Home Brewing

1.  Don't start this process at 9:30pm....on a week night.
For the past few months, I have wanted to try my hand at home brewing.  Finally, it has happened.   My son got me a home brewing kit and ingredients for my first Father's Day.  What a nice kid, but where did he get $200?  I  should look into that.  Anyway....

The process is quite involved.  Mix the ingredients in water.  Boil for about an hour total.  At one point, seep a certain type of hops for the last 30 minutes.  Then, seep 2 other types of hops the last 10 minutes of the boil.  However, the drawn out process is cooling your mixture....or ...wort (pronounced WERT) down afterwards.   This has to be done b/c you have to add yeast to the wort.  If the wort is over 75 degrees....it will kill the yeast.  You don't want that to happen.  The yeast is supposed to attack the sugars in the wort to create ALCOHOL.  Getting the wort to cool off took quite awhile.  Needless to say...when I finally got it cool...poured it in the glass carboy (glass container where it will ferment for a few days)..and added the yeast....it was about 1AM.  Oh yeah...and you made a big mess in the kitchen.  So, you have to clean that up so the wife doesn't realize what was all involved in the process. 

Good news though.  During the cooling of the wort, I went and gave Henry his midnight bottle and put him back down.  He didn't mind that I smelled like boiled grain.

2.  Your house will smell like grains and hops.
Oops.  It doesn't smell too bad.....if you are used to living in a grain silo.  I kid, but I am sure April will have a candle burning when I go home for lunch.

That's all I got for now.  I hope this beer turns out.  On Monday night, the beer will be transfered to a second fermenter where it will sit until we get back from South Dakota (July 10th).  After that...bottling...at least 7 more days of sitting.  I hope this is wort it.  Oh.....a pun!  Definitely going to end on that.....