Saturday Evening

Well, we have had a rather long week. Zachary seems to be on the mend, he's just congested as all get out now. But, he has some flashes of energy and giggles, which is nice. He's also getting much better about reading and playing nicely with books rather than tearing them apart and carrying them around like a Labrador.


Reading one of our favorite touch and feel books

And we are coming along with Plan B Brew. We cleaned 5 years worth of dust off the pot, carbuoy, and the wort chiller. We figured out which sink to use and how the cooking the wort is going to work.

And we figured that Zachary's fit pretty well into a 5 gallon carbuoy.

So the plan thus far for plan B Brew:

Zach and I walked to The Brewer's Apprentice and bought the ingredients for an alt beer. This is a medium hop beer with some malt flavorings and overtones.

We found all the brewing supplies and washed them.

Tomorrow we are going to boil and cool the wort, and then set the final liquid up for its first fermentation.

In a couple of weeks, we will siphon off the liquid, hopefully leaving most of the sediment at the bottom of the carbuoy, into another carbuoy. This will then sit for another couple of weeks for the second fermentation. The recipe should make a beer of about 5% alcohol. This is more than Budweiser or the like, but a lot less than some other microbrews.

The resulting liquid, much closer to beer, will be bottled and capped and set to ferment again. We then get to test it weekly for carbonation!

Hopefully everything will be all done by the time the baby comes around!