I have always wanted to brew beer and when I became obsessed with growing hops last year, I knew it was time to make it happen. Our friends, knowing our tastes in beer, correctly ordered us the American IPA. After a couple of snafus (3-day winter power outage and confusion about whether the brew pot could be aluminum or if it should be stainless steel) we got her going this past weekend.
Hopefully we got it all right. True to my virgo nature, I spent a fair amount of time sanitizing everything with a bleach solution. Everything. Stovetop, countertop, microwave (why, I don't know - because it was near the stovetop?), utensils, buckets, brew pots, etc... As I mentioned, there was some initial confusion about the pot in which to boil the wort. A lot of people say aluminum is a no-no. That was frustrating because my large pressure canner pot is aluminum. The idea of using that was nixed. We ended up using the water bath canner. It's made of steel and has a ceramic coating. I checked on several home brew forums and found this to be a suitable choice for the first-go. If we're really excited about brewing again, we'll think about investing in a large stainless steel stock pot - $$$!! After all of my reading, I started seeing some opposing viewpoints. Figures. Suddenly, it was okay to use aluminum if you didn't try to clean it with a cleaner like Oxiclean. Apparently that will release some offensive tastes into your brew. Everyone has an opinion. Which is the right one? Jury is still out.
The water bath canner was barely big enough. Our biggest fear was a boil over which is common when you first add the malt extract. All went well though, no scorching on the bottom of the thin pot and no boil over mess to clean up.
We have no idea if this will be successful or not. All I can tell you now is that this stuff has taken on a life of it's own in the fermenting bucket. Lots of urps and burbs and bubbles going on. I suppose that's a good sign. AND - it smells like beer. Yes!
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