Fellow Brothers & Sisters in Ales (not arms),
Yesterday was the big day, the official release of Bastedo Brewery's first batch of home brew. This batch was an Irish stout, made using Cooper's Irish Stout mix, and the home brew kit from Niagara Traditions. The unofficial release was actually on bottling day on Jan 16th, because I believe that you shouldn't trust a cook who doesn't eat his own food - and well, I was faced with 5 GALLONS of stout, no amount of superhuman restraint was stopping me (and why should it?). I will say that batch #1 seems to be a resounding successful first forray into home brewing, and it will lead to more (so yes this blog will survive - you can breathe a sigh of relief now). I will give a quick recap of the process, the challenges I encountered, and what will be next.
First, I started my batch on Jan 9th, which wasn't a very difficult process. The real challenge was sterilizing the equipment, and making sure you kept everything clean as you worked. The kit from NT Home brew really makes it incredibly easy. They give you 2 5 gallon pails (like giant pain pails), one for the fermentation and one for transfer to the bottling. They also provide the syphon for the transfer, sanitizer, bottle scrubber, vent for the fermenter and the all important hydrometer (cool little gadget - more to come on that).
So you really get started by boiling your water, 6 quarts for my recipe, for which I had an 8 quart stock pot to use. I would recommend a larger one so that you could do a second boiling after you add the mixture, because I think that might have added a little extra oomph, but not totally necessary. After you've mixed the kit ingredients with the hot water, you transfer it to the fermenter, and then fill it the rest of the way with cold water. So you're adding 3.5 gallons of cold water to the mix, with the goal of getting your wort (mixture to be fermented) to between 21 and 27 degrees celcius (that's roughly room temp for us non-Metric types). This is the ideal temp for fermentation, and the temp at which the yeast needs to be to properly fermented and work its mojo. I added 3.5 gallons of tap water, and about a tray worth of ice cubes, and viola, perfect temp. And even at this very early stage, it smelled delicious! Now, I will add a quick side note here. The kit's instructions from Cooper's were Ok, but very cursory, and not detailed. NT Homebrewing also includes their own instructions, with a few pointers on what to watch for, what to avoid, etc. They recommend using tap water not distilled, because distilled has very little O^2, where tap water has lots and Yeast, being an aerobic organism like us, needs oxygen to make that alcohol every good beer should have. So I HIGHLY recommend following or at least reviewing their instructions (another point on that to come soon).
Once it was filled up, you just add the yeast on top (which my daughter helped do, and thought was awesome), and then let it sit a few minutes before stirring it in. Then you cover tightly, and put your fermenter vent in place, and set the pail somewhere relatively warm, with a stable temp. range and low sunlight. I started getting bubbling in the vent that night, and again, smelled great. Now, if you have a programmable thermostat like me, the house gets cooler during the day, so your wort may be a bit cooler than you really want. NT Homebrew claimed you could wrap it with a towel to insulate it from the cold, but that didn't quite do it for my wort. So they suggested that if the bubbles slow too soon, you should "roust" the wort. Now, this was perhaps the 2nd most fun part of the process for me. Rousting involves giving the wort a quick sloshing to stir the yeast and then warming it up by putting it in hot water. So, imagine my wife's dismay when she comes to take a bath and finds that she has been displaced, by a very happily bubbling "ale pail" of wort. But a warm wort is a happy wort, and a happy wort makes a happy brewmaster, so it was a small price to pay (and my wife eventually came around to the benefits, and still got her bath).
Now after 3 days of fermenting at room temp you can let it ferment somewhere slightly cooler, but still in that 21 to 27 celcius range. I ended up leaving my wort in the den, which was the warmest place in the house besides my bedroom (where it did actually spend the first few nights - no knowing how warm it really did need to stay). Bottling day came on Jan 16th, which my father in law was lucky enough (maybe not in his opinion) to be present for. This was my least favorite part of the process, because I had not thought ahead to clean my 48 bottles beforehand, and had to strip old labels off 24 of them. Lesson learned, wash your bottles well before bottling day, because there's a lot to clean up that day. Now the actual bottling was pretty easy. Transferring the wort to the bottling pail was easy enough, while adding the bottling sugar for the fermentation and final 0.5% ABV it picks up from the self-carbonation in the bottle. And the bottling tube the kit comes with is really easy to use, and the bottle capper was a snap too. Now after bottling, you can drink it after 3 days, with most of the carbonation there, but it really takes a full 2 weeks, which brings us to yesterday. I shared a 6 banger with some friends yesterday, and they claimed it was pretty good (at least to my face), but I do agree it is pretty good, especially for a first go.
Now another fun part of this, was figuring out how you know the ABV for your beer. It all has to do with the difference in specific gravity at first fermentation and then at bottling time.
This is the formula:
(Original Gravity - Final Gravity) / 7.46 + 0.5 (0.5% for the bottling sugar) = ABV
My original gravity was 1.052, and my final gravity was 1.021, putting my ABV at about 4.65%, a little low for a homebrew, but about right for a stout (not like a Belgian stout or anything). The beer has a nice smooth feel, and a smokey, mocha flavor that goes down real easy.
I decided to call this batch (for the sake of the labels on the bottle) Cooper's Snyder Irish Stout, since I can't claim to have gotten the raw ingredients right on my own, just followed the directions well.
So batch # 2 shall commence next weekend. I'm pretty sure it's going to be an IPA, and I'm tempted to make it extra hoppy, but I'm not sure I'll quite get into messing with the kit yet - I guess we'll see.
Til then - slainte.
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