Saturday, October 5, 2013

The Mash Fest #1



Pursuing the first batch meant re reading a home brew book to try and remember key processes that turn out good beer. Number one on the list is perfect sanitation followed by good water. The rest is semi easy, like baking or cooking; ingredients and timers to help us along. Water comes to a boil and liquid malt extract is added with stages of grain and hops for about an hour. Once complete, your kitchen and most of the house smells like warm roasted malt, an aroma I happen to love. Pitching the yeast is a bit tricky because the boiling wort (wert-Unfermented beer)  has to cool down to 70-75 degrees before the yeast will activate against the sugars and provide the proper buzz most beer drinkers seek.  As the wort enters the fermenter (plastic bucket) and we sprinkle the dried yeast over the top of the brownish tepid mixture, it's off to a dark place for seven days for what is known as the primary fermentation. 

The first batch went off without a hitch although we were slightly late with one of the hop strains and didn't get the timing right on another.  Kitchen was a wreck as I remembered but mostly due to large vessels and pots combined with many tools, tubes, thermometers and siphons. In future posts we will talk detail and process in depth but for now let's get this batch, cleverly named, "Ditzy" in a pint glass and down the hatch for a taste review. 

Now we went a little over the top and kegged our first batch before even knowing what it tasted like. We will cover kegs and bottling in future posts but for now let's assume the keg and tap along with the proper carbonation magically appeared. 
The first thing we noticed was our blonde had a little BeyoncĂ© in it!  A blonde ale should be blonde in color. What I learned was the boil was too vigorous and caramelized the extract to a darker color. Note to self.  The head was perfect, very Sam Adams like and remained atop the glass for the entire drink. The Ale was awesome!  Not a single artifact like I remembered from the past reminding you that it was infact home brew and not Sam Adams. Hoppy, malty with a dry finish and light carbonation much like a Boddingtons Pub Ale. We had done it!  Excitement reigned as we went back to the tap over and over joyous that we were drinking kegged home brew in our basement. A cigar later and we had planned out our entire nano brew future including brew schedules, beer types and a merchandise line. 

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