About a month ago I decided that I needed to find a hobby to help fill all the time gap left from not being able to eat carbs or drink beer. My solution? Brew my own beer! I decided to go the Mr. Beer kit method, so I bought two kits and got to work. Since moving to the TC, I've become a little bit of a beer snob. Gone are the days where an American light beer met my basic requirements (I knew I was in trouble when I bought a case of the official beer of central South Dakota (Busch Light) for a fishing trip in September and still have 19 of them leftover). The lightest beer I can drink is Summit, and even that is an EPA. My snobbery started last Christmas when Molly took me on a tour of the Summit Brewery in St. Paul as the coolest gift possible. After touring the facility, learning about hops, and sampling their finest offerings, I decided I could never go back to flavored water. From there, it just got work. I discovered Surly, another Minnesota beer, and my addiction to hops was even more cemented. My friend Tim, a beer connoisseur in his own right and fellow home brewmaster, came to visit last spring and he, Molly, and I went to a beer tasting where multiple local brewers showed me everything I have been missing in the world of beer. I started tasting the subtle differences in beers, being able to pull out the different ingredients, and learning to appreciate the differences between the stoutest stouts and aliest ales. The more bitter the better. I've gone to a few more tasting events since then, and I keep going deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. I do my best to pick up a different six pack whenever I make the trip to the liquor store in an effort to taste all that the world of beer has to offer. Don't worry, I'm not an alcoholic. I've just become a true lover of all things beer.
Anyway, back to the brewing. Three weekends ago I whipped up two batches of my own brew (or as close to my own brew can be based on using only prepackaged ingredients); an American Light style beer for Molly and an American pale ale (think Sam Adams) for me. I decided to not stray too far into the fancy recipes until I knew for sure I could make palatable brew with the most basic ingredients. I was so nervous that I read and reread and rereread the instructions and message boards until I was 100% confident I wasn't going to mess things up. Although my hands were shaking most of the time, I managed to mix the ingredients per the instructions and cleared a shelf in the bookcase in our extra bedroom. The beer has to ferment at a very specific temperature and that room seems to be pretty temperature controlled. Because the wort has to be away from direct light, I draped a towel over the whole setup and let the yeast work its magic.
Welcome to my brewery
Mr. Beer touts that you'll be ready to bottle and brew your beer in just two weeks, but I quickly found on the message boards that the two week estimate is about two weeks short. I decided that tonight was going to be the night that I bottled and started the carbonation process, so I pulled a little sample for a taste and alcohol by volume check. The AVC is pretty close, but after waiting patiently for over three weeks, I still don't think it is quite ready to enter the next step. The key to knowing when it is ready is that it needs to taste like flat beer without sweetness (unless that's what you're going for), and both still have a little bit of sweet mixed in there.
You have no idea how hard it is to be patient and just leave it alone. I've decided to give it three more days, and then I'm going to force the issue, regardless of how ready it is. After I bottle it, it needs to sit in the bottles at room temp for another 3-4 weeks before I put it in the refrigerator for 2 more weeks. That means that I've still got a month and a half to wait until I can crack open my first bottle and taste something that was made by my own hands. I have a feeling that my personal brew won't have half the quality I've found during my exploratory trips to the liquor store, but I have a sneaky suspicion that it will be twice as satisfying. Until then, the wait continues...
I'm still trying to decide a name for my home brewery. From there, I'll try to name each individual batch. Throw some ideas at me, team. The one that tickles my fancy the most wins a bottle of the inaugural batch (for better or worse).
Brewmaster Pool
No comments:
Post a Comment