I am very proud to present an article by a fellow home brewer writing about the making of his two first beer. Brandon Haas, California USA is one of the few V:tES players who also brew beer that I know of and us vampire flipping wort cookers need to stick together so here is his report accompanied by some pictures of the process:
I've been woefully negligent in publicizing my beer. So far, I've completed two batches and will be moving on to a third. I had intended to export a blog entry over to Stefan, but I've been too lazy until now. Sorry, Stefan! Here's a brief run-down of what I've done and learned so far.
Beer "Number 1"
The first batch I made was an English style bitter beer back in June. I used a recipe that I found in a beer book that seemed simple and had some help from my wife stirring, but that's about it. After a day or two, the yeast was bubbling and everything seemed pretty good. The beer did not have as high a gravity as I was looking for because I added water up to the five gallon mark, like the directions said.
For those who don't know much about making beer, gravity is the density of a liquid in comparison to water; the higher the gravity, the more sugar in the wort(pronounced "wert"). Yeast does it's magic by eating sugar and turning it into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
The brewing process is pretty simple. Add as close to five gallons of water to a pot(mine only fits two gallons, I have to add more water later) and bring it to a boil. Once the water boils, remove it from the heat and add your malt sugar, stirring until it dissolves. Return to heat and bring to a steady boil for an hour. Once you're ten minutes or half an hour in, add your hops. There are different methods/times for this, so follow your recipe.
After the boil is complete, immerse the pot in water to cool it down and have the lid on to reduce the chances of wild yeast and bacteria getting to your wort. Once cool, siphon the wort to your fermentor, a bucket with an air tight lid that has an escape valve for carbon dioxide, leaving the gunk at the bottom of the pot(called "trub"). Add water to the desired gravity, then add the yeast. Beer yeast can require some preparation, so read any directions that come with it. Store in a cool place, like your basement or a dark back room. Within a few days, the yeast will start bubbling up and leave a thick layer of foam at the top. In about another week or ten days, you have un-carbonated beer.
When the beer was done fermenting, it was also a higher gravity than I wanted, leading to a generally watery beer. Once I primed the beer, I bottled it in mostly 22 ounce+ bottles. Priming is where you add about 4 ounces of corn sugar just prior to bottling so that the left-over yeast has just enough food to carbonate the bottle, but not so much that it explodes. I gave the beer a week and a half to age, then tasted it.
Number 1 could be best described as beer-like. A slight hops taste and a clean finish reminded me of maybe Coors Light, which is basically urine made by other means. Not a bad first beer. It was drinkable, which was my only real expectation.
"Sunless Summer"
It has been a very cold summer here in Aptos, the coldest in a long time I've heard. When I started this batch, I was concerned that it might get too hot, like over 75 degrees- I never had that problem. We decided on a wheat beer because that is best during hot summer days. If I ever have one, I'll have to test that theory ;)
This time, I used a dry yeast. The process was pretty similar, except that instead of just using barley malt, I steeped some wheat grain to get the sugar out of it and added that to the mix. Once things were brewed, I added water, but only enough to get me to the gravity I wanted. As a result, the beer is strong enough and more flavorful. One concern I had was that the yeast took about four days to get started, so long that I bought more yeast to try to salvage the batch. When I brought the vial home, the beer had started bubbling and it was no longer needed.
Yield was lower, about 3.5 to 4 gallons instead of about 4.5 to 5. After talking to my local home brew supplier, I may need to aerate the wort more to get the yeast started. I should also get a larger pot for brewing as I feel like I'm wasting a fair amount of the sugar and getting small yields.
Sunless Summer is kind of funky, a mix of malt and yeast flavor that could use some balance. With a slice of lemon, it tastes much more like a hefeweizen. I'm pretty proud of this batch.
The next beer I'm going to make will be a belgian. Instead of using pure malt sugar, which is somewhat expensive, I'll use some table sugar to help feed the extra wheat beer yeast I have left over. Wish me luck!
Brandon Haas
Prince of Aptos, Caifornia
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