Dry Irish Stout

I started my first beer on Sunday. I ran up to Brewers Connection and settled on a kit for an "Irish Stout." I'll follow up with my notes tomorrow, so today I will just talk about the experience.

I grabbed a 12 quart pot enameled pot from Wal-Mart for about $10. This was a much better deal than the LHBS (Local Home Brew Store) was offering. This will let me do a 2 gallon boil. The process wasn't too difficult. It was a bit of a problem steeping the grains at 170 degrees, at least it was difficult keeping the temp. The boil went well and I had no boil overs, I credit my cooking experience for this.

The first major difficulty came when I needed to cool the wort to 90 degrees. I think I am going to need to invest a wort chiller. It took way too long. Then came the move to the garage for fermenting. I took a mini fridge and made a cooling box for keeping the temps down. It started at around 90 degrees and I figured it would take a while for the temp to get down. After some work I was able to get it down to 83 degrees by the time I went to bed. When I got up it was 66 degrees and I will check it when I get home to see how well it is working.