The sweet smell of success?

As we are making this beer for others to (hopefully) enjoy we decided to make another light one, fearful that not everyone would enjoy a heavy, dark beer.

After much thrashing about of ideas, which included the rejection of amongst other things honey and spruce extra (yes, as in Christmas Tree) as ingredients, and research in our ever helpful home brewing book and on the internet, we had our recipe. We opted for two varieties of malt and two types of hops, therefore increasing the chances of this being something utterly unique.

Then the hard work began. Up to now all we’ve had to do is soften the contents of some tins and throw it in the brew bin. The new beer began with the pre-boiling of the speciality malts, which in itself took half an hour.

Once that was done it was in with the rest of the ingredients (the “secret recipe” parts being added 15 minutes before the end of the boiling process).

This produced our first ever mash which then had to be “sparged”. One of the best bits about home brewing, apart from the beer, is getting to use funny words. Sparging separates the liquid from the raw ingredients and helps release the sugars to produce wort (pronounced “wert”).

It was then a long (very long, as it turns out) wait for the wort to cool before pitching the yeast to kick off the chemical reaction which will produce our beer. A quick recording of the gravity, so we can work out the alcohol content, then on with the brew bin lid.

And now we wait. We do that a lot. Once we find our feet, we’ll make sure we always have a brew on the go, so one is in production as one is being consumed. That’ll make the waiting easier.

But, in the meantime, as we wait now, we’ll simply have to content ourselves with dreaming of our Light Christmas . . .