FEmalt Enthusiasts: Adventures in homebrewing

Gail and I have been planning to homebrew together for months, but with both of our busy schedules, it just wasn’t possible… until yesterday! Now that I’ve got a little extra time on my hands and Gail was able to take a half-day off work, we resolved to get down to some serious business.

The original inspiration for this plan was the Queen of Beer competition, open only to female homebrewers. Since we’re pretty much the only female homebrewers we know in this area, and since we’re both beginners at this, we decided to band together. Now of course, neither of us has any lack of enthusiasm for big, fancy beers, so we picked an odd concept (to remain a surprise until the beer is ready), and then started modifying the heck out of our original, modest recipe. Suggestions started flying around fast: “What if we throw honey in it?” Or, “Why don’t we just put a pinch of special spice in at the end?” Or, “Oooh, let’s just throw some Brett into it and hold it for a year. No, I know, we’ll take it to my cousin’s farm and let it sit in the open and spontaneously ferment!” Needless to say, I think our enthusiasm outran our talent at this stage in the game. We reigned ourselves in a bit and settled on a formula that is still pretty interesting and unusual, and ought to have been completely manageable…

Yet, as I’ve found every time I’ve brewed: What can go wrong, will go wrong. I had made a few adjustments to my cache of equipment, trading up to a carboy from a bucket, and buying the colander I so desperately needed next time. I even had the foresight to test my outside camp stove to make sure I had gas left (plenty) and to make sure the burner was working (just fine). What we didn’t count on, however, was that over the course of the day, the pressure in the gas line from the propane tank to the stove would go lower and lower due to a leak somewhere in the line. This was probably highly dangerous, but at the time, we mostly thought it was highly annoying since our wort took forever to reach boiling again after we added our extract. We never did get it just right, but we’ll just have to wait and see how it affects the beer.

Still, I’m proud of us. I got to practice some new techniques (e.g., making a yeast starter) and picked up a lot of science from Gail, who knows her brewing chemistry back and forth. And of course, we didn’t take it all too seriously, and went out to Toronado afterwards to reward ourselves with a beer that didn’t require 10.5 hours of pacing my kitchen.

I’m going to let the picture captions tell most of the story since I was pretty diligent about documenting the process this time. All times listed below are approximate, to the best of my memory from yesterday.

11:00am Getting ready to make the yeast starter

11:15am The malt preparation for the starter a minute or two before it foamed all over the stove

11:40am The pivotal moment -- Getting ready to pitch in the yeast

12:30pm We've got fermenting action! Look at the bubble of plastic wrap on top of the jar!

2:15pm For the first of many times yesterday, Gail checks to see if the water is hot enough yet. Nope, not yet!

2:30pm The water finally reached 158 F and we started steeping our specialty grains

2:30pm We bundle up our steeping grains so they retain their heat

2:45pm During the steep, we weigh out our malt. We had half a pound more than we needed, due to one of our crafty substitutions, so we use my bathroom scale in a way its manufacturers probably never intended

3:00pm While the grain is steeping, we also measure and mark off 1-gallon marks on my carboy

3:15pm When the grain is done steeping, we pour off the wort and Gail sparges (rinses more sugar off) the spent grains

4:00pm Having brought the wort to a boil, we add in our malt extract. The stove must have blown out 5 times while getting the wort to boil. Little did we know this was only the beginning...

4:30pm Still not boiling. We're not really worried yet. But we should be...

5:00pm Still not boiling. We decide the problem is the shelter and so we add some modifications to better hide the stove from the wind

5:30pm Still not boiling. When in doubt, we go with plan B: Drink beer.

8:00pm There are no pictures from hour of "the boil" (and I use that term VERY loosely) because Gail went home in deperation to find what she describes as 'a small torch for melting wax off cross-country skis' that we may be able to heat the sides of the pot with to encourage it to boil harder. By the time she finds parking on her way back, the boil is over. This was one of the saddest moments.

11:00pm The wort needed 3 hours to chill down to 68 F, so that we could siphon it into the carboy and pitch in our yeast starter. This is what is left over after the siphoning. The malt sock contains our secret ingredient!

11:00pm The wort, fresh out of the kettle and into the carboy

11:10pm The wort, after being topped up to 5 gallons

11:30pm All done! The yeast has been pitched and the carboy plugged. There was a moment of panic during the carboy sealing. The stopper I bought at Brewcraft mysteriously disappeared at some point during our brewing marathon and Gail had driven home (again!) to get hers. When I tried to fit it in the carboy though, it kept popping out. I had a moment of "All these hours and the beer is going to go bad because we can't seal it off?!?!?!" Then google came to my rescue. Apparently all I needed to do was dry the plug and the carboy so they wouldn't be slippery. Phew. Disaster averted.

11:40pm The brewers celebrate with a well earned beer at Toronado

+1 Day 9:30am It's fermenting! We've got bubbles racing through our blowoff tube. That's something at least!