Amber is the color of your energy

With the tainted wheat beer poured out I began the process over.  Going to the home brewing store and buying supplies for a new batch a beer seemed to give me a renewed zest for brewing.  I decided to try my hand at an American amber ale.  I also picked up some tools to make brewing easier:  an auto siphon to easily siphon liquids, and a bottle rack for drying bottles as I clean them.  I wonder if I can set up direct deposit from my pay check to The Beer Nut?  I'll have to check in to that.

After cleaning the ever-loving crap out of my fermenter, I put two and a half gallons of spring water in my boiling kettle and set the oven range on high.  Upon opening my new box of ingredients I discovered a surprise:  this recipe required the addition of specialty grains.  I've mentioned before that home brewing has been made easy with malt extract, but let me recap.  A commercial company will do all the leg work steeping the beer grains at very specific and controlled temperatures.  They then concentrate the mash and reduce it to a sugary syrup or a dry powder.  Those products are malt extracts.  Since mashing grains is such an exacting process, brewing by way of malt extract is a great way to get a handle on the brewing basics while still achieving drinkable beer.

When a person steeps specialty grains at a controlled temperature then brings the brew to a boil adding extract and hops, they are partial mash brewing.  I was happy for this new challenge even though I'm still new to brewing.  As uncle Roommate can tell you, I tend to watch the temperature of the brew very closely as is, so keeping the specialty grains withing a few degrees of 155 F was not too much of a task.

Aside from the partial mash component of the amber ale, this batch followed the same basic steps as the last.  As before, I focused on sanitizing everything that might come in contact with the wort.  I did decide to do a few things different this time around.  First, I agitated the wort after pitching the yeast to try and mix it throughout the brew.  Second, uncle Roommate and I put vodka in the air lock instead of water as an extra step in sanitizing.  Finally, I covered the fermenter with a cardboard box to shield it even better from light.  I'm hoping these steps will result in a drinkable end product.

Check back soon for an exciting "Do-It-Yourself" project complete with directions and pictures!