“Et tu, Brewte?”
My brother Mike and I received a very generous gift from our parents for our June birthdays: a homebrewing kit from Northern Brewer in St. Paul. Last week we picked up all our gear and chose what beer we would try our hand at first (nut brown ale), and Thursday was brew day at Mike and Hallie’s house. Although it took us several hours to get the job done, it was a lot of fun (lots of faux shouting, “You’re doing it wrong!”). But we did not ignore our responsibility to the brew. We steeped grains, added malt extract, boiled wort, added hops, did some “product research” (see below), achieved a cold break, filled the primary fermenter, aerated, added yeast, and corked it. All those terms are just a technical way of saying, “Had a blast. Thanks Mom and Dad!” Now we wait two weeks before moving to secondary fermentation, bottling, etc. And then…we’ll see if the beer is any good!
- Steeping barley in hot water.
- Mike snorting hops–Fuggle, to be exact.
- While the wort boiled, we did some “product research”.
- More product research and wort stirring.
- Five gallons of cooled wort in a glass carboy. Luckily, this brew slave avoided a hernia.
- “Store in a cool, dry place for two weeks.”
