Home Brew Beer - Est. 2006

I finally got my order from Easybrew last Friday after a long delay (see previous posts). Easybrew apparently “mislaid” my order although it’s all sorted now and they have refunded the postage costs, so no hard feelings.

The brewing was done last night using the following recipe:

• 1 lb Dry Amber Malt Extract
• 1 lb Crushed Crystal Malt
• East Kent Goldings Hops
• Safale S-04 Yeast

Here’s a picture of the ingredients:

The Crystal malt was placed into a straining bag and put into the brew pot along with approx. 1 gallon of water. The grains were steeped while the water was brought to the boil, at which point the”giant tea bag” was removed (see picture below).

The Amber DME was then added and the timer on the boil set for 1 hour (in my head!). The hot break was really noticable which was interesting! After 30 mins I added half an ounce of East Kent Goldings Hops and then another half ounce with 15 minutes to go. Here’s a picture of the hops.

When the boil was done it was cooled as quickly as possible by sitting the brew pot in the kitchen sink, which was full of cold water. The wort was then syphoned into the fermentor and topped up with fresh boiled water to 8 pints (1 uk gallon). When the temperature of the wort was low enough (below 25 degrees C), the yeast was added to the fermentor and the airlock was attached (at approx 11pm). The fermentor is shown below as it is this morning.

Since this picture was taken (about 90 minutes ago) there has been noticable development of foam and bubbles on the surface of the wort. Go Yeast!

Check back soon for developments…