Homebrew: Take One

I decided to brew some beer this weekend. Correction: I decided to watch my dad brew beer, take a bunch of pictures of the process and jeopardize the future of our "co-created" brew. If I want to understand craft beer, I had to be involved in the brewing process. So a few weeks ago, I called my dad and told him to dust off his brewing equipment because we're homebrewin'.

We decided to make a bourbon barrel stout. We had to recreate the flavor of the bourbon barrel, and took a couple of shortcuts along the way but I still learned a ton. I also have an even greater respect for brewers now because brewing is time-consuming and complicated.

There are all sorts of recipes on the interweb, so I wont go through a step-by-step guide. What I will do is show you the basic components and some of the stages of homebrewing. To begin, beer is made up of water, malted barley, hops and yeast. Let's take a look at what we used and how we used it:

Specialty Malt:
Malt is barley that has been germinated and dried. The specialty malt that we used gives flavor, color, body and increases head retention. Once the grains are soaked and in hot water, a wort is produced. The sugars extracted from these special grains will be fermented by the yeast and that's how we get the alcohol. Super important stuff.

We steeped this muslin bag in a vat of hot (not boiling) water like a giant tea bag. 

The grains and heat transformed water into wort

Malt Extract:
After we steeped the grain sack of specialty malt, we added this ultra sticky goo, Malt extract is another shortcut that we took. Basically, malt extract is a base malt that has already been mashed and condensed into a syrup. We added it into the hot wort along with some fresh maple syrup. I had no idea the foundation of a stout was this insanely sweet. My dad told me not to try the malt extract. I did it anyway:

It was sweet, but not in a "this was a good thing to taste" sort of way

We then brought the malt extract, maple syrup and wort mixture to a rolling boil:

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble

Hops:
After we got our wort nice and hot, we started adding hops. We used four different types of hops: Northern Brewer, Perle, Fuggle, and Tettnanger. I learned that they all had to be placed in the wort at different intervals to ensure a well hopped sensation, flavor and aroma. The malt is very sweet and the bitterness of these hops offset the sweetness to add a fuller, more complex flavor.

Everything was tied in little muslin bags.

These are the dry hops, Tettnanger.
My dad told me not to open the bags because I have a bad track record
of making messes, but I took a little peek anyways.

Improvising a Bourbon Barrel:
We don't have a bourbon barrel at our disposal so we soaked oak chips in only the highest quality Evan Williams Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey. Yeah, it's kind of cheating, but it was the best we could do. We tied the oak chips in another muslin bag, smothered the oak in bourbon and let it soak up the flavor over night. We added it to the fermenting beer the next day.

Macgyvered bourbon barrel

Home stretch:
Then we took out all four hop bags, stuck the hot pot in an ice bath, let it cool down and poured it into our keg. I would have liked to use a fancy glass carboy but we weren't making a full five gallons, so we used this plastic keg thing. Don't judge.

Look how dark and thick and fantastic it is. Thanks malt!

Final Steps:
Then we added in brewers yeast to start the fermentation process. We gave it a little stir and closed the lid. We've done all that we can do, it's time for the yeast to go to work. The next day when we opened the lid to add the drunken oak chips, the fermentation process was taking off--which is a great sign. Now, I must wait for the magic yeast to turn the wort I made with my dad into actual beer. I've never been more impatient in my life. Check back in a few weeks to see if my dad and I were successful in our "collaborative" homebrew experiment.