Brewing the Caribou Slobber (Our first homebrew)

A couple of years ago, my husband and I (along with the help of a couple friends) brewed our first batch of beer:  the Caribou Slobber from Northern Brewer.   This extract kit came with our deluxe brewing starter kit.  We watched the official video from Northern Brewer, Brewing Caribou Slobber kit a few times before were were ready to brew.

We followed the kit's recipe very closely, except we did make one very messy mistake (more on that below).

Boiling the Wort

Once all the supplies were sanitized, we created the wort.  The process was pretty straight forward, although with our electric range, a bit time consuming.  (A future homebrew accessory will be a burner!)   Once the boiling completed, we needed to rapidly cool down the wort before transferring it to a carboy.  The picture below is our ice bath.  We were super worried about the risk of contamination during this step.

Transferring the Wort to the (Wrong) Carboy

After the wort cooled down to the appropriate temperature, we transferred the wort to our 5 gallon glass carboy.  This was a mistake and one we would later pay for.  We were supposed to use the 6 gallon carboy.

Next, yeast was added to the carboy.   Satisfied with a hard day's work, the carboy was moved to a closet.   

The Krausen!

In the wee hours of the following day, we heard a loud noise.  We blamed the cat and went back to sleep.  Once we rose out of bed, we eagerly checked on our brew and to our horror we discovered krausen coated the walls and doors of the closet we stored the carboy in.

The noise we heard a few hours before was the airlock blowing off the carboy.  For damage control, we made a small bucket of Star Sans, grabbed the blow off tube and some painters tape to replace the airlock.  It was at this point we noticed we used the wrong sized carboy (a mistake we shall never make again!)

Secondary Fermentation

Two weeks later, we transferred our brew from the 5 gallon carboy to the 6 gallon carboy.  This task was more difficult than it should have been.  The hose for our siphon was so short it made maneuvering a bit difficult.

Bottling Day

Another two weeks went by and then we bottled the beers.  Once we sanitized the bottles and supplies, we were ready to fill them.  We followed the recipe's instructions very closely for mixing the priming sugar.  Capping the bottles was a little intimidating at first.  We worried we would slip and knock over a bottle while using the bottle capper.

Tasting the Caribou Slobber

The final beer came out pretty well, with one minor exception:  the carbonation.  Our beer was very carbonated.  It was the kind of drink you would want to open over a sink in case it foamed out.  We had one bottle explode during the fermentation process.  It was a graceful explosion, however.  It was like someone took a knife a sliced off the bottom of the bottle.   

Our first experience homebrewing was a fun one.  We look forward to brewing more batches and experimenting with recipes of our own.