The Perfect Autumn Ale

There are very few people that know how to brew there own beer. So, I decided to share an easy way to brew quality beer in the comfort of your home. 

First things first. Pour a beer from your last batch (if this is your first batch a microbrew will work). In this case my last batch was an American Amber Ale that I named the "Tuff American Amber Ale". It had a beautiful amber color, complex flavors, wonderful aromas and 6.5%abv. What more could you want? 

Now to get started Brewing our Pumpkin Ale. 

1) Make sure you have all your equipment and ingredients. You can start your home brewery by buying a kit from your local Homebrew shop. Don't forget most kits do not include a brew pot or a food grade spoon. For my beer I purchased a pumpkin ale kit from Midwest Homebrew supply in St. Louis Park. Pumpkin was purchased at a local grocery store. I doubled the amount of pumpkin to give it a more pronounce flavor. There is a total of 60oz. of 100% pumpkin in this brew.

 2) Clean your brew pot, rinse thoroughly and add 2.5-3 gallons of water into your brew pot. Turn burner to high and watch the temperatures. Your goal is to reach and not exceed 150 degrees.

 3) Clean and sanitize the rest of your equipment. I cannot stress this enough. If you have unsanitary equipment you will taste it your final product. Once sanitized it can only be placed on a sanitary surface. Paper towels work just fine.

 4) You need to get all your crushed grains into your grain bag. I have mine crushed at the store because I don't have a grain mill at home. You only want to crack open the shell of the grain. Do not crush to a powder. You just want to get the flavors and colors out of the specialty grain leaving very little grain behind.

 5) Put your liquid malt extract in hot water (make sure its completely sealed). This makes it easer to pour.

 6) Now that your water is at 150 degrees you want to insert your grain sock into your brew pot and let it steep for 20-30 minutes.

Starting to infuse color

 7) Once your timer goes off take the grains out. You should have a nice color wort (pronounced wert) and a great foundation of a wonderful beer.

 Discard your grain bag any way you chose. I open the bag and scatter all my spent grains in the lawn to give the grass some carbons. 

 8) Remove your wort form the heat and pour in your malt extract. Make sure you are constantly stiring the wort so you don't scorch your malt extract. Its not fun to clean later.

 Add the brown sugar. Place back on burner and crank the heat to high. Get a good boil going. 

Pellet Hops 

9) Once you get your wort boiling, add your first package of hops.

 This will boil for  55 Minutes

 10) Prepare you pumpkin for easy handling and get your yeast soaking in a 1/4 cup of water. This will help your yeast start working quicker than just putting it in wort dry. We will come back to the yeast.

 11) Now that your timer has gone off its time to add the 60oz. of pumpkin...

 the cinnamon and nut meg and your last package of hops. Let this boil for another 5 minutes.

 12) When your last timer goes off you need to cool your wort as quickly as possible. The best way is with a wort chiller. But since I don't have one yet, I found an ice bath is the next best thing. Once the ice water gets warm, drain it and refill the sink with cold water.

 13) Once the wort reaches 100 degrees you can put it in your food grade pail.

 Top off your pail with cold water to bring the total liquid level to 5.25 gallons. This should bring your wort temp to 70degrees.  

 14) Take your original gravity reading. This  number tells you how much fermentable sugar are in your wort. It will also give you an indication of when your beer is done fermenting. You will also need this to measure your final alcohol reading when you bottle later.

15) Now you will pitch your yeast that has been sitting. Yeast will eat the sugars in your beer and convert them to alcohol.

16) Get your wort into your primary fermentation vessel. For my primary fermenter I chose a 6 gallon carboy.

 17) Put your air lock on or your blow off tube. A blow off tube is great in high gravity beers. Without it, you have a big mess all over your baby room... I mean... fermentation cellar.

 18) Place your fermenter in a cool dark place. Light and heat are enemies of fermentation. My fermentation cellar is the hall closet.

The beer on the left is a dunkelweizen. Going into bottles tomorrow.

If homebrewing is something you are going to try I wish you the best beer you have ever tasted. The most valuable books I have found are Homebrewing for dummies and The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. Both books are great resources for all experience levels.