Whats your flavor? What's your color? You will never know until you try homebrewing for yourself! You can see fermentation caps on the tops of these carboys.
It’s Earth Week this week, and what are you going to do to celebrate? I have already written about what the NBA has done for their Green Week. Everyone needs to celebrate Earth Week and give thanks to their local environment for supporting you and all the people you know.
What you do is up to you as long at it is “Green”.
One Spokane local is celebrating Earth week by sitting back and sipping on a cold brew. How is this green? You might ask; I will let Tom Zysk tell you for himself.
“All craft projects share a common principle – make something yourself using local materials when you can. Homebrewing beer is just another craft project with the added benefit of making a product with a pleasurable effect.”
Tom not only does his own brewing, but also grows his own hops as well.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the homebrewing process Tom has provided a step-by-step guide as to how he does it.
Pictured is a carboy with a blow tube filling with krausen.
The Malt Extract Brewing Process:
1. Steep grains like a big tea bag in a large pot of hot water. Video
2. Add malt extract to make “wort” (wort, is the sweet liquid that is unfermented beer). Tom told me that at the homebrew supply shop he goes to, they refill his plastic containers that the malt extract comes in (green!).
3. Boil wort for an hour adding hops at various times.
4. Cool off wort and transfer to 5-gallon glass carboy (a carboy is a large container generally used for transporting liquid). Tom has five-gallon glass carboys (pictured) that he uses to ferment his beer.
5. Add or “pitch” yeast (pitch, is a brewers term for adding the yeast to the fermenter, the wort).
6. Put the carboy in a dark spot (like your basement or a room that does not get much light) with temperature between 68 and 72 degrees.
7. Watch beer come alive as it ferments and blows Kräusen out of a tube (Kräusen is the foam that comes to the surface of beet in the initial stages of fermenting beer).
8. Replace blow off tube with fermentation lock (the fermentation tube will gather the Kräusen while allowing C02 to escape, and the fermentation lock allows carbon dioxide to be released after the blow tube is full).
9. Transfer beer to a second carboy to get rid of the yeast bed.
Just Brew It!
10. Continue to ferment the beer in the carboy until it is done. You will know the beer is done when you measuring the specific gravity of it with a hydrometer (For more information on the hydrometer and gravity measuring click: HERE).
11. Transfer beer to a bottling carboy.
12. Add dextrose (also known as D-glucose, and grape sugar) to provide carbonation.
13. Bottle beer your beer. Tom recycles his old beer bottles. He places them in warm water and waits for the glue holding the label to wear away then he bottles his homebrew back into them. The bottles could be left bare, or you could add your own personalized label.
14. Patiently wait to sample.
15. Relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew. Share with friends.
“From growing your own hops to reusing empty beer bottles, homebrewing has “Green” written all over it. It’s hard to get any closer to home when you make homebrew the beer of choice when you want to ‘drink local’”.
So what are you doing to celebrate Earth Week? If you would like to have your ideas, and celebrations posted to this site please e-mail me, Connor Simpson, at Connor@Greencupboards.com.
Special thanks to Tom Zysk for providing information on homebrewing.
Your sweet reward of brewing, and being green!
Images:
http://www.celebrationgeneration.com/blog/2010/12/13/home-brewing-the-genesis-of-our-favorite-hobby-and-a-gift-idea/
http://beerutopia.com/2008/08/25/home-brew-brewing-a-belgian-dubbel/
http://beertobrew.com/default.aspx
http://soe6.eventbrite.com/
