Ahhh, home brewing…

For Christmas, Chris and I got some homebrew kits and some new supplies. What we got was enough for me to start home brewing again! I like to do the no-cooking-involved kits where you just mix up a bunch of ingredients in a big bucket and let it sit for a month. Chris does the more involved kits where you have a number of steps and need lots of equipment. Anyways, we went ahead and started putting my kits together. We started off with a kit called “John Bull Traditional English Ale.” I am a sucker for English beer, probably because I spent a semester there (with most of my time spent in the school pub during the happy hours!!!). Today Chris helped me put the beer into bottles. Another 2 weeks, and it should be ready to drink. I have never tried this kit brand before so it is kind of an experiment. We also made Ginger Ale today. It was really easy…another of my favorite put-it-in-a-bucket and voila! kits. It made eight 2 liter bottles worth. I am a little worried about the ginger ale because I made it in my bucket that I had made the beer in, and even though I had thoroughly washed out the bucket, it still smelled like beer. So my ginger ale may taste a little like beer. Oh, well! It’s all like some crazy Chemistry experiment anyways!