BrewBarrel Brewing

Brewing with a BrewBarrel!

As some of you might have noticed, I have never posted anything about me brewing my own beer.

And that has a good reason, I never have.....Until now!

Well, sort of..

The BrewBarrel

I recently hosted my birthday party, whoohoo, and one of the presents i received was the above displayed BrewBarrel. Having zero experience in terms of hands on brewing, and usually just being on the consumption side of the wonderful world of beer, i was quite excited to give this barrel a go!

The Barrel and its "ingredients" 

The BrewBarrel comes with brewing "ingredients", as everything included (except perhaps the yeast) looks nothing like the real deal.  The large bottle next to the keg is full of Malt extract, the small bottle with Hop extract, and the small package next to it is full of yeast.

This really makes the BrewBarrel the simplest and easiest home brew package, which was totally OK, since I had zero experience with brewing. Below i will show the steps i took to create my first "home-brew" beer!

Filling the keg with Malt extract

Adding a mix of cold and hot water

 After this very challenging step of adding some water, the keg had to be shaken for about 30 seconds.  Afterward, the Keg had to be filled with 5 bottles of water (the used Malt extract bottle).

Adding the "hops"

Adding the YeastieBoys

 After the "hops" and the yeast were added, the Keg had to be pressure sealed using the included pressure control valve. Closing off the Keg with this valve almost made me break my thumb, "it can be  little bit rough to get the valve into the hole" as it is stated in the instruction manual is a bit of an understatement.

And Done! 

After the keg was sealed, it had to be stored away. This whole brewing process only took about 10 minutes. Off course some after-care was necessary: after 24 hours the keg had to be turned upside down for a bit to vitalise the yeast. Then after about 5 days of chilling out, or fermenting, the keg had to chill out some more in the fridge (about two days).

Now for the fun part: actually trying the end product!

Fingers Crossed!

After figuring out how the tap handle worked, and tapping away a whole bunch of foam, the moment of truth had finally arrived. Having seen the "ingredients", especially the Malt extract, i didn't exactly have high hopes for my first brew.

Looks Nice!

Therefore i was pleasantly surprised when the beer was not only drinkable, it tasted kind of nice! I invited over some friends and we drank the 5 liters of "home-brewed" beer!

A fun first experience with brewing, next i will try a more advanced brewing kit!

Cheers!