Jared: Brewmaster.

Chicago.

I gave Jared the quick lesson in homebrewing this weekend, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it turns out well. Though the recipe kit was different than my first batch, the whole process was pretty much the same. We deviated from the printed recipe, in part because I can act like I know what I'm doing. I don't, actually.

I do, however, have the experience of a few batches under my belt, and few bits of equipment¹ that your typical, beginning homebrewer isn't going to shell out for. So we modified the instructions. The recipe went more or less like this:

• Steep the included grains in 6 quarts of water. We used a gallon, because that should be plenty for a pound of grain. Meanwhile, we started boiling up the additional three gallons so we wouldn't be waiting all day for it to happen.
  
  
• Stir in the included malt extract syrup, which is contained in a handy plastic pouch. Instead of having to scrape it out of a jar or can with a spatula, you can simply snip off a corner and squeeze it in. This no-mess bag was my favorite part of the kit. We added this to the near-boiling three gallons, then added the liquid with the grains steeped in it.
  
  
• Add an ounce and a half of Fuggles hop pellets for 60 minutes of boil. Okay. At 3.3% alpha acid, though, there sure won't be much in the way of hop presence in this beer.
  
  
• Add an additional quarter ounce of the hops at 15 minutes and 1 minute. Done. We also dropped in a teaspoon of Irish moss at fifteen minutes, to help clarify. Also dropped in the wort chiller to sanitize it.
  
  
• Pour the remaining three and three-quarters gallons into the fermenter, then add in the wort. This seems like a stretch to get the wort down to a yeast-friendly temperature, and outright impossible with our four-gallon boil. So, much to Emily's consternation, we ran a garden hose into the house to run the wort chiller. It should be noted that we only spilled a tablespoon or two of water. Next time, though, I think I'll suggest walking the apparatus out to the patio.
  
  
• Since we didn't particularly want the sediment in the fermenter, we racked the wort off the trub and through a fine-mesh sieve to help aerate it. Then we added in enough sanitized water to bring the total up to five gallons. We also took a hydrometer reading, and found an original gravity of 1.044.² The kit lists 1.037, and I'm guessing that we may actually have a little less water than five gallons.
  
  
• Pitch the yeast. Those Wyeast packs are great, because it really looks like they could explode at any moment. They don't, of course, and there's just a short hiss of escaping carbon dioxide when you open the pouch, but it's always freaky the first time.

That pretty much sums it up. Jared gets to learn the ropes of bottling next weekend, when I put my latest batch into bottles. Might as well give him the tour, without needing to invite myself over to his place, over and over, just to explain how.

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¹The ones that come to mind are the 10-gallon stainless steel stockpot from a restaurant supply house, and the immersion wort chiller. These were two major purchases at about the same time. The stockpot's great, because I don't need to worry about the wort boiling over. Unfortunately, it's too big to fit in the sink, which makes it impossible to cool down in a cold water bath. (Not that bringing 4 gallons of boiling liquid to below 80°F is ever easy that way.) Therefore, the next purchase was the wort chiller, which was worth every cent for all the hassle it's saved.

²I think it'll be about 4.2% ABV, when it's all done. A nice, easy-drinking beer.