Harold Lee
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- Apr 23, 2008
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I was going to call this topic "What I Did Today" but Tin and Tel have already made topic headings similar to this so I landed on the basement theme. Now I do not want to rank myself, but this is not as good as Tel becoming a grandfather for the seventh time, but it is better than the way Tin described how he felt so I would put it somewhere in the middle...
In the US, all but two states (Mississippi and Alabama) allow homebrewing of beers and ales for personal use up to 200 gallons a year. My first batch was brewed almost 35 years ago and I would have quit then if my son had not gotten interested in it about 12 years ago. It was a good chance to spend time together so we resurrected it a few years back and on about 1 or 2 sundays a month we have a brew day in his basement.... Today was one of those so my son, son in law, and myself brewed up an amber ale we named "Trapped Mosquito" This name was derived from the Jurassic Park movie where the DNA was extracted from the mosquito's stomach that had become trapped in the amber.
We do all grain brewing so the first process is to weigh and crush the barley in a grist mill....
Different beers or ales require different grains.... So we work from a recipie which is printed because it not only has the grains but all of the temperatures and times as well as the hop additions...
After that it is "mashed in" with water and held at a temperature to extract the sugars called "saccarides and the enzymes to break the saccridies into fermentable sugars... This takes about an hour...
After this the mash is transferred into the boil kettle for about an hour of boiling and the addition of the hops...
It is then cooled down with a plate chiller as it is transferred to the con ical fermenter where yeast will be added and it will ferment for a number of days.
After that it is either bottled, kegged, or sent of to secondary fermentation for aging.
The last step is...... Well I think all of you know that one...
We usually have a cider or hard lemonade on the left, an IPA and then a belgian ale or porter and the handle to the far right is a nitrogen tap for the creamy beers...
I took a bunch of pictures and the link below will take those that are interested... As I said earlier, it is not as good as having a grandchild but if Tin were here I think I could make him feel better....
Harold
http://s934.photobucket.com/albums/ad184/hrlee/EW_BrewDay/
In the US, all but two states (Mississippi and Alabama) allow homebrewing of beers and ales for personal use up to 200 gallons a year. My first batch was brewed almost 35 years ago and I would have quit then if my son had not gotten interested in it about 12 years ago. It was a good chance to spend time together so we resurrected it a few years back and on about 1 or 2 sundays a month we have a brew day in his basement.... Today was one of those so my son, son in law, and myself brewed up an amber ale we named "Trapped Mosquito" This name was derived from the Jurassic Park movie where the DNA was extracted from the mosquito's stomach that had become trapped in the amber.
We do all grain brewing so the first process is to weigh and crush the barley in a grist mill....
Different beers or ales require different grains.... So we work from a recipie which is printed because it not only has the grains but all of the temperatures and times as well as the hop additions...
After that it is "mashed in" with water and held at a temperature to extract the sugars called "saccarides and the enzymes to break the saccridies into fermentable sugars... This takes about an hour...
After this the mash is transferred into the boil kettle for about an hour of boiling and the addition of the hops...
It is then cooled down with a plate chiller as it is transferred to the con ical fermenter where yeast will be added and it will ferment for a number of days.
After that it is either bottled, kegged, or sent of to secondary fermentation for aging.
The last step is...... Well I think all of you know that one...
We usually have a cider or hard lemonade on the left, an IPA and then a belgian ale or porter and the handle to the far right is a nitrogen tap for the creamy beers...
I took a bunch of pictures and the link below will take those that are interested... As I said earlier, it is not as good as having a grandchild but if Tin were here I think I could make him feel better....
Harold
http://s934.photobucket.com/albums/ad184/hrlee/EW_BrewDay/
