Brewing beer



Brew number 5



Brew number 4

I brewed 5 batches in 2010, each was 5 gallons. With each batch I learned a little more about beer and brewing. I created and brewed my own recipes, for me that creativity is a big part of the enjoyment. I have brewed six different beer styles and made notes about each with some slight recipe adjustments to be made. The specific ingredients selected and ratio of each can have a huge impact on the aroma and flavor of the finished beer. Beer is fairly simple in that there are 4 basic ingredients: water, malt, hops, and yeast. Yet for something so simple, things can go sideways in a hurry. Anybody that has done any brewing has probably heard tales of exploding bottles. Fortunately I have not had any bottles blow their top. But I have opened and recapped a few bottles adding yeast to salvage flat, under carbonated beer. And I still remember the morning I went to check on my fermenting wort and found it everywhere. The fermentation had been so vigorous that it was spewing out of the airlock and had even built up enough pressure to blow by the fermentation pail lid and sprayed out onto the floor. Lesson learned. Now I always use a blow off tube on the primary fermenter.



Bottle tree with sanitizer pump



Secondary fermenter