First Brew - Brewer's Best Extra IPA

First Step of the Journey

Learning to brew is a bit like learning how to ride a bicycle. It's more than just getting used to getting on the bike, staying balanced, learning how to stop, etc. You have to get a bike first. If you don't know how to ride a bike, how do you even know which one to buy? Thankfully, there are beer kits!

The Gift

2020/12/25

My wife was kind in indulging in my beer making fantasy by getting me a beer kit for Christmas. In this case, it was the very wordy Brewer's Best Extra IPA Hop Rotator Series. The kit can be found on Amazon, but as the word "rotator" implies, the hops chosen for the kit will change. There is a PDF of the recipe, but in my case the hops were Columbus and Idaho 7 instead of Centennial and Amarillo, respectively.

Could It Have Gone Easier?

It wasn't a bad choice for a first time home brewer, but to continue with the bike analogy, I could have started with some extra training wheels. The difficulty level is "easy". The instructions were clear with all useful information packed into a two-sided sheet of durable paper. You have a summary of contents, recommended equipment, procedures, fill-in-the-blanks for gravity, dates, etc. To this day I still record all the brewing steps and gravity readings with the date for posterity. In retrospect, this is not the easiest kit I would recommend for a first time brewer. In this one I was expected to steep specialty grains as well as use LME. Considering how the first brew could end up a disaster, adding specialty grains is a bit overkill. I would recommend a simple English ale kit for newbies. For those who are worried about the up front cost of a kit and want to just get ingredients from the grocery store, I would recommend brewing a JOAM (Joe's Ancient Orange Mead) or a cider using juice concentrate. On the other hand, because this recipe is a double-IPA, the extra hops will help kill off any harmful bacteria for those still new to the sanitizing process.

Equipment

As for the equipment, while the kit contained only a grain bag and bottle caps, it did have a helpful list of equipment. Conveniently, I have a brewing supply store within stumbling distance of my house called Bev Art tucked inside the Wild Blossom Meadery like a matryoshka doll. Buying a brew bucket is cheap, and even cheaper if you make it yourself, but is harder to use than a conical fermenter, which I'll cover in another post. If you're sticking with buckets, I recommend a 5 Gallon Pain Can Opener you can get online or cheaper at the hardware store.

Brew Day

2021/01/23

Enough about the recipe and equipment, how did it actually go? Steeping the grains is like making tea on a grander scale, and it smells like the most delicious malt o' meal you've ever made. Don't throw away those spent grains either. The banana bread is amazing, add it to your cereal, feed it to your chickens, or toss it into your garden. The hint to warm up LME before adding it is useful. Stir it off the bottom to keep it from scorching. I wasn't ready for unintended effects from adding in the hops. Remember kids, hops are related to a certain magic herb, so if you have poor ventilation prepare to get sleepy.

When chilling, I placed the brew pot into a utility sink full of water. Tap water temperature will be similar to ground temperate, and for Chicago that's 53 degrees F. Some use a wort chiller. I'm cheap and haven't bought one yet. Before brewing even starts, I freeze water in 32 ounce yogurt containers the night before. When the boil's done, placed the ice into the utility sink around the boil pot. Since ice floats, convection makes your wort cool faster.

Once the wort was room temperature, I poured the wort into the fermenter, topped off the water, and pitched the yeast  per instructions. Rehydrating dry yeast is not necessary (except when using yeast nutrient, which is a for a post another day). I sealed everything up and crossed my fingers.

Fermentation

2021/01/24

Everything was bubbling and smelled delightful. I was sad when it stopped. As per the directions, this was 5 days later, which meant to check the gravity. It was at 1.012, which was lower than the expected final gravity of 1.016. This means it's time for...

Bottling Day

2021/01/28

It was a bit nerve-wracking since it was the first time I've bottled. I used an auto-siphon to rack the beer into a bottling bucket from the fermenter. Corn sugar was added for priming per instructions. I was surprised by a strong green apple smell. I didn't realize until later than this was acetaldehyde because the yeast didn't convert it all to ethanol, despite the lack of bubbling in the airlock. In the future I would make note to let the beer mature longer in the fermenter.

Then I attached the beer wand to the siphon tube. The beer wand was very handy. I strongly recommend using one for first timers. My wife was there for moral support in case of disaster, but I managed to get most of the beer into the bottles. For the spillage, I now use a baking sheet with raised edges, to avoid a night of mopping. I was impressed by the sheer magnitude of 5 gallons worth of bottled beer.

Tasting

2021/02/12

I dutifully waited the two weeks the recipe recommended for bottle conditioning. Based on the gravity calculator, it ended at 1.060-1.012x131.25 = 6.3% ABV, plus a guestimate of 0.5% for the priming sugar. The "green apple" smell had gone, but it hops smell was as potent as what had bubbled through the airlock earlier. Drinking it, it was very hop-forward, and quite crisp and refreshing. Every subsequent gulp though got increasingly bitter due to that gosh-darned TAS2R38 gene. I guess I'm not a big fan of double IPAs? Bringing the brew to parties though, others didn't seem to mind the bitterness, and found it quite pleasant.

I was encouraged enough to try again. This time I wanted something more fruity and less bitter. Next journey would be a mango APA...