A corner of my man-cave.

Debbiebrau — Part I: Primary Fermentation

Debbie, my mother-in-law, got me an awesome brewing kit from Northern Brewer for my birthday. I hadn’t gotten a full free day to do the initial brewing step until this Friday after thanksgiving. The brewing recipe is called the Caribou Slobber, and I’ve named the batch Debbiebrau.

Step 0: Gather the stuff.

A 5-gallon stainless steel pot, the beer recipe ingredients, coffee, YouTube video with brewing instructions, and a sweet-ass painting of a boat (artist: Lucky Lennox).

Step 1: Put water in a pot.

If you look carefully at the reflection in the stainless steel pot, you’ll see my gym shorts (center) and Arya (right).

Step 2: Steep grains.

TIL: these white sacks are called “muslin” bags.

Step 3: Warm up the liquid malt extract in hot water.

The water is brown because I dumped coffee grinds in the sink after I was done with them. But I’m not going to lie, our sink looks pretty gross any day of the week.

Step 4: Take out the steeped grains and wait for it to boil.

I literally watched water boil for half an hour.

Step 5: Pour in liquid and dry malt extracts.

Stir until the malt extracts have fulling dissolved.

Step 6: Dump in the hops.

And repeat this process two more times at differing times of the cook, with different packets of hops.

…60 minutes later…

We have wort!

Step 7: Cool the wort.

Apparently it’s beneficial to cool the wort as quickly as possible, so I gave it an ice bath. I went to the gym for an hour and came back to see that the water in the ice bath was full-on warm. I had to dump and replace the water.

Step 7.1: Carry the 5-gallon pot of wort downstairs.

Note to self: don’t do leg day and primary fermentation on the same day. In fact, don’t do leg day at all. Ever.

Step 8: Sanitize the stuffs.

The equipment about to be sanitized.

Sanitizing the 6-gallon carboy. The auto-siphon that comes with the kit is awesome.

Not shown: making the sanitizing solution.

Step 9: Pouring the wort into the carboy, and pitching the yeast.

I forgot to take photos of me doing any of that, so here is a picture of the finished product.

Overall — if you include wait time, prep time, and cleanup — setting up primary fermentation took about five hours. Was a great day, and am excited to see how this caribou turns out.

Secondary fermentation in two weeks!