Beer: WillCo Homebrewing Company Presents Digby IPA

This past Saturday -- thanks to my first free weekend in a month -- I finally got around to brewing up my second batch of homebrew. Like my first batch, this is also from a kit, a birthday gift from one of my friends. This time I'm brewing an IPA that I'm naming Digby. IPA is by far my favorite style of beer, so I decided to name my first homebrewed IPA after my blog (sort of).

Here's the process in pictures (I attempted to capture some different aspects this time).

The Ingredients

Steeping the crushed Crystal and Victory malts. This is done at
160-170F -- NOT a boil -- hence the need for a thermometer.

Soco (top) and Leelu (bottom) wonder what that strange
smell is coming from the kitchen (Cosmo must be hiding).

No, these aren't rabbit turds....they're hop pellets! Hop pellets
are compressed hops that ship better and keep longer.

Adding hops to the boiling malt. (Watch out for boil-over!)

The hops rise to the surface at first....mmmmmm....

....and then settle into the mixture.

We were prepared with more ice this time. The wort got down to
about 77F when the last of the ice disappeared. Just about perfect!

After transferring the wort to the carboy, you carefully add the yeast.

Then you gently rock the carboy to mix everything together, put
an airlock on and put it to bed. It's got lots of work to do.
Hour 0

Hour 15

Note the electrical tape line I made to indicate 5 gallons this time.