Pilsner Lager

My wife and I spent the Christmas holiday with her sister's family in upstate New York. My Brother in law makes his own wine and told me about Hammersmith Home brew supplies ( Hammersmithhomebrew.com ). When he told me they also sold a good selection of beer making ingredients and equipment I decided to drive by and check it out. Joseph Shunk, the proprietor was a pleasure to deal with and very helpful. He puts together ingredient kits from high quality items that would normally be bought a la cart. Being a bit nervous about making a larger I was happy that he had a pilsner lager kit. The kit came with 6.6 lab of extra ligh malt extract from Northwestern Extract co. 2oz of Hallertau hops for boiling and 1/2 oz Tettnang finishing hops. a dry lager yeast and some dextrose (corn sugar) for bottling.

I started off by boiling 2 gallons of water and then removing the brew kettle from the heat. I then put the malt extract in the kettle and brought it back to a boil. once it was boiling I added the Hallertau hops and then let it boil for 40 min. I then added the Tettnag hops and let it boil for 5 min. I had three gallons of cold purified water in the fermenter and I added the contents of the kettle to this. I had proofed the yeast hours before and I added that to the fermenter as well. This was all done yesterday and I woke this morning to the happy sight of a bubbling water lock :) I will update with more news later.