Home Brewing - the first tentative step.

It crossed my mind not long before Christmas last year, that it would be an interesting hobby to get into home brewing. The theory being that, if my quest to try out and rate all these different German biers is part of a wider quest to find perfection in taste - then perhaps the best way to achieve this is to learn how to make it myself. How hard can it be, once an understanding of the process and how the ingredients work together, to achieve the perfect brew? With this in mind, i informed my wife that a brewing kit would be a great gift for the forthcoming festive period.

At the beginning of December when both of us were out working, one of those annoying 'sorry you work and weren't around when we tried to deliver a package' cards. Fearing a long wait for redelivery or trip to the sorting office, i was relieved to find the package had actually been left next door. So, i knock on their door and am pleasantly surprised to find a big white emblazened with the words 'home brewing kit'. Seems the wife actually listened to me and got what i wanted and the company she'd ordered from had completely ruined the surprise with their unsubtle packahing. So 2014 was going to be the year of brew it yourself.

Fast forward to this past week, my first week off work of the year and the perfect opportunity to finally try brewing. This first attempt would be from a kit, which takes the form of a malt extract in a can, and some yeast. This bypasses the mashing and sparging and general processes that create the flavours for the beer and concentrates solely on creating alcohol and conditioning the end the result into a drinkable beer. The kit i'm using for this first brew is a Golden Ale kit that i got from the Wilkinsons website.

The first step to the brewing process is the one i was least looking forward to. That is thoroughly sterilising all the equipment to to be used to ensure there is no bacteria that can develop in the beer. This equipment is initially a fermentation vessel (essentially a large plastic tub with a volume of 33 litre, and a lid with a small hole into which an airlock can be fitted). The airlock for the fermentation vessel which helps vent the vessel and provides and indication of the activity inside the vessel during fermentation (as bubbles appear in it). A large spoon to mix the mixture, and a barrel which will be used for conditioning the beer after fermentation. 

This turned out to be a fairly painless process in the end. I just filled all the large containers with warm water and put all the smaller items inside, before adding a few teaspoons of sterilising powder that came with the brewing equipment. Ten minutes later the job is done and brewing could start.

I opened my golden ale kit and found there were two large cans inside and a small sachet of brewing yeast. The instructions told me to put the cans in hot water for 5 minutes. So i filled the washing up basin with water from the hot tap and left the cans in there as i prepared my fermentation vessel. After sitting in the water i opened the cans and emptied the sticky syrupy malty contents into the vessel before topping with 6 litres of boiling water and then enough cold water to fill the vessel up to 23 litres. I used my long spoon to give the mixture a mix before sprinkling the yeast over the top of the liquid and covering the vessel and fitting the airlock in the small hole of the lid.

The instructions call for the vessel to be kept at around 22 degrees c for the fermentation period, which would take 4-6 days. In order to try and keep it at this level i placed the vessel in my kitchen cupboard and wrapped a rug around it to insulate it from the cold. I left it for a while before checking its progress later that day to find very little going on. This left me a little worried that perhaps it was too cold for fermentation to occur but i thought id give it more time to see what happened anyway. Thankfully when i checked the next day, a good deal of froth had appeared and it was obvious that something was happening.

Today is the fourth day of the brew (the minimum time the kit suggested for fermentation). So i thought i'd check the beer again and see if the fermentation process had stopped. On first look i was convinced it has stopped. For the froth had mostly receeded and there where just a few islands of froth on top. 

I worried that the late start of activity and the seemingly abrupt end would mean that less fermentation than required will have taken place. In that scenario, not enough sugar in the malt extract will have turned to alcohol and i'd be left with a very week brew. Thankfully though, my brewing equipment also came with this fantastic bit of kit called a hydrometer. This looks like a thermometer with a weighted bulb at one end and a scale on a thinner bit of tube on the other end. This measures the specific gravity of the brew. Essentially this tells you how much of the sugar in the mixture has turned to alcohol and if measurements are taken at the start and end of fermentation can allow you to calculate to ABV of your brew.

My brew kit mentioned in the instructions that after fermentation the specific gravity of the brew should be below 1014. So to check that my brew was doing alright i took a ladle and a testing tube (which also came with the brewing equipment) and decided to do a test. I quickly sterilised all the equipment i would be using and then took of the lid of my fermentation vessel and using the ladle, scooped some beer out to put into my testing tube. The first thing i noticed was that the liquid was the golden colour that was expected for a golden ale (it looked much darker in the vessel) and this was a relief. I then dropped my hydrometer into the testing tube and took a reading. Using the hydrometer essentially works by the weighted end floating the hydrometer in the liquid and the scale showing the gravity by seeing where the liquid goes up to on the scale. To my relief the result was around 1012-1013 so exactly what was expected. This brew may be working after all.

So i readied the vessel in my spare room on top of a  chest of drawers, ready to siphon into my barrel for the next stage of the brew. However, just as i lifted the lid on the vessel to start, i noticed there were still small bubbles appearing haphazardly on the surface of the beer and this suggested to me fermentation may still be occurring. Therefore, i'm leaving it another day until i move it into the barrel.

What i have learned so far is that using a kit is pretty much fool proof in terms of creating a beer. Whether that beer is any good will remain to be seen. I have also learned that i should take a hydrometer reading at the start as well as end of fermentation to get more of an idea of whats happened during the process and what the expected  ABV is of the brew. Lastly, the slow start to fermentation led me to read about online and i've read that a lot of brewers mix their yeast in warm water with sugar and leave for a while to forth before adding to the beer at the usual stage as a 'starter'. This helps fermentation start to occur quicker and i a practice i will try next time.

So, thats the brewing process so far. It's been a lot easier than expected so far and a lot less hassle. Ill blog tomorrow about the next step of moving from fermentation vessel to barrel.