Brew Day

We started our second beer of the brewing season last week, one called Old Luddite English Strong Ale. We practice what is called extract brewing, which means we purchase a box which contains all of the ingredients needed to brew a batch of a particular style of beer. Most beginning home brewers start with extract brewing, and if they want to exert more control over the beer, move to all-grain brewing, which requires a little more equipment and know-how. We've considered moving to all-grain brewing, but since the beers you can brew with extract kits are quite good, we will continue doing it this way for now.



The brewing process is quite simple, and the actual time spent actively doing some task is not long. On the first day, you start by bring about 2 1/2 gallons of water to a boil in your brew kettle.

While the water is heating up you usually will steep a mesh bag filled with specialty grains, which will give the beer some color and certain flavor characteristics.

After the water comes to a boil, you add a liquid malt extract and dry malt extract, as well as hops.


After the water has boiled for about an hour, it is removed from the heat and cooled as rapidly as possible. Some people use a wort chiller for this, which is basically coiled copper tubing through which cold water circulates, cooling off the water. Since we do our brewing in the winter months, it is easy enough to cool the water outside when it is 20 degrees with a supply of snow and ice.

After the water in the kettle has cooled to below 100 degrees, it is brought back inside and poured into a 6 gallon glass carboy, which has been filled with 2 gallons of cold water. After adding more water to bring the volume up to 5 gallons, the liquid in the carboy is aerated by shaking it back and forth.

After aerating for a few minutes, a sample is then taken of the liquid, which is called wort, to determine the specific gravity. This reading can be used to determine the eventual alcohol content of the beer.

At that point, a packet of yeast is poured, or pitched, into the carboy.
After the yeast has been pitched, it is time to let the wort ferment for a couple of weeks.












The latest carboy sits next to our first batch of the winter, a porter which has been fermenting since Thanksgiving weekend.

In a couple of weeks, we will proceed with the second phase of brewing, transferring the wort to another carboy to begin the secondary fermentation.