Beer making

This weekend, Megan and I made some beer.... 10 gallons of beer to be exact. We haven't made any beer since before our wedding and we have over 4 cases of empty bottles downstairs. So, we sat down and tried to work out what beers we should make to fill those poor lonely empty bottles. We decided to make a cherry stout and a kölsch. For those not in the know, kölsch is a pale beer made only in Köln (Cologne) and is sort of a mix between ale and lager. It's fermented at fairly cool temperatures, but not really lagered. Our local homebrew supply store closed down, so we ordered some kits for these beers from Northern Brewer. We've ordered from them before. (In fact, it was from them we got the Belgian raspberry puree to make the mead we had for our wedding.) The kits came late last week and we made the beer on Saturday and Sunday. Using our big propane burner that came with our turkey fryer sure makes things go faster than on the stove top!

Fermentation has just started, but I'll move these to the secondary fermenter probably tonight or Wednesday night. I imagine we'll be bottling the kölsch in maybe a week and a half and the stout after another 2 weeks or so. Then they'll have to bottle condition for another 3 weeks or so. Should be ready right about Christmas or so! You can see more details about the beers at my homebrew page.