Everyone is coming over for a pre xmas celebration today so we are going to test a bottle..a bit early but we want to test one before xmas :-)

Finn shook the bottle a little and it did not look like there was any CO2 in there but it needed to be tested. The cap was popped and we filled 3 glasses, lo and behold there was foam!! It seems we have made beer after all :-). We all seem to like the taste, but there is not quite enough bubbles yet. We will let it sit a week or so more. It does taste nice I think, a round flavour and a touch bitter. I look forward to testing more :-)

-bernt

So we are bottling today, these are the steps we took:

1. Added the Wurt (or however you spell it) that we took out before adding yeast. 1 bottle pr. dunk. This is done instead of adding 1/4 ts or so of sugar to each bottle, this is to get CO2.
2. Split into 3 jobs. Cleaning, capping/transport and filling.
3. Cleaning with a Crystal Soda mix, to disinfect.
4. Using a tube to transfer the beer to the bottles.

It all seemed to go rather well, we did not have the right equipment to measure the gravity so we are unsure if there is any alcohol in this but we assume there is.

Now we wait...

-bernt

So we tasted the beer and it tasted like flat beer, therefore we decided it was time to bottle, after a bit of discussion we decided the bottling would be done tomorrow. We went to IKEA and bought 70 bottles to use, transparent (not really the best) so we need to keep them in a dark place but they are the old type with a flip top (or whatever you call them). We are exited :-)

-bernt

So it is still not fermenting so dad talked with Rob to find out how his is going. His had started earlier in the week. They decided that we should taste it and see if it still was sweet or like beer. If it is sweet we should add some more yeast and if it tastes like beer we are to bottle it.

-bernt

My dad has been checking the beer every day but it is still not fermenting...something is not quite right. Hopefully soon.

-bernt

I'm posting this a couple of weeks late but hopefully I remember most of what happened correctly :-)

So we got up early 08:30 or so for my part, still not feeling great but I had been waiting for this the last month or so...no way a bug was going to stop me from brewing beer. I was picked up and headed up to my parents place to wait for our pickup by Rob. Eventually he came and we all headed off towards Ims where we would learn how to brew beer together with Rob.

We got started as soon as we arrived at the farm where it was all going to happen. The first thing we did was go over the recipies Rob had made and decided to brew a brown sort of bitter ale.

Will just write down the point now then continue the writeup later...

1. Got the tanks ready, the first one was heated allready...can't remember the temp..
2. Measured out the malt grains we where to use then started grinding it
3. Added the ground malt to the water and let it soak for about 60 min.
4. Now we transferred the water & malt sugar water to the other tank for cooking.
5. heated up the water to boiling temp, while we waited we measured out the various hops types we where to use.
6. Gradually added the various hops types at the stated intervalls approx 15 min between each.
7. Got the cooling coils ready then as we hit the right time put them in and started the cooling process ( he said that the quicker we can cool it the better ).
8. Transferred the wort to the "dunks"

When we got home we did this:

1. Removed enough wort to fill a 1.5 l bottle from each "dunk", this was "correct" method to re introduce sugar after the fermenting and before bottling. Usually you add sugar to each bottle.
2. Added the yeast
3. Capped the "dunks"

Then we wait...

All in all a fun day and we learned a lot about brewing beer :-)

-bernt