Now she’s back. She’s changed quite a bit in two years, but there’s still a spirit of discord that she brings with her. Normally small things are amplified and communication is difficult despite our best efforts.

I feel like I’m in prison – I just want to do my time. There’s nothing that can be done at this point other than just letting the time pass. You want to ask me how I’m doing? Sure, fine. Can you help me get out of this situation? No? Sorry, I’m just going to wait until this is over.

I wish I had some better tools to work with but I really only know how to turtle and let the timer run out on this. What makes it worse is that Alice and I are under no compulsion to let me sister stay. no one has tried guilting us into keeping her, but since no one else has stepped up to the plate – now or in the past – we get her by default. If I was heartless and less of a man, I would turn her out into the street (that day may yet come) but for now I’m in a prison of my own device.

She has until March 1 to stay with us. If she doesn’t find something by then… *sigh* …I can’t be held responsible for letting her go.

Meanwhile, brewing is going strong. I need to take a weekend and visit Mike Sweeney of www.stlhops.com. He was gracious enough to let my adventurous brewing partner hangout during a weekend recently and I’m hoping I can do the same. Our Rocktoberfest didn’t turn out as we planned, but there is still great hope for the as yet unnamed Irish Stout – both of which have been bottled. The next batch will be kegged, I hope. So that’s another thing to add to my list from the previous post:

• Get a kegerator!

I, for one, am glad it’s making a comeback! I’m currently delabelling the bottles from Epic Brew’s last batch with the intent to begin a new brew by the end of the month. I had completely forgotten about it when my three year old nephew walked into the bathroom and asked, “Uncle Jason, why is the bathtub full of bottles?”

I should probably get on that tonight.

This is day one. Notice the distinct line about a fourth of the way down the carboy.

This is yesterday:

It’s weird because, while clearing is occurring, it’s more diffused. We should still be on schedule to bottle this weekend. Possibly Saturday no later than Sunday.

We last left you, gently reader, anxiously awaiting the exposition of the box, echoes of Brad Pitt crying, “What’s in the box? What’s in the box, man?!” Wait no more.

Here’s the same shot from last time, recycled for bandwidth purposes and to add a hint of continuity to our narrative:

So humble, yet so full of potential mischief. Wait, what’s this? Labels?

See? We’re making wheat beer. /drool. But there’s more!

What are these mysterious hops that are “included in price” and “stored seperately?”

Here they are – Bittering:

and Aroma:

We were instructed that we should keep these in the freezer until brew time to ensure maximum deliciousness.

Opening the box reveals several bags of premeasured powder:

There are five pounds of Wheat Dry Malt Extract
Priming Sugar
and Ale Yeast:

Brewing will take place at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow morning. Stay tuned for details!

Well, yesterday began our first step toward true manliness. We took a little stroll down to St. Louis Wine & Beermaking in Chesterfield, talked up the owner (a man who seemed to enjoy spreading the love of homebrewing) and purchased one of the relatively inexpensive beer kits which I will dissect below. I say relatively cheap because what we had seem online was pretty pricey, but at under $150 we received an entire brewing setup, 48 bottles, and all the ingredients for our first batch. Many of the places we had seen online sold just the brewing setup for $150 – not including shipping! We also received “The Complete Joy of Home Brewing” by Charlie Papazian who is apparently one of the founders of the homebrewing scene.

Here’s a shot of everything I hauled in:

After reading through the instructions that came with the kit and recalling some of my previous research I realized that the copper tubing wasn’t going to be of much use in this first brew. We were originally going to use it to make a wort chiller but since this is an extract brew it’s not necessary to make the wort with all five gallons, so we will use chilled spring water to accomplish the wort chilling. When we begin doing full grain brews this will be handy so I think I’m going to hang onto to it.

This kit uses a plastic 6.5 gallon primary fermenter:

It’s fantastically labeled “Ale Pail” although I’m pretty sure you can brew whatever you darn well please in it.

The secondary fermenter is a 5 gallon glass carboy:

Also included are:

Caps

Capper:

Racking Cane:

About 5 feet of tubing:

A really cool bottling tool:

Here it is in action:

An air lock and stopper:

You fill this puppy with some sort of sterile liquid to keep germs out. No band-aid beer here!

A very nice thermometer:

A bag of sanitizer:

And finally, the item with the most potential for intoxication, the ingredients for the first brew:

Stay tuned for the breakdown of this item in the next post!

Update: Part two is now out.