Finishing off the brew

A few weeks before I left Los Angeles, our good friend, Aaron, invited my husband and I to learn how to homebrew beer.  He was making an amber ale, and we were invited to participate in the brewing process.  We jumped at the chance to learn something new, and as beer lovers, we were extremely curious about the process as a d.i.y. project.

We started with a kit, because none of us are advanced enough to not need one at this point.  Our kit came from Northern Brewer and it was the American Amber Ale kit. It included the caramel/malt grain, Amber malt syrup, Cascade hops, and yeast.  The kit also came with instructions, but Aaron relied more heavily on the information provided in How to Brew by John Palmer.

Homebrewing requires a lot of specialized equipment and a lot of patience for sterilizing that equipment.  At the very least you’ll need a fermentor, a bottling bucket with a spigot, a thermometer, an airlock for the fermentor, a bottle brush, bottle capper, bottle caps, a bottle filling hose, siphon tubing, a very large stovetop pot, sterilizing cleanser, large measuring cups, a sieve, and a hydrometer for measuring alcohol content.  There are more items if you want to add to your equipment, but this is pretty much what you’ll need to get started. You will also find yourself collecting beer bottles for a while, which you’ll have to wash and remove the commercial labels from before you sterilize them for the homebrew bottling day.

I loved the smell of the grain.  It was a rich, fulfilling smell that made me very excited about the results of the brewing process.  I’ve noticed that the beers I prefer have a rich smell to them, even if they are not super-heavy brews like stouts or porters.  A good beer has a lot of flavor.

The process requires a lot of patience and waiting around for things to happen.  You have to wait for large pots to boil and add ingredients at key times.  There is boiling and steeping and temperature taking, followed by pouring, straining, aerating, and cleaning up the big mess you made when you sloshed a bunch of liquid onto the floor.  C’est la vie.  It’s all worth it for the sense of accomplishment and the ability to taste your own homemade beer.

Bottling day is weeks after the initial brewing day.  In our case, it was four weeks later.  During that time the beer is fermenting and becoming alcoholic.  The beers then have to condition in the bottles for at least a couple of weeks, but in our case, we found that the longer the beer was in the bottles, the better the beer was.

It was certainly an adventure, and a serious commitment to buying specialized equipment and giving up space in your home for the stuff, especially while the beer is fermenting.  But, it was really fantastic to learn how beer is made and to take control of the process.

The books we used during this process are all worth checking out.

The Naked Pint by Christina Perozzi and Hallie Beaune is more of an overview of different styles of beer, but it does contain some recipes.

The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian and How to Brew by John Palmer are the straightforward instruction manuals which explain how to complete this process.

Verdict: Check them out.