The Bubbles!

We did it! We made our first beer. Well, it's in the first stage of fermentation right now. But, it's bubbling and it's alive!

After battling through the bizarre Iowa weather, we decided not to make the beer outside. It was cold and it would just be easier inside. The girls went off to use their recently acquired gift cards and the boys were left to stink up the house. We read and reread all of the instructions, discussed what we had learned outside of those instructions (gleaning tips from my future father-in-law for example).

The pot I purchased to make the wort in was much too big, but the plan is to work our way up to bigger batches, so whatever. After boiling the water, we added the grains in their little sock to the mixture. This created what could be the most incredible teabag effect ever. The grains steeped for a while, the we took those out and added the malt extract. This came in two very large cans, filled with what can only be described as a thick, sweet molasses-like syrup. My brother was kind enough to stir all of this in while I tried to keep everything clean.

Then that had to boil. For quite a while. So, we decided to open a beer. I had brought down a few favorites from the Ommegang Brewery. One of these was their namesake brew, Ommegang. This beer is quite possibly my favorite drink ever. It pours with an amazing clarity and a rich, red-hued head. My brother had gotten some new beer glasses for Christmas (Thanks Kimmy!) and we were able to use the "proper" glass. This beer has a rich complexity at the beginning, without any overwhelming single characteristic. After you swallow, there is a secondary explosion of flavor in your mouth. A fruity, sweet afterthought, like the beer wants you to remember it.

We also tried the Ommegang group's Hennepin ale. This is a very good ale also. It's a lot crisper and less fruity than the namesake brew, but it's definitely tasty. It pours a clear golden color with a light head. A little heavier on the hops, this beer still retained that complexity that makes it difficult to pin down a single ingredient. We also sampled a brew from Amsterdam, which was amazingly caramelly, but I have no idea what it was called. I studied German and the label was aggravatingly close to German, but not enough that I could actually understand it. And we had another Belgian ale. Mind you, this is over the course of nearly ten hours, not just in the hour it took for the wort to boil...

So, the wort has boiled, we've added the finishing hops and we're getting ready to add it to the bucket of cool water. How, exactly, should we go about pouring this vat of bubbling liquid into the bucket? My brother, always the hero, grabs a coat so he can pour the thing without burning his arms (although as a plumber he has managed to burn most of his arms anyway). After he successfully poured it, I filled it to the five-gallon mark and then began to wait until the temperature was correct for adding the yeast. It was a bit over 90 degrees initially and we didn't want to kill the pour little buggers.

After adding the yeast, we realized how tense we had been. It was a very stressful experience. As it was our first go at brewing, we didn't want to muck it up. However, when would we know if we had mucked it up? A week? Two weeks? Three weeks??? No, we just had to wait for the bucket to bubble. 24 hours. So, we sat down to play some video games and watch some television. After a night of this and a feast prepared by my sister-in-law, my girlfriend and I prepared to leave. It was at this point that we saw the bucket bubble.

That was a memorable moment. It meant that we hadn't messed up the yeast process and that the beer was fermenting. Whether or not it will taste good is still up in the air, but by God it will be BEER! Next weekend, we will bottle it and store it so that it can carbonate properly. So, now I have to figure out what type of bottle I want to use. I'm thinking the bigger "Grolsch" type bottles would be cool. Also, I have a lot of bottles around here that I am thinking about cleaning up and seeing if they will work. Either way, I know the name of the beer. Baby Bock. In honor of my buddy who just found out his wife is pregnant.

Here's a link to me and the Bubbles.


Prost!