So we finally put our Hop Box Brew kit to work a few weeks back to see if we could turn out a half way decent beer. With the recipe given to us, we set forth on Jared’s stove to make a batch of chocolate oatmeal stout.
If you know brewing, then you know that water is the number one ingredient. Since we were doing a one gallon batch, we didn’t have to worry about boiling a massive pot of liquid.
Next you want to mill your grains making sure you break them up nice for mash. Hop Box sent us a bag already pre-crushed so we skipped this process.
The Hop Box brew kit comes with a bag for the mash in process. This is optional depending on your set up. Since we have never brewed in a bag before, we decided to give it a whirl.
Its pretty much like steeping a bag of tea at this point. You want to make sure you get all those starchy sugars making up that sweet nectar we call wort.
Usually after you mash in, there is a rest period. However with this process, there was not. So we began our boil. For this particular brew it was a 60 minute boil. This might vary depending on the beer you are brewing.
At this point we add our hops and various points of the boil to add layers of flavor to the beer. This particular recipe called for Fuggles, which is an English hop and mostly found in darker beers like; brown ales, porters, or in the case a stout.
After the boil you want to cool your wort down to fermentable temperatures and pitch your yeast. After that, the most grueling part. Waiting for the beer to finish for bottling.
Bottle as you like. We decided to use some old Kulmbacher swing tops to match our classy kit. All in all the beer camp out pretty good. Our only beef was some flavors that came from the water. I believe next time around will take the steps to treat the water before making our batch. The Hop Box Brew Kit definitely makes brewing easy. If you are looking for a way to make your own beer, but don’t want to invest in a big system, Hop Box is for you. A big thanks again from Mike over at Hop Box for sending us out this kit, we will be putting it to good use through out the year. Cheers buddy!
-Brian