Homebrewing

My husband and I both love beer so several years ago we started making our own. The idea came to us while we were planning our wedding and Brad had the idea to make his own beer to have at the wedding. Which started the "itch". He bought a turkey fryer and a kit for an Amber Ale to test the waters. He loved it, but we both like to be in control too much to continue from a kit. This started our journey into all grain brewing. That was almost 5 years ago for Brad. About a year later Brad got tired of me telling him what to brew so he told me to start. We have a few flagships that we have perfected over the years, but are always trying to branch out into new styles. We use the BeerSmith program on our computer to track our recipes and build new ones. We also use the BJCP app to make sure our beers are following all of the guidelines. We have not entered any into competitions, but we're hoping to soon.

We brewed both Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately it was snowing Sunday morning. Fortunately we had just finished cleaning the garage Saturday which gave us plenty of room, but man it was still cold. Saturday was my Strawberry Honey Blonde and Sunday we attempted a new recipe, a Red Rye Ale. Just picture the creepy kid with his finger from The Shining saying "Red Rye". That's what he's naming it...creepy, but fun to say/do.

Brewing couldn't be easier and it's so much fun coming up with new recipes. If you enjoy beer, this is a MUCH cheaper alternative to buying it. Most of our beers cost us less than a dollar to make.

Once you have bought all of your ingredients you need to grind your grains. I highly recommend buying your own grain mill. They're really not that expensive and worth it to grind your own to keep your grains fresher longer. Not to mention the smell is heavenly.

After all of your grains are ground up, you have to boil water and add your grains to it. We do a two step batch mashing method. Which basically means we put our water into a giant cooler with a false bottom to prevent the grains from clogging the spout. It "steeps" in the water for 60 minutes, drain it slowly, add more water, and let it "steep" for 15 minutes more mainly to rinse the grains to be sure you got all of the sugars from them. This process is to pull all of the sugars from the grains and the slower you drain it the better conversion you will have which can allow you to get higher alcohol beer.

With all of this done you have then have to boil it to disinfect and reduce, you can add your hops at varying times, or any other additives. Most beers are boiled for 60 minutes to concentrate your sugars and flavors. From here it has to be cooled. The faster you can cool it the better. Once it's below boiling you then have to be extra careful to make sure you sanitize everything.

When it's finally cooled you can pitch your yeast. Different yeast strains have different flavors and aromas depending on the style of the beer you want. Now comes the fermentation process. Seal it up and wait. We leave most of our beers in primary fermentation for 1 week before transferring them to secondary fermentation which again needs to be completely sanitary. Secondary is where you can obtain more of your aging flavors, clarifying your beer, more additives, etc. Most of our beers remain in secondary for 2 weeks, but have aged for 10 months before.

After all fermentation is done you can either bottle it or keg it. We force carbonate ours in the keg and put it on tap because dealing with bottles is a major pain. Now it's just about enjoying it yourself or inviting friends over to enjoy. Cheers!

Do you like to homebrew? What do you like to make? Ever wanted to try?