The Brewing Process

Sanitization: Always start by sanitizing everything that will come in contact with the unfermented beer. This includes the fermentation bucket, lid, airlock and its' stopper. Sanitize with a solution of two tablespoon of household bleach to five gallons of cool water. It is best to simply fill your fermentation bucket with this mixture before you brew and let stand 30 minutes.

Brewing: If your recipe calls for specialty grains to be steeped (brew like tea) start this in one gallon of water. Bring the steeping grains up to a boil, take it off the heat and cover for 20 minutes. When steeping is complete, start a one hour boil with an additional two gallons of water and the malt extract. When the mix, now called a wort, begins to actually boil add the boiling/bittering hops. They will boil for about 45 to 60 minutes. Other hops may be added for aroma 10 to 15 minutes before the end of the boil. When the one hour boil is completed, rinse the sanitized fermentation bucket, lid, airlock and stopper in hot water until the smell of bleach is gone. Now add two gallons of cold water to the rinsed fermentation bucket. The wort (boiled but not fermented malt/hops mixture) is now ready to be added to the bucket and the lid firmly put in place along with the airlock and stopper.

Fermenting: We pitch (throw in) the yeast when it cools to below 90 degrees and place the fermenter somewhere out of the way at its’ ideal temperature to ferment ( this information will be given for each individual recipe).

Bottling: When fermentation is complete, we are ready to bottle. Bottles, bottling bucket, hoses, siphons and bottle filler must be sanitized and rinsed thoroughly. Once sanitation is complete, we prepare the priming sugar by boiling it for 5 minutes, add it to the bottling bucket and transfer the beer. From here, we put the beer into the clean bottles, cap and store until it is ready to drink.