A Stressfree Brew Day

The key to a successful brew day is organization. Before you heat a drop of water, make sure you have your recipe, and all the ingredients. Making beer is more like baking than cooking: you can't substitute ingredients.

Then walk through the brewing process, checking off your items:

Bring a gallon of water to 170° and add your specialty grains. Do you have something that will hold a gallon of water and your specialty grains? Do you have a muslin bag to hold the grains? Do you need one? (I don't.) Hold at 170° for 30 minutes. Do you have a thermometer? A clock? A watch? Meanwhile, bring a quart of water to 150$deg;.

Put your strainer over your kettle. Do you have your kettle and strainer? Put the muslin bag into the strainer. Or, pour the liquor and grains into the strainer. Then, slowly, pour the quart of water over the grains to extract as much fermentable sugars as you can.

Add the extracts and stir. Spoon? Bring to a boil. Add the hops. As the wort boils, sanitize your fermenter and your strainer. Got bleach or iodophor? Once finished, pour the wort through the sanitized strainer into the sanitized fermenter. Top off the wort with chilled water, pitch your yeast when the wort is around 85°, and ferment.

Now you have a list of the items you need.