Back to Brewing: Oatmeal Stout Kit from Northern Brewer!

I love to brew beer, but I got to the point where I was going all-grain, all-time consuming brews.

With two little kids, and other things to occupy my summer time, it made it hard to dedicate the time to do the all-grains.

So, bring in the partial mash kits from Northern Brewer!

I have purchased supplies and kits from them before, so I figured they were a good place to start to reintroduce myself to brewing! I went for a kit that I haven't tried before, but had great reviews, and was a style I am known to like: Oatmeal Stout!

I love the kits, as NB does a great job of packaging them:

The first thing to do: setup the brewkettle9000©!!

Add 5 quarts of water to the brew pot, and bring it to a temperature of 165°F in the brewkettle9000©.

Once it reaches the desired temperature, add the bag of grains in the kit.

NOTE: If you put this in a nylon bag, make sure to keep it off the bottom of the kettle, unless you want the bag to melt!!!!

At this point, the temperature should be within a couple of degrees of 154°F. If it isn't there, add cold/hot water accordingly. While you are working on getting the temp to 154°, get another kettle with 5 quarts going with water heated to 170°F for sparging!

We'll want the kettle to stay at this temperature for an hour. The best way to do this is either wrap it in towels, put it in the oven, or keep it on low heat and monitor the temperature, or some combination of those :)

After one hour, put the mash kettle back on the burner and apply heat to get it up to 170°F. Separate the grains from the liquid by removing the bag, or scooping them out with a slotted spoon. 

Congratulations! You just made wort!

Now, we want to take that hot water, and pour it over the grains to get all the sugary, grainy goodness to add it to our wort (don't waste it!)

Anya helping me sparge, or ride her scooter, you decide :)

Slowly pour the water over the grains to make sure the grains don't spill back into the wort, and get the all the potential yummies out of the grains. Make sure to use all 5 quarts of sparge water!

Bring the water to a boil. Once there, turn off the flame, and add the malt syrup and malt power. Turning off the flame will make sure the malts don't get burned. Burned malts = not delicious beer!

After adding the malts, bring it back to a boil and add the hops! Let it boil for 60 minutes.

After 60 minutes, turn off the flame, and cool the wort with a wort chiller, or by putting it in the frigde/freezer. We are looking to get the wort down to 100°F.

Pour the wort into your carboy, and add cold water to bring it to five gallons. Shake the carboy to aerate the wort. 

Carboy, without Wort (I somehow missed getting a picture of it with wort!)

At this point, the wort should be around 78°F. If not, let it sit until it reaches this temperature, then add the yeast. Shake it again, and add your airlock. Let it sit for 2-3 weeks in a warm, dark place.

After the brew has settled down, about a month, it is time to bottle!

Transfer the wort to your bottling bucket, or get a piece of tubing with a cutoff switch, and clean bottles of course!

Add two cups of water, and 2/3 cup sugar to a pot, and bring it to a boil.

Slowly pour the sugar water into the wort, making sure not to splash!

Once in there, bottle it up!

 Add bottle caps, and place in a warm, dark place for a month.

Then, enjoy!

A follow up entry will be added in a month with taste results!!!

Nut Brown Update

I took the Nut Brown and transferred it to the 5 gallon Glass carboy on Sunday. It was in there for about 8-9 days before the primary fermentation settled down. While I was transferring the brew, I caught a hint of the hops...and I am happy to report that this will not be a super hoppy beer! Hooray for not using the same hops every single time!

Holiday Brew!

So I like to brew beer.  I'm not quite to the total grain "I make my own Extract" type of brewing but I hope to get to that point when I have the space.  My latest Brew was a holiday themed brew that had potential for disater.  Did it?  Read on to find out if it is all Silver Bells and Dumplings or if I ended up with Coal Beer

Beer Attempt #3

So since our first attempt at beer was a success, I attempted another Beer for This Chirstmas: A holiday porter.  Not super great, but not bad.  Here's a hint: be skimpy with cloves in beer...a little goes a long way.

But that was attempt #2...this post is about 3#!  In an effort to attempt a different brew every time Robyn and I decided to try making a barley wine.  We have both had a very decent barley wine-style ale, and thought "what the heck?"

We had help from our friends Dan and Candace...and I think it'll be alright...
I can say that now after the three days of looking like rust....