A Home Brew Journey

So this brew should be a winner with no problems or hassles now that I have everything I need to get going right? Well sort of. Spurned on by my  DIY skills I was keen to test my new bit of kit out. So once again time to get all my stuff I would be needing out

Then time to sterelise everything again


So once I had sat the can in some warm water while everything was sterelising and had boiled about 6 pints of water it was time to add it all to the fermenter

Now all was going well so far then it got messy in the real sense of the word. The mixture in the can comes out like treacle and I got a bit distracted by something so some ended up over me !!! Anyway i then added the boiling water and then the sugar. Do NOT do this, any sane person who has half a brain would see the steam coming up from the bucket and know that it will make the sugar all moist and stuck to the bag. I mean i knew that would happen but went ahead anyway thus making a bit more mess. So another lesson learnt sugar before boiling water.

Time to add the rest of the water to the mixture and aereate it well before adding the yeast


Does that not look like one hell of a pint. So now that I had a thermometer I thought I should test the temp to see what it was when I added the yeast. Turns out that the cold water in my house is really cold and had brought it down to about 12`C. This is not what I was wanting to see as yeast 'goes to sleep' below about 16`C, but in for a penny in for a pound I added it anyway.

I then fired it in my heat bath which I had switched on earlier that day to heat it before adding my fermenter (always thinking I am). Thankfully after 3 days I started to see some results the airlock was bubbling away nicely and a good layer of foam had formed on top of the mixture.

So now I know to add sugar before the water and to top up my beer with hot water so that the yeast is not getting pitched at to low a temp. I have also been reading up on rehydrating the yeast which is supposed to give it a head start so I might try that out when I do my next brew which I think will be a Pear Cider that will be left for the summer I think.