Home Brew

I think this has to be more than just a baby blog, so here's a little update. Friday night (After many days of convincing Carrie it wouldn't smell too bad!) I started my first attempt at home brewing. I got the equipment from Sean's dad, and the ingredients from a local home brew shop.

The molasses looking stuff is grain malt extract. This eliminates me from having to cook any grain. I think need a few runs before I get that complex. The red packet is yeast, and the silver contains hops pellets.

We had to cook the malt in 3 gallons of water for 60 minutes to make the wort. Luckily the pot I have said not to use on a glass cook top, so we did this at Sean's. Now his house smells like a brewery, not mine! Thanks Sean and Tracey for the help and the house!


After 15 minutes of boiling the wort, we added 2/3 of these hops pellets to bitter the beer. The rest was added the last 15 min to provide the spicy/flowery flavor and aroma. After boiling we added the wort to 2 gallons of water in the fermentor, for a total of 5 gallons.

Now the fermentor (a 5 gallon bucked with an air lock on top) sits in our spare bedroom closet bubbling all day. This should bubble for a few days while the yeast breaks down the sugars in the wort, making alcohol. After a week, I will bottle and let the bottles condition for 3 weeks before I have 50 bottles of pale ale to share!