A few days ago we received the brew kit at our door! So my boyfriend got to brewing ASAP! After boiling and cooking the "tea" and "wart" for about an hour, it was time to chill the wart from 180 down to 75. The copper tubing has cold water flowing through it which cools the wart in minutes. The only problem is the water flows through, then gets wasted. We can only water the plants so much!
Here the now cooled wart is being filtered and poured into the first fermenter. This took forever due to the fact that we put orange and grapefruit shavings in the wart, as well as all the leftover hops. The yellow in the sink is iodine water to sanitize everything.
After about 24 hours the fermenting beer began to make a film at the top called krausen. This is caused by all the yeast eating sugar, making co2, and dieing. The co2 then goes out the top through a special bubbler top which lets air out but not in. Once the krausen sinks to the bottom, it will be time to transfer it to the second fermenter. This is done to leave all the dead yeast that has sunk to the bottom behind, if you don't transfer the beer, the dead yeast will release unwanted flavors into the beer. Now in a few weeks we will have some India Pale Ale infused with orange and grapefruit!
