It has been, oh, 10-11 weeks now since I've begun brewing beer here at home. It all started back after Christmas when I purchased two Mr. Beer (MrB) kits from Woot - one for myself and one to stockpile as a gift to give to an unspecified someone later. I went with the embarassing $20 (cheap!) all plastic 2-gallon mass-produced homebrewing-lite kit because I was passively curious about the hobby and because it was tons cheaper than buying everything needed for a decent 5-gallon home setup. Sure, I might be a little shy when talking about opening and dumping two cans of premade beer mix into a goofy-looking plastic keg thing, especially when doing so with co-workers who had "honest" setups at home and who were involved in actually putting together measured ingredients and doing things more akin to "brewing". But as long as the end result wasn't terribly suckish, I wouldn't complain.
[Note to readers! I have manually adjusted the date/time of this post to force it to the beginning of my blog, even though I actually composed it on May 6th 2012. Sorry for the deception!]
So in mid-February, I cracked open the first kit, which came with a can of Hopped Malt Extract (HME) labeled "West Coast Pale Ale", a packet of yeast, a 1-lb bag of powder labeled "Booster", a packet of powdered cleanser, a plastic keg and 8 plastic quart screw-top bottles. While there were extensive instructions regarding sanitization (which I'll get into later), the actual brewing process was a no-brainer...
Step 1 - Dissolve the Booster in water and bring to a boil
Step 2 - Open the can of HME and stir it into the Booster/water mix (and now it's called "wort")
Step 3 - Put the wort into the keg, add yeast, stir
Step 4 - Cap the keg and stick it somewhere dark for a week (and now it's called "beer")
Step 5 - Pour the beer (flat and yucky) into bottles with sugar.
Step 6 - Cap the bottles and stick them somewhere dark for another week.
Step 7 - Refrigerate for a few days, then drink!
Okay... sounds simple. Let's give it a try.
Well, before I jumped in, I scoured the forums at the MrB website to get a few tips from folks. The one thing that was consistently emphasized was to NOT SKIMP ON SANITIZATION! Ignore the assembly steps above, if you didn't take the time to follow the instructions regarding making and keeping everything sanitary, your product would suck. So if being safe and clean was important, that's what I'd do. Heck, I ended up overdoing it.
Bottles: Before doing anything at all, I took the eight plastic bottles and 2/3rds-filled them with warm water, mixed in a teaspoon of OxyClean, and after capping I shook the bejeezus out of them and set them in the window. The OxyClean bubbled for 3-4 days, but it eventually stopped, which gave me the green light to rinse the bottles, place a small piece of cling wrap over the mouth of each, and cap them. Overkill? Heh, without a doubt.
On brewing day, things went pretty smoothly. My spoon, measuring cup, and manual can opener all went in the keg and sat in sanitizer for the requisite 10 minutes. 4 cups of Bloomington's finest tap water went into the pot, then I slowly (and I mean s-l-o-w-l-y) poured in the Booster, stirring the heck out of the mix as I went to try to get it to dissolve. It was a pain! And I noted that I was using my metal spoon in my teflon-coated pot, which meant I was probably ruining the pot. (Have to use a metal spoon - nylon, wood, and anything else can't be sanitized properly). Oh well, in for a penny.... It took about 20 minutes to get the entire pound of Booster to dissolve - while it felt as if my right arm should have swollen up to Popeye-esque proportions in the process. Phew! Raise to a boil, remove from heat, open/stir the can of HME, the pour everything into the keg.
Yeast, check! Final stir, check! Capped, check! And off to the dark pantry for you, with a nice thick beach towel draped over the gizmo to ensure the light is blocked.
The instructions indicate that 7 days in the keg are needed for fermentation, but everyone online recommends doubling that time... so two weeks march by.
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