Finally, frigging B R E W D A Y

Picked up a turkey fryer a couple of months ago. This allowed me to overcome a major obstacle in my house which is pissing off everyone else in the family with sweet succulent scent of boiling malt and hops. Apparently, this alluring aroma does not have the same appeal to my wife and kids. Anyway. I assembled the fryer. Cruised to one of the many local 7-E's in the area and exchanged my empty spare propane tank for a full one. Cleaned and sanitized all the brew equipment. Set it up and started brewing!


The kit is a Belgian Strong Golden Ale from Northern Brewer.

Fire beneath the brew kettle:


Look at the boil! You can see the hops(green) in with the malt. When that stuff hits the boil the smell is incredible.


After an hour the wort (the stuff in the pot) needs to cool down. I used the stick the covered brew pot into the sink full of ice water method. Once cooled the wort was carefully poured into a fermentation bucket (first time starting off with a bucket). Water was added to get the total volume up to 5 gallons. The wort was aerated and the yeast pitched. An airlock was placed into the bucket to prevent nasty things from contaminating the beer.

Brew bucket with airlock:


Close up of airlock:


The yeast eats the sugars in the wort. In general this primarily produces alcohol and CO2. The CO2 builds up pressure and gets pushed out of the airlock. Currently this is "blooping" along fairly well. The bucket is acting as a primary fermentation vessel. After about 5 days or so the fermenting beer will be moved (racked) from the layer of dead yeast forming at the bottom to a glass carboy where it will continue to ferment at a slower rate for the next few months up to six months. After that it will be bottled. More when I rack the beer to the carboy!

Cheers!
BuBBy