Drinking Beer!

So I am finally enjoying my first batch of Bangladesh Beer. The recipe is a Dark Lager kit from The Beverage People in Santa Rosa. If you know your beers, a lager goes through a period of refrigerated fermenting (or Lagering) before its second fermentation and then bottling. As you can imagine i have no way of lagering five gallons of beer for weeks at a time so I did not lager my beer. So I am not really sure what to call it... For those familiar with the Ukiah Brewing Company it is remarkably similar to a 10 Guilder. For all you others out there the closest thing I can come up with is a bit darker and more flavorful version of a Negro Modelo. There are some issue that have taken me a few days to figure out. When I added my priming sugar to the beer apparently I did not mix it very well because all the early bottles are carbonated well and all the later bottles have no carbonation at all. So now I need to go back and re-prime the uncabonated ones... At least I will have some to drink while I do it!

Finally Brewing!

Finally got my act together and brewed some beer! It is a Dark Lager Kit from The Beverage People in Santa Rosa. Everything went pretty well and now it is just a waiting game. There is something so satisfying about making things like beer and bread and mayonnaise from scratch. Things that we usually just buy at the store. Things that we take for granted. We go to the store to buy bread or beer like it is a singular item. But when you make these things you realize that they are a collection of ingredients and time and meticulous actions and stress and mistakes. It means so much more and tastes so much better. The next time you go to the store and buy a loaf of bread you appreciate everything about it. "My, what lovely crust. The airy quality of the bread" or "Oh, this beer has a great fresh hop flavor!" and you read the bottle and it talks of the variety and region of the hops used in the beer. Appreciation is back. Brewing your own beer makes other people's beer more interesting. Alright, I'll stop! Here are some pics of the process.

Steeping the brewers barley

Boiling the malt extract and barley tea. I am also sanitizing the copper wort chiller.

 The spent grains

 My wort chiller chillin. Tap water to ice bath to wort and to the drain. Worked ok, was not as fast as I was hoping... need larger coils I guess. It took about 40 minutes to get it from boiling to 80 degrees...

 Siphoning from the pot to the primary fermenter.

Overall the process is surprisingly easy and only took about 3 hours. It seemed so daunting and I have been putting it off because I was a bit intimidated... but of course there was no need! Should have started brewing sooner!

Beer!

I got an invite from one of the long time teachers at AISD to come over to help brew beer. I have tasted a couple of different batches of Leon's beer. They are interesting, full of flavor and rather un-homebrew like which is so refreshing after drinking mostly Hieneken since our arrival. He has a proven setup and brews 20 gallons at a time! When I arrived he already had the malt and hops boiling. Our job was to transfer from stove top pan to a pan on the floor and cool it as quickly as possible. The key is a heat exchanger. Boiling beer goes in one side and ice water in the other. What comes out is 21 degree C beer and warm water. Leon was a Chemistry major in college so he has a very ordered and clean way about his brewing: think efficient production line. He also has a distillery!!!!!! Fun Fun Fun. Here is a pic of the man in action.

Can't wait for our container to arrive so I can brew too!