Chocolate Milk Stout: Brewing

Damian got a beer making kit for Christmas.  Let's make beer!  His first batch was an ESB, which is being force-carbonated in our kegerator now.  This is our second batch.  I voted for a chocolate milk stout.  We are not awesome enough (or ambitious enough) to attempt an all-grain recipe yet.  So, we bought a kit with malt syrup.

Sounds good!

Step one for brewing beer is to wash and sanitize EVERYTHING.  Dirty gear will lead to skunky beer at best.

No one complains about doing dishes when it leads to five gallons of beer (he never complains about dishes, really).

While Damian worked on the tedious cleaning job, I put two and a half gallons of (bottled) water in our stock pot.

Then I added the grain and turned the burner on high.  Also, the jug of malt syrup is in a pot of water over very low heat.  It's thick, sticky stuff, so it helps make it more pour-able to warm it up some.  There is a towel on the bottom of the pot to keep the jug from getting too warm.

Giant tea bag of cracked, roasted grain.

This is either very young beer, or the most disappointing tea ever.

We steep the grain until the water reaches 170 degrees Fahrenheit.

Probe thermometers with temperature alarms are the best!

Damian is pressing the liquid out of our giant tea bag.

Next we brought the brew to a boil, took the pot off the heat, and added our sugars.

Adding the malt syrup.  This stuff tastes so yummy!

Adding the lactose.  This is what makes it a milk stout.

Once the sugars were stirred in, we put the pot back on high heat and brought it back to a boil.  Now we got to start calling the brew a "wort."  This is fancy talk for "young beer."  Once the wort was back at a boil, it was time to add some hops.

Hop pellets:  they look like rabbit food.

The wort was boiled for 30 minutes, then another round of hops was added in.

Only 1/2 ounce this time.

We boiled the wort for 30 more minutes, then cooled it down as quickly as possible.  It's important to get the wort below 100 degrees Fahrenheit as quickly as possible.  We did this by putting a bag of ice in the primary fermenter (big, sanitized bucket) and pouring the wort over the ice.  Then we added enough cold bottled water to bring the total volume up to five gallons.

The ice goes in.

Then the hot wort goes in.

Next up, we needed to aerate (stir) the wort so the yeast would have enough oxygen to be happy, eat sugar, and make our beer worth drinking.

Science time!  We took a small sample of the wort to check the specific gravity of the mixture.

Fun with a hydrometer.  The specific gravity was 1.052, which is what we were aiming for.

Once the wort dropped below 80 degrees, it was safe to add the yeast.

Keeping it clean:  the yeast packet, the scissors used to cut it open, and the gloves I am wearing were all sanitized.  The yeast are the only micro organisms invited to this party!

And now we wait.  The beer will hang out for about a week in the primary fermenter, then we will move it into a glass carboy for the secondary fermentation.  The cacao nibs will be added about two weeks before we bottle the stout.  I will post an update when I know how our beer turned out!

Don't you keep a big bucket of beer in your linen closet?  Why not?