Finally took the hour trip to Reno to pick up the supplies, I was also picking up a few friends who are currently hiking the PCT and luckily one of them was a brew expert! Shout out to Mr. Chris Tucker… he helped SO much in the process of picking everything out and showed me everything to do for my first batch. For the first batch we did an all grain basic Amber Ale. I plan to add some different flavor to it when I switch from the primary to the secondary I was thinking of jalapano for some spicy beer… but I think I might consider some other options while I still have a few days left to decide. Opinions? I’m thinking of either sticking with the jalapano, or possibly going with something fruity.
We brewed the beer on Thursday night (06/23) so I’m going to wait 10 days to switch the beer to the secondary. There was one issue with the wort chiller, one of the screws wasn’t quite tight enough on it so some water from the hose leaked into the beer. We fixed it pretty quickly so I’m hoping for no contamination, the beer looks contaminant-free so far!
So I decided to go all out and buy all the equipment at once, considering I had nothing… so the following is a (rough) list of what I have bought so far!
- Kettle (32 Quarts)
- Burner
- Auto-Siphon
- Hydrometer
- Grain bag
- 2 Dial Thermometers
- A lot of hoses…
- A lot of rubber stoppers
- Spoon
- 2 Carboys, 6 gallons each
- Wart Chiller
- Bottle Caps
- 2 Buckets (6 gal each)- both with a spigot
- Sanitizing Solution
- Calcium Chloride (so the beer doesn’t boil over in the high altitude)
- A capper
I’m sure I’m forgetting a thing or 2, but that’s the gist of it. It’s a lot more stuff than I was expecting! But the plan now is to wait until Sunday, July 3rd and switch the beer to the secondary. My dad and I are going to get an IPA going that day as well, so we can get some more experience in right away! I’m going to get a very basic all grain IPA, so once again I am free to experiment with fun flavors. The first batch may not turn out the best, and maybe the second won’t either… but I am determined to make some yummy beer. So if you’re in Tahoe and want to donate some bottles I will happily give you a couple free beers (good beers) in exchange for your empty beer bottles! … wink wink.
Since I wasn’t too involved in this batch of beer, mainly just an observer, I didn’t want to write about the whole process. I plan to do that for the IPA that we make this weekend and hopefully I won’t mess it up to badly. I’ll keep ya posted on how the secondary goes and hopefully I figure out a flavor between now and then (yes, I know adding the flavor during the secondary isn’t necessarily how you’re suppose to do it, but we didn’t have jalapanos when we were making it… sooo secondary it is!!).
Kelsey Hyche
