First Brew!

First ever brewing day.

Disaster is a strong word. It wasn’t a disaster.

I started the brew day extremely optimistically, I was very excited. I arranged everything out and weighed everything to the right measures. I started to heat up the water, and that’s when I learned my first lesson.

I don’t have a hob that is powerful enough to heat 4 gallons of water. Or at least, I don’t have a hob that’s powerful enough to heat 4 gallons of water within 5 hours or so and stay boiling. This means that my first brew day was a tortuous experience. It took an hour and a half just to heat the water up to steeping temperature.

When it finally did reach steeping temperature, I popped the grain in. I didn’t realise when I placed the order that I had ordered crushed crystal malt that was way darker than I realised, it was a chocolate malt. This means that my ‘pale ale’ is going to be a lot darker. I guess it’s just ‘ale’ now. Second lesson learnt.

After steeping the grains for a while I had a really dark wort, which took another hour and a half to reach boiling point. If I’m being completely honest, I’m not even sure I ever reached boiling point. I certainly never reached a vigorous boil. It only managed to get to a simmer, with small bubbles coming out of the wort, making a really gentle boil. I am guessing this is OK, because it is the heat which is converting sugars, not the actual act of boiling. That’s what I tell myself at night. I can’t have wasted all that money on ingredients…

So a gentle simmer was all I could get, so I added the malt extract and started timing the boil then added the tasty tasty hops. Just a little sidenote; I got hops in my nose from smelling them, and my faced twitched for the rest of the day, which was weird. Yes. I snorted hops accidentally.

After the boil had finished, I cooled down the wort in my sink. Which is when I learnt lesson number 3 – I either need a bigger sink or a wort cooler. It took about an hour for the wort to cool, and this seems way too long.

Anyway, I pitched the yeast and now it is fermenting in my room. I wasn’t sure at first but I had a cheeky check last week and saw that there was a ton of foam from the yeast, so fingers crossed all is well.

Only time will tell, so in the meantime I’m gonna sit around drinking other people’s beers. This isn't a good hobby for impatient people.

Edit: Reddit user exige1981 pointed out that the boil isn't for converting sugars, that is what the mash etc is for. The boil in extract is just to extract hoppy goodness. Here's HOPing it worked!