Homebrew #1: Caribou Slobber

Two weekends ago, Baltimore was in the midst of the first half of its double-whammy, back-to-back snowstorm attack, and I figured there was no better way to spend an afternoon cooped up inside (with a stir-crazy, but surprisingly cooperative toddler assistant) than to try my hand at homebrewing for the first time.  So, with the snow falling down in enormous clumps outside, I fired up some good tunes, and gathered my brewing equipment, my Caribou Slobber extract kit, a tasty local craft brew, and my wits… and jumped on in.

One of the things that I had been concerned about before starting, was whether or not my stove top would be able to heat 6 gallons of water in a reasonable amount of time. Well, the 10 gallon Megapot I ordered from Austin Homebrew nicely straddles two burners, and the water actually reached 170 degrees (the specialty grains steeping temp) before I was even ready. No worries, though. I crushed the specialty grains, added them to the mesh bag, and had them steeping, in no time.  After steeping, the specialty gains were removed, and the wort was brought up to a boil, before adding the malt extract. US Goldings, Liberty, and Willamette hops were then added according to schedule.

Next came time to chill the wort. Due to the massive size of my brew kettle, there was no chance of giving it an ice bath in the sink – though I may well have been able to toss the whole thing in the snow for a half hour and achieve similar results. This is where the beauty of the immersion wort chiller comes into play.  The immersion chiller works by passing cold water (from your hose or sink) through a series of coils that are… well, immersed in the wort. The heat from the wort is transferred to the water in the coils, and the heated tap water is then dumped out in the sink. This process is pretty similar to the way that the coils in your fridge work, and it allows you to bring the temperature of the wort down from boiling in a fraction of the time that it would take otherwise.

Once the wort was chilled to about 78 degrees F, I took the original gravity reading (roughly 1.050, just shy of the goal). I then poured the wort into the carboy, straining out the excess solids, and pitched the pack of liquid yeast that I had activated several days earlier.  I should mention that I did hit a bit of a snafu that caused my chilling process to take probably about as long as it would have with an ice bath, anyway. Lesson learned, though – next time will be easier, and hopefully the longer chill time won’t aversely affect the final product too much. After pitching the yeast, I sealed up the carboy, inserted the fermentation lock, and transferred my baby to the basement.

There are so many factors to consider, when brewing, and I’m still so green, that it’s a bit much to process. I’m seriously lovin’ it so far, though. I can’t wait to see how this batch turns out… and get my second batch going in the near future, as well. Stay tuned for more updates on Batch #1…