My First Brew Day

My First Brew Day: September 15, 2012

I had been looking forward to BREW DAY all week long!  I popped out of bed early on Saturday morning (ok... 9am), ate breakfast, took a shower and got dressed lickety-split because I wanted to dedicate as much as time to brewing as possible.  As a typical hipster, I was going to the Bon Inver concert later that evening and I didn't want to screw this thing up, you know?

Like a diligent little Brew Master in training, I carefully unpacked all my equipment and ingredients, read all the instructions and watched all the videos on Friday night.  I took notes on everything and then peacefully drifted off to sleep, confident and excited about Brew Day.

Brewing beer is pretty straightforward stuff - you boil water, add ingredients and then transfer the liquid a couple of times.  I followed the recipe and instructions from Northern Brewer.  Below is my account! 


1. Boil Water. 

Boil yourself 2.5 gallons of good water.  It takes a while.  As you can see from the clock, I started around 10:45am.  I got this nice, five gallon "kettle"/stock pot. 

2. Add Ingredients: grains, malt, hops.

Adding the ingredients is where it gets tricky.  For my first beer, I choose to make the Irish Red Ale recipe.  To add color and flavor, you steep some specialty grains in the water water for 20 minutes.

steeping grains, what what! sort of like tea!

let grains steep for 20 minuted

the water is now a dark color! wow!

After the grains steeped for 20 minutes, I then waited for the water to actually boil.  It took foreverrrrrr.  Have you tried to boil 2.5 gallons of water recently?  It takes a while.  Once I got a nice, rolling boil, it was time to add the malt liquid.  Malt its the sugary stuff that comes from barley.  This is where things could go awry... you don't want the boil to get out of control and spill over.  You actually have to remove the pot from the heat, stir in the malt, and then return to a boil.  Lots of patience involved here. 

water + malt = wort

Ta-da! I now have wort, which is water and malt.  This boils for an hour.  During the hour long boil, you add in whatever hops you need from the recipe.  

hops, hops, hops!

Yeah, the hops totally look like rabbit feed pellets or something nasty like that.  But hey, they make some tasty beer.  So basically, you boil the water, grains, malt and hops for an hour.  

3. Cool the beer as quickly as possible. 

After its done boiling, you want to cool the beer as quickly as possible.  The easiest way to do this is an ice bath.    

Behold: ice bath! Cool, cool, cool!

5. Transfer into the fermentation system. 

After the beer has cooled, it is time to transfer it into the fermentor and add the yeast for fermentation.  You have to make sure everything is really clean and sanitized.  Can't let any airborne microbes into the beer.  

aerate, add yeast and there you are!

6. Store in a dark, quiet place for a couple of week to allow fermentation to happen!

story in a dark, quiet place!

Now the yeast will do its magical work to make the beer! 

It has been a week since brew day - so fermentation is still happening.  There will be a secondary fermentation stage where I siphon the beer into another carboy for another couple of weeks.  After bottle, the beer must sit for another week or so... AND THEN WE CAN DRINK IT.

Brew Day Preperation

This evening I finally had time to unpack the four massive boxes that were delivered to my house this week:

What could possibly be in there?!

I unpacked, organized and cleaned everything I need for tomorrow.  Unfortunately, the laminated instruction cheat sheet wasn't included, sooooo guess I'll have to do without it!

what IS all this stuff?

A Brief History of Me and Beer

I have a confession to make: I actually don't know that much about beer.  Hmm... did that just destroy my credibility?  I hope not.

If you were to ask me "hey Sarah, what is your favorite beer?" I would just be like "uhh... Blue Moon?" and walk away feeling like a loser. This is shameful, I know.  But for some reason, I am just not the most educated person when it comes to beer.  Of course I like to drink beer and I think it tastes good.  But one of the main reasons I'm starting to brew my own beer at home is so that I can learn more about it and distinguish different tastes.  What is the difference between a stout, a lager, an ale?  No clue.  But I'm about to find out!  

To give you some context, let's review the history of me & beer over the past few years and what I've learned:   


1. English Pubs.  I turned 21 the summer before my senior year of college.  This was convenient because in the fall semester of my senior year I went to study abroad at Oxford University in England.  Even though the drinking age was 18 in the UK, it helped that I was of legal age in the USA so that I could drink with my American peers and professors over there without any qualms.  Lesson learned: we naturally spent a good amount of time in pubs while at Oxford, and it was here that I first learned to really appreciate the social aspect of a pint of beer over conversation with friends.

At the Eagle and Child in Oxford, circa 2007.  Stalking CS Lewis.

