In Which We Make Nut Brown Ale

"My two large Piggs, by drinking some Beer grounds taking out of one of my Barrels today, got so amazingly drunk by it that they were not able to stand and appeared like dead things almost... I never saw Piggs so drunk in my life, I slit their ears for them without feeling. "
Diary of a Country Parson Rev. James Woodforde 1778


The above was quoted from the book The Country Kitchen by Jocasta Innes . I just thought it was funny. Today we were making Nut Brown Ale. I've had it on my to do list for ages. I already had the ingredients. I was just lacking in energy , but today , come hell or high water (and there was lots of high water with all this rain ) , I was going to do it even though what I wanted more than anything was to crawl back to bed and sleep for another 4 hours. ANYway, we got it done. It only took about 5 hours from start to finish. That didn't include the scavenger hunt earlier to find where we had stashed all the different materials and ingredients.
Beer making is now becoming a popular hobby but it actually used to be a standard skill in a homemaker's repertoire . This is from the same book quoted earlier...

"During the 19th century beer brewing was a normal part of household routine, a chore housewives undertook along with baking, raising poultry and curing meat for the winter months. They brewed fine ale for special occasions, 'small' or weak beer for harvesters , and strong stouts for expectant and nursing mothers. Indeed, beer was so nourishing that William Cobbett, in 1825 , lists it along with bread and meat as essential to the farm labourer's diet.

I find it rather amusing that they saved the strong stouts for expectant and nursing mothers. People would be rather shocked today. Maybe it kept them mellow. Who knows, but we are all here today and our ancestors lived like this so it couldn't have done that much harm .
This has nothing to do with beer but it was funny with Jesse poking his head around the corner like that. He is standing on the back of the couch .

This is the malted grains steeping. The water is 150 * F and it steeps for about 45 minutes. You are trying to turn the starches in the grain into sugars. It smells really good at this point.

So far we've been getting completely organic beer kits from Seven Bridges Co-op and we've been very happy with the results. You can find them at http://breworganic.com . You can even call and talk to real people if you have a question. Always a nice thing.

Next comes the sparging of the grains where we slowly and tediously pour 170 degree water over the grains to rinse all the goodies out. All the water is collected in the main boiling pot then we add the original steeping water too. This all goes together to make your wort.

Then we bring that whole mixture to a boil , then add the barley malt extract. Skimming foam after we finish.

A good rapid boil.. Then you add your bittering hops .. for this recipe they boil for 40min.

Then we add the aroma hops and Irish Moss (it helps settle out the proteins in the wort) and boil for 20 more minutes .

Mmmmm. it has a very .... earthy smell.. Well, my older sister Violet said it smelled like sweet potatoes. I haven't smelled any sweet potatoes like that , but anyway.

Then you have your brother Buck run over to the 99cents store and get you a bunch of bags of "old" ice..... whatever that is.. I'm not eating it. I just want to make things cold so what do I care if it is freezer burned. Can you really freezer burn ice? I mean.. it is water for cryin' out loud. I know it can take on that "freezer" taste... hmmmm. Anyway, it was very cheap and very cold. Just what I needed because I don't have a wort chiller and I couldn't have hooked it up to the hose today anyway because it was rather wet outside, to say the least.

Then you forget to take pictures of the transfer of the chilled wort from pot to fermentor as well as the adding of the yeast but you can just imagine that okay? Here it is behind the dining room door next to my vinegar barrel full of about 20 gallons of cider in the process of going to vinegar.(that is cheesecloth shoved in the bung hole to keep critters like flies out and let air in ) . I've never done it in a barrel before so we'll see how this turns out. If it is a flop, I'll have a lot of floor cleaner to use. ANYway, the beer gets to ferment for about a week and then we will siphon it off to a glass carboy and ferment it longer until we finally get around to bottling the stuff. But the big part is all done. Yay.