STUDENT PRACTICUM / CODY BARTHELS

My name is Cody Barthels and I am a senior at Central Washington, and I am studying to get my Major in Craft Brewing. I am very excited to go through and show how my process went for my first home brew!

My home brew was based off of a kit I received from my wife a year ago. I never made the time to actually start this project, and since this was my first practicum I thought this would be a perfect time to get invested and start to begin brewing at home. The kit that I was given was a Centennial SMaSH IPA kit.

I started my brew in late January and was able to get all the materials I needed from Ace Hardware down in Yakima, which was very convenient. I had gotten all my cleaning materials set out and had made 2 buckets of cleaning solution on hand for while I brew.

I thought I had all the right materials on my brew day when all of a sudden I saw that I was missing my rubber carboy stopper. I immediately drove to Ranch & Home in town and was able to have one made for me which was fantastic. I got home and started my brew in my 20 quart stock pot, and I realized that it was much bigger than I needed for a 1 gallon brew. I got a 12 qt stock pot from the store and eventually started my brew. I filled my stock pot with 1.25 gallons of water and brought that to a boil. After it was at a perfect boil I added my malt extracts which were:

• 1.5 lbs of Maillard Malts Pilsen malt extract syrup
• 1 lb of Pilsen dry malt extract

I stirred this into the boiling water and this became into my beautiful wort that I created.

I boiled the wort for 45 minutes starting with my first addition of my Centennial Hops with an alpha of 8.2%, and the packet was a total of 28.3 g of hops.

I started with the first addition at 45 minutes and dropped 7 grams into the pot. This boiled for 25 minutes before I dropped in the second addition of hops at 20 minutes left, again this was 7 g of hops. My third addition of 7 g was dropped in at 10 minutes left of the boil and the final hop addition was added after the 45 minute boil had finished.

This next part was fun yet difficult. I cooled my wort by setting it into the sink and filling the sink with cold water and ice. It sat in there for about 30 minutes before reaching 60-70 degrees Fahrenheit.

Before anything, I filled my graduated cylinder with some of the new brewed wort and put my hydrometer in and took my original gravity (OG) reading which was a big 1.092.

While it was cooling, I was busy cleaning up everything I had used for my brew. I sanitized all my gear and got my glass carboy ready for action for when the beer was nice and cooled. I had gotten my airlock, screw cap, rubber stopper, auto siphon, and hose ready and cleaned. After the 30 minutes I siphoned my beer into the 1 gallon glass carboy and screwed it tight with the cap, stopper and airlock.

I aerated the wort before I screwed it tight and then sloshed the wort around after I had screwed it on to mix air in. I opened the top and dumped my
4 g of Bru Yeast (small batch) American Ale Dry Yeast.

I then officially sealed it off and set it in my closet for the next 2-2.5 weeks. I got really excited for how this was going to turn out and was checking on it daily to see the process of the beer inside the carboy. I saw that the bubbler was doing it’s thing, which got me even more excited because it meant I was on the right track for my first home brew.

When the two weeks had ended, I took my carboy out of the closet and headed over to one of my good friend Michael’s house. He helped me through the process of adding sugar for carbonation into the beer. We boiled up some sugar in water and then poured it into the carboy and mixed it up with my beer. We then siphoned the beer into each bottle and filled 8 bottles with my first brew.
This is when I took my final gravity (FG) reading which was a whopping 1.028.

I took my bottles home and let them bottle condition for about another two weeks. After this time was up I put them into the fridge to get all nice and chilled for when I can finally open one and try it. It wasn’t till this last week that I opened one and tried it for the first time. It was very overpowering and had a lot of bitterness immediately from the taste. I didn’t notice any off flavors from the beer, however I am going to spend a day doing a full sensory panel for my new beer along with having other people to taste test to get a few different views on how my first home brew tastes. I had a wonderful time doing this experiment and can’t wait to brew more!