Hello there!
I have never brewed beer before, and I'm skint, but decided to give it a go without reading up or learning pretty much anything.
Since this morning I have read up on it properly, and quickly realised that almost everything I've done was completely wrong; now I know you're all thinking 'why would we care? this guy is just an ignorant prat who didn't do his homework before trying his first batch and now wants to boast about it'. That is not what I'm trying to do - I basically figured that as I've done everything pretty much without any prior knowledge it should be a pretty fun experiment to see what happens when you don't follow the rules - So, without any further waffling, here's a summary of what I've done:
I bought 500gm of Wheat Barley
500gm Brupak's Fuggles hops
1 sachet Munton's brewing yeast.
1kg sugar.
6 1L flip-top bottles (like on grolsh bottles)
My first mistake was not knowing about sanitising. I figured that with fermentation it was probably a good idea to make sure that everything was clean, so I took everything I was about to use and boiled it in the pot that I would use for 'cooking' the beer.
I filled the pot with 7L of water and brought it to around 80 degrees Centigrade.
I then added the Wheat Barley and kept it at a pretty much steady temperature of 80*c for 20 minutes. I then let it cool for half an hour and emptied it into another pot that I had sterilised with boiling water. I then cleaned out the first pot with boiling water, and strained the liquid back into it using a collender with a clean tea towel in it to filter out the barley.
I brought this to the boil and added approx 400 grams of the hops, and boiled the mixture for 20 minutes. I then added 200 grams of sugar, and 100 grams of orange-bloom honey, and the zest and juice of two lemons mixed it all in and boiled for a further 20 minutes. By this time the house STANK of hops. I tasted the liquid and it actually tasted like a really nice darjeeling (can't spell that!) tea - it was pretty sweet but had a very bitter aftertaste. I let it cool down and then filtered it using the same collander/tea towel method as before, until I was left with a misty yellow liquid - it looked exactly like hoegarden.
I let it cool to blood temperature, and meanwhile activated the yeast in a bit of water before adding it. I then looked on the internet, and found that I couldn't just bottle it straight away (that seems very obvious now! ) - As I had no fermentation bucket and nothing with an airlock I left it in the same steel pot until it started to show signs of fermentation (a few small bubbles floating to the top) - then I realised that if I left it there, un-covered it would just rot, so I figured that I'd take the bottle-bomb chance, bottled it and put the bottles in a steel box in the shed just in case.
So, my question to you guys is what do you think will happen? We'll take bets on it and whoever gets it right gets to flame me for being such an 'ignorant n00b'!
- H
I have never brewed beer before, and I'm skint, but decided to give it a go without reading up or learning pretty much anything.
Since this morning I have read up on it properly, and quickly realised that almost everything I've done was completely wrong; now I know you're all thinking 'why would we care? this guy is just an ignorant prat who didn't do his homework before trying his first batch and now wants to boast about it'. That is not what I'm trying to do - I basically figured that as I've done everything pretty much without any prior knowledge it should be a pretty fun experiment to see what happens when you don't follow the rules - So, without any further waffling, here's a summary of what I've done:
I bought 500gm of Wheat Barley
500gm Brupak's Fuggles hops
1 sachet Munton's brewing yeast.
1kg sugar.
6 1L flip-top bottles (like on grolsh bottles)
My first mistake was not knowing about sanitising. I figured that with fermentation it was probably a good idea to make sure that everything was clean, so I took everything I was about to use and boiled it in the pot that I would use for 'cooking' the beer.
I filled the pot with 7L of water and brought it to around 80 degrees Centigrade.
I then added the Wheat Barley and kept it at a pretty much steady temperature of 80*c for 20 minutes. I then let it cool for half an hour and emptied it into another pot that I had sterilised with boiling water. I then cleaned out the first pot with boiling water, and strained the liquid back into it using a collender with a clean tea towel in it to filter out the barley.
I brought this to the boil and added approx 400 grams of the hops, and boiled the mixture for 20 minutes. I then added 200 grams of sugar, and 100 grams of orange-bloom honey, and the zest and juice of two lemons mixed it all in and boiled for a further 20 minutes. By this time the house STANK of hops. I tasted the liquid and it actually tasted like a really nice darjeeling (can't spell that!) tea - it was pretty sweet but had a very bitter aftertaste. I let it cool down and then filtered it using the same collander/tea towel method as before, until I was left with a misty yellow liquid - it looked exactly like hoegarden.
I let it cool to blood temperature, and meanwhile activated the yeast in a bit of water before adding it. I then looked on the internet, and found that I couldn't just bottle it straight away (that seems very obvious now! ) - As I had no fermentation bucket and nothing with an airlock I left it in the same steel pot until it started to show signs of fermentation (a few small bubbles floating to the top) - then I realised that if I left it there, un-covered it would just rot, so I figured that I'd take the bottle-bomb chance, bottled it and put the bottles in a steel box in the shed just in case.
So, my question to you guys is what do you think will happen? We'll take bets on it and whoever gets it right gets to flame me for being such an 'ignorant n00b'!
- H