In June, I purchased a brew kit for my husband in honor of his status as a kitty father. My husband looked at me and said, "This looks 'fun'. You know that I nearly failed chemistry in High School, right?" To which I replied, "I will help you. I earned a 5 on the AP Chemistry test. Besides, this is more microbiology than chemistry anyway. You like microbiology." This earned me a husband eye roll.
I admit that I bought the kit for me and used my husband as an excuse. I wanted to do a little kitchen chemistry/microbiology. I admit it! I wanted to foray into the world of home brews. He just wants the end product.
For the past three months my husband has been dutifully consuming Italian beer called Nero's from Trader Joe's so that I can use the swing top bottles. Please don't think that he was put upon in anyway by this process. The hubs was bulking and the Italian beer from Trader Joe's is tasty. It smells malty and sweet. It doesn't get the best reviews because the reviewers feel that it doesn't have much body and is rather sweet. However, if you like sweet and not bitter then this might be the brew for you. The husband drinks it as dessert with chocolate. The caramel smell coming from the beer does lend itself rather well to dark chocolate. I haven't tasted it because most beer is not worth the intestinal suffering they induce. Mommy has gluten free/wheat free/allergen free brew from Belgium that tastes fantastic. Thank you Belgian brewers!
Every time the hubs opens a Nero's to enjoy, he says, "Italian beer...who knew?" It has been three months and he is still shocked each time...who knew? By the way, if you are interested in the beer, the brewer's website is here http://www.birraamarcord.it/it/index.html. The website is in Italian. If you are not well versed in a Romance language (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, etc.), you may want to use Google's translate feature.
To accomplish my husband's dream of quaffing homemade brew in about a month, I pulled out the brew kit. On Sunday, while two beered up men cheered me on, I made beer. By the way, the instructions for the brew kit tell you that it takes about 4 hours from start to finish. Please don't be like me and think that the master brewer's estimates are incorrect and begin brewing at 8:00 PM. The master brewer is the master brewer for a reason. Midnight finish times on projects make even the most hyper focused Aspy teacher cranky. Fortunately, I have a two week break to recover.
I must say that I was initially intimidated by the process. However, a lady does not show fear in the face of beered up men and microbiology. Once I started, despite the lengthy process, it was amazingly simple and fun. If the end product is drinkable (and possibly if the end product is not drinkable), I will totally do this again.
Key things to remember include reading instructions several times prior to beginning, remembering how to siphon without getting sanitizer blow back, and having a fair amount of finger and shoulder strength. You will also need a decent amount of endurance and patience. Being a practiced knitter will help. Teaching middle school students helps. Having a tendency toward hyper focusing on projects will also help.
Right now our yeast friends just stopped making carbon dioxide and are in the process of converting sugar to ethanol. The picture you see shows the stop cock. The liquid in the stop cock is sanitizer. This will prevent bad bacteria/yeast from getting into the brew during the process. It also ensures that oxygen is not part of this party. Yeast will make carbon dioxide in the presence of oxygen but I want them to make ethanol. The yeast will make ethanol in an anaerobic environment. The little gallon jug of yeast friends and grain sugars will live in the pantry for about two weeks fermenting. The location of the pantry ensures that it is at about 70ish Fahrenheit. That is about 21 Celsius or 294 Kelvin. It is also dark. I brought the jug out for a picture but as we all know, light+beer=gross.
After two weeks in this environment, the brew gets three shots of maple syrup and goes into bottles, the maple syrup gives the yeasts something to use to make carbonation. At this point we will seal the bottles and allow the brew to sit for another two weeks. The pressure in the bottles will force the carbon dioxide into solution so that the hubs gets a proper beer experience when he opens one.
If you're interested in home brewing, microbiology, or random kitchen chemistry, there are a number of home brew kits on the market. I bought the Chocolate Maple Porter kit from the Brooklyn Brew Shop. This was one that I found at my local grocery store while I was compulsively looking for gluten free/wheat free snacks. There were others...many others...but the hubs likes porters so the Chocolate Maple Porter won the "who will be brewed first" contest. (If it had been me prior to wheat free, I would have brewed the Grapefruit Honey Ale first.) The kit included all of the technical equipment: jug, stop cock, tubing, dry mash ingredients, hops, yeast, etc. I just needed maple syrup, two 8-12 quart stockpots, fine mesh strainers, a couple of bowls and ice packs. I have a big strainer for the mash and a superfine strainer for the jug transfer. The Brooklyn Brew Shop does not include instructions in the kit. Printed instructions are expensive and their intent (per the website) is to keep the cost of home brewing low. The instructions are posted on their website with videos of the process. These played well on our IPad and also on my husband's Nexus. I used the IPad because I watched Moyashimon while I worked and I loathe watching anime on a screen smaller than the IPad. Please note, nothing in this post is an endorsement of any kind. I don't get paid to do this. I get paid to teach.
