In honor of the arrival of the most drinkable holiday of the year, I thought I'd get everyone in the spirit by posting about my first experience brewing my own beer. The process was actually pretty simple — everything you need comes in the kit (we used True Brew). The directions were easy to follow and left you feeling somewhere between master chef and mad scientist. We let the 5-gallon brew ferment for about two weeks, bottled it, and let it sit for another month after that. The result was delicious — we chose the Nut Brown Ale flavor, which came out tasting much like Newcastle and made close to 50 bottles. We got the kit at Fermentables, a very knowledgeable brew shop in North Little Rock. We are finishing up our Nut Brown Ale and about to start brewing the American Wheat, which will be much more suitable for springtime porch drinking! Here are some pics from our home brew experience, we recommend you give it a try. Bottoms up!
The kit came with everything we needed to brew
Graham took on the tedious task of reading the directions
You need a REALLY big stock pot
Mad Scientist
Transfer to the fermenting bucket
It's ready to bottle when the bubbles stop
Be careful not to let the sediment siphon through
Beer flows into the bottling bucket
Purchase bottles, caps and bottle capper. Sanitize bottles before bottling and save them to reuse after drinking
The bottle-filler had an automatic on-off valve to make sure the exact amount of beer is dispensed into each bottle
Beer-rich
Satisfied customer
