Brewing Beer

 For about the past year my wife and I have been getting into the home brewing action with a trip to the local-not-so-local homebrew shop in Westminster CO. Our first brewing endeavor started not with beer, but wine. At the time I was not at all into wine. I was a microbrew guy to the core. Elise was definitely a wine girl with a knowledge of good beer. As the story goes, during our engagement we visited "Do your Brew" just to "look". After spending a short while looking, we were told that making wine was a simple process and would only take a little bit of our time and we could brew on premises. That day we started a Old Vine Zinfandel. And our home brew fun had begun.

 Last November my wife and I brewed our second batch of beer. It didn't have a classification of its own, however it did have a kick. Measuring 14+%ABV this was a strong beer. It had problems though. The taste was too earthy and there was very little carbonation, if any at all. The brewing part was great, my wife, brother and good friend all came over to enjoy the event. Thanksgiving dinner was the debut of the beer and I was disappointed. I believe all the guests at the thanksgiving dinner thought the same (even though they didn't say anything). Except Elise, she is always an encouragement and never lets me be defeated.
...Fast forward 4 months and a move to Minnesota...
I decided on a Imperial Nut Brown Ale for our next brewing adventure, the only brew since the epic failure a few months prior. Whenever we brew there is always beer on hand to drink, after all, its part of the experience. I have a few bottles of the failure brew sitting in the corner of our dinning room and I decided to pour a glass and give it a little sip. After pouring I noticed  a great deal of carbonation, full head, and the aroma of the beer was good, the taste was a lot less earthy. It actually turned out ok. The only venerable was the temperature, room temp instead of refrigerated.

 Now for the brewing of the Imperial Nut Brown Ale...
We begin the night by drinking Trout Slayer made by Big Sky Brewing Company in Montana. By we I really mean I because currently Elise is carrying our first baby. (We will get to meet our little girl in about a month). First steps in brewing is to clean everything to make sure your beer does not pick up any off flavors. At this stage I'm also making sure I have everything I need, ready and available.

After the steeping grains 

During the boil

 Time to get the brew pot doing its thing. I put about 10qts of water in and bring it to a temperature of 150. I steep the grain bag in this water for about 25min then remove the brew pot from the heat before adding the extract. (This beer is a partial mash so it includes both grains and extract). This brew calls for a couple things I have never used. Maltodextrin and powder malt extract in addition to the liquid extract I am familiar with. Then back on the burner to a full boil once everything is dissolved. The total time boiled is 1 hour with three stages of hops. The hop schedule is 45min 5min 2min.

 After the boil we cooled the wort as fast as we could by putting the brew pot in the kitchen sink and spraying down the sides of the pot with the sprayer attachment, making sure no water enters the wort. Once I got the temperature down to 90 I transferred the wort to the primary fermenter and added cold water to bring the total volume up to 5 gallons. Once we get to this point, we take a gravity reading. This beer has a gravity of 1.076 which translated into a potential alcohol of 10%. So with those numbers, I figure the final alcohol reading will be between 6-8%ABV. After I take my readings I pitch the yeast and seal it up. We will be leaving it in the baby room where it is currently dark and cool. Not to worry, the beer will be out before the baby comes in.