New Beer!!!

So I had an unexpected day off yesterday (hope you feel better soon Sara) so I decided to bottle and brew a couple days early. My first batch tastes pretty good. It's quietly sitting in my closet getting carbonated. A couple weeks and I can start tasting it, although a couple more after that will make it better.

Now the important part. My next beer. I call it Boston Way Brown Ale (v1.0). It was going to be Boston Way Amber Ale but it turned out way darker than I thought it would.

My recipe (Mr. Beer sized batch):

2 lbs Sparkling Amber Dry Malt Extract

1 cub brown sugar

1 lb Crystal 60L grain

.5 oz Saaz Hops

.5 oz Willamette Hops

1 packet Fermentus S-33 Yeast

3 gallons spring water from hyvee

I steeped the grain for 30 minutes at around 160 degrees in a gallon of spring water

Then added 1 lb DME and the Willamette and boiled for 45 minutes

Added half the saaz and the rest of the DME boiled another 10

added the rest of the saaz and boiled another 5

Then I added water to fill the fermenter (around a gallon and a half) and added the yeast.

The little yeast bastards had a crazy orgy and produced a bunch of foam pretty quick. It'll be awesome (I hope).

Things I learned.

If you pour the DME in all at once it will cause big ugly sticky sweet chunks. They will eventually break down though.

When you boil water for an hour some of it will evaporate so if your planning on making two gallons of beer you need more than two gallons of water so buy more water if your using bottled water.

A pound of crystal 60L grain steeped for half an hour in a little over 2 gallons of beer will make pretty dark beer.

A snowbank will cool your wort down pretty quick so don't leave it out there for too long.

Well now it's the waiting game again. In two weeks or so I'll bottle whats in the fermenter and start a new batch.