Beer

I decided to brew some beer last night. According to my brew-log it's been 3 months since my last batch so I'm well over due.


Here are the ingredients. The thing in the back is NOT a tube sock, it's a grain bag. You use it for steeping the additional grains; in this case 12oz of Crystal 60L.

This is all from a kit: Brewer's Best Microstyle Pale Ale. I picked it up at Maryland Homebrew http://www.mdhb.com/product_info.php?cPath=5_7&products_id=2562 . It's a good basic American Pale Ale. Refreshing and hoppy, but not overwhelmingly so. Tastes almost exactly like Great Divide's Denver Pale Ale http://www.greatdivide.com/thebeers/dpa.htm which I think is an excellent summer-time ale.

I've come up with several recipes on my own. In general they've gotten pretty good reviews. However, every once in a while I just don't feel like experimenting and just like to go with something that I know will work.



Here's the brewing in action. You boil the wort for one hour, periodically adding hops. Really very easy.



The cat came by to supervise, but found it all rather boring.



Here it is the next morning. The yeast is already chugging along making alcohol and carbon dioxide.

From turning on the burner, through final clean up, took about 2.5hrs. I figure I'll leave it in the primary fermenter for another week, then about two weeks in a secondary fermenter, then into the bottle (that takes about 2hrs). So, for the investment of $42 and 5hrs of my time, I'll have another two cases of a great beer on hand. Seems like a bargin to me.