Homebrews: Rack and Vegemite

Making beer is as much about taste as it is about sustenance. Beer, properly made without fillers, is like drinking a loaf of bread. It is the yield of the grain, the staff of life. What can be more basic than wheat beer?

On this edition of Me and the Homebrews, WBN chronicles the making of a Dunkelweizen, or dark wheat, beer.

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It's now a week and two days since Brew Day. All visible activity in the beer has stopped and there is an inch of cold break -- read: sediment -- at the bottom of the carboy. This is what vegemite is made out of.

Time to rack the beer. This is a fancy term for transferring the beer from the first fermenter into the second fermenter. The second fermenter helps to precipitate some of the solids and will improve the clarity of the beer. Most importantly we hope to protect the beer from getting off flavors as the yeast begins to die.