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Making My First Batch of Beer

By Paulie Weese

Daunted by the price of good beer, I decided to brew my own.  At first, I was overwhelmed with my first batch of beer.  At a local winery, there is a supply shop with everything I would want to make beer or wine.  It was an astonishing inventory of plastic and glass jugs, bottle caps, brushes, grains, gadgets, books, and wine samples.  (I like wine sampling!)  Judy, the owner, helped me put a kit together.  This included a five gallon container for fermenting my beer, a brush, hydrometer, bottle capper, airlock, and a few more odds and ends to make the process easy.  For a cost under $100, I was on my way to making cases of great beer everyday.

Once I got my treasure chest, my wife, K, was wondering how much of a mess I was going to make.  There were several moments where we pondered where we were going to keep the equipment, how much room it was going to take up, and how much clean up was going to have to happen every time I made another batch.  I didn’t know, but held on to the confidence that whatever I did, the beer  was going to be better than the store, and cheaper too.

Let the Brewing Begin

I got my favorite brewing book, The Joy of Home Brewing, out and started with Step  1:  “Boil the water”.  I did that, then added the malt and cracked grains from my local supply store.  “Boil 15 to 30 minutes”  read the second step.  Then a big discussion started in the book about boiling time.  Not knowing if the boiling was for sterilizing, infusing, or something else beer related,  I settled for boiling 20 minutes, and not worrying if I was over-doing it.  As long as it wasn’t burnt, I was near the right path.

Hops are curious to me.  I have been in horticulture and herbs for years and had not heard of flowers being used in anything except salads.  To find that they are used in beer, well, I scratched my head and opened the package.  They came in a two ounce package, air tight with all the air sucked out of the bag.  Once opened, the bag expanded and left all the oval shaped hop flowers smushed flat together. I broke them apart and added them to my wort.  After mixing with a big spoon, I watched patiently for my wort to boil to finish.

After twenty minutes I turned the fire on my stock pot off.  I prepared the cold water for my fermenter (3 gallons) and added this to the container.  Now was the hard part.  I took a moment to figure out how to strain the wort and have all the liquid go into the fermenter.  Deciding to set the fermenter on the ground and use my wife’s large strainer, I grabbed the handles of my stock pot and set to pour out the hot liquid.  Things went well until the floor started getting very wet.  As I poured, I lost a ton of future beer to my linoleum.  I was dismayed and worked harder to keep the pour going into the fermenter, the solid ingredients going into the strainer.  After several tense minutes, my pour was complete and my wife was elated that she would soon have a very clean floor.

When I purchased my beer kit, it came with an adhesive thermometer that sticks on the plastic fermenter, just like the ones used for fish tanks.  On mine, there are four ranges: lager, ale, and too cold and too hot.  After adding the wort, I was obviously too hot, especially to add the yeast.  So, I cleaned the kitchen, and numerous other jobs and the wort was still too hot.  After a time, the only way I could keep my patience in check was to go to sleep for the night.  When I awoke, the wort was within temperature range and I added the yeast.

Bubbles for a Week

Nothing happened.  The yeast sat on the top of the pretty brown liquid and did nothing.  I was beside myself.  After what seemed to be a long time, the yeast began to fall to the bottom of the fermenter.  The lid of the fermenter came with a hole in it to accommodate an air lock.  An air lock lets air out, not in.  This I found out was essential to keeping the soon-to-be-beer, free of other yeasts, bacteria, and other contaminates.  

This part was a lot of fun for me and K because the beer bubbled for a week!  We watched the air lock give off air constantly at first, and slowing as the week progressed.  The week began to wear on with bubbles, a fermenter that was too big for our kitchen, and building skepticism that this beer might not be good.  From my cooking experience, I knew that if it wasn’t drinkable, it would be great as a marinade.  

Ten Days After Plus Seven

After ten days, the airlock was not bubbling any more.  This meant that the beer was ready for bottling!  Breaking out my how-to beer bible, I prepped my equipment.  Realizing that this moment would come, K and I drank enough beer to have a couple of cases of beer bottles saved up.  In fact, we were short because we threw away a few.  Luckily we had friends drink beer with us to make up the shortfall.

Bottles, hose, and caps sanitized and ready for flowing beer, I set my fermenter higher than my beer bottles and began the siphon.  Now I remember what happened with the mess of my first boiling, and what I found was that this was a very similar memory.  After my first few bottles, I was scrambling to make sure my beer levels were right, the beer stayed in the bottle and not on the floor, and that K was reassured that I’d clean up the mess.

The bottles got capped.  I stored them in the garage, which was cool and would keep the beers out of the way.  The mess was cleaned up, and the next stage of anticipation began.  One of the fears that had me checking my beer was if I had carbonated my beer too much. (To carbonate, adding a cup of boiled corn sugar to the beer provides enough fizz for each bottle.)  Nothing happened, and I considered this a good sign.

K and I broke open our beers after letting them set a week.  Luckily, they didn’t explode, or run over, or make any fuss.  After tasting, we tasted again.  Before too long, I was glad that the two cases of beer were as good as what I could get in the store, and handmade!  Soon, I was making beer for my tastes, and then K’s. 

Published October, 2009

Paulie Weese, www.thebarleyreview.com           Back to Main Article Menu