Chesnik, Chesnik & Hoolehan

This is the name of our brewing team at our homebrew class at the Flying Barrel. After a bite of my mom's infamous mac&cheese, my pop and I headed down to Frederick to attend our first homebrew class. With 9 students and one teacher, we jumped right into the process.

Step 1: Select our beer. We chose a Pale Ale based on the other team's selection of a Porter.

Step 2: Measuring and Milling our grains. Pretty interesting process. We nibbled on the roasted crystal barley and flaked barley...quite tasty. After milling the crystal into our steeping bag, we added the barley flakes and headed over to the boiler.

Steps 3: Steeping the Barley. It took approximately 15 minutes to steep. Enough time to quaff a brew crafted by our fearless teacher, Bob. Throughout the process we had "spare" time to enjoy different samples.

Step 4: Boil, Boil. Time to add 6 lbs of Pale Mat syrup to the mix. Our team partner Mike got the pleasure of stirring with the world's largest spatula, while I poured the syrup into the boiler. After that we dashed in our first hops, which escapes me now. We waited for a half hour. Yes, more brew was consumed.

Step 5: 30 minues pass, time to add the Finishing hops, Cascade.

Step 6: 2 minutes later we release the beer from the boiler into our fermenting bucket. A strainer catches all the left over gobble-di-gook.

Step 7: Cooling the beer from 212 to 80 degress. We used a copper immersion chiller, which utilizes a water source (hose) and coiled copper tubing. The idea, cold water in through the copper tubing chilling the wort. The cold water turns into warm water which is used to clean the boiler. Pretty interesting process. I got the job of stirring the wort, which earned me a seat and a fresh beer from my bestest beer bitch, my dad :)

Step 8: Add yeast and stir! Pop got stirring duties this time while Mike dumped the yeast. This is my favorite part, because this is where the alcohol is born. The yeast eats the sugar with the byproduct being sweet, sweet booze.

Step 9: Sanitize the lid and pop it on the bucket. Add the aerator and VOILA!

I'm sure I missed a step or two, but that's okay. So did Bob, the instructor. He fumbled on a few steps, probably due to the number of batches going on at once. Our team was the first to go, so we were the Guinea Pigs...which will probably end up being the name of our pale ale (credit to my pop's for the name). Or we could call it "Shit..Sugar", a phrase Bob used when he made his first trip up.

It is a great class, maybe not everything I thought it would be, but it's definitely fun. I thought it would be more homebrewing (i.e., making beer in a kitchen) oriented. The facility they have is beautiful, but would be quite an expense to get up and running in one's house.