Let me introduce this journey by saying this: Homebrewers, respect. I totally underestimated the work that goes into brewing beer. It took me a full day in total to brew this beer, and you have to have patience. A lot of patience. That being said, I did like it, eventually. Let’s get into my process!

I brewed the Beer Geek Breakfast Stout by Mikkeller with the Brooklyn Brew Shop X Mikkeller Beer Making Kit, which you can find on the Mikkeller webshop. Lucky for me, I didn’t have to figure out the process all by myself: There are clear instructions on the website, you get all the supplies you need in the kit (expect for a big pot to brew in, you need that!) and I found some helpful beer brewing video’s on Youtube. After sanitizing everything (tip, be very careful with the pack of sanitizer, you only need a little bit each time and you need some sanitizer to clean your bottles later too) I could start cooking.

This takes a while. It (the grain and water) has to cook for an hour and you have to keep it at an even temperature and stir every five minutes. After that, it’s time to strain your wort a few times. I recommend you to do this with someone else, because its pretty heavy. Then you have to cook your clean wort again and add hops in the beginning and at the end. I forgot to add the hops at the end (whoops!), but I reached out to Brooklyn Brewshop and they told me it wasn’t a big problem, so that’s that. With the remaining grain you can bake beer-bread, if you want to.

After that, the wort needed to be put in the glass fermenter which is one gallon, the yeast needs to be added, and then you have to shake very aggressively to wake up the yeast. I think I didn’t do that enough, because I had little to no fermentation.

After two days of fermenting into a bottle of sanitizer, I put the airlock on and waited two weeks. Here’s another tip: I thought I had to put the glass fermenter in a cool, dark place. It turns out you should put it in a dark place (obviously) but it does NOT have to be cool. Room temperature is better.

Two weeks later, I could start bottling! I borrowed a bottle capper from a brewery close to home, but they say you don’t really need it: You can also screw-caps. I recommend bottling with two people as well, because again, it gets pretty heavy.

First, you need to rinse, sanitize and dry your bottles, I did that the day before I started bottling my beer. I also made a mix of coffee, honey and water that
needed to be added to the wort.

Before you start bottling your beer, I recommend you practicing with the tube a couple of times, just to get the hang of it. I felt like it was pretty hard to open and
close that tube the whole time while filling up the bottles. And after you put on your caps, you have to wait again! That’s the process I’m in now. My beers are in a cool, dark place and they even have labels on them already (the last pic). I will post an update on my Instagram once I test these badboys out, which will probably won’t be for another month. I learned that you have to have a lot of patience as a brewer, you need to stick to the instructions and that it’s easier and more fun to brew with someone else than alone. I would really recommend anyone to brew. You get to learn a lot more about beer and the process of making it.