Amber Ale

Last weekend, we took a trip down to ye old brewshop and picked up all the equipment and supplies to make our first batch of homebrew. I bought Neil a brewkit back in Portland about 3 years ago, but for some reason we never got around to making any beer. In San Francisco, our friend Alec shared some of his delicious homebrew with us and when we moved here, and realized there was a homebrew shop 3 blocks away from us, it just seemed like time to make some beer. Not to mention that the price of beer is RIDICULOUS here - $6/pint in bars and $10-13 for a 6-pack. Definitely motivation to make it ourselves.

For our first batch, we decided to do an Amber Ale. The process was really fun - the first step was to steep some malted barley in the GIANT brewpot, then we added more water, some malt extract and brought the whole thing to a boil. It's really hard to get 3 gallons of liquid to boil, let me tell you.

(bag with grains in it for steeping)

Then we added three different types of hops to the boil and different times. The hops smelled AMAZING when they went into the pot - so fragrant and delicious. The hops that you boil for the whole time give the beer it's bitterness, and then the other two additions add fragrance. We added Centennial, Willamette and Mt. Hood hops.

(hops pellets waiting to be added)

After all the boiling was finished, we cooled the wort in the sink, with ice.

Then we poured the wort into the fermenting bucket, along with 3 gallons of water and poured in the rehydrated yeast. We put the lid on, put the airlock into the lid, and let the yeast start to do its business. The next day, the airlock started bubbling!

That crazy setup that we have it in is called a swamp cooler because the beer needs to ferment at about 65 degrees, and our apartment is usually around 75-80 degrees. We don't have control over the temperature, so we had to find a way to keep the beer cool while it fermented. So we sat the fermenter in a restaurant dish tub, filled it up with water, covered the fermenter in an old t-shirt, and we swap out frozen water bottles twice a day to cool the whole contraption. So far, it seems to be working. 

So next weekend is bottling weekend and then I need to re-read by book to see how long it has to stay in the bottle before we can drink it!! I'm just praying that I didn't do something to ruin it somehow and that we don't end up with skunky beer. 

I wanted to leave you with a super-cute picture. Neil got a new coat this weekend, and it's basically made for hunting, so there is a pocket in the back of the jacket. When he tried it on at home for the first time, we realized that it would fit Lola and Swarley perfectly: