Not everyone should drink alcohol & I’m not advocating drunkenness, but this post is about brewing beer with my brother, which was fascinating.  Cooking often involves heat and chemical reactions, but rarely at such a scope as this process which takes weeks to months.

We brewed two small batches this day. 2 & 3 gallons each.  An amber and a wheat beer.

Grains are the backbone of the color & flavor. They need to be milled to extract the sugars (maltose).

The milled grains were placed in a sack to make their removal easier.  After you heat them you need to get them out.  Rather than straining the water this lets you just pull out the barley and other grains.

Hops carry the preservative quality of vitamin c and also counter the sweetness to bring balance to the beer’s flavor.

Yes, they are related to hemp. No, you don’t smoke them.

Once the wort (pronounced wurt) is boiled you need to cool it down. This can be done several ways including with this chiller.  The smaller pot was rested in some ice water in the sink.

The yeast & wort go into a carboy. This is a container that will keep the CO2 in, and the oxygen out to prevent funky flavors & spoiling from contamination.

After some time fermenting you can finally drink it.  This is not the beer we brewed, this is some other home brew my brother made.  It was delicious, just like it looks.