One of my brews from start to where I am at now!

      First is first let's start with some basic vocabulary so we are on the same page for this post:
Wort: In our case it is malt extract and water.
Malt: it's an extract from grains, in my case was in a syrup form that I added to my boiling water.
Hops: a plant, used mainly for flavoring of your beer (gives it the bitterness and the aroma).
   
      Let the fun begin, at this point the work station and all the equipment have been sanitized (as shown on my previous blog), and we are ready to make some beer!!!!

      My ingredients were very simple; Alexander's wheat/barley malt, 2 tea spoons of honey (just because i wanted to sea if it will influence the finished product), hops, a package of dry yeast, and of course water. My ingredients were purchased from the Home Brew Store, here in Chico, California. You can get them online but why not support local business, right?

      Start by boiling a gallon and a half of water, in a clean stainless steal pot (also make sure there are 4 gallons of water in the fridge being chilled). Make sure you have room for the malt and the hops!

      Once your water comes to a boil, add the malt, mix it until it has all been dissolved and bring it to a rolling boil (this will be a 60 minute process from when you add the malt), 20 minutes into the process, add your hops (about a handful) to contribute to the bitterness.

     
      About 5 minutes before you are done with the boil, add more hops for the aroma (I personally only had hops in there for 5 minutes during the whole boil, because I wanted to have a sweeter beer (ale). After your whole 60 minutes are done, pour the wort into your ferminator and add cold water till you reach about 5 gallons total. It helps to put your ferminator at that point in a sink or a tub full of ice water to bring down the temperature (the faster the cooling happens, the better the quality). Once you are between 65 and 78 degrees F, add your yeast to the wart.

      Finally put your airtight lid on the ferminator, with an airlock, to allow co2 to release but no air to come in to avoid contamination. Add water about half way in your airlock.

      From here on leave the ferminator in a dark place (sunlight is you beers enemy), within 24hours you will notice bubbling in the airlock and that is good news, it means fermentation is taking place. leave it alone for about 2 weeks, and then you will be ready to bottle. I will blog about bottling, in a later post and go through the process with you. Hope you enjoyed this post!