It's alive!

I couldn't have been more disheartened by the time I had sealed my fermentation bucket. It seemed like everything had gone wrong. Not only were my temperature and my specific gravity incorrect, but I had also freaked out and used a bunch of unsanitized equipment for reasons I can't even remember at this point. (I did at least run the new stuff under hot water for awhile, so, you know, I'm sure it's fine. I'm sorry, Charlie.)

Anything you read about homebrewing will casually tell you to store your fermenting beer in a dark place at 65-70 degrees. As though there aren't any cheap bastards out there who would shiver all day and night under three layers of blankets rather than turn up the heat and pay a slightly higher oil bill. Not that I know anybody like that.

At any rate, room temperature in my home during the winter months is lower than the recommended temperature for fermenting ale. It's about 60 degrees during the day. So I am probably the only homebrewer in history who has fermented his ale in the basement, because it is warmer than the rest of his house. I'm keeping it in the unfinished side of the basement, near the furnace, which is the warmest and driest part of the house right now -- not to mention the darkest.

After the calamity that had befallen the yeast-pitching portion of the brewing process, I was expecting the worst. I checked on my fermentation bucket a few hours after leaving it in the basement and thought I saw some condensation on the inside of the fermentation lock, but didn't know what to make of it. Probably, I thought, the whole thing is a failure.

The next day, first thing I went downstairs to see if anything was happening. I turned on the light and thought I saw something moving in the lock. I crouched and stared at it. Come on. Show me something.

The bucket burped.

Maybe that's not a correct description of what was happening, but it's what it looked like. The fermentation lock is a small plastic container half-filled with water. As I watched it, it continually belched out bubbles, sometimes violently. Those little yeasts were doing their job -- which, as I understand it, is to eat sugar and crap alcohol. This goop might yet turn into beer!

Of course, I still have to bottle it. And nothing so far has scared me as much as that.