Beer and Wine

OK, since my last post the homebrew club tasted my beer.  Those that chose to comment like it.  What else can I say? 

Now I'm switching to winemaking.  I bought two frozen juice kits from Universal Carbonic, the local homebrew/winemaking supply store.  One Italian juice (Lambrusco) and one California juice (Merlot/Cabernet Sauvignon blend).  They won't be here until the beginning of November, so I'm doing the winemaker thing, collecting bottles by drinking store bought wine.

It's not that I've forgot about homebrewing.  I'm planning to get some bulk supplies to try and make my own recipes.  I'll probably also get a few more kits as part of my learning process. In the meantime, I'm drinking my way through the Full Sail Amber Ale Clone beer that was my first beer.  It's a tough job, but someone has to do it.

What's Brewing?

Well, I finally started my first brew.  It's in the primary fermenter now.  Somewhere around Friday, I'll move it to the secondary fermenter.

I decided to start small for this first brew and made an extract kit of Full Sail Amber Ale that I ordered from Austin Homebrew Supply.

I did have to steep some specialty grains in addition to boiling the malt extract and hops, so it was more than just a boil, but not a lot more.  By the end of an hour, I had 2 gallons of wort (non yeasted liquid)

Due to lack of equipment, I used a 2 gallon spaghetti pot for the grains and the extract boil, then diluted it with water in the fermenter.  To chill down the wort, I made up some sanitized ice bricks in some freezer containers the night before and then added them to the water before adding the wort.

To aerate the wort, I attached my DAN (scuba) oxygen bottle to a 6 inch aquarium stone and let the oxygen bubble through the wort.  I used my large wooden stirring paddle to keep the wort moving over the stone.

Next week, I'll publish an update and in a month, a full report including brew club feed back.