90 Shilling Ale- Part 1

When my husband and I first started dating, he had recently bought the house we live in today. Him and his best friend would remodel a room of the house, each brew a different batch of beer and then have all their friends over to help drink it up.

Though my husband and I don't drink very often, it became a fun process that we do occasionally. We will share with friends and family this year for Christmas.

We have a great local shop full of beer supplies. They help you get the grain and grind it up, As well as the yeast, malt and other items. We follow the Brew-Master's Bible by Stephen Snyder.

First we take a bit of water, heat according to directions and put in your bag of grains. Essentially you are making a "tea."

Then we added into our large stock pot with more water and bring to a boil adding the different kinds of malt. This recipe called for a powder and syrup malt.

Next we added in the hops.

And you continue to boil and boil and boil.

The hardest part is cooling down the beer before adding the yeast. It can't be too hot or the yeast will die. (or too cold) That is one reason why we enjoy making beer in the cooler months here in Michigan. We already had a bunch of snow, so my husband, Nate, took the pot outside and set it in the snow, monitoring the temperature to get it down to 70 degrees.

Then we put it into our 5 gallon bucket for the first stage of fermentation. Added the yeast and some more water. Let this sit according to directions. In our case about 5 days.

This beer recipe we have done before and in the past it built up so much pressure we couldn't use the traditional bubbler. So we attached our siphoning hose to the top of the bucket to a canning jar filled with some water.

The 2nd part of the fermentation process to be continued in part 2- coming soon.

Can't wait to show you the whole process!