From: robinson@ac.dal.ca
Newsgroups: rec.crafts.brewing
Subject: First Batch
Date: 19 Aug 92 10:42:52 -0300
Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Well, I took the plunge last night.  I've been interested in brewing my own 
beer for quite a while, but I'm not much of a beer drinker, and around here 
the base price for all the equipment seems to be around $100.00 Cdn.  I 
suspect that if you know what you're doing you could do a bit better, but 
probably not a lot.

I've always enjoyed speciality beers, and most of the non-mainstream beer 
I've tried, which is what made me think I might like to make my own.  So, 
upon discovering this group (where I can torture you all with silly inane 
questions :-) I wandered down to the only home brewing shop I'm aware of 
here in town and bought one of their kits.  They have everything you need, 
from the fermenters to the sodium metabisulfate and your choice of malts.  
There are enough caps and sugar to do two batches and given the price of 
local beer two batches puts you in the black, by a good margin.

So I decided to try a Brown Ale kit and see where that got me.  I started 
by letting 5+ gallons of tap water stand (in my primary fermentor, the good 
old plastic carboy) for 24 hours.  This, supposedly, gets rid of most of 
the chlorine.  The next batch will be with bottled water and I'll compare 
the two.

Then I cleaned all the rest of my equipment, sterilized the glass carboy 
and siphoned the water into that.  I wasn't able to siphon quite all of it 
so there was maybe a cup or two of water left in the primary fermentor.  No 
problem.

I put two liters of the water (that had been sitting) on to boil, and put 
the opened can of extract in another pan of boiling water.  Then I 
proceeded to dump nine cups of corn sugar into the water in the bottom of 
the primary fermentor.  While waiting for the water on the stove to boil, I 
stirred this with a beer paddle until I had a thick syrup.  Then I added 
the boiling water, stirred a little more and then tossed in the extract.  I 
was holding the (hot) can of extract with big cooking mitts and when I 
tried to hold it in one hand I dropped it into the wort.  So much for 
sterility :-).  I really don't expect it to be much of a problem as the can 
was exposed to steam/boiling water for quite some time.

After stiring this all up, I lifted the glass carboy (they're damn heavy 
when full) and poured water in, pausing occaissionally to stir (and put the 
damn thing down :)  After I got all the water in, I stired some more and 
then siphoned off a small amount to check the temp and SG.  The temp was 
right around 60F and the SG was 1.32.

So, right at the moment it is sitting in my study, waiting to warm up to a 
temperature where I can pitch the yeast in.  After this batch has finished 
I'm going to try another one with bottled water and then I'm going to try 
some wine I think....

The shop I bought my kit at will also rent a press out for about $5.00/day, 
so you can crush your own grapes, for example.  I'm going to try a batch of 
apple cider I think....we have lots of apple trees around here and you can 
pick them for a very reasonable fee.

I've got a book which discusses cider, but no books on beer or wine yet.  
That will come soon.  Anyway, that's all for now.  I'll post an update and 
let you know how it is going.

-- 
John Robinson                  Only criminals, tyrants, and cowards have
robinson@ac.dal.ca                 reason to fear the armed, honest citizen.
DOD #0069