I started building my mash tun tonight by purchasing a 48qt cooler that will allow me to do 10 gallon batches. The cooler was $19.99.

I am also assembling my own nozzle which cost me $23.74. I could have bought one from a home brew shop online, but this gives me something to do with my hands.

I am going to go with a manifold design. This way I can start out with batch sparging, then later try out a fly sparge in the future easily. Still debating on cpvc vs. copper at the moment.

I brewed a Christmas strong ale last weekend and thought the fermentation had already stopped. See, I had to clean out the air lock twice because of all the activity in the bucket and was expecting it to continue. But a day later there was no activity in the airlock. I just figured the fermentation was over. I took a gravity reading this evening and discovered the fermentation had been so active that it popped the top right off! Lots of fermentables in this one!

The taste so far is good and the alcohol burns nicely.

“Brewing” Hard Lemonade

I was going to run some test batches for hard cider today, but when I went out to buy the cider I realized that its not apple cider season. Duh. So I decided to do some hard lemonade instead.

I used two one gallon carboys, 5 lemons, 1 lime, 1/2 packed of Windsor brewer’s yeast and two lbs of sugar. I split everything in two and seperated the batches into the one gallon carboys, one lb of sugar in the raw in one, one lb of regular sugar in the other.

As of right now it is actively fermenting, I am afraid this one is going to explode on me so I put both carboys in a closed crate.

I may bottle half of each batch with priming sugar, and half without to find out if I like with or without carbonation.

Brewing South Hills Brewing’s APA

I bought a kit from South Hills Brewing and brewed that today as well. It came with liguid yeast and extra hops to add to the secondary fermentor which should give me a nice hoppy aroma once its all done. It seemed to have come out well, I will know in about a week when I do the first gravity reading.

Bottling the Brewer’s Best APA

On top of all this I bottled the Brewer’s Best APA today as well. It has come out really heavy and malty which is not what I am into. I will let it sit in bottles for a month and see what happens. This was the first time however that I ended up with two full cases. In fact I was able to have enough after bottling that I filled up a flip top bottle I had and added blueberries to see what would happen.

Rather than buying new bottles for my homebrewing needs Monica and I have been saving the bottles from the beer we drink to bottle with. Doing so not only saves us money, but I think in its own little way it helps the environment. I have about five cases of bottles so far that I will be able to put into rotation.

I have been drinking my first home brewed IPA for a few weeks now, have a Watermellon Wheat conditioning in bottles and a Pale Ale in the fermentor. So far I have to say that I am really happy with the quality of the beer. The first two batches were from William’s Brewing while the third was a Brewers Best kit I picked up from the local South Hills Brewing.

I plan on picking up a seconday fermentor in the next week so I can have a cleaner beer, perhaps dry hop and free up the primary fermentor for another batch. My goal is to have a recipe I want to drink year round in a 5 gallon cornelious keg and to continue to bottle seasonal batches.

My first batch of home brewed beer, an American IPA is currently fermenting in my basement. Heres how it all went down.

After boiling the water it is time to pour in the pre-mashed malt. This stuff is very thick and slow to pour out. And sweet to taste.

These are the pellet hops that came with the kit. Basically just hops compressed into a pellet for easier measuring. This bowl went in the boiling malt and water within the first five minutes of boiling.

The malt, hops and water boiling after about 30 minutes. It smells really good.

Here is the finished beer with the yeast poured in. It is now in my basement fermenting. In two weeks I will have to bottle the beer, adding priming sugar to add carbonation.