I hope everyone had a safe and happy New Years, I spent my New Years Eve brewing beer!

This one was a simple extract kit that I picked up from a local homebrew shop, the True Brew series of kits. First time I have ever used one of these kits from this company, so i figured I would give it a shot and brew up a quick 5 gallons. All of the brew kits are fairly simple however this one added something to it that I have never seen before. One of the steps is to roast some of the crushed grains in the oven for 10 minutes. This my friends, will make your  kitchen smell wonderful, although your spouse may not approve!

Here’s the ingredients:

LIQUID MALT EXTRACT (LME):

6.6 lbs Dark Malt Extract

CRUSHED GRAINS ( they do not specify the exact grain, just a general description):

6 oz. Chocolate

6 oz. Crystal

6 oz. Pale

HOPS:

1 oz. Hallertau

1 oz. Tettnang

YEAST: Munton’s dry Active Brewing Yeast (yellow packet)

Gravity targets are  listed as 1.052 - 1.054 for the starting gravity and 1.012-1.014 for the final gravity. When I checked my readings with the hydrometer it read 1.040 without adjusting for temperature (room temp was 68 degrees). Adjusted for temperature in Promash and it came  out  to be 1.051, still came in a bit under  and not  sure why?

Basic instructions (these were a little bit different than what  I am used to):

Preheat oven to 350 and spread the Pale malt on a cookie sheet, toast for 10 minutes.

Place 1 to 1.5 gallons of water in the brewpot, bring to a boil.

Turn the heat off, place all the grains into the steeping bag (provided in the kit) and steep for 20 - 30 minutes. Personally I did 30 minutes here.

Remove the grain bag and bring back to a boil. Then turn the heat off and add the 2 cans of LME mentioned above. Also add 1 oz of the  Hallertau hops at this time.

Stir and bring back to a boil (watch for boil overs!)

Boil for 1 hour, adding the Tettnang hop pellets for the final one to two minutes of the boil.

When boil completes, cool the wort down as you normally would (I currently use an ice bath) to get the temperature of the wort down to below 80 degrees.

Add the wort to your fermentor and top off with sterilized water up to 5 gallons.

Now here is where I strayed from the instructions just a bit. As I stated above, this kit comes with a packet  of dry ale yeast. Technically you can just pitch this yeast  into your wort bone dry but i decided to rehydrate. What this does is activates your yeast (think, head  start!) before you pitch which should result  in a faster start  to your fermentation. I’m glad I decided to do this as my airlock was bubbling like mad within 4 hours of pitching the yeast.

To rehydrate a dry yeast, simply place 1 cup of  sterilized water ( I boil mine, then cool to pitching temps - under 80 degrees) into a small container. Sprinkle in your yeast packet and stir with a sterilized utensil. Cover this with Saran wrap or equivalent, I happened to be out of Saran wrap so I just placed a ziploc bag overtop of the container. Wait 10-15 minutes for the yeast to activate, you should see a small amount of activity and  it should turn a cloudy, milky consistency. When the yeast is ready, stir up your wort a bit with a sterilized utensil (seeing a pattern here?) and pitch. Finally, seal your fermentor and agitate the wort (i.e - shake the shit out of it!).

Place your fermentor in a safe  place and your done, for  now!

to be continued…..