My beer brewing adventure

My friend Mark lent me his brew kit so I decided to give it a try. I went to this really nice brew shop close to our house. I also drove around all of Culver City, Marina del Rey, and Venice Beach looking for a place to fill my propane tank. I finally found a place behind Sony Pictures Studios (to think that Alex Trebek was just on the other side of that wall!). When I was at the grocery store buying ice and water, the cashier asked me what I was doing with all of this stuff. I told him and he made me promise that I would bring him one of my homemade beers. So I made the promise.

Anyway, I brought the six pounds of wheat extract (looks like really thick maple syrup and tastes pretty sweet) to a boil using five gallons of spring water...a LOT of beer. After it was done foaming (called the "hot break") I added the hops (tiny little pellets that smell like herbs and spices). I brought my beer "wort" (another word for this strange concoction) to a rolling boil for about an hour out on the deck. It gurgled and boiled and there was all kinds of strange crap floating around in it. It smelled so good... like sweet cereal... mmmm. I was out there watching it to make sure it did not boil over when our neighbor Kaitlin, was curious about what I was doing... ha ha ha! She was pretty happy to hear I was making beer even though she was hungover from the previous night. Then I cooled it in the kitchen sink by putting ice and cold water around it. It had to be cooled quickly from 200 degrees to 80 degrees and I then strained it into a sanitized bucket. I threw in the yeast when it was at 75 degrees. Next, I put a cover on the bucket along with an airlock that lets the CO2 out slowly (the by-product of the yeast eating all the sugary delight and making the precious alcohol). I put the bucket in the closet of the guest room to ferment for three weeks.

Amazingly, I did not have any huge disasters and it was not as much work as I thought it might be. In three weeks, I will bottle all of the beer and they will have to sit for another two weeks to get conditioned and carbonated. Just in time for new years.