The following are my notes from the actual beer making process. Basically every book I’ve read on beer making has differing opinions as to the individual steps, but they all agree that the brewer should take copious notes. The bold text = notes I took while brewing, normal text = commentary.

Boil started @ 0
Added grain @ 10 min
155º F – Stirred occasionally. Good idea?

Well, I don’t mean boil so much as grain seeping step. I still don’t know if stirring it was a good idea, but it probably was.

Forgot to start timer
Est start time 7:00

Yeah, future note, note the actual time when you start heating the water or add the bag of grain. I’d like to point out that “boil started @ 0” is not in my handwriting.

Temp 7:20 - 170º F
Reduced heat
Future reference: temp to low once you reach 155º F

Basically, as soon as the wort hits 155º F turn the burners as low as they can go, then bring them up as needed.

Bag removed at 7:31 – burned fingers

155º F is quite hot, perhaps tongs would be a good investment for the future.

7:37 smells different 180º F
burners?

Yeah genious, perhaps if you boil grain in water for 30 minutes it’s going to smell different. I don’t remember why I wrote “burners” but it probably had something to do with my frustration with electric ranges.

7:46-7:49 added malt syrup and kicker
tastes like ultra sweet All-bran

As I’ve said before, malt syrup is a force to be reckoned with. We did have some trouble getting it all out of the bag. Perhaps we’ll use a squeegee next time or something. The more sugars there are in the wort the more alcohol you’re going to end up with.

Back on full heat at 7:52
Water boiling at 8:01
Hops added 8:06
Irish moss 8:08

Bleach solution good idea for cleaning small stuff

It would probably be a good idea to 1) check the Davis water bacterial load numbers so we know that we can rinse things with Davis water safely and 2) keep a bleach solution around to sterilize small things like thermometers

Wort off @ 9:01 added 1ga H2O
Wort cool at 9:26 (chiller malfunction from 9:01-9:10)

Let me explain the wort chiller to you. Basically, there’s two coils made of copper tubing, one sits in a bucket of ice, the other sits in the wort. Water flows from the tap, through the ice water coil, into the wort coil and then into the drain. We put the ice water coil in too early and the water froze inside the coil causing the water to not flow for the first ten minutes or so. In the future, put the coil in the ice bath without water in the tubes, or put the coil in the ice bath immediately prior to use.

Siphoning started at 9:43, yeast pitched

Dry yeast is lame.

Gravity? 1080?

Not that we know the usefulness of taking gravity readings, but our improper and more importantly useless gravity reading was 1080. This was higher than it should have been because we were measuring a concentrated portion of the wort, not the full 50 ga.

Shaking…

I’m not sure the 10 minutes of shaking the fermenter would have been possible without the POÄNG. Thank you Sweden.

Yar, lid not sterile.

mmm.. foot beer.