So my neighbor Jake and I have been talking about brewing beer this winter for quite some time. This weekend we made things happen. We headed over to Bobs Homebrew supplies in the university district Saturday morning. I had read a little bit about this shop on the internet and the word on the street was that Bob's cost a little more but with the advice you got it was worth it.
Well all the reviews were dead on. We walked up to the counter and said "we want to brew beer this winter but have no idea what we are doing." The only input we had was that from what we had read we wanted to skip bottling and just go straight into a keg as that seems easier. We knew we would need a little more equipment but what the hell, lets go for it! Bobs response to our statement that we had no idea what we were doing was "not a problem, feel free to roam around the store and I will get together what you will need." Wow, no "you guys are stupid so you should get out of my store and read a little?" Nope, Bob was great and shortly we had everything we would need.
While Bob was rounding things up we picked out what our first beer would be from a list of recipes on the wall. We settled on a Porter since winter is quickly approaching and will almost be here in a month when the beer is ready.
So we hauled everything home and put it all in Jakes garage with plans to brew our first batch on Sunday.
Sunday afternoon Jake and I got together at my house since Natalie was off at the ballet and tried to figure out what order we should do all of this in. We decided to start the keg reconditioning (would take 2 hours) and while it was doing its thing we would get started. So after wrestling the keg into the bathtub and adding the sanitizing agent (Natalie, we did not do this in the bathtub)(everyone else, yes we did) we headed downstairs to start cooking.
I never realized how much was involved in brewing. First you have to start drinking beer from the fridge and then there are lots of steps after that. :) Anyway, we got everything rolling along and for the most part had every step knocked out without too much trouble. The directions said it would take us 3 hours and it took 5 but hey, it was our first time. We only forgot one step which was to take a gravity reading before sealing everything up but that should not be too big of a deal.
So right now we have a sealed firmenter down in Jake's garage with a little airlock on top which will release oxygen as the yeasts eat away at the sugar and create carbon dioxide. I went down in the garage yesterday (Monday) and we already have action down there. We have about 30 bubbles a minute coming out of the airlock so the yeast is down there doing its thing. In 10-14 days we get to open things up and transfer to the secondary firmenter so fingers crossed until then.
And with that 9310 Brewery was born!!
