Westgota Nidbryggeri - Bonnatwist Bitter, Part 1 - Brewing

So after only drinking for a while its time to enter the world of beermaking. The idea started on our Belgian beer trip and the same bunch who travelled then today gathered for our first experiment.

Left: Lars, pot stirrer.

Right: Me, document-ation.

Left: Erik, brewing host

Right: Jonas, brain

First time we decided to make it simple. We use a Black Rock Bitter homebrew kit, exchanging the yeast, adding spray malt instead of sugar and hopping it up for taste and aroma.

Left: Beer Kit
Right: Spray malt

Right: Granulate and Amarillo hops
Below: Yeast

We cooked about 10 litres of water together with 30g of Amarillo hops and 2x500g spray malt for 15 minutes. We then added the beer kit and 30g more hops for another 5 minutes of cooking.
The time-consuming part was to cool the brew down. We quickly added more than 10 litres of cold water to reach a total of 23 litres. That way we avoided the critical temperatures but the cooling from 38 degrees to room temperature took a long time even though the barrel was surrounded with cool water.
Now it is time to let it ferment for two weeks before bottling and then another two months before it is ready to be consumed. I have a feeling Bonnatwist Bitter will be interesting but probably a little too bitter and we have to keep in mind that this is our first attemt.