Small batch brewing

I am new to the homebrewing process, but have been enjoying it so much. Today's brew is the Caribou Slobber Brown Ale 1-gallon batch from Northern Brewer. Seen here are the ingredients laid out and ready to go.

The specialty grains get dumped into a mesh bag that will add flavor and color to our wort before we start boiling. In the background our 1.5 gallons of water are heating up.

Steeping the grains, just like a teabag.

After about ten minutes in the water, we remove the bag and then crank up the heat to start our boil.

Once our water reaches boiling it's time to add the malt and hops. Remove the pot from the heat (important, because it will boil over as soon as you start adding ingredients if you don't) and mix in the malt. This is 1.5 lbs of gold malt extract.

Next up is the first addition of hops. We're looking at 7oz. Willamette hops which will boil for the full 45 minutes.

Back in the heat and boil away!

Thirty minutes into the boil it's time for another hop addition. This is another 3.5oz of Willamette hops.

After 45 minutes of boiling, our wort is finished and ready to cool off. This is an important step. We can't put yeast into wort that's too hot, otherwise it will just burn up. Plus, it is critical to keep this cooling time as short as possible in order to keep bacteria from forming. An ice bath in the sink should do the trick.

While our wort is cooling, it is time for something I did not realize was so crucial to homebrewing: Sanitization! Here we have everything laid out that needs sanitized including our 1-gallon glass fermenter. The small items will just get tossed in the fermenter and sanitized there, while the bigger items get put in a bucket.

Clean fermenter.

Here's the star of the show, this tiny little bag of yeast that's going to be doing all the work for the next couple weeks. Sanitize that too.

Our wort is cooled and the fermenter sanitized, so it's time to transfer. I just use a mesh strainer to dump the wort through, as it's easier than siphoning.

This would have been the time to aerate the wort, which means to shake it up for a few minutes creating oxygen for the yeast to reproduce with. Unfortunately I forgot this time. Reading forums about this makes it sound like that's not an unforgivable offense (and maybe not even necessary). In either case, the yeast is the next ingredient to go in.

Ok guys, do your thing.

An airlock is the final touch as we get ready to stow this away.

Into the closet with it's big brother watching over behind it. I'll see you in a couple weeks!

I hope you enjoyed reading about my homebrewing process. I have never had this much fun getting into a new past time before. This is only the fourth batch I've made, so if you have any suggestions feel free to send them along.