Great Hope Ale

Over the weekend I celebrated my birthday with friends... at a friends. You see my apartment is small. The kitchen is small, but more importantly, I have no storage. You see, I need storage so I can store stuff to make beer. Well, actually, I don't make beer all the time.... Well, actually, this is my first time at making beer. Why, why would a first class food snoot with a fetish for Zinfandel be making beer? I blame Mary Ellen.

We went to San Francisco Brewcraft a while back to find citric acid. Youknow, to make ricotta cheese with. The only place we could find this essential ingredient was at a place that sold all the stuff you could ever need to make your own beer. Sooooo I start fiddling and poking and asking questions, smelling some specialty grain and what not, and it just takes me. I HAVE to make some beer! I know, I'll do it on my birthday. I'll do it at Bill's house! He HAS a house! I can store all the stuff there, yea. I'll let him have a six or two for his troubles..............

Well, I turns out that Uncle Willy already had beer making supplies in his basement. He just hadn't gotten around to doing it. One beer making class (and numerous downloads on technique, recipes, history) later and I'm on my way over to make some brew. As it turned out the whole party became a sort of English Pub theme party. Fish & Chips, onion rings, and cheesecake. OK. Almost English Pub theme (I just couldn't get cheesecake out of my head).
(All of the eats today were supplied by my lovely wife, a fabulous cook and a terrific writer. Read about the food from this Pub fiesta on her blog.)

So as Gris, the brew master at SF Brewcraft says, "Don't read too much. It's supposed to be fun! We're making beer for Christ sake." (Gris and the whole crew at SF Brew are a good bunch of characters, so use them if you want to brew in the city.)

Let's get to it.

1) Make a grain tea. That's essentially what wort is. You
take a bag full of grain (oats, barley and something else) and put it in a cheesecloth sock. Put it into a large pot with about 3 gallons of water (you'll need a big 5 gallon pot for this) and tie the open end around the handle of the pot to keep the bag floating and not sitting on the bottom of the pot. I didn't get mine up high enough and burned a whole in the bottom of my sock. It helps if you have another person to stand around and share an already opened St. Peter's with.



2) Once the pot just starts to boil (not full-on boil), turn off the gas and wrap in a towel for 40 minutes to steep. Have another St. Peter's.






3) Now bring the wort (grain tea) back to a boil. Once it's boiling add the malt extract. This stuff is pure maltose for the yeast to eat, what's the saying, yeast eats sugar and shits alcohol? Yea, that's it. Maltose smells like maple and almonds, sweet yet slightly earthy.




4) Once the pot start to boil, my recipe called for Challenger hops for a full 60 minutes, and EK Goldings, 1oz at a time, to be dropped in for 30 minutes, and 15 minutes. And a St. Peter's. What that means is that I boiled, really boiled for a full hour, so use a timer. I added the Challenger hops at the beginning of the hour, 1oz of EK Goldings 30 minutes into the hour, and the last ounce of EK Goldings at 45 minutes into the hour. You need to stir pretty constantly at first as the pot starts to boil over. Once the foam subsides stir occasionally to keep what I call the "hops goo" incorporated.





Hops look like rabbit food.







5) Once the hour of boiling and trouble is over, put the entire 5-gal pot into an ice bath to cool it down for about 40 minutes. This is called the cold break. So break open an Anchor Steam, since all the St. Peter's is gone.




6) Hey batter... Hey batter.... Swing! Time to pitch the yeast. That's just a fancy way of saying, put some yeast into the goo. Once you've cooled the almost beer, you take your food grade "primary fermenter" and put in about 2.5 gallons of water, about a third of the almost-beer, and then put your yeast in. Then take the rest of the almost-beer and vigorously pour it into the "primary fermenter." This will stir up the yeast and make them hungry, after all there's a lot of maltose to consume! Seal the bucket, plug the hole in the top with an airlock and put it away for no more than 6 days. Have another St. Peter's that was miraculously discovered in the back of the fridge behind a packet of yeast.


7) Good night sweet yeast, funky ferment of grain and hope. (For the last part, put the bucket away from light and wild temperture fluctuations. The fermenting takes place at room temperture now for 6 days.) To be continued.........