So we’re still trying to get ourselves settled and our lives in order. Part of that is just simply getting into a routine that suits us in our new world. One of the nice things about being back in Chicago is living in a house with space. As a result, we’re trying out various household activities to entertain and enlighten us during these cold winter months. Among these, I’ve taken to baking my own bread (going a month strong so far and still doing it every week). Well, one thing I’d wanted to take up in England but lacked the space and time was brewing beer. Back in my more innocent days, I had been a part of a trio of fellow brewers. This being college and us being under 21, we found this was a bit of a loophole and was an easy way to drink good beer without the whole fake-ID thing (I won’t go into details how). Being a bunch of geeks, we gave our non-commercial enterprise a name and a website. One of my partners in crime emailed this morning and I was reminded of this and managed to find the “Brewery” website. It’s from the internet archive and it looks like the links are dead, but it was a fun reminder.

Anyway, here I am, older, wiser and more cynical and I’ve decided to start it back up. It’s amazing how far American beer has come (but I’ll save this for another day) and I’ve since found out that two other coworkers who sit near me are doing the same thing. I went out a few weeks ago and bought a home brewing kit. Last weekend, before the super bowl, was my moment of truth. In my previous experiences, I was just a cog in the home brewing machine. I sat around, stinking up a dorm kitchen only really understanding some bits of the process (I believe my official role was the guy who broke things because I once broke our thermometer). As I found out, brewing alone can be a bit challenging. It’s not impossible, but there is always a moment or two that other people around you make it more fun. After finding out the hard way that my kettle was too small, I enlisted the help of Anne who was kind enough to keep me company and pitch the wort into the fermenter. But, besides the question of how to use the hydrometer and whether I was anal enough in my sterilization, the beer was happily bubbling away within a day. It slowed down in the usual expected time and I decided it was time to transfer it to the secondary fermenter (you do this to re-energize the yeast and clear out the sediment the yeast creates).

Here’s the brewer in the middle of transferring the beer from the primary fermenter to the secondary one. The beer he is drinking is Half Acre, not his own. Note the assistant brewer, aka. Simon, observing the process.

Here I am with the fully transferred beer putting it in the closet to keep it nice and dark while it hopefully keeps fermenting and clears a bit.

For those of you wondering why you transfer your beer in the middle of the process, this sediment is a good reason. It can impact the brewing and whatnot. Tons of dead yeast, yummy!

I had a bit of a sample of the beer and besides it being a bit flat, there were some good tastes going on. I hope that I can follow this post up with something in a couple of weeks saying my first batch came out tasty, but you never know. It’s a learning experience and it’s a lot of fun. After a batch or two, I’ll be much better at it and will hopefully be making some tasty beer. For now, here’s hoping for some beginnings luck.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 12th, 2011 at 5:38 pm and is filed under Chicago, Photos, Rogers Park. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.