Making Beer

For Valentine's Day, I got Matt a Beer-making class for the 2 of us. Matt loves all different kinds of beers and has recently started talking about flavor profiles, pairing beers with food, and just the general beer making process. What better way to say "I love you" then with a class on making beer. Yes, I thought it was brilliant too.

After much search I found one place on the southside that, in addition to being a beer & wine supply store, has beer & wine making classes. All we needed to do was pick what kind of beer we wanted to make. Matt loves IPAs, but because I'm not a hops-gal, Matt chose the Hefeweizen.

So here's our chronicle of our Beer-making class.

The 1st half of the class was all about the home-brewing process and the chemistry behind beer.

During the class, we got to nosh on dorritos and unlimited beer. This beer they called "spring cleaning" because they used all sorts of leftover grains/spices/etc to make it. It was delicious but can never be recreated.

Here's a demo of beer going from the primary fermenting container to secondary container.

Our turn to make the beer.

In to the brew pot goes our "tea" of specialty grains for the Hefeweizen (the brew pot already had 2-row grains brewing- a basic profile).

After steeping, we take it out the wort and the tea bag.

Toil Toil Boil & trouble ... or Stir Stir

In goes the malt extract

2 kinds - 1 is hopped the other is not - both for hefeweizen

Now it's a caramel hue

The "tea" bag come out and we pour cold filtered water over it until we have 5 gallons an the temp goes below 70

In goes the yeast - liquid yeast especially for hefeweizen

It's all ready to sit and ferment. Yum Yum

The only picture I didn't take was when our teacher tested it for an appx alcohol content. A Hefeweizen should be pretty low and the scale should read 1050, but ours read 1058 so that was a little high. Oops!

They will transfer it to the secondary fermenting container. After the 15th, we can go and bottle it in which it will then sit for another 2 week at our house until it is ready to be drunk ...Labor Memorial Day Weekend!