So… I’m completely obsessed with this beer making thing. (previous post)
OnlyWife let me buy my own brew kettle, which I found SUPER cheap at one of the online stores; a 5 gallon stainless steel boil kettle for $17.99! Yeah, great price… until you get to the shipping. So of course, I had to get a few other things to make it worth it; some cleaner, another beer kit to brew, some more bottle caps.
But this kettle… big. Bigger than the one I used in the last batch. A little flimsy; definitely not the best kettle, but it will do.
So I get to brewing the next batch. Get the kettle on the stove, follow the instructions and… it doesn’t boil. I’m freaking out. If it doesn’t boil, the beer may be ruined. I’ve read alot about home brewing, and everything says not to panic; it will be alright. But I was panicing.
2 hours and no boil.
Then I leaned on the stove in frustration and almost burned my hand. Aha! The pot was too big for the burner on my glass top electric stove! The glass was actually dissipating the heat away from the pot. Damnit! Luckily, my stove has a “bridge-burner” on the other side, which basically makes the whole left side of the stove one big burner, so I cranked it up, and moved the boil kettle over.
In a short while, it finally started to boil. Whew!
So I finally got moving on the brew. Everything worked out, and now I have two batches of beer fermenting and getting ready to finally drink. The waiting is the hardest part.
While I was waiting for the boil, I also made OnlyWife a small batch of “Hard Lemonade”. I’m using my old Mr. Beer kit to ferment it. I had to actually put the thing to use; couldn’t let it go to waste. 🙂
Now I’m trying to convince “Santa” (OnlyWife) to buy me an outdoor propane burner so I don’t have problems with the stove again. And I’ve got the process pretty much down, so the next brew day should go pretty smoothly.
Now if I can only figure out how to keep glitter out of everything. 🙂
