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It was determined that we could brew at Mark’s house. It would be a risk, but we figured we could pull it off without the aid of a kitchen. I purchased a portable hotplate, a 2 or 3 gallon steel pot and found a 5 gallon glass fermenter called a carboy at a garage sale. The other equipment could be found in any kitchen or bought from the homebrew supply store. We also discussed what type of beer we would brew. The Bill Mares book listed a small number of simple recipes. In the end we decided on what was probably a basic pale ale. I also had to find bottles. There was no way I was going to scrape up 48 beer bottles since I could not legally buy beer or frequent places where I might find beer bottles. There had to be another solution. The answer came in the form of IBC Root Beer bottles, which did not use twist-off caps. These would be re-capable and perfectly suitable for beer. Luckily, my mother had no problem picking up a 6 pack of IBC every week at the grocery store. IBC was also a staple at another friend’s house, so that doubled the number of bottles we could get each week. Within no time, I had plenty of bottles. I had enough bottles and the basic brewing equipment. Now I needed the raw ingredients. The kind folks at DeFalco’s Home Beer and Wine Supplies were not fazed by the sight of two high school kids who had come in to buy homebrew ingredients. We wandered around for an hour amazed at the entire selection of home brewing hardware and ingredients. The store was, and still is, a truly unique place. The smell of fresh grain filled the air. Some areas were covered in dust as a result from grain being run though the grain roller/crusher. There were bags of hops from foreign lands, packets of yeast bearing unique logos and names, and 20 different barrels of different types and colors of grain. On the hardware side, we saw rolls of different sized plastic tubing, rows of brew kettles and mash kettles, glass vessels of assorted sizes, carbon dioxide tanks, and a workbench with a severely worn work surface full of tools and assorted fittings and small bits of hardware. The store was cluttered with the evidence that beer was crafted here on a regular basis. The store was much more than a retail establishment; it was also a workshop and a laboratory. They were not just selling homebrew products; they were also giving the technical know-how to produce beer and inhabiting a location that was a living small scale brewery. This was going to be fun. We left with everything we needed to know and all of the ingredients brew our first batch. At some near point in the future, we brewed. It was probably a weekend. After hauling 5 gallons of water up the stairs, sanitizing the equipment, and making a complete mess, we were ready. We started the boil and followed the procedure by adding the hops at the right times. We were cautious to avoid a boil over which would have resulted in a sticky mess and the smell of burned sugar. One snag we ran into was getting the malt extract out of the container; it was thicker than syrup. The Bill Mares book suggested soaking the container in hot water to soften the extract, but that meant finding another container and heating water. After an hour of boiling and another hour of preparation, we had completed the brewing phase. Now the beer needed to be transferred to the fermenter and sit there for several days during the vigorous primary fermentation. Because we were following the advice in the Bill Mares book, it was not perfectly clear how long the beer should remain in the primary fermenter. It was also unclear if we even needed to move the beer to a secondary fermenter at all. Getting another carboy to serve as the secondary fermenter, after all, would cost money and I did not intend to spend a lot of money on this project. |
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| Thursday, December 04, 2008 |
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