Yesterday was a bit of a momentous occasion, as I took the first steps towards completing my first home brew. If all goes well it will be an red ale, with a reddish-brown color, and hopefully lots of flavor. For Christmas I received a pretty excellent home brewing kit, with all the equipment I would need to complete my first brew, including the ingredients for the red ale. Here’s a link to Home Brew Mart, the website the kit was purchased from.
If you do the math, it turns out it took me almost 3 months to get my shit together and start the brewing process. Even after receiving the kit, home brewing carried with it a certain mystique which I think played a big part in why I procrastinated for so long. It wasn’t so much that I was worried that it was going to be too difficult, because really just like baking (sort of), in that you go step-by-step following the instructions very closely, until your done. What really scared me was the absolute failure that I was told my first brew was destined to become. It doesn’t matter who you ask, family and friends alike, anyone who even thinks they know anything about home brewing all say the same thing. “You’re first brew always sucks ass, don’t worry about it,” or “They never come out good on the first try, so just get this one out of the way and learn from your mistakes.” While I appreciate being told like it is, I don’t necessarily condone marking someone’s efforts a failure before they even get started. It just seems a but fucked up to me.
Oh well, haters be damned, I went along with the process, and I have to say it wasn’t as scary as I had built it up to be. I won’t go through the whole process of cooking the batch, as you can find a million tutorials online that do it better than I could.
Having brewed the beer and bottled it after two weeks of fermenting, I am really excited to see how it turns out. I think a big part of what makes brewing your own beer so attractive is the level of investment it requires, and as a result the level of attachment you feel to the process. I can’t think of anything comparable to the experience in conventional cooking. When you take into consideration the specialty equipment it requires, the time, the prep (cleaning labels off of beer bottles sucks sooo many balls **see the bottom for my thoughts on this process), the cooking, and the wait time, there’s a lot going on, and a lot the get attached to. If everything turns out ok, I anticipate a fairly immense sense of pride for the final product.
I am definitely going to be posting on the outcome of this first brew, and hopefully on many more in the future. Oh, and another benefit of brewing at home is that when all is said and done, you’re getting about 56 bottles of beer (more that 9 six packs) for roughly $35, which is amazing.
**The best bottles to clean were Saranac and the worst were easily the Anchor Steam. F Anchor Steam in the A, for real. The best way to clean the labels that I found was to soak the bottles in really hot watter for a few minutes and then scrape of the labels with a knife, or some similarly shaped object. If you have trouble scrubbing off the left over glue, spray on some windex, it makes a huge difference.
Posted in Red Ale, beer, craft brew, drinks, home brew, i am smart, porn, resolve, sexy-time
