Beer making

For Willie's birthday, we took a class on brewing your own beer. We got to participate and taste samples of home brew that the store owners made. Making my own beer has been on my "someday I'd like to..." list for several years. But, I never got up the energy to do it.

After the class, Willie was jazzed about making beer. I was hesitant because it's got a hefty up-front cost ($150-200 range). So, he bribed me into it by saying we could make an IPA (my favorite kind of beer) as our first beer. I didn't need much convincing and that pushed it over the edge.

So, the next convenient weekend, we gathered the materials, opened the beer kit and got to brewing.

Sanitizing the buckets proved a bit tricky since they're huge and don't fit in the sink. We don't have a sprayer attached to our sink, so the next best thing was to use the hose. A little weird, but it worked. Then we brewed the beer which took the better part of four hours. When we get practiced it will take less time, but as noobies, we had to concentrate and read about every step.

After the brewing, we put on the lid and airlock and waited. A few days later, we saw bubbling in the airlock and knew the yeast was doing its thing. After three weeks in the fermenter it was time to bottle. So today was the moment of truth: if we opened the fermenter and had sludge that smelled like rotten oatmeal, then we didn't sanitize well enough. If we had something that smelled and tasted like beer, we were in business.

We made beer! We sanitized still more equipment then bottled the beer. We ended up with a case and a half of what should be a very tasty IPA in a few weeks. It was tasty enough today, but a little rough. I'm very hopeful that a chill in the bottle will make it amazing.

I'm glad the beer seems to be turning out. There's still a chance it could go south if we screwed up the sanitizing this time around, but I'm crossing my fingers. And now I can check off "brew my own beer" from the big list of things I'd like to do someday. Happy drinking!