Brewing My First Beer

Back on April 22, 2011, I did my first brew using a Porter kit that Allie bought me for Christmas. It has taken me this long to post the pictures because I am lazy. Here are pictures from the brewing process:

First, 2 and half gallons of water were heated with a bag of specialty grains and the heat was removed just prior to boiling:

At this point, the specialty grain bag was removed and the malt extract was stirred in. The malt extract is the dark syrup (in the bag) that is high in sugars for fermenting and gives the porter its dark color:

This mixture was brought to a boil, and then a bag of bittering hops was added. This mixture, or wort, was boiled for a full 60 minutes.

After 60 minutes, the pot was rapidly cooled by placing it into a tub of ice water and stirred for about 20 minutes.

From here, the cooled wort was transferred into a (sanitized!) fermentation bucket and the volume was brought to 5 gallons by the addition of cold water. Critically, the yeast was also added at this point. The bucket was sealed, aerated, and an air lock was added. The air lock was filled with water and allows the carbon dioxide to escape, but no other contaminants can enter.

I placed the sealed bucket into my closet where I assumed the temperature would remain relatively cool and constant. It is necessary to ferment the beer between 60-70 degrees F. This is the ideal range for making an Ale. Since I live on the third floor in the apartment complex, my apartment actually gets pretty warm, and the temperature probably got as high as 75 F during the process. Higher temperatures can create off-flavors, but after some research I determined that 75 F is acceptable.

It is useful to take a hydrometer reading before and after fermentation to get the alcohol content. My initial hydrometer reading on 4/22 was 1.050. After 7 days, the hydrometer measurement was 1.012. On the 8th day, the measurement did not change, so it was reasonable for me to assume that the batch was fully fermented. The calculated alcohol content was 5.2%. Not bad!

After cleaning a bunch of 12 oz bottles (48 to be exact for 5 gallons of beer), Allie helped me bottle everything. The beer was transferred to a bottling bucket and a little sugar was added to the beer at this point (before bottling) so that the remaining yeast in the beer will ferment it and create carbon dioxide. Basically, after capping the bottles, the beer carbonates in the bottles. This carbonation is complete after about 10 days.

I sampled some of the uncarbonated beer and it tasted pretty good. After 10 days of bottle conditioning, I put the beer in the fridge and gave it a try. I must say, I was less than impressed at first, but after a few weeks, the taste actually improved! Overall, I was successful with my first beer brewing experience!