HOMEbrewing Adventures

Hiya!
I hope everyone had a good and relaxing weekend. Mine was really, really quiet. The boy was up in Austin on a boys trip and I stayed home and ODed on my newest obsession.. Breaking Bad. I know I'm super late to this train. Hey I'm here now. LOL. Also been preparing for Pia's party this coming weekend. Pretty stoked on that but also super nervous.. only one little girls mom confirmed that she was coming. I hope I don't put all this work into a party and no one comes. That would be a total bummer for sure.
Today I thought I would show y'all some snapshots of some homebrewing we did a couple of weeks ago. I was waiting until I got pictures from the bottling so that it could be one entire post. I also have a video on Instagram if any of you are interested in the bottling process.
So the brewing itself doesn't even start until you get everything cleaned and completely disinfected. Which is the biggest pain in the butt ever!

After all the disinfecting and cleaning for a bit we turned on the propane to get the water a boiling. Bob was a little apprehensive about the propane, kept saying he felt like everything would explode as soon as he turned it on. Needless to say, we were all fine. Nothing caught fire. We're all alive. The beer got brewed!

After the water reaches a good boiling temperature you steep the grains to make the wort (beer). It's pretty much like making tea. You have to hold the grain bag to make sure that it doesn't burn and let the grains out into the wort. You do this for around 30-45 minutes. You don't want to leave it too long because, just like tea, it gets bitter. This is done to release sugars and enhance the flavor. The malt + the grains release the sugars that get fermented, which turns into the beer!

These three pictures on the top are the addition of the malt into the wort. It has the consistency of like porridge when you add it into the boiling water. Pretty icky looking. I hope you're not entirely lost.. it's a straightforward but also complex process of measuring and timing. It's actually super interesting to read about. I'm just barely scratching the surface with my explanation of the whole brewing process. I didn't get to take pictures of the hops that got added to the wort. They were added twice actually.. on brewing day and later on when the primary fermentation was over. 

So here comes the lame part of me documenting this.. I fell asleep not too long after brewing when the wort was being cooled. Bob brews way too late! I will hopefully change this and document it at another date. 

I didn't get pictures of the wort being cooled or it being put into the fermenter, which is just a plastic carboy. The yeast gets added to the wort when it goes into the carboy and it sits for typically around a week to a week and a half to ferment. Then it gets transferred to another carboy so that the yeast sediment can be separated and a secondary addition of hopping can occur. Ok, so now that your mind is spinning around that... bottling day!

The picture above shows the carboy it went into for the secondary hopping. We had just uncapped it. As with brewing day, bottling day requires tons of cleaning and disinfecting as well. As soon as we have enough saved up we will be kegging. Bottling is a paiiinnnnn. 

These show the siphoning of the beer into the bottles and then all of them capped and ready to sit for a little while longer to ferment. I guess I didn't even tell you all what kind of beer this was! A double Ipa! So super hoppy.

I hope y'all enjoyed my brief explanation of the brewing process. Hoping I didn't bore you to death!

Do any of you brew?

With All My Love,

Pati