This weekend I checked another activity off of my Portland bucket list. My friend Mike and I have been talking about brewing beer together for a while now and we finally coordinated our schedules, got all the ingredients at the local home brew store, and Mike dusted off all of his brewing equipment. We decided to make a nice dark porter that will be ready to drink just in time for the holidays.
It felt like we were working on a science project as we sterilized pots and carboys, mixed and heated ingredients to a very specific temperature and then added yeast for fermentation. The beer will ferment for about a month before it is ready for consumption. I can totally see why Portlanders are so into this. It’s a science and an art. And after you’ve experimented with it enough, you can get creative with it and really make some tasty drinks (such as pumpkin ale). We’ll see how this first batch goes and then who knows… we might be opening up our own local brewery (as if Portland doesn’t have enough of those)! Prost!
mixing the malt extract with the mulling barley
Cascade hops
filtering into the carboy
topping it off at 5 gallons
the hardest part... waiting.
and when we weren't busy in the lab/kitchen, we got to play with this little chunk! Mike's 5-month old daughter, Eleanor.
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