About a month ago I bought a beer ingredient kit from the Sarnac Brewery in Utica. At the time I had a few beers in me and it didn’t quite click that it’d need a lot more stuff than just some hop pellets and a can of malt. So I got home and promptly became dissapointed. That, however, is not the end of the story.
Rather than waste the $25 I spent on the kit I went ahead and bought a bunch of stuff to brew the beer. (At this point I have to admit that was another $150 or so.) I got it all at northernbrewer.com I got the glass starter kit a case of bottles and a 5 gallon pot to boil it in. After all that they threw a t-shirt in, so that’s cool
Anyway I just bottled the beer yesterday but here is how I made it.
First boil about 2 gallons of clean drinking water. This takes forever.
Now get your carboy (10 points to whoever can explain the origin of that name) (buzzco: no it’s not made of car or boy you lose 10 points). Get a gallon container and pour it into the carboy, mark the gallon mark then repeat till you fill the carboy. Now you can measure!
Now while you’re still waiting for the water to boil mess up your kichen. Really just put stuff everywhere. You have plenty of time so get creative.
Since you are still waiting for that water to boil do something constructive. Get a pot of water put it on low. Find your can of Malt Extract and put it in the water. The key here is to gently heat the malt so it’s easy to add to the boiling water. Careful not to heat it enough to make tin can shrapnel, beer + blood = DOOM
Now since your still waiting for the water to boil take a picture of some bottle caps.
Ok, the water is now boiling remove it from the heat. Open the can of malt and whatever you do don’t smell it. Just don’t. When your roommates ask what the smell is tell them you’ve been burning otters in the basement, if they knew the truth they won’t try your beer.
Pout the Malt Extract, the powdered malt, and the hop pellets into the water, mix it a lot. Now bring it to a boil again. This is gonna take forever.
While you’re waiting it’s time to sterilize EVERYTHING THAT WILL TOUCH THE WORT. (Wort is the crap on the stove.) I used a one step sanitizer specifically for brewing. (It came with the kit). This needs to be done well or your just boiling water for shits and giggles.
After half an hour or so pull the beer off the stove and drop it into an ice bath. You want to cool it quickly, down to about 80 degrees. Make sure Jeff Bisti approves
When it gets to the right temp it’s time to pitch the yeast. I didn’t explain that earlier but about 15 minutes ago you put yeast i
n warm water. Then you ignored them. Now pour the wort con yeast into the carboy (I used an autosiphon) then add cold clean drinking water up to the 5 gallon mark (that
’s why you marked the carboy in the beginning.) Now ignore it for a week.
So that’s most of it i’m sure I left out some details but that’s the jist of it. In a couple days I’ll post the bottling process.
