Sotted Sow

Here we go! I am going to record this for posterity. I am not sure what that means but it's so I don't forget. I think maybe you, my avid readers, might find this interesting too. I took pics during the various steps of the brewing process and will describe it here. So don't worry, zombies, no talk about real world issues to bring you out of your zombified states. Like Harper trying to tell Canadians that we can't travel anywhere HE decides is a "terrorist" area. So I've heard he's going to ban all travel to the East Hastings area of Vancouver. Ar ar. See? Say it in a funny way.

Anyhoo, the above pic is the first thing I was in charge of. There were some flakes of maise, yes, corn flakes, that had to be soaked in water for a while. I had to keep the temperature between 154 F and 168 F or something like that. It was pretty easy. I did it on Mike and Heather's stove.

This big, glass jug is the fermentor. It's like 6 gallons. That's water mixed with sterilizer inside it. This time we were determined to be EXTRA sterile so as not to get another 37 bottles of vinegar. I tasted the milk stout. WOW! It was vinegar! Hugely disappointing!

Whilst I watched the cornflakes, Mike went to the I Tae Won Brew Store, right behind the Seoul Pub, and bought some other grains for the Sotted Sow, which is a cream ale. This is just one of the grains. We put them all into a sort of cheesecloth bag.

Then in the big pot, the main one on the outside barbecue, Mike put the sack of grain into the water. 5 gallons of water? Something like that.

Then when the time was right we mixed my corn water in. We left both bags in the water for a while and actually rung them out to get all the grainy goodness we could.

The boil went on into the night. As Mike says, "It takes money to make money and it takes beer to make beer." We had a beer or two during the boil.

Then we added flavour hopps and aroma hopps and soon it was time to cool the beer down. This was the fun part. We put cold water, and ice, into the blue cooler. Inside the cooler is a fish tank pump pumping the cool water through the hose and into a copper coil that we put into the kettle of beer. The cold water goes in and comes out pretty hot. I take jugs of the water to the nearest sewer grate and pour it. When the temperature gauge on the kettle reaches the right temperature, we transfer the beer into the big, glass fermentor. It is emptied JUST before we fill it to maintain sanitation.

This is the yeast that is added to the fermentor to begin the, you guessed it, fermentation process. The yeast eat the grainy goodness and crap out alcohol. Yummy! It's quite a lot of action and bubbling. This time around we put an air lock in the top of the fermentor filled with vodka. This air lock allows the air created by the fermentation to escape, but nothing, like fruit flies, to get into the beer.

So the fermentor is iced and kept cool under camouflage so that the boy, (Kellsterino), doesn't yank the air lock out. This may have been the demise of the milk stout. Now we wait two weeks. Then we add some lactose powder, (I think. To make the cream part of the beer), and some more yeast for carbonation, and we put it all in bottles. Hopefully after two more weeks it'll be fully carbonated and delicious.

So that's how we did it. I'm hoping to get good at this. Maybe do it on my own someday soon. We shall see...

Job update: I got a call from the international school. Sometime this week I will go to the school for orientation and to sign contracts. Then the visa process will hopefully begin. I just hope there are no complications. If I could I'd brew beer for a living, but I can't. Gotta get back to work.