Homebrew

I went to a party last night at a friend of mine’s place.   It was a “homebrew” party.   By homebrew party, I mean that the theme was about tasting homemade beer.   I have several friends who make homebrew and they had pooled their efforts and put together a very impressive array of beers.  I spent the evening tasting beers, eating some great food, and talking with friends.   It was a good time.

I used to make home brew years ago and by most measures I was pretty good at it.   I quit when I moved into a small condo and didn’t have much space for that sort of thing.   Home-brewing, if you’re going to be good at it, requires a lot of space and equipment.   I believe that the only way to really make your own beer is to start with malted grain.   This is opposed to malt extract, which is a think liquid base.   Many home brewers use malt extract when they are first starting out, but you’re really limited in how much you can manipulate the final product when you start with so much of the work having already been done for you.    When you start with malted grains you can really express yourself completely in the beer.   I once considered even starting with just plain barley and going through the malting and roasting process.   It didn’t take too much research to determine that that wasn’t going to be feasible though.  

To make beer, you have to go through several steps.   The first is grinding up the grain bill.  You select the mix of malted barley roasted at various levels and grind it all up.   The ground barley is then mixed with water and heated to a desired temperature.    It has to be held at that temperature until the enzymes in the grain convert the starch into sugars.   After the conversion process (mash), the grain is slowly rinsed (sparged) and the sugar water (wort) is collected.   The wort is then boiled with hops.   When the boil is complete, the mixture is cooled and the hops are removed.   The liquid is then put into a fermentation vessel and yeast is added.   The yeast converts the sugars to alcohol and you have beer.   The whole process takes about a week and a half; one day to make up the wort, and about 10 days for fermentation to take place.  If you’ve done everything right, you end up with really good beer.   If you’ve done it mostly wrong, you still end up with something that you’ll probably drink. 

I miss home-brewing sometimes.   I still have some of my equipment so I expect that there is more of my own homemade beer in my future.  Maybe the next “homebrew” party I attend will showcase my own wares.