day seventy-seven

i think it's high time for a little lesson in brewing, no? (#61) shoutouts to kyle and jake for doing this - frequently - and for sharing the wealth of both knowledge and beer. here's the abridged version:

1. mill the base grains (we didn't do this - they came pre-milled. or milled. whatever.)

2. soak the grains in approximately one hundred and fifty-five degree water for twenty minutes to an hour, then drain the sweet, sweet liquid (called wort) into a large kettle.


3. repeat step two (called sparging) two or three times.

4. once you have enough wort (for us, six gallons for a seven gallon pot) bring it to a boil.


5. once it's boiling, add the hops according to whatever "hop schedule" you're working with - typically bitter hops go in first, then aromatic hops. we put the first hops in right away, the next hops forty-five minutes in, and the last hops just a few minutes before taking the pot off the burner.



6. remove the kettle from the heat and cool the liquid down as quickly as possible. they use an immersion cooler - essentially you feed cold water through a copper coil via a hose from a tap, the water runs through the coil, cooling down whatever the coil is immersed in, and then exits the coil much hotter than when it entered, via another hose. check out the journey from sink to tub.



7. once the liquid has cooled down sufficiently (about fifty-five degrees for a lager), pour it into a fermenter. in this case, it's a giant glass jar - ok, carboy - that allows air out but no air in. really anything airtight will work.

8. after pouring it into the fermenter, add the yeast and let it do its thing - eat all the sugars and produce the alcohol - for weeks.

9. (optional) ferment it again a couple weeks in by moving the liquid into a clean fermenter and leaving the nasty grains and yeast collecting at the bottom behind.

10. enjoy beer!

so there it is, more or less. ok, significantly less - but in the interest of maintaining blog order i just wanted to give a brief synopsis. the truth is it takes a fair amount of patience and commitment. some other lessons learned: it's less complicated than i anticipated, you can take several liberties (intentionally or accidentally) and it still comes out allright, and the main difference between lagers and ales is the temperature at which they ferment. oh, and sanitizing is super important.

switching gears... here's a fun bit of word origin-iness (#8) i picked up yesterday: umpire. from the french, noumpere, it means a person without peer - that is, someone who could be fair in rendering a judgment because s/he is bound to no one party or family. i'm loving how so many seemingly short, self-contained words are turning out to be combinations of other, even shorter, more self-contained words. only a week in and i think i could be a lifer in this little linguistics club.

finally, i'd like to wrap up with a little post-mlk day inspiration that i'm finding applies to several decisions i've made in the past year or two (particularly when it comes to this never-ending cycle of contract employment i just can't seem to break). again, courtesy of the calendar: "faith is taking the first step, even when you don't see the whole staircase." - martin luther king, jr. short and sweet, just how i like my insights.