Making Beer

So one thing about us... we try to make everything we can. It is all part of taking control of our food and how it is processed and handled. One of the things that we have brought in house is beer. This one is fun and is something that my husband and I do together. We realized that we were spending a lot of money on beer, and most often I wouldn't drink it because it turns out that I don't like the hoppy flavor. With brewing our own we have been able to reduce the cost spent on beer and been able to tailor it to our tastes. Luckily my husband isn't a big fan of hops either. So there was a little investment up front to purchase the equipment but it translates to other areas nicely too. Such as I can use the big stock pot (20 quart) for canning.

We usually purchase a beer kit online and it comes with most of the ingredients and is ready to go. A couple of the speciality beers require additional items such as pumpkin for the pumpkin beer or pecans for the roasted pecan nut brown (my personal favorite). Once you have the recipe you can also purchase the ingredients from local brew stores, but we have found that the price is about the same to just buy the kit.

This weekend we decided it was time to do a pumpkin beer and so after the kit and all of pumpkin together we started a brew. The one thing that you have to do the morning of or the evening before is to "pop" your yeast (if you are using liquid yeast). Once the yeast is swollen (meaning that it activated) you start with everything else. For the pumpkin beer you can use fresh or canned, and since it is the wrong time of year for fresh pumpkin we used canned. I put the pumpkin in a pan and baked it at around 315 for 20 minutes. This releases the pumpkin smell and flavor nicely.  Then I put it into a brew bag and let it seep along with the grains for 20 minutes as the water was getting hot (in this step it goes up to 170 ).

After the everything has seeped for the 20 minutes it is time to bring it to a boil and this is usually where you add all of your malt, this recipe had both liquid and dry malts.  After you get all of the malts added and dissolved you bring it to a boil.

Once it is at a boil you add in your hops and start your timer. This is the step where we usually change it up a bit because as I said before we are not big fans of hops. So we cut it in half and add it in. The wort as it is called boils for about an hour and in the last 5 minutes you add pumpkin spice or what they call the aroma for the beer.

Now comes the tricky part, you have to take almost 3 gallons of boiling wort and cool it to 80 in 20 minutes. We use what is called a wort chiller to do this, it is usually done in a little over 5 minutes this way. A wort chiller is a coil of copper that you connect a garden hose to and let cold water going through it cools the wort as it goes through.

After it is cool it is time to put it into the carboy, we use a big funnel to get this done. Once all of the wort has been added you top it off with enough water to achieve the amount stated in the recipe in this case 5 gallons.

Once the water is added you put a bung in the top of the carboy and shake it to mix everything up. Then you take a measurement to check the specific gravity of the beer. The recipe will state what it should be in this case we were looking for 1.054.

After you make sure that the specific gravity is where it should be you add the yeast, shake it again and put it to bed. It will sit in this carboy and ferment for 1 to 2 weeks. And then it gets moved to another carboy to continue the ferment for another week. Here it will "clarify" or the beer will clear and look more like you are used to seeing.  After it is done in the secondary you can either bottle it or put it in a keg to start the carbonation process.

Look for more pictures as the beer goes along.