The weekend of brew day my girlfriend and I had gone up to her cabin at Alpental to get out of the city for a couple days. Her cabin is situated halfway between Interstate-90 and the Alpental Resort in the Alpental neighborhood. This place is amazing and we love going up whenever we get the chance to.
Erika's Family Cabin
Other than the skiing and hiking 5 minutes away, one of the things we love about the cabin is the tap water up there. The tap water up at the cabin is unbelievably crisp and clean tasting. It is hands down better than any bottled water I have ever tasted. In the past I have brought some back from the cabin because it is so good. So, on our way up to Alpental on Friday night, Erika and I were talking about Brewing Sunday, and she had the brilliant idea of using the cabin's tap water for our brewing water!!! Thank you Erika!!! So on Saturday when we were exploring Cle Elum, Suncadia, and Roslyn, we purchased 5 5-gallon water jugs, which we then filled with the cabin's tap water. (pictured below)
Every person I told, that I was going to start brewing beer, all said the same thing. cleanliness, cleanliness, cleanliness...sanitize, sanitize, sanitize! The key to a good batch of beer, is to keep everything as clean as possible. This advice came from my uncle who used to brew his own beer, to the brewers at Roslyn Brewery. Sidenote: If you live in Western Washington and have never been to the Roslyn Brewery, you need to visit. The 3 beers they make are delicious and the brewery itself is a trip in itself. Roslyn, WA is a place where you feel like you just went back in time to the early 1900's. It is a town with an old western feel, nestled in the corners of the Cascade Mountains, and the brewery is just stashed just at the edge of the main town center. Their Brookside Lager is worth the trip, go visit!
Back to the cleanliness. I used 2 packets of C-Brite with 4 gallons of water to wash out my Bucket Fermentor, as well as 3 gallons of water and another 2 packets of C-Brite to wash out our brew pot as pictured below.
Let's start brewing!!! What we did was took 3 gallons of the fresh cold water we brought down from Alpental and bring it up to 150 degrees in our brew pot. Once we reached a water temperature of 150 degrees we put our
- 10 ounces of crystal 40 ºL &
- crystal 135–165 ºL, and put the grains in a Muslin bag for steeping (as shown below) We then steeped the grain bags in the water for 20 minutes and then discarded the grain bag.
After steeping the grains for 20 minutes and removing, I took a spoon and stirred the water to create a whirpool in the pot. Salim then took our Cooper's Light Malt Liquid Extract (pictured below) and slowly poured the entire can into the pot, all the while I continually stirred the Wort. Once, the liquid extract had dissolved into the Wort, Salim began slowly pouring in the dry malt extract (pictured below) into the Wort, still stirring consistently. A word to the wise, do not take whole bag of dry malt extract and hold it over the pot to pour in consistently. Salim and I did that and the steam rising from the Wort made the dry extract melt and clump together and only made us stir more to get rid of the clumps. Instead, I would suggest putting medium sized amounts in at a time, and individually stirring them in separately. Would most likely save a lot of arm strength haha. Stir the wort continuously until all extract is dissolved.
HINT: What is WORT? If this is the first time you are hearing the word, get to know it well. Essentially what Wort is, is the beer itself prior to fermentation. What John J. Palmer defines Wort as, is "The malt-sugar solution that is boiled prior to fermentation." Also another little tidbit from Mr. Palmer is that prior to boiling the mixture is called the "sweet-wort" and the mixture after boiling (with added hops) is known as the "bitter wort."
Once the dry extract has been completely dissolved we brought the Wort up to a slow rolling boil and added .5 ounces of Chinook Hops Pellets to the wort and continue to boil. The total boiling time for the wort should be just around 60 minutes.
HINT: WATCH FOR BOILOVERS!!! Salim and I put the lid on the brew pot and about 5 minutes later we had a boil over. Horrible to try and clean up! Instead what we did for the rest of the boil was place the lid on top and left about an inch of open space for air to escape. We had no more boil overs for the rest of the boiling process.
After 30 minutes from the beginning of the boil, we added the first ounce of Willamette hops Pellets into the Wort. We continued boiling and after 45 minutes into the boil we added the 1 tsp of Irish Moss and Gypsum into the Wort. And then again, after 55 minutes into the boil, we added the second ounce of Willamette hops. We continued boiling the Wort for another 5 minutes to finish out the total boil of 60 minutes. The next step is crucial, once the boil is done we put the boil pot directly into an ice bath to cool the temperature of the Wort immediately (as shown below). The reason this is crucial is because the Wort must come down to a temperature between 65 and 77 degrees so that we can pitch the Yeast into the Wort to start fermenting. It would be wise to keep the lid on the brew pot to keep any cooling water or contaminants from entering the Wort. Salim and I only left the top on the Pot half of the time to try and cool it quicker. We will see what effect not having the lid on the top will do to the taste of the beer.
Once the beer had cooled to 75 degrees Salim and I poured the Wort into our Primary fermenting bucket. We poured the Wort aggressively into the bucket as to cause the Wort to splash. This is the only time in the brewing process you want to oxygenate the beer, as it provide the required oxygen necessary for the yeast to grow. (as shown below) After pitching the yeast we added the remaining two gallons of Alpental water to the wort to prepare the batch for fermentation.
Once in the fermenting bucket, we sealed the air tight lid shut and set aside in our house to let the Wort ferment for 7 days in the primary bucket. We placed the fermenting bucket inside our tub, in case there was some leakage. (as shown below) Once we put the fermentor aside, we left it. Unfortunately I forgot to fill the airlock with water, and ended up doing it 24 hours after the initial capping. Hopefully, this doesn't effect the flavor of the beer too much. What you want to do, is fill the airlock with water or sanitizer solution right away.
As you can tell there are definitely some kinks that need to be worked out in our brewing process, but hey, it is our first batch and we expected to make a few small mistakes. The one thing we are hoping is that the small mistakes don't make huge effects on the beer. What we will do, is learn from them and make sure it doesn't happen the next time around.
Just a view of where we are fermenting the beer in our house. Make sure that you can keep the temperature of your fermenting beer around 65 to 70 degrees.
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