brew beer

O.K. you may have read the post where I was making Growler Porter beer. Did the whole steeping the grains thing and the brewing process took some time. That beer is wonderful! If you want to taste a pint or so, you may want to quickly make your way to my door.

Now take a look at this. Today I mixed up some

of Paddockwood’s fresh Ready Brew Malted Oat Stout After I got up this morning I smacked the yeast package and left it to rise. A quick spray with the
Star San sanitizer in a spray bottle and a hot water rinse, and the equipment was good to go.

Starting Time

The yeast grew this much in about 4 or 5 hours

Close up of the label on the box of Paddockwook Ready brew Malted Oatmeal Stout.

The inside of the box of fresh wort.

Moving the wort from the inside of the box to the big pail. I use a chair on top of the table to aid the syphon.

Add the yeast.

All done! You can do this a lot faster if you do not stop to snack, watch T.V. and take photo’s of each step.

Roasting your own coffee at home gives you coffee that is not bitter. You buy green coffee beans from Craig at Andrews Green Beans in Toronto, or this place in Toronto. It is easy to do. Here are a few photo’s of how we do it.

Paddock Wood Brewing Supplies made a EasyBrew Growler Porter kit and this is about my first experiance brewing beer on the stovetop. The link is to the ReadyBrew kit, a 23 litre box of beer ready to pour into the glass carboy and pitch the yeast into. This is the other way of brewing. The Easy Brew instructions are in the bag and here on the website.

Start by breaking the bag of food inside the yeast package.

The yeast I used is a 1275

The package before it grows.

Everything is to be clean so I use this stuff.

Spraying the pot with the sanitizer.

Here is the kit, everything in a bag.

Pour 3 litres of water into a clean pot and steep for 30 minutes at 60 C (140 F).
My batch was 10 F degree’s above on the temperature at the end of the steep, so I trimmed 5 minutes from the steeping time.

Quick rinse of the bag.


In goes the DME or Dried Malt Extract.

The rest of the water was cooling outside since I smaked the yeast.

Poured a few litres of the cold water into the plastic primary fermenter first then in goes the stuff from the stove.

Darrell and Vicky made up a lightly hopped wheat beer, and added a can of Oregon R Cherry
Puree to the primary fermenter.

The first day it gave off a strong

something-died-in-the-back-of-the-fridge

smell, but when it went in the
secondary, all was well, and the report is that it tastes great too!

In a rush to bottle my very last BrewHouse beer kit , I forgot a step, adding the prining sugar until I went to put a cap on. Had to add one teaspoon per bottle. The result was beer that varies in carbonation as the size of the bottles and amount of sugar varied in the batch. Still good beer, sort of but could be way better.

This story at the New York Times ( free registration required to view ): With Great Beer, It’s All in the Rocks (and That Doesn’t Mean Ice) that describes how the geology surrounding a brewery affected the local water chemistry and determined the kind of beer a brewery could produce.

Yet another photo essay by Darrell and Vicky Bedard, cause I’m learning how from these photo’s. They boldly went where I thought was silly. These are Darrell and Vicky’s photo’s. This is my wordy experiances.

One of the challenges I have making beer at home, is getting bubbles into the beer. Beer is basically flat like plain red wine when finished.

The method I first used involved putting a measured amount of sugar in the beer before bottling. You then put the beer into bottles and put a cap on them. The yeast with a small amount of sugar to eat will jump up and make CO2. Rather than having bubbles escaping into the air lock you get fizz trapped in the beer. This takes two more weeks and the yeast will leave a bit of white sediment on the bottom of each bottle that you have to be careful not to drink. This yeast by-product is the “dregs”.

Beer can be put into a Keg for carbonating, rather than bottle conditioning. It takes only a few min. prepare your beer this way but you have to invest in a bit of equipment.

The CO2 tank, regulator, and hose will sit outside of the “fridge” thanks to this handy hole?

Image Details, Filling a keg with beer from the plastic fermentor.

This is Josh helping fill the last 4 litres of beer into bottles, as the keg only holds 19 L out of the 23 L batch. Funny I don’t remember smiling that much when I had to “pick the eggs” or “feed the chickens”.

Close the door the beer is getting warm! Pictured is the CO2 tank and hose, on the left outside the fridge, the hose runs through a hole and attaches for carbonation. Lots of room left over for more keg’s.

The method for carbonating varies on who you talk to. Some are high pressure shakers. Some are low pressure rockers. Everyone agree’s that the beer has to be cold to become carbonated.
Yet others just put the CO2 on the keg and have a wee sample every day or so.

This is what I am doing:
• Day one, no bubbles, no surprise.
• Day two, flat beer with foam on top.
• After three days the beer has a small amount of carbonation in it. The bubbles rising in the glass are small but dissapear after one minute.
• After five days the beer is carbonated.

Cheers.

Melfort - Canada - Current Conditions and 5 day forecast, Provided by EC

I want to restore this keg fridge to operating condition again and outfit it so it can dispense beer from 5 gal ball lock containers. The faucet or tap, it seems to have a broken or missing bit.
Must also find a way of connecting the ball lock hose to the bottom of the tower.

The picture above shows all the parts. The next four images below show the broken moving part.











What you can see is the missing or broken part in the front of the facuet.





The next three images below show the fitting that connects the beer to the tower, and hose.

You have to love beer. A simple beverage that has almost as many recipies as bread. Here is a photo essay on making beer, from a kit, prepared by Darrell and Vicky Bedard.