First homebrew: American Pale Ale
My buddy Kyle and I brewed a tasty batch of American Pale Ale recently and I really enjoyed both the process and the results. Enjoy these photos from the process!
Kit contents - American Pale Ale from Brewer's Best
Grains in a cheesecloth bag
Steeping the grains to make wort
Adding liquid malt extract
Bittering hops
Lots of boiling and hoppy smells
Finished wort. Delicious.
Transferring the wort to the fermenter via siphon
Pitching the yeast
Installing the airlock
Shazam! Fermentation!
CO2 bubbling through airlock
Fermentation Station - CO2 bubbles on top of beer
Done fermenting - about 1 gallon of trub rests on the bottom of the fermenter.
Time to bottle.
We used two types of bottles: capped, and flip top.
Filling the bottles one by one. Everything is sanitized before the beer touches it.
Capping the bottles
All capped up
The fruit: 4.5 gallons or 2.25 gallons each. Time to let it carbonate in the bottle.
Two weeks later & time to enjoy my American Pale Ale.
Timeline of the process:
November 22: brewing
November 23: fermentation is rocking
November 29: transferred beer to secondary container to avoid some sediment (trub)
December 2: bottling
December 9: Mr. Eager opens a bottle, and it’s definitely not ready yet.
December 17: respectably carbonated and tasty
January 4: only one pint left, time for a new batch of homebrew!
