Beer Brewing Adventure Part 1: Brewing

On July 16, 2005 we went to Shennandoah Brewing Company where they let you invent and brew your own beer - for a very reasonable cost. The brewmasters were Brian White, Erol Hak, and me.

The first step was to have a few beers to put us in the right frame of mind to invent a new beer. We decided it would be a lager, patterned after a German pilsner, but with an extra kick of hops. We decided it should be 5.5% alcohol by volume. This determines the amount of suger to put into the wort. We selected Galena hops and Liberty hops, and plenty of them. The exact amount is a closely guarded secret.




Here are the tanks to cook up the wort. That is Anning, the real brewmaster in the blue shirt helping one of the brewers.





Erol is measuring the hops that we will put into the wort while it is cooking.

The wort now has grain and sugar in it. The next step is to bring it

to a boil, being careful not to boil it over, which would be very embarassing - not to mention lose a lot of the beer.

Adding more malt exract & sugar to raise the alcohol content of the finished product.


Then we are "steam cleaning" sugary syrupy the pitcher.





These are the Galena and Liberty hop pellets that we add to the brew at various stages of the 90 minute cooking process.





Jamie making sure that we don't make any cooking errors.





After cooking, open the valve to drain the cooking tank into a fermenting barrel.








Check the specific gravity to make sure the alcohol content will be right. Anning was a chemistry major.




Check the taste at this stage. Hmmm, tastes a little funny, but it will be better after the sugar converts into alcohol.







Now just add 4 vials of German Lager yeast and we're almost done for now.








But first we must roll the barrel back and forth for 8 minutes to make sure the yeast mixes in completely.




We'll come back in 11 weeks to bottle the beer. In the meantime, we'll name the beer and design labels. Since Brian White is the brewer of record & it is a very hop-intense brew, the tentative name is "White Men Can Hop". Any comments or suggestions on the name are welcome.

Oct 1, 2005 = Party time!