Learning to Homebrew: Part 1 - Brew Day

Yesterday, we spent the day brewing beer at our friends the Brewer’s. No kidding, that’s their name. Talk about hitting the genealogical jackpot. Curt Brewer started brewing beer about 12 yrs ago and knows what he’s doing. I’ve had good and bad home brews in the past, but Curt’s have consistently been great. We jumped on his offer to show us how it’s done.

I’ve been around friends who were brewing beer before, but never actually paid attention to what they were doing. The only questions I ever asked were “what kind is it?” and “when can we drink it?” Yesterday I was there to learn.

Q: Why Home Brew? A: For the love of beer.

The cost savings isn’t huge. The ingredients for a typical batch cost about $40 at current hop prices. That will get you about 55 beers. Roughly half the cost of buying beer at the store. If you’re looking at it from a purely monetary perspective it comes down to how much your time is worth.

There is something special about drinking the fruits of your own labor; by brewing your own batch, you inherently learn to appreciate the efforts put into store bought beers.

A big part of brewing beer is drinking beer. We had a great mix of beers from all over to taste throughout the day. Curt travels a lot with his job, which allows him to bring back beers not available where we live. Everyone was a big fan of the Alaskan Brewing Co. beers out of Juneau, Alaska. Available in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, California, Nevada or Arizona.

Our friend Goody, also brought a ‘Cinq Cents’ Pale Ale from the Belgian Chimay Brewery.  A trappist beer, brewed by monks of the Trappist Order, the ‘Cinq Cents’  had a nice hoppy flavor and went down smooth.  Chimay Beers get extra points for the fancy bottle they come in.

The recipe we used (coming soon) was of Curt’s making. A yet to be named Amber Bitter that used a wide variety of barley and hops. Can’t wait to taste it. Unfortunately, patience is a big part of brewing your own beer. By the end of the day we had the beer in it’s 1st fermentation stage. In a week Curt will transfer the beer into it’s secondary fermentation container. In about a month, we’ll be back with Part 2 - Bottling.

At this point Brewing Beer is a spectator sport for me. I won’t bother you with a watered down step by step guide on how to brew. There are plenty of good resources out there written by well informed authors. Curt recommends reading The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian. It’s a funny and highly informative guide to home brewing. Papazian (a.k.a. Professor Surfeit) drives home the point that brewing should be a fun and relaxing hobby.