Making Beer

I have had this post in the works for over two years. I don't always remember to take pictures while Nathan is making beer. The boys love to help, so Nathan has made the process as kid friendly as he can. When Nathan started making beer, his first 4 beers were made from a can of supplies (they were all very good). -There are 3 types of brewing: from a can, dry malt extract, and all grain. As far as levels of brewing the can is the easiest. Dry malt extract brewing takes a little more skill, but is more expensive. All grain brewing is the most skillful but can be the cheapest. Nathan, of course, has found a way to make all grain as inexpensive as he can.- For his fifth attempt at brewing, Nathan wanted to try dry malt extract. He and a friend went to the brew store, he came back with ingredients to make an all grain batch. He said he had no idea what he was doing, but the owner JT assured him, he would be just fine. Turns out JT was right and Nathan has been doing all grain since.

Nathan buys large bags of grain to make it less expensive. Leaf was still crawling when I took this picture. (I know, it has been a while)

Nathan got an old grain mill from his mom. Everest loves to run the grain mill. At first it was a little hard and Everest would get tired after awhile. Nathan has since improved the operation and uses an electric drill to crank and he has mounted a plastic yogurt container on the top as a funnel, so we can put more grain in at one time. (He does this in the garage because it still makes a little bit of a mess.)

 The boys helping daddy boil the grains.

The beer fermenting in a carboy. If you look carefully enough, (and have been to our house in UT) you can see this picture was taken in Logan.

Nathan has been grumbling for a year that he doesn't have a spoon long enough to reach the bottom of his 10 gallon kettle. The ones at the brew stores are $40 or more. Nathan finally made his own "paddle" for $4. Can you tell how proud he is?

Getting ready to transfer the beer to the secondary fermentation. The carboy needs to be cleaned first. Leaf and Everest were both eager to help out with this. You can see the beer sitting in the bottling bucket, on the stool, on my washer.

Leaf loved helping wash the fermenter. He loves anything that involves water.

Everest wanted in on the action too. We have been working hard on sharing and "my turn, your turn" with the boys. They each got a few minutes to wash, and I think they each got 3 turns. It was definitely clean by the end.

Leaf says "Isheee" I can never resist, this beautiful blue eyed boys who is full of life. I have more pictures of him looking up at me and grabbing at the camera. I love all of them, and he is cute, so I thought I would share.