Racking the Beer

I finished the second step of brewing today: racking the beer. Basically, the wort (unfermented mixture of grains, malt, hops, and yeast) has sat for a week and turned into baby beer. You can tell here that the beer is still opaque, but it should clear up more in another two weeks during the secondary fermentation. I also made the mistake of not putting the hose under the level of the beer to avoid too much aeration. I don't know how much that will affect my final product, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. The beer was dribbling down the side, not splashing directly in, so let's hope for the best.

You can see yeast crusted around the edges here while I use an auto siphon to direct the beer into the glass container. It looks disgusting, but it actually smelled pretty good! It smells like a medium bodied wheat beer, but extra sharp because it needs to ferment and mellow more.

This is the crust of yeast left at the bottom of the bucket. It was pretty gross, but not at all hard to wash off.

In under two weeks, we will be bottling!