Sleep Over Ale

So, Pennie got me a brew kit for Christmas. What a wonderful wife I have! [I had a hint that was what I was getting as I had to carry it in from the car before Christmas. With just enough time to add some books to my Amazon wish list.]

Included with the kit was a can of this:



and a few pounds of malt extract and corn sugar. Glen came over on Monday, and we started the pot going.

The recipe that came on the back of the can said to just use the can, while the alternate recipe inside said to add 2.2 pounds (1 kg) of corn sugar. The recipe we decided to follow was from Papazian's book The Complete Joy of Home Brewing, called Avagadro's Expeditious Old Ale. Here is what we actually did:

Heated the can of malt in a pot of hot water for about 15 mins. Then emptied it into a 3 gallon stock pot. Added 2 pounds of Muntons Dark Malt Extract, and 1 pound of corn sugar. [Papazian said the Muntons' kit should be 6.6 lbs. The can had 3.5 lbs, with the 2 lb of dry extract. So we added 1 lb of the sugar. According to the table on p22 this is within the correct range of sugar to malt. We should get a dark, full bodied ale with a medium to high alcohol content.] Then, added enough tap water to about half fill the pot.

As we were getting this going, we added the packet of yeast to a cup full of boiled water in a sterile jam jar to hydrate.

Recipe on the can said we did not need to boil the wort (as this mixture is called), but the book said we did. Plus, I wanted to get the finishing hops in, so we boiled for 15 minutes. Then, added 0.5 oz of Cascade hop pellets (6.3% acid content) and boiled for 1 more minute. Then, we plunked the pot with the wort into a sink full of ice water to cool it down to below 80 F.

Man, I hate the imperial units. But I'll stick with them, as that's what the recipes tend to use.

OK, so we now had cooled wort. We santitized the fermenter vessel (a 5 gallon glass carboy), then added a couple of gallons of boiled (then cooled) water to it. We added the wort through a funnel that had a fine mesh filter. Or, at least, we started to. Precipitate in the wort quickly clogged the mesh, so we ditched it and just used the funnel without it. Pouring from high to try and get some air in the vessel. Then, added cool tap water directly to the vessel to make it up to 5 gallons. Pitched in the yeast, and stuck on the airlock.

Finally, we stuck the whole thing into the downstairs shower. Hey, we never use it anyway. This was about 8 pm on Monday.

Next morning I came down and saw the mixture trying to get out of the airlock! Quickly took it off and santitized my tubing. Also realized, I had not taken an Original Gravity (OG) reading on the wort last night. So, stuck the tubing into the wort, and took a sample. Not-Quite-Original-Gravity (NQOG) was around 1050 at this point. Then resanitized the tubing and bung and put it in the top of the fermenter.



My work write-ups are not this informal, just in case you were wondering. But not too much different. Also, this is not too much different to what I do at work anyway. Throw some stuff in a fermenter and let it grow. Course, simply sanitizing (killing most of the microorganisms) instead of sterilizing (killing all of them) is killing me.

Wednesday am now, and the blow-off tubing is still in place. Its still bubbling away nicely. Will probably take it off later though and put the airlock back on, as it is starting to slow down some.

Oh, and the name? Callum's friend Henry was having a sleep-over on Monday night. Robert (Henry's dad) was going to try and make it here, but had a meeting. Hopefully he'll be here for the bottling (and the drinking)!