malt, and got the first set of hops started, then it is a long wait (about 45 minutes for this recipe) before you are ready for the next step.
Just add water! (And yeast, time, etc)
So what did I do for 45 minutes? Well, since this was my first batch, I really didn’t want to leave it by itself. I just wasn’t sure; you know, overprotective beer-parent and all. So I thought, hey, why not just start the wine? And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I did. Bentonite is added as a clarifying agent, then the delicious juice. The next step is adding some water, and then (mostly if you’re making some reds) adding oak chips or powder to give that “barrel flavor” that is really hard to accomplish authentically at home. At this point, I broke out one of my favorite new tools… my drill attachment stirring rod. Next time, I promise a photo of this bad boy in action. Essentially, it is paddles that are pushed outward via spinning force on one end, and the other end is your drill. It is made of awesome. Now, at this point the (not-quite) wine was a little warm, but we’ll get to that later… Toss the lid/airlock on that bad boy, and then back to the beer.
Shortly before you’re done cooking, aromatic and flavoring hops are tossed in to the mix. The aromas and flavors imparted by hops tend to evaporate rather quickly, so these have to be added much after the bittering hops, and just before you stop the boil. Let them sit for a few minutes, and then off the heat we go. Toss a lid on it, and now we’ve got to cool the wort as quickly as we can. A sink full of ice water is a perfect chilling bath for a 20qt stockpot. It wasn’t terribly long until my wort was down to the ideal temperature, but that pesky wine was still warm from the warm water used with the bentonite. Whatever, I’ll leave it. Now that the beer is cool, I can transfer it to a carboy. In addition to my white plastic bucket, I’ve got two plastic carboys from Better Bottle, and I really like them much more than the plastic bucket. Once in the carboy, toss in the yeast and break out the (cleaned and sanitized) drill attachment and let the stirring begin! A few awesome seconds later, and stopper/airlock combo is pushed in to the next of the carboy, and it is moved to the basement.
Colorado Snow-chilled Wine: A Marketing Gimick!
At this point it was getting late, and I wanted to cool that wine down. My backyard WAS full of snow, and snow is cold… yeah, yeah I did that. But it worked, at least in the sense that the wine cooled down. So I added the yeast, put the lid back on, and put it in the basement. And now we play the waiting game… the beer will be bottled in another 5 days or so, and ready for first taste about two weeks after that. For reference, here are some stats for these initial batches. If there are terms you don’t understand, don’t worry… a post is coming about those in the future.
Now, I just hope I don’t get hit by a C-C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!
Beer
- Grains: 8oz Crystal 60L, 4oz Chocolate, 6oz. Carapils Dextrine.
- Malt: 3.3lbs liquid amber, 2lbs dry amber
- Hops: 1oz bittering, 1oz flavoring, 1/4oz aroma
- SG: 1.050
Wine
- Style: Tempranillo
- Region: Spain
- SG: 1.085