My Homebrewing Attempt

I’ve only homebrewed a couple of times. I’ve had a couple of disasters, but mostly just mediocre beer. I’ve tried a pretty decent number of homebrew that was delicious though, so I keep trying. I figure that even if my batch sucks, I can always boil some bratwurst in it!

This time I bought the Bavarian Hefeweizen ingredient kit from Beer Crazy in Urbandale. It’s a fairly simple kit (which is needed for a guy like me). Instead of having to steep the grains I got one that uses malt extract. The only ingredients were a couple cans of malt extract, liberty hopes, yeast, and priming sugar.

As with most things, the process is simple but the devil is in the details. If you’ve been following the homebrewing guest blog series written by my friend Ian then you’ve got this down, but I’ll give you the brief version.

1st – Sanitize everything you’re going to be using. Then do it again, just to be safe

2nd – Boil 1.5 gallons of water.

3rd – Stir in 1 can of malt extract and 1 oz liberty hops, return to a boil for 35
min

4th – Remove from heat, add second can of malt extract and 1 oz liberty hops

5th – Return to boil for an additional 15 minutes

6th – Put 2.5 gallons cold water into your fermenting bucket (vessel if you want to
sound fancy)

7th – Slowly pour your hot mixture into the fermenting bucket

8th – Once mixture cools to under 90 degrees, sprinkle 1 pack yeast over mixture.
Wait 10 minutes, gently use 1 or 2 spoon strokes to stir yeast in.

9th – Put airlock in the lid of your fermenting bucket and leave it alone for about a week

Coming soon I’ll put up a post about the bottling process. For now, isn't that picture of the bottom of my fermentaion bucket disgusting?