Well, I finally broke down and bought all the necessary equipment for brewing at home last week. I also bought ingredients to make my first batch of beer. I decided to go with a Baltic Porter recipe from Northern. My brother came over Saturday afternoon and we got set up.
Recipe was a partial mash with specialty grains (Briess Caramel 80 & 120, Simpsons Black and Chocolate) Steeped until water reached ~ 165 degrees and then removed. Brought to boil and added 3 lbs dark DME and an oz of Perle hops (bittering). 60 Minute boil with 1/2 oz Mt. Hood added at 15 and 5 minutes. Added additional 6 lbs dark LME at 15 minutes too. Cooled to 70 degrees F and pitched yeast starter (Wyeast #2112 California Lager). Yeast was started approx 30 hours before brewing by mixing with sterile 1 cup light malt and 1300ml water mixture. Took about 3 hours from start to finish. OG came in at 1.077 (temp corrected). The recipe stated it should be around 1.075 so I was pretty pleased with myself.
It's currently hanging out in the basement and has been ACTIVELY fermenting for 4 days now. It's fairly dark in the basement and the temp is pretty constant at about 64 degrees.
Anyway, the "plan" is to move to a secondary after about 2 weeks, leave it in the secondary for about 3 weeks and bottle. Then allow it to bottle condition for another 3 weeks (8 weeks total) and it should then be ready for consumption. Recipe stated it should take about 2 months for it to be complete.
Hopefully this will work out.
More later!
Steve