Nearer to beer we be

This is what we saw when we took the
lid off the fermentation bucket.

It's been 11 days since we cooked up our first batch of beer.  Since then it's been sitting in a fermentation tub (a 5 gallon plastic bucket) on the big table in my office/dog room.  The first few days it was bubbling noticeably out the top but after that it seemed to stop so I wasn't sure what was going on in there.  Today we opened it up, siphoned it into the secondary (a glass carboy), and have sealed it up again for another two weeks. 

Clay, siphoning into the glass
carboy below

There was definitely evidence of fermentation and most importantly, it smelled like beer, a nice red ale to be specific. 

Two weeks in the carboy and then we bottle, but it will be yet another two weeks until it's ready to drink. 

It's a low tech operation



Putting stopper and
fermentation lock
on the carboy

Apparently light is bad at this
stage, so the carboy is wearing
one of my sweatshirts for the
next two weeks.

Trooper got off the bed to come into the office
to watch the process, but he soon got bored.



It's hard to believe he's such a fierce badass when he curls up like this or sleeps on his back
with all four legs in the air.  He's sweet.  I call him Troopy.