The "almost" Daily Beer and Bike Log March 31, 2015 My First Real Brew Day

It was a fun weekend. A weekend that started out by picking up another Pick Six, six pack for some new beers. 

A Nice Friday Afternoon Ale.

 Waking up and brewing my first real batch of Beer (we will get to that one in a minute) Along with having a few more cold ones, and being on the Illinois side for the brew being able to pick up some Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, 

and then it was on to watch my oldest play softball, while my buddy Rob kept me up to date on the fermentation.

I will get to rating the beers I tried over the weekend in separate posts I can say everything I tried made the list from the Left Hand Brewery Sawtooth Ale on Friday Afternoon to the Great Divide Titan IPA after my Run Monday they all at least rated (which will bring my total to 26 Beers, Halfway there)

So Saturday Morning I jumped out of bed helped my wife with our one year old washed up and was out the door. I always feel bad leaving her with the baby to go and “play with my friends” but again I have an awesome wife who told me to go have fun. When I got to my friends Rob’s in Illinois we had to go to the brew shop and figure out what we were going to brew. He had to finish washing and sterilizing some gear, so we started off behind on time. I had to get going by 3 to get my oldest daughter to her softball game.

So we got to downtown Belleville, and the Happy Hop homebrew shop 

He told me to choose what I wanted as far as style, I went for a Stout of course. Initially we were going to do a kit, but 1) I had already seen a kit done and 2) Rob told me once I did an All grain I would not want to go back. We decided to fall in between and got All Grain in A Bag. or Brewers Best Brew in a bag

 It is a kit with all the ingredients, and the recipe on the bag of grain 

(so in the future if I want to stat experimenting I can alter these and try other grains. Imagine a giant Beer tea bag.

 He picked up some other gear and we stopped by the super market to grab 7 gallons of water (to save time boiling our own. (I also picked up some Dogfish Head since I don’t get over to the Illinois side regularly)  We got back and got the burner set up, spread out everything and went to work.

Poured in our water and began to get it up to 170 degrees. 

I poured some Rouge Brutal IPA and we waited….

And Waited….

Had some of the Dogfish Head 60 minute IPA

And waited... (watched water never boils)

Then had some Lagunitas Sucks

And finally the water was there. We set up the bag and poured in the grain for the wort. 

Now a problem we did come into was keeping the water at 158-160 degrees. It was a mildly cold day and we had to let the grain sit at temperature for an hour. So we needed to restart the burner a couple of times to keep that temp consistent.

Once we finished with the wort we drained as much water back into the pot as possible. 

Got the boil back up and added our hops in, going through the brew schedule.

 The only thing we changed a bit was adding in some Irsh moss a fining agent (although this would be a darker beer it is used to clear or making smaller molecules aggregate to  larger particles basically it makes homebrews less cloudy)

Adding the Lactose

 (I love lactose but it does not always love me back) getting it into the fermenter and then letting the Yeast take over.

 I had to leave and got these picks an info that the plug was bubbling so everything went well.          

And we will have my first brew and a sweet stout in about a month.  

As with my mountain biking I am officially hooked and can’t wait to not only try what we made but make a batch of something else. For the time being I will continue to read up on brewing and gather any info I can. I suspect my next few brews will be over with my friend Rob until I gather all the equipment needed to do it at my house (which will probably be with Rob anyway, it’s more fun to brew with people as it is a social event) So I will keep you updated……….