What’s That in Your Closet? A Carboy Filled with Wort! Wait, What?

What's in your hall closet? Winter coats and jackets? Maybe a vacuum cleaner? Skeletons? Well, I've got that beat -- in our hall closet right now, we've got what will eventually be two cases of extra-pale ale beer!

Knowing that I'm a huge beer fan, my wife bought me a very cool starter kit with all the equipment needed to home-brew some great beer as a birthday present a few years ago. Since then, using some beer recipe kits from Northern Brewer in Minneapolis, we've tried our hands at brewing a couple different beers.

We started with a version of a brown ale, called Caribou Slobber. It was pretty good -- and a pretty good success for our first time brewing our own beer (thankfully, we had some expert advice from a friend, who's an avid home brewer).

Next, we brewed a version of a double IPA -- an imperial pale ale. It turned out okay, but ended up with a little too much carbonation when we bottled it, which resulted in too much foam (like almost three-quarters of the glass) when you went to drink it.

Now, we're brewing a version of an extra pale ale, similar to Summit's EPA. It's currently in the active fermentation stage, and needs to be stored in a warm, dry place -- which is why there's a glass carboy in our hall closet. Because it's not fully fermented, it's not actually 'beer' yet -- brewers refer to at this stage as 'wort'.

In another week and a half, we'll transfer it to the secondary fermenter, and then eventually bottle it. After sitting for a few more weeks in bottles (about six weeks from the original brewing date), we'll be able to crack one open and see how we did. It's kind of cool to open a bottle of beer knowing that you, yourself brewed it. I'll let you know how it turns out!