Mmmmm....homebrew

A few weeks ago I took up homebrewing as a hobby. It's something I have wanted to do for years, but just never made the investment until now. I love beer, and I love good beer even more. As my tastes and preferences have evolved over the years, it has become increasingly expensive to purchase the beer that I like the most (oh, this is Daniel by the way). So that brings us to homebrewing. A former college roommate of mine started brewing a few years ago and inspired me to do the same. After purchasing my homebrewing equipment, I recruited a couple friends to split the cost of ingredients in payment towards splitting the output of beer.

For batch number one, we went with a basic American Wheat. Meeting in the Brink kitchen a little over 3 weeks ago, we sanitized the equipment, boiled the wort, pitched the yeast, and left the five gallons to ferment in the study closet. (I don't have a picture of this process, sorry). Five days later our wort was finished fermenting, officially becoming beer. It didn't look all that great (as you can see) but it smelled divine. The next step was to siphon it into a glass carboy to allow all of the sediment to drop.A few days later the beer had cleared up considerably, so we added some priming sugar (to start the carbonation process) and moved it into bottles. 52 in all. About two weeks later, we popped open the first few. The satisfaction of drinking my own homebrew outweighed the actual beer. It was good, but it wasn't great. Since we used such a basic recipe the flavor is lacking complexity. Right now it is very similar to a Blue Moon. It will probably change a bit as it continues to evolve in the bottles.While savoring the first batch, we began the process for the second. An English nut brown ale is currently fermenting in the same study closet, so I'm looking forward to its completion in a few weeks.