Well for those of you that know the Australian side of me, I got into homebrew a few years ago. The opportunity arose a few weeks ago that allowed me to try to make an American brew, and of course, how could I say know. (For those of you that have been keeping up with the blog, making beer seems tame compared to other things I have done).
I enlisted the help of Shawn to brew the beer in Robin's kitchen (with Gas). I ordered a wheat beer kit over the internet (the best way to buy things when your in the middle of a corn field) and set about brewing beer on a warm Saturday afternoon.
The first step is to steep the grains in warm water for about 1/2 hour. We then added the malt and the wheat extract, cooked for a while longer then added the hops (the bitter flavour in beer).
Once the brew was cooked, we needed to chill it down before we could add the yeast. We did this both with more cold water chilled in the freezer...
and with a copper cooling coil (used outside of course).
Once the brew hit the right temperature, we pitched the yeast and sealed it up. The airlock on the top allows the CO2 to escape as the yeast converts the sugar to alcohol, while not letting any nasties into the beer.
Once sealed, the beer was placed in Robin's basement and left to ferment for two weeks. Once finished, Gemma and i had to bottle the beer, as Shawn was on the East coast. We started by siphoning the beer out of the fermenter and into a large pot. This was mixed with a priming sugar (to make the beer fizzy in the bottles).
Siphoning the beer.
The best job of making your own beer is the cleaning of the bottles. The not only need to be cleaned with a special detergent as normal detergent ruins the head of beer, but also sterilised.
Of course, there are some nice leftovers from the yeast in the bottom of the fermenter.
Gemma filling the bottles.
The final product, 5 gallons (20ish L) of beer.
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