My wedding is fast approaching, soh it's time to make some homebrew. I'm getting married on October 31 (no costumes), so I thought that two batches of pumpkin pie spice pale ale would do nicely. This time around, I'm taking pictures for posterity and blogging about it to make it feel extra special. I started batch one last night. Join me, won't you?
Step 1: Sanitation and Prep
Anyone will tell you that sanitation is key in all phases of making beer. My last batch picked up an infection, though I still have no idea where from, so I've redoubled my efforts to make sure that everything that gets even close to my beer is sterilized. Here's the equipment that we'll be using on brew day for this batch:
1 large funnel (w/strainer), 1 small funnel (w/strainer), 1 glass carboy, 1 rubber stopper with blowoff hose attached, 1 hard plastic spoon, 1 set tongs, 1 candy thermometer, 1 turkey baster, and 1 12-quart stainless steel stockpot. All of them sit in a solution of water and non-chlorine bleach for at least 20 minutes. There's also a bunch of other stuff that I didn't need this time, as the large funnel made transferring from the brew pot to the carboy a LOT easier.
Step 2: The boil
First, we take the mix of carapils and crystal malts and put it into two grain bags. This makes them much easier to work with, and makes the entire steeping process not unlike putting a tea bag in water. Then we dump in a gallon or so of water and bring it all up to about 150 F. The bags steep for a half-hour, so we drink for a half-hour. This will impart the color and flavor of the grains into the beer. Next we pull the grains out and get the pot up to boiling.
Once the water is boiling, we add the 6 lbs. of dry malt extract and stir it all in. And we drink some more. We fill a grain bag with the Simcoe hops, which will impart the floral/bitter flavor. Since this is a pale ale, it won't be too strong, unlike the hoppy Stone IPA that I was drinking. Most of my guests drink Bud, so we don't want to floor them with a hoppy beer. Besides, the spices should take center stage. After 50 minutes of boiling, we add 1 oz. of the Cascade hops (for flavor). After 58 minutes of boiling, we add the rest of the Cascade hops (for finishing). Then we stop the boil and pull the hops out at 60 minutes.
Now we need to cool everything down, so the pot gets a lid and goes into an ice bath for 30 minutes. During this time, we drink. The gross-looking bags on the right contain the mushy remains of the hop pellets.
Step 3: Into Primary Fermentation
So now the wort (aka unfermented beer) is cooled down enough to add to the glass carboy. I dump it into the large funnel, straining out any remaining gunk. Then we top off the carboy with another 3-3.5 gallons of water. We also take a sample of the wort and test it with the hydrometer to get an idea of our potential alcohol. The reading came out a bit lower than I'd like (1.029), so this will most likely be a relatively weak beer. I think that'll work for the crowd at the wedding, and the spices should have enough flavor to make the beer interesting (hopefully). I'll use a bit less water with batch two to give that a bit more punch. I also give the batch a taste, though honestly it tastes like crap at this point. It confirmed that this will be a light beer.
From there, we put in the rubber stopper with the blowoff hose and run the hose into a vase full of water. This will allow CO2 and any nasty byproducts to blow out out of the top of the carboy, but it also keep the air out of the batch. Light and air are the worst enemies of good beer. I keep my carboy in its box to keep some of the light out. My coat closet has been converted to my beer closet for this occasion.
I checked out the batch the next morning. All's well, because we've got bubbles!
By the time I got home from work, there was significant blowoff. This can be a bit scary, as excessive blowoff means that your beer is probably infected. My last batch went completely overboard. However, a couple of hours after taking this photo, the batch settled down nicely and has been simply bubbling away like the good beer that it is.
Now the carboy just needs to sit for about a week. Once the bubbling subsides, that tells us that the sugars have been consumed by the yeast and that the beer is ready to be transferred for secondary fermentation. Right now, I'm in the middle of brewing batch two as I write this. I simply repeat the same process over again, especially the drinking part. The only difference is that I'm drinking Ommegang's Abbey Ale this time around.
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