2. The Hofbräuhaus. After the semester at Oxford was over, my friend and I toured around Germany and Austria before heading back home.  One of the highlights was stopping by the famous Hofbräuhaus in Munich to enjoy some beer and pretzels!  We were only in Munich for a short period of time before heading to Salzburg, so we squeezed in this visit at like 11:00am during a weekday...  Nevertheless, the place was hoppin' and I felt very cool being there. Lesson learned: there is a lot of history behind brewing beer. 

awful picture, but pretty historical moment in Munich, circa 2007

3. Beer Madness. In the spring semester of my senior year, I applied to be a judge in the Washington Post's second annual Beer Madness Tournament.  All that the application required was an email containing a one sentence description of yourself as to why you would be a good judge   SHOCKINGLY ENOUGH, I was chosen for this little gem:

"Previously dry college senior turns 21, leaves the country for one semester to study abroad and discovers the joys of drinking beer in English pubs!"

I was THE youngest, barely-legal-judge there.  It was a lot of fun! We tasted 32 different beers and through a March Madness like bracket, chose the best one: Hook & Ladder Backdraft Brown.  I can honestly say that I have no recollection as to what this even tasted like.  Lesson learned: compared to the other judges, I know very little about beer.  But I did get this fantastic picture of me double-fistin' it:

At the Washington Post's Beer Madness in 2008. This picture is so ridiculous. 

4. Rotterdam, Cologne & Reykjavik.  Every time I go to Europe, my interest in beer and the history of brewing is rekindled.  Everything is just so much older over in Europe, including the recipes for beer!  In Cologne, I first discovered Kölsch, the amazingly delightful beer with a strong history connected to that region of Germany.  I drank Dutch beer in Rotterdam and I drank Icelandic beer in Reykjavik.  Lessons learned: different regions of the world produce vastly different kinds of beer with their own little histories to them.  

Enjoying Dutch beer in Rotterdam, 2011. I think this is the most badass picture of me in existence today. 

Discovering  Kölsch in Cologne, 2001.  Cute haircut, too!

Icelandic beer from my 2012 trip

In Iceland with Bekah. There is the aforementioned beer, on the table in front of me.

So there you have it, folks!  That is basically all I know.  I hope to learn more... like, a lot more.

Inspiration to Brew

I want to become a Brew Master. 

I am constantly wanting to "become" something. For example, "I want to become a florist" or "I want to become a photographer" or "I want to become an organic farmer." I have this funny (or pretentious?) tendency to always think I that I would probably be pretty good at many professions in life. I see someone doing something cool (something usually other than a desk job) and tend to think "hmm, I could probably do that" and then proceed to imagine myself crafting amazing floral arrangements or milking cows or capturing outrageously amazing photos. Most of the time, this all just stays in my imagination. 

Not this time. This time, I want to become a Brew Master. 

It all started a few months ago when I went to go visit my friend, Elizabeth, in Charleston, South Carolina. On one fateful day in July we visited a winery, a distillery and a brewery! This really wasn't too hard to do, since Firefly knocked out two of the three locations.  But as nice as our first stop was, my favorite part of the day was visiting Holy City Brewery, which capped off the marathon of tastings.  This local brewery had only been in business for like one year, but they had crafted some delicious beer that Elizabeth, Thomas and I thoroughly enjoyed.  

As we sat there in the summer heat, drinking and laughing and enjoying ourselves, I thought of how cool it was that these guys had started up their own microbrewery. How in the world does one start such an operation?  How do you learn to make beer in the first place?  My curiosity naturally lead me to imagine what it would be like if I opened my own brewery.  What would I name it?  What kind of beer would I make?  Would people enjoy it as much as I was enjoying theirs?  

My fascination with microbreweries developed even further when more recently, one of my coworkers visited Port City Brewing in Alexandria, Virginia, for a birthday celebration.  As he told me about the tour he took of the facility and the beer he enjoyed, I began thinking the same thing I had thought in the summer: How did these people come to open up their brewery?  What a cool job that must be!  After all, who doesn't enjoy a good beer?  I could totally do that.  

The yearning to be a creator, to make something physical welled up inside of me once again.  I've always enjoyed the type of work where you get a physical end product.  Some of the most satisfying work I do now involves producing reports, albeit not tangible ones.  

Brewing beer began to sound more and more appealing to me.  

After briefly entertaining the "I'm totally going to open a microbrewery one day" idea, I realized that instead of daydreaming about "what if" alternate realities, I could actually start a home brew operation right now in my own kitchen.  I had heard of people brewing beer in their basements and such, so I turned to the internet and spent a Sunday afternoon with my pal Google searching things like "beer making kit".  A few hours into my extremely preliminary  research, I was sold.  I happily purchased my kit from Northern Brewer and thus began my quest to become a brew master. 

Brew Master Goals: 

1. Learn to recognize what ingredients makes beer taste the way it tastes.
2. Learn more about the process of brewing, fermentation and bottling.
3. Learn how to craft my own recipes in order to make my own great tasting beer. 
4. Share my brew and bring joy to friends and family. 
5. Have fun!

Potential Problems: 

1. Something goes terribly wrong in the process. 
2. The beer I make really sucks.
3. No one wants to drink my beer. 
4. I don't actually enjoy the experience. 

With these goals and pitfalls in mind, I shall embark on my quest to become a Brew Master.

Elizabeth and I at Holy City Brewery in Charleston,  SC