First Brew

My first brew was a Wheat beer. Again I can't remember the exact name of the HME from Mr. Beer but I can say that there was two of them. Mr. Beer also seems to have a process where you would use one HME along with a booster. But no booster for me.

So brewing consists of three steps. First is sanitization, second is brewing, and third is fermentation. I guess you could add a fourth called bottling. Anyhow, so the kit comes with a one step sanitizer. I'm not sure what is in this sanitizer but it doesn't require a rinse. It feels slippery like a basic solution. I think I read somewhere that it is basically a peroxide solution that gets created. So, the first thing I needed to do was sanitize everything. Any brewer will tell you that this is the most important step. Any germs that get in the beer will make the beer bad. Apparently there are no good germs. Yeast is a fungi. I would personally classify fungi in the germ category. If I can't see it with my naked eye and it is considered "alive", I think it should be a germ. However germs have a negative connotation, so I guess it's not a germ. I don't know.

The Mr. Beer instructions indicate that we should fill the fermenter with about 1 gallon of warm water and put in our can opener, measuring cup, and stirrer (spoon or whisk) in the fermenter and add the sanitizer. So I did that. I used spring water for this. Our tap water has chlorine and I understand that will give the beer a smell and taste like band aids or something. I hope that as I learn more about beer and the process of brewing it these thing will get more technical and scientific. I put one gallon of spring water that I bought from Albertsons into the largest pot we have and warmed it up. Not too hot. The fermenter is made from a type of plastic that doesn't like to get too hot. It must be made of the same stuff as those BPA free water jugs because those things melted in the dishwasher. After pouring the warm water into the fermenter I added half of the santization packet. Well, the thing began to leak.

The spout is not installed by default on the unit. I needed to screw it in and I guess I didn't screw it in tight enough. Now here's where I needed to stop and think life through but didn't. I got pissed and dumped the solution out. Now I wasted the spring water and half the sanitization packet when I could have just as easily put the whole solution in the big ass pot. Also now I'm short on the amount of spring water I'm going to need. So I went to the store and bought more water. While I was there I got a new can opener too. The old one was rusty. Rust didn't seem like a good thing to expose beer to. I then screwed on the spout crazy tight and tried the whole thing again. This time no leaks. I shook the solution so that it touched all surfaces on the fermenter. Now I've read that it is a bad idea to do this because since my whisk, measuring cup, and can opener are in the fermenter as well and they could scratch up the inside of the fermenter which would give germs a great place to take up root. I will consider changing my process to incorporate this new knowledge.

After 5 minutes I shook it all up again. I also got a bowl and emptied some the solution into it. This wold give me a sterile place to put my whisk, measuring cup, and can opener. It also sanitizes the surfaces of the spout. Five minutes after that (10 minutes total) I emptied the solution and put the can opener, whisk, and measuring cup into the sterilized bowl. I have an issue here that bothers me. I now need to reach into the fermenter to get these things out. The human hands are very germ ridden. So the very fact that I reach into the fermenter would indicate that I've introduced germs into the fermenter. I don't know what to do about it. I can't just turn the fermenter upside down and risk everything falling out to surfaces that are germ ridden. I guess the best I can do is to wash my hands as best as I can. I'll need to be mindful of this in the future.

Next I emptied an entire 1 gallon of cold spring water into the fermenter. This is to absorb the thermal shock of the heated wort when I add it to the fermenter. As previously stated, it doesn't like hot things. I put an old pot on the stove and measured out 4 cups of spring water into it. I used the measuring cup I sanitized. This really made no sense to me since I was going to boil the water anyway. Then I brought the water up to a boil. While waiting for the water to boil I got two bowls and filled them with hot water from the tap and dropped the two cans of HME into them (one in each bowl). This is meant to loosen up the HME. I guess it's thick and yucky. Here I made a mistake. The yeast is contained in little packets under plastic caps that are on the HME cans. I dropped the whole can, lid and yeast, into the water. When I figured it out, I took the cans out of water, took the caps off, and inspected the yeast packets. They still seemed dry. So I figured what the hell. I'll use them. It didn't occur to me at the time that the temperature of the hot water may have killed the yeast. I don't think this came back to bite me but you never know.

When the water was to a boil, I took it off the heat. I then opened the first can of HME with the sanitized can opener and out of curiosity tasted the HME. It tasted like molasses. I poured it all into the water. Then opened the second can and pour all of it in as well. Here I made another mistake. Your supposed to stir in the HME as you pour it in the water to keep it from burning on the bottom. I don't think that any of it burned on the bottom but I will be sure not to make this mistake in the future. I stirred it up real good. Now apparently I have wort.

I poured the wort into the fermenter. I suck at this. I got wort all over the place. Some missed the GIANT hole on the top of the fermenter and poured over the side of the fermenter. I don't know what's wrong with me. Anyhow, now I add some cold water to the 2.5 gallon line and I stir it up. With vigor. We need to aerate the beer for the yeast. I guess the oxygen in the wort gets removed when we boiled it up. At this point I made an interesting decision. I desperately wanted to somehow make this beer mine. I mean at this point all I've done is sanitize and add water. It didn't feel like I was brewing. I didn't feel special or unique. Part of the reason I got into brewing was because I could potentially make a beer that no one else in the entire world had ever consumed. This was the opposite of that. And by golly I was going to do something about it.

After looking at some of the literature included in the Mr. Beer kit I noticed methods to improve the alcohol content of the beer. You can add their booster, honey, maple syrup, and sugar. Sugar. I thought, I've got loads of sugar in the house. The literature indicates you can get a 1% boost in alcohol content by adding a cup of sugar. So that's what I did. I added 1 cup of table sugar (sucrose) to the wort. I then added the yeast from the packets. One packet per can. Since I had two cans I had two packets. Remember I had gotten these things a little wet so I was worried. I opened them up and threw them into the wort. As I learned, the brew speak for this is "pitching the yeast".

