Yes Dear, It’s Time to Make Beer

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There is a point in every mans life when he realizes he is not going to own his own bar. When this happens we reach for a more noble and profitable goals, like the dream of owning our own brewery! Now before we start on our grand business venture it might be good to learn about beer and more importantly how to make beer. Luckily for me there is a great brew shop right by the house and there I met some amazing people and made an amazing first beer.

That first beer was a Belgium Wit that was flavored with coriander and orange peel. It was a beer I was sure the wife would enjoy and spousal support is a necessity for a project like this.

 

The ingredients for this brew were:

  • 6 Pounds of an extract made from 65% Malted Wheat / 35% Malted Barley
  • .5 pounds of Cara Foam Malt (crushed)
  • 1 ounce of Saaz Hops
  • .5 ounce of Dried Orange Peel
  • .5 ounce of Coriander Seed
  • 1 vile of Belgium Wit Liquid Yeast

Here are my cliff notes on how to brew this batch:

  • Step 1: Steep the crushed grains in 158F degree water for about 20 minutes
  • Step 2: Remove the grains and bring the water to a boil
  • Step 3: Add half of the extract and hops
  • Step 4: After 40 minutes of boiling add the other half of the extract
  • Step 5: After 55 minutes of boiling (15 minutes after step 4) add the coriander and orange peel
  • Step 6: After 60 minutes of boiling (5 minutes after step 5) remove from the heat and chill down to below 100F degrees, you now have wort
  • Step 7: Port the wort in to a fermenting vessel and add water until you have 5 gallons
  • Step 8: Once the wart is between 65F and 80F degrees take your initial gravity reading then add the yeast, close the vessel properly, and put it someplace cool and dark
  • Step 9: After about 2 weeks verify the gravity and if everything looks good, prime and bottle the beer.
  • Step 10: After about 2 more weeks refrigerate, open, and enjoy!

  

As I mentioned before, the beer turned out awesome and we served it for our summer party. That being said here are some notes for my journal to share on this recipe.

  • Taste your ingredients, I suspect the coriander was quite fresh as it had a very intense flavor, I would add less based on taste in the future. Same for the orange peel, maybe not so fresh, I would have added more.
  • Test tasting along the way was crucial to getting awesome beer. For example after two weeks in the bottles the beer was good but not great. We left it an additional 8 days at room temperature to mature more and at that point we had a great beer and off to the fridge it went to stabilize it.
Here is the full recipe I followed if you are interested.

This is grain, which any fool can eat, but for which the Lord intended a more divine means of consumption … Beer!” –Friar Tuck

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