#extractbrewing

I first tried Weihenstephan Hefe Weiss Bier at the strong recommendation of a pushy fellow customer at the Liquor World in Fayetteville, Arkansas last year. The floating yeast particles in the bottle turned me off at first, especially when the label claims it was made by the oldest brewery in the world, which is nearly 1000 years old.

But after having a coworker try it first and not die, I was ready to try it. It tasted really really good. So this summer, I made a batch of my own. I used the Bavarian Wheat kit from northernbrewer.com and used Weihenstephan yeast.

German wheat beer is known for it's unique banana and clove flavor that stems from a particular German strain of yeast. It's one of the more popular beers in Germany.

My attempt at recreating this style of beer came out perfect. It fermented in the basement at a nice cool 62 degrees. Below are some photos of the process.

Yeasty.

Brew Kit

Introducing my second home brew creation, a brown ale. It turned out very well, definitely better than my first attempt at home brewing. This ale has a hint of caramel sweetness and a nice undertone of bitterness. The only downfall is that the carbonation is a little too strong. Oops. The alcohol by volume ended up at a solid 4.6%. Details below.

Yeast starter. I created this concoction a couple of days in advance so the yeast was strong and healthy for brewing day. For this particular recipe, I used 1099 Wyeast Whitbread Ale.

Brew kit instructions. I purchased the Nukey Brown Ale extract kit from Northern Brewer. A good beginner's recipe.

Steeping the grain. This is like making a pot of tea, except the tea bag is as big as your head and filled with specialty grains (CaraRed, Chocolate and Dark Crystal). Luckily I found a 4 gallon stainless steel pot at Big Lots for just $17.

Fuggle hops waiting to be boiled.

Grain steeping is done.

After removing the grain bag, I added 6 lbs of gold liquid malt extract, 1 lb of light dry malt extract and the fuggle hops. Then boiled for an hour. This liquid is now called wort.

After the boil, the goal is to get the wort down to room temperature as fast as possible.

After the wort cools down, I poured it into the carboy while straining the hops out. I aerated it by giving it a good shake, then added the yeast. Fermentation now begins.

Fermentation isn't pretty.

Racking the beer. After two weeks of primary fermentation, I moved the beer to a second carboy and left behind all of the sediment that formed from the yeast. This makes for a clearer beer.

Gravity Reading. This instrument, called a "hydrometer", measures the gravity of beer. This let's you know that your fermentation is complete and how much alcohol was created.