Belgian Brew Day

Pete and I decided to do an all-grain brew of a Belgian ale off of a recipe of a friend of mine. In this first picture, you see me stirring preheated water in with the close to 15 pounds of grain that we have in the mash tun.



Here is a shot of the mash tun, and our somewhat trusty digital thermometers we need to keep an eye on the heat inside.



Now the lautering has begun. The tin foil is used to divert the hotter water of the lauter from disturbing the uniform filtering of the grain bed, since the grain is now used as a filter as well as a source of sugar.



The dark, rich wort being drained off into the brewpot. We'll boil this for an hour, adding hops and Belgian rock candy.



The full pot of wort ready to be cooked on the propane burner. We need the propane in order to heat the wort up fast enough and keep it constant.



The first "hot break", or the moment when it's about to boil over and you adjust the heat.



After boiling and simmering for an hour, now it's time to chill the wort down as fast as possible to 72 degrees or thereabouts. We use a coiled copper tube with cool water running through it in order to conduct the heat away.



Now we've pitched the yeast into the primary fermenter and the wort is filtering in, aerating as it does in order to provide the yeast with plenty of oxygen to play with.



Some of the hops filtered out.



Looking good.



Doing some final aeration before putting it away in the closet for a few weeks.