Small and Larger Rewards

As I sit awaiting the cascade to finish on a just-poured Guinness Stout, a reward for a few hours of hard work, I am also awaiting a slightly larger payday in a slightly larger container about 10 feet away that will be harvested after a few weeks of hard work. I am of course talking about the 5 gallons of just-brewed wort that is currently (and for the next 2-3 weeks will be) serving as nourishment for some low-sedimentation, low-to-medium-final-gravity yeast. I am throwing these terms around like I actually know what they mean, but I am, in every sense of homebrewing, a Grasshoppa.

The final product will (hopefully) be a full-bodied, malty, high-gravity Imperial Blonde Ale (again with the terms I don't fully understand any more than the average brewphile).

From beginning sanitization of equipment (used a store-bought concentrated, non-rinse chlorine...and I rinsed anyway) to final drying of clean-again equipment, the 1st leg of this Tour-de-Chance took just over 4 hours: approximately 5:30pm to 9:30pm. I say Tour-de-Chance as this supposed payday could turn out to be nothing more than five gallons of high-alcohol sugar water. Hopefully the fine folks at Brewer's Best idiot-proofed this package to the point where it is Me-proofed.

I of course had the help of Brew (gin) Meister Jerz, and the process would have definitely had some complications without an accomplice, such as liquid transfers (of which there were many), an extra set of hands to stir, etc... At the suggestion of the Hophead (fancy Brewphile word for one who loves overly hoppy brews) at the homebrew store, I went with a Brewer's Best prepackaged kit that measures out pre-engineered/prepared ingredients, including pre-cracked honey malt grains, liquid and solid malt extract, and hop pellets (aroma, flavoring, and bittering).

As my journey of education is merely shoving off the dock (I have read about 30% of several hard and soft-copy references, including Homebrewing for Dummies), I thought it would be useful to record some points for next time.

-I hope sterilization was sufficient: short of running every piece of hardware through an autoclave, I probably could not have gotten everything more sterile
-Used tap-Brita-filtered water for primary wort boil and wort dilution
-double-simmered liquid malt extract to increase viscosity and used every ounce by means of a plastic spatula (Brewmeister Jerz was good enough to stir with brew spoon as I added it)
-After the steeping of the 1 lb. of honey malt grains in a grain bag, took a strainer through the early wort to remove stray grain husks and other solids (few and far between)
-proofed (fancy brewers word for soaked and woke up) yeast in ~6oz. cold water...according to the "For Dummies" chap, this helps to wake the yeast up
-When cooling the wort after your boil, you will need at least a half pound of ice...or you will have to use various vacuum-sealed foods from your freezer as I did, as I was probably not as patient as I should be
-Was not able to get the stupid siphon working, so dumped the wort into the primary fermenter and poured last remains of it through a fine strainer to minimize sediment (fancy brewer word: trub) that went into the wort
-Diluted with several gallons of filtered water at room temp
-took a hydrometer reading, was way too high (liquid too thick) when there was 4.5 gallons of water, once we got it to an even five gallons, hydrometer had a reading of 1.067, exactly where the fine folks at Brewer's Best said it should be)

Tune in again shortly for a chronicle of the secondary fermentation in the carboy (old-school water jug like you see in Mad Men)...hopefully in a few weeks I'll get to sit down with some of you and enjoy the first pour of Brickhead Brewery's Imperial Blond Ale.

My only regret thus far (though I probably would have regretted it the other way if I had gone through with it): I didn't taste the wort as a hunter tastes the blood of his prey...okay let's just settle down.

To Your Health-
mp