Ryan's Currently Unnamed Blog

Yay.. just got home to check on a new project i was worrying about.. and turns out i had nothing to worry about!

Yesterday, my Glass Starter Kit from Northern Brewer showed up, and i didn't get to open it up until after midnight. Within the next month or so, I wanted to be able to share my first batch of beer with some friends, so I wanted to get started right away.

I unpacked everything.. and had already read the instructions online.. so, I kinda knew what I was doing. It took about 4 hours until I was done, and I went to bed worried that I had ruined my first batch.

First, very minor, but i added the barley to my brew kettle before I brought the wort to a boil. I wasn't too worried about this, but of course.. I wanted everything to be PERFECT. But, that just wasn't going to happen.. of course. The biggest worry I had was about the yeast.

You see, it comes in this little package with a little nutrient pouch inside of it. My pouch was already half inflated, indicating that the yeast was already active. I tried to smack the package opened.. and THOUGHT that I succeeded. I can even swear that it continuted to inflate a bit more. It wasn't until I went to pitch the yeast that I realized that the nutrient pouch wasn't broken yet.

Panicked, thinking that my yeast wasn't going to fully activate, I quickly decided to break the pouch and add it to my brew. I sealed it with the stopper and the fermentation lock and before went to bed.

No activity a few hours later... and came home at lunch to find that about once every five minutes... the fementation lock was bubbling!! Yay! That means that SOMETHING in the brew was producing some kind of gas.

I went back to work, and it wasn't until about 11:30pm that I got home.. and the FIRST thing I did was check on my beer! I was SHOCKED to see this:

There was a large head formed and looked like blow off is a real possibility! So much for worrying about it not working out! The lag period supposedly can be up to 48 hours.. and here... 22 hours in.. it looks.. and even smells... a little like beer.

Ok, the smell isn't quite like GOOD beer.. but its vaguely beer related... So.. the plan is.. about a week or so in the carboy... The Thief that was missing from my kit should show up on Monday... and I should be able to get an idea of how its progressing, but i think within a week I can be bottling by first batch and within another couple weeks.. I'll be enjoy an Extra Pale Ale that I made myself!

Wooot!