Nobody Listens

Woke up this morning eager to see if any signs of fermentation were happening.  The lid was bulging a bit, so I pressed it slightly.  A few bubbles, but nothing spectacular.

I was being a bit impatient.  Did I aerate enough?

The temp. was around 67.  I did something (potentially) dumb: I hooked up a heater next to my bucket.  The air temp quickly rose to about 71 and the airlock began bubbling like mad.  I thought better and turned it off.  The bubbling subsided shortly there after.

The airlock seemed to be sucked all the way down and looked like it was pulling water back into the bucket.

Maybe I should just leave well enough alone.

The setup.  A perfect little spot for making beer.

The day (actually night) had arrived.

I had read around on some postings that secondary fermenters should be glass, not plastic due to the headroom and the permeability of plastic. So I decided to use the 7.5 gallon bucket I got at HomeBrew USA for my primary. I’ll pick up a carboy later. Plus the old bucket was, well… old.

I put the old bucket to good use however. I cleaned it well and mixed up 5 gallons of Star San. Overkill, yes but it should keep for a long time.

Here’s the recipe I’m making. It is a Pale Ale that HomeBrew USA calls “Cape Henry Pale Ale”

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I had been tossing around the idea of getting into homebrew for a while. Not wholeheartedly, just kind of a “Wouldn’t it be neat someday” thing. There is a homebrew store in Norfolk called HomeBrew USA. I got some friends, my dad and my brother together for a beer school on Saturday, March 22nd. As soon as you could smell the grains, I was hooked. This would be my new obsession.

The class was great (and I highly recommend anybody in the Hampton Roads area check it out). Our instructor, was very knowledgeable. He’s even growing his own hops. Basically, the class consists of going through the brew process all the way to pouring the wort into the fermenter. To be honest, some of the stuff the instructor told us went over my head but it was all very interesting stuff.

I already had some equipment that my brother-in-law gave me a long while back. It had a primary fermentor (bucket), bottling bucket, racking cane, bottle capper, bottle filler and probably what was 6 year old corn sugar (I threw that out). So I figured I’d use that and just pick up some additional pieces of equipment. I got another bucket for a secondary (more on that later), some caps, an auto siphon with some tubing and an air lock. Oh yeah, and a beer kit to make a pale ale.

My dad and brother picked up full equipment kits and beer kits to make a Newcastle clone (Ryan) and a blonde ale clone (dad).

Can’t wait to start.