Yes, yesterday was Blue Mountain Lager Brew Day for me. That means I spent about 2-3 hours cleaning, sanitizing and making my wort for the Blue Mountain Lager which I will probaby enjoy in about a month’s time. Hmmm…..just thinking of it makes me all weak in the knees. Just like when I met my first love - my PC. Anyway, before I continue, I will give you guys the recipe. Nothing special, it consists of just the Morgan’s Blue Mountain Lager Kit, Lager Malt (1kg), Cluster Hops, 50g of Malto-dextrin and Ringwood Ale Yeast. The Ringwood Ale Yeast is actually a yeast cake slurry from the owner of Homebrew Singapore which I got all my ingredients for making this batch.

Well, this is the 3rd time I am brewing kits. The first two was the Cooper’s Australian Pale Ale. The first one was a failure because I am the stupid one. I forgot to rinse my bottles after sanitizing them. The second one turned out great (at least to my friends). And I am hoping that this brew, the Blue Mountain Lager, will turn out even better than all of them! I am keeping my fingers and my toes cross.

Okay, here we go -

The picture above shows me pouring water from the tap to my brew pot. See how clean the brew pot is. I scrubbed and scrubbed like a mad man to make it so shiny and clean to make the wort, my parents think that I have gone bonkers. There is no need to sanitize the brew pot because I am going to boil it. Boiling kills any germs and bacteria that may be present in the water and if you put your hands into the boiling water, it will cook it.

Yes, after filling that brew pot, it’s time to put in on the flame in order for it to boil. This can take quite a while, so take a break by reading a book. Or you could just sit and stare at the brew pot like what I did and think deep thoughts. Do you guys know that the answer to the universe, life and everything is the number 42? Well, now you know. So go forth and enlightened the world.

Ha, it’s boiling! Finally after so long, the water starts to boil and it’s now time to switch off the flame and add our lager malt extract. Remember to switch off the flame, we won’t want the malt extract to scotch and turn the wort/beer too dark. And remember to stir continuously as you add the malt extract.

That’s me peeling of the wrapper on the Morgan’s Blue Mountain beer concentrate can. The reason why I am removing the wrapper is to ensure that even you use the can opener to open the can, the paper won’t get into the beer concentrate in the can. My first brew, I think I got a few pictures of paper in the beer wort because I didn’t remove the wrapping from the beer concentrate can.

I am heating the beer concentrate can. The reason why I am heating it is to make the beer concentrate easier to pour later. You can’t imagine how thick this stuff is. It’s really like the rice maltose you get from NTUC. Thick and extremely hard to pour out of the can. I did this heating at the same time I was boiling the water before I add the malt extract.

That’s the lager malt extract on the left and the malto-dextrin on the right. The malto-dextrin is used to get more body into the beer. This complex sugar is not fermented by the yeast and thus, it will remain in the wort. And it helps to create a very good head for your beer. We all just love a good head in our beer, don’t we? It’s also very cool to show off to your friends your creamy creamy beer.

Okay, in the photo above, I have added the 1kg of lager malt extract into the boiling water. Look at the little foam they have created. Not to worry, after boiling the wort for a while, all the foam would have disappeared.

The Cluster hops from Morgan. I am going to add the cluster hops as a flavouring hops this time. Yes, I said before that I may not be using the cluster hops because I don’t like the flavour. But after reading the forums for a while, it seems that this hop flavour is quite okay as a flavouring hops, so I said to myself, why not?

Yes, that’s the specially designed infusion brew bag aka normal tea bag. Don’t you just love marketing people? They can really make something out of nothing. I am quite impressed.

Yup, I am using my S$2.80 can opener to open up my beer concentrate. Oooiii, make in England okay? Should go well with Muntons.

Yucks, it doesn’t look that appealing right? Well, hopefully, it will turn out to be a very appealing beer. Looks doesn’t matter much when you have great beer to drink. Anyways, it smells better than the Cooper’s Australian Pale Ale beer concentrate. Cooper’s Australian Pale Ale smells very sickly sweet, the Blue Mountain one smells pretty aromatic and complex. That is probably the hops and other malts they used. Well, I guess we will have to wait and drink in order to compare both of them.

After pouring the beer concentrate into the wort, it turned much darker. It was definitely much darker than what I expected from a lager. And this was before I did another 5 minutes boil. Not sure whether the beer will turn out darkish in colour or not.

This is not your Chinese New Year goodies gone bad. This is the yeast slurry that Homebrew supplied me. It’s the Ringwood Ale Yeast. Heard that it is a high flocculation yeast with medium attenuation and it produces some very complex flavours. This is something which I would love to try.

Before we pitch the yeast, we will need to cool the wort down first. Pitching at a high temperature can either kill the yeast or make the yeast go on a crazy feast which can produce all sorts of off-flavours in your beer.

Well after that, I added the wort to the fermenter and top it up to 23litres with tap water. After that I aerate the wort for 15 minutes and then pitch the yeast. The krausen appears in just a few hours and the airlock has already started bubbling very furiously. I think I will wait for 3-4 weeks before I bottle this baby of mine.