Relax! Have a Home-brewed Beer!

The adventure began many years ago when I discovered that one of my friends had run a microbrewery in the past. We talked about it and it got me thinking. She suggested I read The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing, by Charlie Papazian. That book got it started, and we decided to keep going with the hobby.

I worked the numbers first. One batch of home brew supplies cost about $35. Some initial equipment purchases would need to be made, but the overall cost of the initial purchase was under $100 and would only be about $35 from then on out. I stopped by the local brewing shop and picked up my carboys and hoses and first brewing kit. I knew that one batch would make 5 gallons of good, top quality beer. That's four cases of really good beer for $35. Those were some pretty good numbers for me.

What do I mean by really good beer? Well, the best analogy I can come up with is comparing a commercial chain of Italian restaurants to a local family owned restaurant. If you eat the chain food, it will tastes just fine, and you'll get your Italian food fix. But if you eat at the family restaurant, you'll taste really good, rich, smooth tasting food. In the case of home brew it is actually healthier since brewing at home keeps a lot of the B vitamins in the beer. Why does this matter? A lack of B vitamins and water is usually a strong cause of hangovers. That's right: there is less chance of a hangover with home brew than there is with store bought.

My friend, Lisa, decided that she, her husband and some friends were going to have a brewing party and it would be a great chance for me to see how it all worked. I knew the basics of home brewing: all you needed was a container, sugar, yeast and water. The type of sugar, the type of water, the amount of yeast and any other additives you might put into it was what determined the type of alcoholic beverage. Mix all the stuff up in the right way, put it in the container with a way for the gas to escape and you could make alcohol. It was necessary for the gas to have a way to escape, or all you made was a big bomb. The reason for this is, when the yeast and sugar meet in the water environment, the yeast eats the sugar, and makes two bi-products: alcohol and carbon dioxide. But knowing these basics didn't show me all I needed to know to make beer, so I was up to Lisa's brewing party suggestion.

At the party, there was one guy that started from scratch with his brewing. He used a bag of wheat, sparged it (extracted the yeast malt, or the "sugar" in this case, looking like a thick syrup) and then continued on the brewing process. Lisa took my home brew kit, which was the already extracted syrup, a bag of herb-type stuff called "gruit," and certain hops. By the way, all of that was prepared for me at the home brew place according to what beer I wanted to make. The batch even came with instructions that would have allowed me to make a batch even without Lisa's guidance and Papazian's book. But Lisa began showing how the whole process worked. She boiled the water in the big 5 gallon pot, we added the gruit at the right time, put the hops in at the right time, and finally added the malt at the right time, and let it all cook for an hour or so. Oh, by the way, the other main task of a brewing party is to try all the home brews from times past and other various beer creations. So, by the time your own batch is ready, you are, well, feeling just fine, shall we say.

The guy that started from scratch started about two hours before us and ended about the same time. Aft er the batch is boiled and has sat the right amount of time, you cool it very quickly, then put it in the glass carboy with spring water. Then you let that sit about two weeks. During that time the beer bubbles and foams going through the fermentation process. At the end of the two weeks, you add a little sugar to it, bottle it, then let it sit another week. This naturally carbonates it, and you now have a finished, smooth, home brew.

How did it taste? Awesome! How did it compare to that guy that started from scratch? Well, he was making the same type of beer, and it tasted almost exactly the same. But, man, that beer was good! Better than anything store bought I had ever tried!

So, give it a shot. Pick up a new cheap hobby. Get the book, do a little research and then you too could be a brew master!