The Art of HomeBrewing

About 5 weeks ago, I started my own home brewing. My Uncle Tom used to homebrew very religiously so when my Aunt Debbie said I should really get into it I quickly jumped on the opportunity. Little did I know was that she was almost willing to pay me to take all of the equipment out of their basement. Here is what a home brewers basement will generally look like:

Bottles upon bottles, buckets, carboys (clear glass jar), bottle caps, tubes, bottle filler, etc... Uncle Tom hooked me up with a great starter kit. I am very thankful to have an Uncle that would be willing to donate all of this equipment to me!! He doesn't know this yet, but he will be getting a delivery this week with "Fragile Christmas Ornaments."

The first brew I started 5 weeks ago was finally ready this past week:

My first brew was made with a pre-assembled kit and it's a hoppy dark ale. I named it "The Uncle Tom." It came out wayy better than I could have asked for my first home brew. Here is a picture of it poured:

For my second homebrew I decided to pick up some ingredients for a more intermediate brew. I have a contest coming up at The Draught Horse, a local bar on Temple's Campus. The brewmaster from Yeungling will be judging the contest. Everyone is required to brew a Brown Ale. For my beer I will be brewing an English Brown Ale and it should be ready in time for the competition on December 7, 2010. Here are a few pics over the past 3 weeks of my progress:

Sunday, 10/24/10

 (All the ingredients- Pre- Boil)

(Pulling out the Tea)

10/31/10

I racked the beer from the primary bucket into the carboy (that's the glass container from the 1st picture above)

11/14/10

 

I racked the beer out of the carboy into the bottling bucket

Then sanitized my bottles while the Sugar Dextrose boiled on the stove

Then I bottled and my sister Kelly helped me cap

We got about 27 bomber bottles out of this brew. The beer will now sit in my basement for about 2-3 weeks while the dextrose sugar does its job and carbonates the brew. 6 bottles will be going to the judges in the contest and the rest will be drank by my friends, family, and of course myself!

Brewing is definitely something I will continue to do. Drinking a good beer is just one of those things you don't appreciate until you understand all of the work needed to put into a great batch. I had no idea how beer was made until I started doing this. 

Stayed tuned for an update in the beginning of December on my contest results.

-Kev