Wort, me worry?

All things being equal, I thought the first part of brewing my 8-Bit Ale went very well. First, I added 1.5 gallons of water to my 20-quart stock pot. (Tap water, as mentioned in the last post.)

Next, I poured the 1 pound of crystal malt into a muslin bag and knotted it. I dropped it into the stock pot and turned on the heat.

I brought the water to a boil, then removed it from the heat and let the malt steep for five minutes. Apparently you can check the temperature during this part of the process to make sure that you're getting everything right, but, again, I decided not to sweat it.

I was a little worried because the bag was only about halfway submerged in the water, and because lots of fine powder had escaped the bag in the transition from the counter to the pot. But before long, a dark toffee color was seeping from the bag into the water, and a rich sweet smell was permeating the air. The most interesting thing that happened during this step was that the grains started to pop under the heat, almost like popcorn.

While this was going on, I filled the sink with warm water and stuck my cans of malt extract in for a few minutes. Papazian had recommended this as a way to make the syrup easier to work with.

He was right! The stuff was incredibly thick. And sweet, too, as I noticed when I sucked a bit of it off my fingertips.

Next, I removed the grains from the pot, and added the syrup, the hop pellets, and the water salts.

The next stage was time-consuming, but easy. I simply boiled the concoction for 45 minutes. (The instructions I got with the kit said to boil for 30 minutes, but Papazian said 45, and in this case I chose to follow his advice. Later, I would learn that I should always follow his advice.)

During this time, I was blown away by the aroma. The dominant scent was a malty sweetness, girded by an earthy grain odor.

I was surprised by how many visible changes the wort went through while I was boiling it. At first, the hop pellets disintegrated and floated on the surface. After a little while, the wort formed a thick greenish coating that looked like pond scum. Then it disappeared, and for the last half or so of the boiling process the wort took on a deep caramel color.

The questions persisted: What does it mean to boil for 45 minutes? Do I want a violent boil, or more of a simmer? They don't tell you this stuff. For the most part I went with a rolling boil, but it was dangerous. At times, the liquid level surged nearly to the top of the pot, and only judicious stirring and alert heat control prevented it from boiling over.

During this time, I asked my wife to watch over the wort while I attended to some sanitization. I needed to clean my fermentation bucket, the lid, and everything else that would come into contact with the wort once it came off the heat. This wasn't too hard, although, again, I worried about the details. My kit came with something called "C-Brite." I had to mix one packet of it with a gallon of water. Seemed easy enough to do this in my fermentation bucket, and then sanitize the smaller equipment right in there. But what was I supposed to do?

I ended up dunking the equipment in the cleaning solution for several seconds, swishing it around to make sure every bit of the surface was sanitized. Then I rinsed it all under cold tap water and laid it out on paper towel. For the bucket itself, I grabbed some more paper towels that I sloshed into the solution, then up and around the walls of the bucket. I only did the top part of the outside, figuring the beer wouldn't and shouldn't come into contact with much of the bucket's exterior. Maybe this will end up poisoning me.

All told, I was happy with the way this part of the process unfolded. Everything seemed to go right. I added the ingredients at the right time; I sanitized everything, maybe even more than I needed to. So far, my first batch of homebrew was shaping up nicely. I could almost taste the 8-Bit Ale.

And that's when everything started to go wrong.