While in Green Bay WI, we found a nice store called House of Home Brew http://www.houseofhomebrew.com/ where we found a nice American Amber kit.

We also picked up a wort chiller and a new bottling tube.

On a bight sunny, but cold and windy January day, we started brewing our third batch.

The instructions were good, with helpful tips – although more useful if you read before just diving in 🙂

Started boiling 2.5 gallons to steep the grain bag, but realized the tip to use more water if you have the equipments, we we can, so we added more water. Getting this much water to a rolling boil took a little longer. Nice tip to warm the liquid malt extract (LME) container in hot water to make it pour easier. Added the dry malt extract (DME) and the first batch of hops. Had a small boil over, but caught it quickly.

While watching the boil, we enjoyed a few home brews from brother Tim Pelton’s Mineral Springs Brewing http://mineralspringsbrewing.com/ and preferred Rod Carew Irish Red over the still very drinkable Scottish 80 shilling with the Chuck Taylor Converse All Star logo. Also enjoyed cousin Jeff Westra’s #2 and #5.

Transferred the wort into a smaller pot to cool with the new wort chiller with cold well water and stirred water, snow and ice around the outside of the smaller pot in the big pot. Everything worked really slick! Saved an hour as compared to other methods.

Transferred the wort into the 6.5 carboy through a filtered funnel to remove the chunky stuff.

Cleaned up the boil over mess and we were done for the day.