It's Brewtime Baby!

Tonight I have a little something to post about that's been brewing for some time. My hubby has been making beer for about six months now! See what I did there? Brewing? Sometimes I crack myself up.
Anyway, this new-found hobby of his is pretty exciting to me. Brewing beer takes some patience (start to finish ~6 hours for primary brew, then there's secondary and bottling processes as well), but yields great results! Well, all except for Brad's first batch of Dos Equis, which was really not so good. All of his other brews to date though, a vanilla porter, another Dos Equis Lager, a kriek lambic (for me) and a blueberry oberon, have been great! He's at it again with a new batch of Oatmeal stout.

First up, a trip to the beer store for milled grainsThen you've got to heat and mash those grains to extract their goodness

Then there's lots of cooking of things, making your kitchen look like a science lab

After all that, the beer goes into a glass carboy to basically ferment. It does this for about a week or two, then you transfer it to another carboy for a secondary ferment. Finally, after all that, you bottle it up and add some sugars, for a final extraction of all the yeasts. Bottle aging takes anywhere from 4-8 weeks. So obviously we didn't bottle the stout right away, but we did bottle some of the blueberry oberon that was ready to go.

That involves lots of bottle washing and dryingThen siphoning into bottles!

All in all, I've been really happy with Brad's brewing results, and furthermore, I'm really geeked he's found a hobby he enjoys so much. It's a win-win for me when I get to drink all those beers as well!