Beer Making!

Trey's newest adventure is beer making. He got a few gift cards for Christmas to spend at American Brewmaster to buy the supplies he needed to brew his own beer. They even have pre-packaged sets of ingredients to make different types of beer. We went with one of these pre-packaged beers this time since it is the first time to make sure we know what we are doing! Maybe in the future we will pick out and order separate ingredients to make a unique beer. 

We decided to go with a hefeweissen, probably my favorite style beer. The brewing process takes about 2 hours for a 5 gallon batch. He had to brew together the ingredients and let it sit for a while then add a bit more. 

After it was done he put it in a 5 gallon fermenting bucket and let it sit for 2 weeks to ferment (the yeast eats the sugar and released carbon dioxide... it comes out the tube at the top... and leaves alcohol in the beer).

 And yes, that is sitting in our half bathroom downstairs... It is the coolest (temperature) place in our house.

After it was done fermenting it was time to transfer the beer to bottles. We have been saving our old beer bottles (that don't have a twist off cap) for a while now so we didn't even have to buy bottles. But you do have to sanitize them! Being sanitary is the key to good beer.

 Sanitizing!

 Transfering from the fermenting bucket

 Bottling

Putting the cap on!

After it was put in the bottles it had to sit about 2 more weeks. It is currently still in that stage so we haven't had a chance to try it yet, but will in about a week! 

The ingredient kit cost just over $30, and creates 5 gallons... not too shabby.  It's a pretty cool process so I'm sure we will try a few more kits and then move on to create our own! We're still working towards that goal of a family brewery... The Valle Crucis Brewery.... One day!! ;)