Yesterday the stars aligned and it was finally brewing day! Hooray! Saturday I went and bought all the goodies I needed to make a batch of yum then I came home and sorted it all out. Threw the hops and yeast in the freezer and set off to run some more errands.
The hops and the yeast in the freezer.
So Sunday morning I got up all ready to brew, remembered that the hops and yeast were in the freezer and promptly started trying to find out where I could buy more yeast. I ended up having to wait till noon for The Homebrew Pro Shoppe to open and raced down there to get some new, not frozen, not dead beasties. On top of that I also did a little shopping for baked potato soup ingredients. I’d been meaning to try making some for a long time, so I invited a few people over for brew day and soup.
So anyway, brew day went really well. I learned a few new tricks that helped me burn myself with scalding water a lot less and the wort came out really well, I think. I also screwed up a few times cause I was trying to do too much at once. Added one addition of hops a little too early and added corriander and orange peel way too early. Hopefully the beer will still be beer.
This batch is supposed to be something along the lines of a Spring wit beer somewhere between New Belgium’s Sunshine Wheat and their Bier de Mars. I started with a basic wheat base (50% malted wheat and 50% pale malt), kept the hops pretty low and added corriander and sweet orange peel. I also picked up some peach extract that I am going to add to half the batch at kegging time. Feel free to stop by in a month and try it out! 🙂
As for the baked potato soup, that turned out pretty decent. It was my first try at any kind of soup that didn’t come from a can and it wasn’t bad. Could have used a little something, but edible and filling. That’ll definitly be the last time I try to make a complicated meal and beer at the same time. I was running around all crazy all day.
This morning I woke up to the happy sound of bubbling fermenters. A note to myself: Stirring helped. The fermenter I stirred the yeast into was going much faster than the one I didn’t, so I’ll need to do that from now on.