Mildren Brewing up and running!

This past Christmas, Beth's parents got me a brewer starter kit from Bachus & Barleycorn in Kansas City. I've had some interest in doing homebrewing for a few years now, but living in craft beer-starved Guatemala for the past year-and-a-half was the impetus I needed to begin making my own beer. I brought back two ingredient packs, one of which was a gift from my good friend, Adam (who is also beginning to homebrew), and each one will yield around 5 gallons of beer (45 or more 12 oz. bottles of beer).

On Saturday, I started to make an English porter, which is a black beer with strong malt flavors and low hop bitterness--an easy-drinking ale. I'm calling it "Pacaya Porter," in honor of the active and black cooled-magma volcano, Pacaya. Using instructions provided by the homebrew shop as well as information from my copy of The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, I started to brew!

First I steeped a bag of pre-cracked grains in the water as I slowly brought it up to a temp of 170F.

Then I brought it to a boil, added the two cans of malt extract and hops and boiled it all for 45 minutes, checking often so as not to have a messy, sticky boil-over.


In the final 15 minutes I added more hops and a little Irish moss for additional flavoring and aroma. After an hour of boiling, I allowed the pot to cool for 30 minutes before then submerging it in a sink of ice to bring the temp down rapidly. Everything went surprisingly smooth, but then here's where things got messy...

I was supposed to transfer the "wort" (cooked ingredients) to my fermenter (in this case, a 5-gallon water jug). The trouble was that I needed to strain it as it went in. But since it was passing through a narrow neck, it was hard to accurately pour into the opening, as well, the strainer kept filling up and the wort spilled off the sides. In the end, I spilled a lot of valuable wort and made a BIG mess. Beth and I were pretty flustered, but we eventually got it all transfered over. We then had to calculate how much wort was lost and recalculate how much water to add to it. In the end, I went from making a 5-gallon batch to 3! Oh well. It's part of the learning process and everyone says something will go wrong during your first few batches.

After the water was added, I added the liquid yeast (which eats the malt sugars and converts them to alcohol), and attached the airlock (which allows the carbon dioxide to expel while keeping out all air-born bacteria and wild yeasts that could ruin the beer).


After sitting in the dark in our closet over night, I checked the fermenter and could see "kraeusen" forming on the top. This is a result of active yeast and a good sign!


The beer needs to sit for another two weeks to ferment. My next step will be to siphon out the liquid into another container and then add a sugary concoction to it. I do this right before I bottle the beer so that the yeast has more sugar to munch on while in the bottle so that it will create a natural carbonation. After sitting in the bottles for another week or two, the beer should be ready (assuming everything went accordingly!). I'll definitely post a follow-up to let you all know how it went.

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After a long afternoon of brewing, Beth and I were treated to a gorgeous sunset and BBQ dinner at our friend Kris' place.