Anyway, the beer brewing was a SUCCESS. And I actually did get to have a mini beer party. The initial plan from my sinister colleagues and friends was to actually finish up ALL my beer. But alas, pizzas and chicken wings caused stomachs to not being able to contain a lot of beer.

So in the end of the party, only managed to drink 9 bottles which is roughly about 6.5 litres of beer? So where are the pictures? Well, I was kinda busy eating and drinking to take any. I believe Darren took some pictures but I didn’t get it from him.

So now today at 22 July 09, I still have 8 bottles of beer remaining. Seeing that it has been 2 months since the beer was ready from drinking and I still have 8 bottles left does show that I’m no alcoholic. I am planning to finish up the beer soon and start to brew my 2nd batch. Will be ordering ingredients soon.

Okay, I can sense some of you complaining that the post is too wordy already. To end it off, a picture of my beer.

Beer...

Oh yeah… I am gonna go Bali tomorrow!. So hope that I’ll be able to take some decent pictures and blog about it!

Now that the fermentation has stopped, it’s time to bottle the beer. So I lay out the necessary items on my dining table.

All items layed out

So I’ll quickly run through few of the important items this round apart from of course… the beer.

Little bottler

Little bottler attached directly to the tap

First up we have this  nifty little thing known as the “Little bottler” and it attaches directly to the tap of the main fermenter. We’ll see how it is used in a short while.

Carbonation Drops

2 Carbonation Drops to each bottle

Then we have the carbonation drops. Carbonation drops are really sugars that aids to generate that “fizz” you get from the beer. We need to put in 2 drops for each bottle.

Bottle Cap

And let’s not forget the bottle cap.

So with that said, we go into bottling! The next 2 pictures will basically describe the whole process. We’ll just open up the tap and push up the empty bottle to the little bottler and voila… beer flows into the bottle.

Push the bottle up onto the little bottler

Beer will flow into the bottle

We just have to make sure that we pull the bottle down once the beer goes up to the neck of the bottle. Once that is done all we need to do is fasten the cap we then have successfully bottled the beer. This step is repeated till all 30 bottles are filled up.

Bottled beer

The bottled beer will need to mature for at least 2 weeks before it’s good for consumption. The 2 weeks is needed for further fermentation within the bottle and also to give it the beer “fizz”. So back to the chiller box it goes and now we put on the solid cover. The ice packs will continue to be rotated during this period to keep it nice and cool for this process.

Back to the chiller for 2 weeks

So guys and gals, beer party is on 6 June 09 Saturday!! Woohooo..

Not much activities these few days apart from changing the ice packs daily. Nothing spectacular and I suppose nothing worth photographing.

However today I did do something different. I did a test to see whether the fermentation is complete and the beer can be bottled. This is done by using a hydrometer provided in the brew kit.

Hydrometer

What I did was put the beer into the tube provided and the put in the hydrometer. What happens is that it will sink and then float when stabilized. There’s some sort of measurements on this hydrometer. Basically when fermentation is completed and can be bottled, the hydrometer will actually sink more to the bottom.

If you look carefully at the picture, that point would be just under the red strip above the beer level. So more fermentation time needed. Of course I took a sip at the beer as well. Seems beer like (duh) but now I think it’s still slightly on the “light” side. Let’s see what happens when it’s completed.

I suppose I’ll be doing the test again 2 days later and see if it sinks further. So next blog post will be.. BOTTLING.

Anyway, now that my Brite Ice is frozen and I’ve RTFM as well as view the instruction DVD, I’m ready to go… or am I?

First off, I needed to sanitize the fermenter and any parts that will touch the beer. This is to minimize contamination. This done by pouring boiling water into the fermenter as well as the parts. Well for the parts I just drowned them in hot water.

Sanitizing the fermenter. Poured hot water into it. Don't mind the messy sink.

Sanitizing the parts.

After sanitizing the parts, we open up the beer concentrate. And there we will find the brewing yeast.

The beer concentrate. Can see me through the reflection.

Yeast that comes with the beer kit. This is what ferments the concentrate.

Following the instructions, I have to leave the beer concentrate in hot water for a few minutes. This is done to soften the concentrate a bit so it’s a bit easier to pour out. So that I did.

"Softening" the beer concentrate

While waiting for the concentrate to soften, I then start to attach the tap to the fermenter. The tap will be used during the bottling process, so we don’t have to scoop the beer into the bottles. Will illustrate that when the time comes for me to bottle my beer.

Tap attachment of the fermenter

Okay, few minutes later back to the beer concentrate. I’d assumed it be soften now so I proceed to open up the can.

Opening the can. Hands modeled by my lovely wife.

Then, as the instructional DVD suggests… “give the beer concentrate a taste..”. Taste pretty much like…. concentrated… malt like thingy.

My sis taking a swipe at the concentrate

Now that the taste test is over, I take a quick look at the manual. To find that the next step requires me to open up the brewing sugar.

RTFM

Brewing Sugar

With the brewing sugar it’s time to do some mixing. Pour in the beer concentrate into the fermenter followed by the brewing sugar. Then add in 2 litres of hot water and stir.

Pour concentrate into fermenter

Pour brewing sugar into fermenter

Pour in 2 litres of hot water and stir

After stirring for few minutes and I no longer see any sugar lumps, cool water is added into the fermenter till the 23 litre mark. I just use filtered water for this purpose. After all the water is in, I give it a quick stir.

Pour in cool water till 23 litre mark

At this point, I stick on the “stick on” thermometer. This thermometer is used to measure the temperature of the mixture. Supposedly for this brew, the temperature for the mixture should be between 21-27 degrees celcius for optimum fermentation.

Stick on the "stick on" thermometer.. duh

At this point, I looked at the temperature reading… and to my horror.. it’s 32 degrees. No good. From what the instruction says, the temperature should be below 27 degrees before I can put in the yeast and seal the fermenter for the fermenting process. I needed to bring down the temperature of the mixture.

I put the fermenter in the chiller box and put in all the ice packs hoping to crash cool it slightly. But NO… after 30 minutes, the temperature ain’t going down. So guess what happened next….

The fermenter in my room!!!

I moved the chiller box right into my bedroom and turned on the air conditioning! haha. Wasn’t my suggestion, it was the Mrs. It was quite hot in the living room so she suggested bringing into the room during the fermentation process. Being in the aircon room did help but only slightly. After 2 hours the temperature hit 29 degrees. I got fed up and heck care, I just pitch the yeast.

Put in the yeast

After the yeast is in, I seal the fermenter and attach the airlock.

Attach the air lock

Mission accomplished. Well, hopefully it will start to ferment considering I didn’t follow the instructions to the dot and put in the yeast before the right temperature is achieved. But heck, I needed to sleep already.

You’ll know in my next blog post whether it worked or not. haha.

I’ve been rather intrigued with the idea of brewing my own beer at home ever since my friend Selina told me that her sis does it. That was like 2-3 months back and I’ve been reading about it ever since in terms of how it’s done and surprisingly if you get a micro brew kit, it’s rather easy.

Before that, let’s take a quick look at what’s in the kit.

Feel kinda excited but won’t be able to start everything today. Gotta freeze my ice packs first and of course I need to RTFM (read the fucking manual) first. Oh, the kit also comes with an instructional DVD that roughly shows you how to start brewing.

So I will start the brew tomorrow night after work. Will document the process with more pictures.