My (Southern Son's) First Brew Day

Sunday, January 9th 2011, was my first brew day. I brewed from the Brewer's Best Vienna Lager kit. It took about 3-3.5 hours to go from cleaning supplies to fermenting beer. Granted, there was a lot of "first timer" time built into those 3.5 hours. I stuck to what I learned in How to Brew, the Northern Brewer instructional video, and the included directions in the kit.

Here are the steps I followed with caveats for improving efficiency.

1. SANITIZE EVERYTHING. So much of the advice I've received from other home brewers and all instructional materials stress the importance of good sanitization (80% of brewing is sanitization they say). I realized this by probably overdoing the sanitization a bit - I used half the easy clean sanitizer that came with my brewing equipment - about 3 times more than i probably needed. Anything that was going to come in contact with ingredients, the wort or beer. This includes the pot, the fermenter, stirring instruments and even scissors to open the packaging. Throughout the brew day I kept my bottling bucket and a large mixing bowl filled with sanitizing solution to store equipment until it was needed. I immediately returned equipment after use to the same sanitizing solution (a tip i picked up from Northern Brewers video).

2. Get Water in the Pot on the Heat. The directions suggested using 2.5 gallons ( i eyeballed this and wished I had measured it out in the end). The Vienna Lager kit came with some steeping grains that steep as the water heats for 20 minutes.

3. BOIL. Turns out a watched pot will eventually boil. Who knew? I kept constantly measuring the temperature and added my malts around 200 degrees cause I wasn't patient enough. Next time, I will be patient, I will be patient, I will be patient. The Vienna Lager called for a 60 minute boil time.

4. ADD HOPS. The Vienna Lager had both bittering hops and aroma hops. The bittering hops were added early in the 60 minute boil, right away. With 5 minutes left I added the aroma hops.

Optional Step 4.5. Consume beer and gaze in awe of your laboring. While the wort boils and you monitor for boil overs turns out to be the perfect time for a beer. Again, who knew?

5. Immediately following boil time the wort needs to be cooled to 60-70 degrees. Doing this quickly, my reading informs me, prevents bacteria growth. I placed the brew pot directly in the sink with running cold water and ALL the ice and ice packs I could find. I quickly got the wort down to 80-85 degrees before I ran out of ice. I will definitely be grabbing a back of ice or making sure I have ice reserves in the future to make the last 15-20 degrees a bit faster.

6. To the Fermenter (and beyond). I added the wort to the 6.5 gallon carboy (fermenter) using the supplied funnel. Previously (during the boil) I measured and drew a line at 5 gallons on the carboy. This was helpful and adding cool water to the wort bringing the volume up to 5 gallons. I took an initial gravity reading (OG - Original Gravity) at 1.060. This was a little high so I added more water and got it down to around 1.052 (still a little high, but I thought close enough for my first go - we'll see).

7. Add Yeast. Lastly I added the yeast and shock the fermenter vigorously. I placed the bung in the top of the carboy and added a airlock bubbler. I moved the fermenter to the garage where it is about 55 degrees lately.

8. Don't forget to clean up. I found other residents to appreciate a cracked window and burning candle at the conclusion of my brew day.

In the end, getting the experience of my first batch will definitely help subsequent batches. I know now that having more ice ready and being even more precise with measurements will also help. I can't wait to try it! In case you were wondering what it tastes like on brew day... sugary hops with luke warm water.