My First Brew: Red Ale

Ted's Red

It's a beautiful thing!  But it took seemingly forever before I could pop the top to my very first home brew.  But after waiting five weeks, taking my first sip, it was definitely worth the wait.  If you want to know the process then read along.  It isn't as difficult as you may think, but it is a process. 
Cleanliness is essential to this process.  That really cannot be stated enough.  And it must be part of your technique.  You must thoroughly wash and sanitize all equipment and utinsels to be used in the brewing process.  We always had a large bowl or tub filled with sanitizing solution and religiously dipped our hands in before and after touching anything. 

I had an experienced partner in all this; my fellow Wing Nutz teammate, Al "Heisenberg" Beilgard. Al has a home brewers set up that has everything one needs to brew a batch: 6+ qt. brew pot, 5 gal. fermenting bucket, hydrometer, thermometer, glass carboy, airlocks, syphon set, bottling bucket, and bottle capper.  An equipment kit like this runs about $150 if interested. 

For the beer itself, you can buy beer kits that have all the ingredients needed to brew the flavor and style of beer one is interested.  For this first brew, I let my sister-in-law Judy (also a fellow Wing Nutz member) choose and she selected a red ale.  The brand name of this particular kit is True Brew.  What comes with the kit is both  hopped and unhopped light malt extracts, melanoiden malt grain, grain steeping back, hop pellets, yeast, priming sugar, and bottle caps.  The kit ran about $40 or so.

The wort (pronounced wert)

And so it begins...a wort (unfermented beer); the first step in brewing, making me one step closer to my first beer.  We brought 1.5 gallons water to boil in our brewpot and then turned off the heat.  Next, we filled our steeping bag with grains, tied it off, and placed in the hot water and began steeping it for the next 20-30 minutes.  

 

Next, we added our liquid malt extracts and heat the wort up to a slow rolling boil.  Next, we added half of the hop pellets stirring them in until dissolved and then boiled for 30 minutes, adding the remaining hop pellets in the last two minutes.  At one stage the hop pellets adds aroma and at the other acts as bittering agents.   When finished, we filled a sink full of ice water and placed the brewpot in it to rapidly cool down the wort.  When it achieves a temperature of around 90 degrees we put it into the 5 gallon fermenting bucket and added cold water until we reached about 5 gallons in total volume.  This brings the temperature down to about 74 degrees or less; the desired temerature.  Using a hydrometer we took our original gravity reading and registered at 1.05 - right on target according to our kit directions.  Just before bottling we take a final gravity reading.  Through a simple calculation this will give us our alcohol by volume percentage.        

The final step of this first day's process is to add yeast.  We sprinkled it over the top, stirred it in, and sealed the bucket tightly with the lid. Inserted into the lid is an airlock that allows gases to escape but not let air in that will contaminate the wort as it is fermenting.  When sealed tightly we took it downstairs and stored it in the basement where it is cooler.  It needs to be stored in a cool, dry place out of sight where no light can (especially flourescent lighting) disturb it.  Light is bad.  

 

Over the next 24-48 hours the yeast goes crazy and does its thing and fermentation begins.  You can see it in action bubbling through the airlock. Fermentation continues for about another 48-72 hours and then cease as settling begins.  The beer needs to settle for another 3-4 days after bubbling ceases.  In total, it takes about a week and then you can begin the second stage fermenting process.   

  Second stage fermentation allows for more settling and allows for greater clarity of the beer.  Using a syphoning tube we transfer the beer from the fermenting bucket into a 5 gallon glass carboy.  The tube has a little stopper on the end that helps minimize transferring the settlement (called trub) into the carboy.  The picture above is the transferring into a carboy.  The picture below is the trub.   

 

When we finished the transfer, we capped the carboy with a rubber stopper equipped with an airlock.  It will continue its fermenting and settling for another week. 

  

Finally, after two weeks we are ready to bottle.  But before we do we take our final gravity reading , coming in at 1.010.  This gives our beer a 5.25% ABV. 

 

We syphon the beer from the carboy into a 5 gallon bottling bucket.  Just prior to filling the bucket we add the priming sugar, a necessary ingredient for carbonation.  As the beer transfers it stirs the priming sugar.  Next, Al used a special glass tube and hose called a bottle filler to begin syphoning the beer from the bottling bucket and filling the beer bottles.  As he did that I stood at my station and used a bottle capper to seal the bottles.  When finished, we had 48 bottles of beer.  They will remain in their cases in the cool, dry basement sitting in the dark for another three weeks as the beer ages.

 

Five very long weeks later, I am finally rewarded!  It was a really big hit with others as well.  It was as good as most red ales I have had.  We went throught the first case fairly quickly but I have reserved some that I would like to age longer and try after four months or maybe even six.

It was a lot of fun  learning the process of home brewing.  And since this first batch, we have done a imperial nut brown ale, Scottish ale, and special stout beer that is a homage to Walter White, aka Heisenberg, and the Breaking Bad series.  We just transferred this Breaking Bad beer into the carboy over the weekend where it will rest for another 2 weeks before bottling.  It should be ready for the final season premiere on August 11.  Next up to cook this weekend is a german beer in  preparation of Oktoberfest! 

 

Cheers everyone!