Nut Brown Ale #1

Our first brew was the Nut Brown Ale recipe we bought as part of our home brew kit from MoreBeer! in Los Altos. The description of this beer from their website states:

Our Nut Brown Ale has a richer, maltier, less bitter flavor than the American Brown Ale. Victory malt provides a nutty, biscuity flavor. A very full, robust beer.

The Nut Brown Ale recipe uses 8 pounds of Ultralight malt extract; 24 ounces of steeping grains including Crystal, Caravienne, Victory, and Chocolate; and 3 ounces of Glacier and Willamette hops.

The plan was to start the process between noon and one o'clock. Many people showed up from that time or throughout the afternoon. We spent the afternoon brewing the beer and designing logos for our brewery and beer labels. But the bottling process is two weeks away and drinking four weeks away!

Being our first time brewing, the entire process took longer than initially expected. The first problem we ran into was providing enough heat on the stove to raise the water temperature to the required 170 degrees when steeping the flavoring grains. A single burner on the gas stove was insufficient for the large 8 gallon kettle; but once we straddled the kettle across two burners, everything was super green and the rest of the brew process went well.

During the steeping process, the water temperature didn't reach 170 degrees during the allotted time due to our single burner issue. So we steeped longer than specified in the recipe. At this point in our experience, we have no idea how this will affect the final taste of the beer. But the rest went without a hitch and we ended the day by transferring the wort to the carboy for fermentation. (I will post pictures of the fermenting brew later.)

For the more technical geeks out there, the Nut Brown Ale recipe had an estimated original gravity (OG) of 1.062 and our first OG measurement before fermentation was 1.053. And the average temperature of our fermentation location is roughly 65 degrees.

Waiting to enjoy the fruits of your labor is the hardest part when you first start brewing your own beer. But once you start the process and continue to brew on a regular basis, you'll have a steady stream of beers ready to drink.