Pottery by Cú Chulainn: Brewing Day

With my brother in town brewing day finally arrived! Our first attempt will be a dry Irish stout in the tradition of Murphy’s or Guinness. We used the extract kit from Northern Brewer here…

http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/dry-irish-stout-extract-kit-2.html

Frankly the brewing day was uneventful. We added our grains to a mesh bag and steeped then as the water began to boil. The heavily roasted barley imparted flavor and color to the liquid.

Once we hit 170 F we removed the barley and brought the mixture to a boil. We then added the malt extract which is essentially syrup provided in a half gallon container.

Once the mixture was brought back to a boil we added the hops and boiled for 60 minutes as stated in the directions.

Finally, we plopped the wort outside to cool. It was about 20 F that night so it didn’t take long until it was cool enough to touch. We poured the wort into a carboy and added water to make a five gallon batch. We then took our original gravity readings.

After much debate and testing we determined our OG was 1.043. Lastly we placed a simple water valve to seal it and set the entire thing to begin fermentation. But not before we drank our unfermented wort. It was really sugary and despite Tim's acting will never get you drunk...

Fermentation was ridiculous! I woke up the next morning to an explosion of beer. Apparently the fermentation was so vigourous that the valve couldn’t keep up and my kraeusen had literally blown the bung off and created quite a mess!

So I had to attach my blow-off tube. The pressure in the carboy began to push out the extra foam slowly through the hose just as I expected. With the second end of the tube under a couple of inches of water I still had a good seal and there was no chance the kraeusen could clog my Thankfully I was fully prepared and knew how to handle the situation. Thanks Northern Brewer!