Our first attempt at Home Brew

           Well we finally jumped off the pier into the ocean of homebrewing. It was slightly over whelming at first, and after a lot of research we decided to go with a kit that had the wort already made. I know this is not what some of the home brewers would call brewing, because their is no brewing. But, I personally would recommend this for the first timers out there because it will get you through the mechanics of fermentation, sanitizing, racking and bottling.

           We purchased a Brewhouse Beer kit which is manufactured by R.J. Spagnols. It's commercial description is:
  "An entirely new concept in homebrewing. Until now, most homemade beer has been made with concentrated malt extract syrup. The Brewhouse Kit produces all-grain microbrew style beer with the convenience of a kit. Brewed from fresh grain and hops, it is pure all-grain wort, made the same way as commercial microbrewed beers. Gentle handling preserves the delicate aromas and flavors. Fresh grains make fresh beer! The Brew House Kit is made from 100% grain. The grains are cracked just before brewing and gently steeped in water at our custom designed German style brew house. After the sweet wort is drawn off, it's carefully boiled with generous amounts of hops. Then, without adding water or concentrate, it's aseptically packaged for maximum flavor and aroma. Brewed by two certified beer judges, both experienced prize-winning brewers and a German Quality Control scientist, these kits are as close to the described style as possible. They conform to the definitions laid out by the American Homebrewers Association."

           It came in a box which contained a plastic collapsible carboy filled with wort. We had to pour the wort into the fermenting bucket and add a couple gallons of water. At this stage, I in all my "infinite" beer brewing wisdom decided to split the batch, add more corn sugar to half and dry hop it. This process was pretty simple, did not take long at all, then we split the yeast packet and pitched the yeast.. We placed the brew in a temperature regulated incubator and in a few hours the two buckets were bubbling up a storm, we are home brewers, we thought. After a few days the primary fermentation slowed and we racked (put it into a different container) the beer. We placed the 20 liter carboys back into the incubator and were set to wait another 10 days.

          Here is where the fun started. I have been saving beer bottles for a few months in a 55 gallon plastic barrel out at my shop. It of course is out side with no lid. I rolled out my barrel and began to sort through the bottles that I planned to use.  I am a smoker and on numerous occasions will drop a ciggy but into the bottle when I am finished. NO FREAKIN' MORE. It took me a few hours to sort out the screw tops and dumps the butts and trash from the bottles. I am not a cheapskate but I went thru the drum like a Hobo hunting for a ham sandwich. After I was covered in it (whatever it was) I sighed in relief just as my father showed up and informed me that he had been putting bottles in a large rubbermaid tote and proceeded to point it out to me. F' ME! I went thru these too. I ended up with ten cases of used brown bottles, man I thought I was a Genius, I am gonna save One Hundred and Twenty Dollars an this adventure.

        After a few hours of research on the Internet later that night I decided that I would try to boil the labels off the bottles. The next day I went over to a friends house and we set up the big pots and burners. After what seemed like forever the 5 gallons of water began to boil and I put some of the bottles in.  I watched as the bottles rolled around in the boiling water still thinking about all the money I was saving by recycling these bottles. What a Dumb ass. The bottles were too Hot to touch so I could not begin to scrub them immediately with my House Hold scrubbing pad as described by another home brewer in some forum I was reading. So, I removed the bottles and put another batch in the boiling water. After 5 minutes or so the bottles were cool enough for me to touch and I began to scrub the labels.

       THEY ARE NOT SCRUBBING OFF! F' ME Again! Now I got a couple of hours in this with not so good results. It was about this time that both burners went out like clockwork with a whoosh. SON OF A BITCH. We weren't drinking and this was very aggravating. We calmly decided to give up, for the night. We placed the bottles in containers and covered them with water and I went home. The next day after work I went to the propane guy and filled the two tanks. Twenty eight bucks was the total. I got to my bud's house and started the burners. The labels were still not loose after soaking overnight. I rummaged through them and found that the Sam Adams labels would release. I through my head back and let out a villainous chuckle. We ripped through the Sam labels and ended our cleaning session (sanitizing as we went) after 4 hours with two people ended up with seventy five clean bottles.

       The bottling process went smoothly, we added priming sugar, filled and capped the bottles. We cleaned all the equipment and were finished with the two batches in about two hours. We ended up with about two and a half cases of beer. A few days later some of the members were over on a Saturday night for a tasting session of some beer that Ben had found. We ended up with 10 or twelve bottles that could be used. I rinsed them carefully and my wife suggested putting them in the dishwater with Dawn dish soap. THE LABELS FELL OFF.  So, all that Internet BUNK and research could have been avoided by just asking my wife. Women are a lot smarter than us.

       I will let you know how the beer turns out.