The yeast had a very distinctive smell. I don't think I've ever smelled raw yeast (I don't bake or anything). I wasn't unpleasant. The yeast is a dry yeast and appears as little flakes which when they hit the wort quickly dispersed from the center where I poured them in at. They didn't sink but rather remained on the surface. After 5 minutes I stirred the whole thing with my whisk which had been sitting on my sanitized bowl. Stirred it like a boss. Then screwed on the lid and put it on top of the fridge. The fridge is on the south end of the house which never gets direct sunlight. So, I figured it was a good place. Then I sampled the wort. It tasted liked it smelled. Sweet. Like sugar and molasses. Imagine that. I saw the hops in the HME but was unable to taste any in the wort at this time. I attached to temp strip to the fermenter and it measured in at 65 F. The house was set 70-72 degrees. Then I cleaned up.

The whole process took about 3 hours.

When Ellie got home I made her try the wort. She didn't want to. But she did. She's a good sport. I sampled the wort every other day or so. And I noticed how it gradually went from sweet to a neutral balanced taste. I have to be honest. Once the sweetness went away the wort didn't taste very good. This was probably about 3 days in. After 7 days the taste improved. I felt it was drinkable at this point. After 14 days I decided to bottle.

The fermenter has little holes near the lid which would let the CO2 escape. Well now we need to put that CO2 into the beer. I mixed up a gallon or so of water in the plastic pitcher I use to give the dogs water and put half a pack of the sanitizer and let it sit for a few. Then I fill the bottles about half full with the solution and screwed on the caps. I then shook them up. After they sat for 5 minutes or so I shook them up again and set them upside down for five minutes. After emptying the bottles, I had Ellie help me with priming the bottles. Priming, I've learned, is brew speak for adding sugar to the bottles so that the yeast, which still remains in the beer, continues to work on the sugar for the purpose of adding CO2 to the beer. We were meant to add 2 and 1/2 teaspoons of sugar to the beer. This turns out to be two scoops from the magical scooper provided with the kit into the bottles. Now here is where I've got a serious issue with sanitation. The instructions go into great depth to teach you to sanitize the can opener and cup measurer. These things touch the beer before it gets boiled and so any germs that come along get boiled to death. But the instructions say nothing about sanitizing the sugar scooper. In hindsight, I must have added a lot of unwanted germs into the beer by not sanitizing the scooper. Also, how to hell do you sanitize the priming sugar? The longer it sits around the more germs that will get in it. Anyhow, we again used table sugar (sucrose) as a primer.

Then I moved the fermenter to the kitchen island. My wife suggested that. I thought it was a good idea. So I did it. I then emptied the fermenter into the primed bottles. Another note about sanitation at this point. The spout has been sitting out in the open this whole time and has been gathering germs. I should, in hindsight, sanitize the opening of the spout before I begin letting my beer flow over it. Now I did my best to let the beer flow on the side of the opening and flow in nicely because you don't want to aerate the beer at this point. Even still that's a lot of surface area to aerate and introduce germs. I think the best way I've seen from the interwebs is to use a tube which fills the bottle from the bottom up. We had a nice little system going. She would prime the bottles and I would fill them. The last bottle we filled mostly with yeast and gunk from the bottom. This was an experiment more than anything. The bottles were placed on top of the fridge, right next to where the fermenter sat.

After a day or so I squeezed the last yeasty bottle and felt it was under incredible pressure. I decided that this little experiment is over as I don't want the bottle to explode and make a mess. I took it over the sink and opened it and there was a huge release of pressure. It was cool.

After about a week I chilled two bottles. The next day when grandma was over, I opened one. When I twisted off the cap there was pleasant release of CO2. I then poured the beer out into a standard tumbler (worst beer glass for the record; I need to get some better ones) and right away noticed the lack of head. There were little carbonation bubbles in the beer but there was no head. The color was a light brown. Similar to what you'd expect a lager to look like. We used an ale yeast. Whatever. It smelled like beer. It smelled a little sweet. I then tasted it and found that it tasted like beer but it was cidery. This is no doubt from the sucrose used throughout. The cidery taste was not good. I will never use sucrose again. I drank the one liter quickly and got a nice little buzz. So there was alcohol.

An hour later and I'm on the toilet with the squirts. Now I thinking I've managed to ruin the whole batch. The runs only lasted an hour or so. I figured it wasn't that miserable so I'd try another bottle and see what happens. While I was drinking my first bottle I called my dad and told him I was drinking my first beer that I made from the kit he bought me. Further, I told him that I couldn't bottle the next batch until I emptied the bottles from this batch and he should come over and help me drink it. Now my dad loved beer in his day. But these days he has health issues so I don't get to drink too often with him. So I was crazy surprised when called and asked to be picked up and brought over to my place to help me drink some of it. So dad arrived and we drank a bottle each. I warned him that the beer maybe spoiled so if the beer tastes horrible or gives him the shits I need to know that. Happily no bad things occurred.

After an additional week. I tried another bottle and the only difference I detected was a more pleasant head.

Overall the process was educational. As you can see I've learned a lot. I made mistakes along the way that will be improved on. I made observations along the way that will allow me to improve upon the process. I can conclude that overall the first batch was a success. It would have been unsuccessful if I had spoiled the batch and it made anyone who drank it sick. One bottle did give me the runs which obviously happened sometime around bottling. I will definitely improve the sanitization process to avoid this in the future.

Next post: HME IPA