It was all beer and pretzel necklaces in the beginning...

Our wounds from replanting the hops plants healed enough to be barely noticeable in our wedding photos. In fact, in most of the pictures, save a few formal ones for the parents, I am sporting my red sunglasses and a tall glass of our homemade beer. The brew, a floral pale ale called “Hop Burst,” was a hit — or at least everyone felt obligated to compliment us since we dressed up and everything. We filled pitchers of the Hop Burst for every table at toast time, and it felt quite nice to have everyone toasting us with our own beer, I do say.

But now what?

Though our guests drank an admirable amount of beer during the wedding and the next day’s barbeque, Ben and I are still left with a fridge-full of bottled homemade beer, complete with cute labels, which someone was supposed to hand out to guests as they left. (That someone was quite possibly me.) We surprised ourselves yesterday by saying to each other, “how are we going to drink all this beer?” Did I really say that ? What is happening to us?

In the beginning, we didn’t tell people we were planning to make beer; it seemed crazy from the mouths of two people who’d barely just met. But by our third date we knew we were destined to brew together. We kept our dreams to ourselves for many months, enjoying instead the beer of other American craft breweries while snuggled next to each other in a booth of our favorite beer bar. I think the waitresses began to be suspicious.

Finally we announced the big news: we were going to brew together! This is an announcement that always elicits much unwanted advice. Don’t you want to try more beers first? Do you really want to drink that same one for the rest of your life? Well, you’ve been enjoying beers long enough, I suppose, ‘cause that’s certainly over now! Have you talked about bottling?–because you should have that talk sooner than later.

He had clearly done this all before

We paid no heed to their callous words and went ahead with it anyway. At first I was nervous, of course. I’d certainly brewed before, but it was never like this! So much seemed at stake this time. Ben was a more experienced brewer and knew his way around siphon and a carboy. I tried not to be jealous of his past, but I couldn’t help but wondering about his previous batches. But when we both forgot about adding in the second tub of malt extract, I knew he was just as nervous as I was.

We had a wonderful time brewing and really worked well together in the kitchen. It was so fun, in fact, that we did it four more times in rather rapid succession, throwing in new things each time: an extravagant dash of wet hops or a hot, drawn out boil. Soon, though, the novelty of it all wore off and we settled into a solid routine.

This is when we still thought all the beer we were brewing would be drunk up at the wedding. But now we have cases of homebrew in the fridge and another full secondary fermenter in the basement. We stopped brewing altogether.

Sitting on the porch this evening, having Matrimoni-Ales with Ben I said, “We can’t keep going on like this.” He nodded yes, taking a swig and staring off into the distance. “We have to throw another party.” He turned to me and smiled, raised his glass to me. We toasted for the first time in days. Brewing commences tomorrow.