Tag Archives: homebrewing

How Not To Brew Beer: A Cautionary Tale

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We had all the ingredients for what could be the perfect day of easy beer making:

All that AND the kitchen sink

All that AND the kitchen sink

  • Cold, snowy day (with the prospect of much more cold snowyness)
  • Kit from the Brooklyn Brew Shop for making Chocolate Maple Porter (hops, grains, and yeast)
  • Authentic Ohio maple syrup (not included in kit!)
  • Brewing-on-a-snowy-day soundtrack (Modest Mouse, The Moon and Antarctica; Black Keys, Turn Blue; Patsy Cline, Best of)
  • Brewing beers (Nitro Left Hand Milk Stout)
  • Fuzzy socks

It started out well: I laid out everything I would need, I looked up the instructions online, I actually read said instructions. But then, what was all this nonsense with heating the grain in water and straining and re-straining? (It’s mashing in and sparging, smarty pants!) I’ll just use a grain sock like usual, I thought, feeling rather smug at having found a shortcut. I consulted with Ben, just to be sure, and he said that was fine, making that swatting nah gesture that you often see old men making.

Having thus combined steps one and two, I spent the hour the grain was to be soaking anxiously taking the temperature of the mix every four minutes or so. I was occasionally within 10 degrees of where it should be, but mostly wildly off. I would adjust the stove accordingly and push the sock of grain around with my comically oversized spoon. I consulted with Ben, just to be sure, and he said that was fine, this was a pretty inconsequential step and then he did the frowny thumbs up. Continue reading →

Matrimoni-Ale Bliss & A Hoppy Ever After

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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. Continue reading →