Week 38 - "Make a Batch of Beer (Part 1)"

      Once again we are using one of the 52 cards that our kids gave us. Patrick actually gave us some beer mix ingredients last year but we didn't get around to making it until last weekend. This installment is called Part 1 because we have made "a batch of beer." Part 2 will be "drinking a batch of beer." That will have to wait a couple weeks for the beer to settle and for the sugar to work its magic.
     Let me describe the photos first. At top left, I am mixing the beer wort with the honey and yeast in the fermenter so the wort can ferment (naturally!) for a few days. In the second photo, the wort has fermented until the alcohol content reading is the same two days in a row. That took about seven days. So we added the sugar and put it into a second 5-gallon barrel called the "beer bucket." Then we drained the wort from the first fermenter via a tube into the beer bucket.

The beer bucket, or "ale pail," has a spigot, so in the third photo I am filling beer bottles with the sugar and wort mixture. We made enough beer for seven 6-packs and two additional bottles. The recipe said it should make about eight 6-packs so we were close. We left a lot of sediment in the fermenter and beer bucket so we might have filled eight 6-packs but the last few bottles would have been filled with beer mud. Last, we capped the bottles. They now are supposed to sit for about 10 days before refrigerating and, then, drinking.
     We have our fingers crossed!
     The most important part of making beer is sanitizing the equipment. The yeast and fermentation pick up anything that globs onto the buckets and bottles so you have to be sure everything is sanitized. We hope we got everything!
     Several years ago, when Cheryl and I were at the Rotary Youth Exchange Conference in Michigan, she and a couple friends stumbled on a wine shop in town. The shop also had beermaking kits. We bought one with a very simple recipe for pale ale and the beer turned out great. When I went back the next year, the store owner said he got out of the beermaking business but had one kit for a stout beer that he would sell for $5. I couldn't pass that up but the batch did not turn out and I hadn't tried to make any again for three or four years -- until the kids came up with this "Make a Batch of Beer" card.
     Cheryl and I had fun making it together. We had all the equipment from the first time I made a batch. This recipe called for a little more work so we went to a neat liquor store in the Champaign-Urbana area

called Friar Tuck's. They have hundreds of craft beers and wines plus about any other alcohol-related product you can think of. We had a list of what we lacked in my materials and were able to purchase all of them there for, maybe, 20 bucks. So if this batch turns out, we will have seven 6-packs for $20 -- about $3 a 6-pack, not a bad price for craft beer!
     When we bought that equipment in Michigan, we paid about $70 for everything and got about 10 6-packs from it. So the first batch made beer for about $7 a 6-pack and making additional batches brings the price down considerably. That's IF the beer is any good. And for the answer to that you will have to wait a couple weeks. To paraphrase that old wine commercial, "We will drink no beer before its time!"