As intimidating as we thought homebrewing would be, the process was rather simple and straightforward. Quite enjoyable, actually. It felt like we were the guides of our own science experiment, and were very excited when our brew began to foam indicating that we successfully began fermenting!
Here's a little overview of how we brewed our first batch of Anchor Space Pale Ale :
With a ton of unknown equipment spread out across the office floor, we explored "The Complete Joy of Homebrewing" book to familiarize ourselves with what we had and what we were supposed to do with it. It's important to note that we followed an ingredient kit prepared by Brooklyn Homebrew to make our first round easy... we're really glad we did! After a half-hour introduction, we sanitized all of our equipment, and got a pot of water on the stove.
We seeped our grain mixture in some water to infuse the water with all of its flavors. We added some more water, brought it to a boil, added three different hop variations at different increments, and finally added the pre-made malt liquid to the boiling water. This combined mixture is called wort. Once the wort boiled for the proper amount of time, we used a copper tubing coil to chill the wort quickly. Once chilled, we transfered the wort to our fermenting carboy, filled the carboy with more water to equal 5 gallons, and added the yeast.
The next morning when we woke up, the yeast was doing it's job fermenting. Success! Our brew will remain in the fermentation carboy for 7 - 14 days at which point we will add sugar, bottle the brew, and let it ferment once more in the bottle before enjoying the fruits of our labor. All in all, we will have spent 8 hours brewing beer, 2 months allowing it to ferment properly, and will result in almost 9 six-packs of our own Anchor Space Pale Ale creation to enjoy. Pretty good deal if you ask me!
We're looking forward to making our next round of Anchor Space Brew in the near future.
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| Drinking brew while brewing |
Here are a few photos of our process :
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| Sanitized Equipment |
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| Hops and malt |
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| Rapid-cooling the wort |
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| Adding the malt |
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| Into the glass fermentation carboy |
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| First day of fermentation : success! |
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