Beer Glorious Beer!

For a long time now, I have been planning on getting Dr. H a beer making kit for Christmas. Well Christmas came early, and we now have five gallons of (hopefully) delicious IPA brewing in our guest bedroom closet. We had set everything up in the basement, but Dr. H worried that it would be too cold down there for proper fermentation, so the whole shebang has been moved upstairs. Beer making is actually a fairly simple process. It can get quite fancy depending on the type of beer one is trying to make, but the essentials are pretty straight forward. You steep some specialty grains (barley) in a pot of hot water until it reaches a boil, add in super condensed malt extract and dry malt  and let boil for a while. Then toward the end you add your hops. Once you cool this "Wart" down you add it to your "Carboy" (basically a big glass water jug) and fill the thing up with cold water. Add your yeast and that is basically that. I have skipped some steps here (like making sure everything is sterilized) but you get the general idea. Now on to some pictures!

heating up  malt syrup

the beginning: steeping the specialty grains

steeping

supplies

I intend to take some pictures of the beer while it is fermenting, when we rack the beer to the secondary fermenter, and then when we bottle. So many fun steps!