My First Attempt at Brewing Beer: A Malty Disaster

A couple of months ago I tried a friend's home-brew and became insanely jealous. I mean how cool would it be to be able to pour people a foamy head of stout and say, "yep, this one finished carbonating yesterday. Enjoy!" I also had some fanciful and unrealistic notion that making my own beer would be cheaper than buying it.

 

 

And so I began to research: the end result being that I decided to brew Sheaf Stout. After buying all the grains and hops the first step in the brewing process is the boil. Essentially you make oatmeal out of your grain--but brewers have glorified the process so they call it mash. I didn't know going in that I had picked one of the hardest beers to make. The darker the beer the more grain there is in the mash.

 

All of this has to be thoroughly mixed and then strained through a cheese cloth--it took some doing!

After completely trashing my friend's kitchen I finally had about a gallon and a half of beer concentrate. To this I added water and then I waited for a week. This week is called the primary fermentation and is when most of the sugar in the grain is turned into alcohol.

 

 

After a week I siphoned my brown liquid through a cheesecloth to remove the yeast and any residual chunks of grain. Then I put it in a cold place for another week. This is called secondary fermentation. The colder temperature causes to yeast to fall to the bottom and hibernate--so that they aren't bottled along with the beer.

 

 

After another very very long week I was faced with a choice: natural or force carbonation? I have a keg but no Co2 tank, so I decided to naturally Carbonate which meant waiting another two weeks.

In natural carbonation you bottle the beer with a small amount of sugar. The residual yeast in the beer will convert the sugar to alcohol creation Co2 as a by-product. Since it cannot escape it becomes pressurized.

 

I counted down the days until I would hear the PSSSSSST of my carbonated bottle of Sheaf Stout being opened, and finally that day came! After 4 weeks of effort and research I finally took a sip...and it was the worst thing I've ever tasted. It had alcohol. It was carbonated. It wasn't good. Ah well, better luck next time