NEXT:
The beer brewers' index.
ALSO: Thirsty? Try one of these local
pubs and microbreweries.
CHECK: The Club & Bar Guide for further
options.
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By
Tamara Tuttle, MSN Sidewalk
Forget your pantywaist gourmet cappuccinos and lattes. Let's talk gourmet beer.
None of that sissy pisswater stuff — we're talking real beer. The kind that
takes muscle to swallow, that goes down rich and mellow, that feels like a meal and has
nary a
"-weiser" in the name. Real beer is expensive beer. Make it a habit, and you'll
have no quarters in the piggy come laundry time, guaranteed.
Fret not. There's hope if you have a do-it-yourself attitude and a penchant for chemistry.
For less than $100 in start-up costs, and $15 to $25 per 5-gallon batch thereafter, you
can home brew your own favorite concoction. That translates to about half the microbrew
retail price per beer. And there are other reasons to home brew ...
"No one makes perfect beer but you," says Home Brew Mart/Ballast Point brewer
Yusseff Cherney, 29. "Bitterness, alcohol — you can customize it all the way you
want."
READY, SET, BREW!
Turns out once you have the basic ingredients (water, malt, grains, hops and yeast) and
can work your way around the simple-chock-fulla-tubes-wannabe-Moonshiner's contraptions,
you can pretty much go free-form with your beermaking. There are as many beer recipes as
Betty Crocker has cookie variations. You can create fruity aromas, nutty aftertastes and
beers of varying color and texture. Brewing real beer, it turns out, is an art.
The best way for brew virgins to immerse themselves in this most liquid of art forms is to
get your hands on a beer kit and a pale ale recipe. "The kits have your first-batch
ingredients, a fermentation vessel, capper, cups, hydrometer — that measures alcohol
content — tubing, brushes, the works," says Cherney, a brewer at Ballast Point
for six years. And the pale ale? It's an easy, tasty beer for first-time brewers.
BREW HOW-TO's
Though you should follow the specific directions on your kit or recipe, the very general
beer-brewing process goes something like this:
Sanitize: After assembling the necessary equipment, you gotta sanitize (bleach or
B-Brite), soaking it for a half-hour before you rinse it. This is the lame part. Try
roping your spouse or a friend into "helping."
Cook: Bring the cold water and grains (if you're using them; depends on what type
of beer you're brewing and the recipe) to a boil in your brew pot. Remove the grains. Add
malt syrup or extract kit, and other ingredients like bittering hops according to your
recipe and boil the stuff (called wort, pronounced wert) for an hour. Cackling and
chanting, "Boil! Boil! Toil and trouble!" provides additional dramatic effect.
Hydrate your yeast: Sounds disgusting, looks worse, but it's easy to do. Add a few
tablespoons of wort to cool water and throw in the contents of the yeast packet. Pretty
soon you'll have a living bowl full of something that looks like it could latch on to your
throat if given the chance. Neat!
Ferment: Cool the wort and add to your fermenter. Place the stopper or lid on top.
Take a hydrometer reading so you can tell how much alcohol content will be in the finished
product. Do this with great flourish and you'll appear very knowledgeable, very
Frankenstein.
Pitch the yeast: Add your yeast to the brew, assemble and insert the three-piece
airlock. In 24 hours, some sign of beer life should be present: Mmmm. Bubbly,
beery-smelling goodness.
Siphon: When it's done fermenting, it's time to move the brew to another vessel.
This could be a carboy, bottles or a keg, but the mantra here is: beer + air = bad
batch. No one wants to serve up stinky beer. Use a siphon for the transfer.
Conditioning: Additional aging benefits certain beers. Depending on your time
frame, you may have to rack, or move the beer off the yeast that has settled at the bottom
of the fermenter.
Bottling or kegging: Either process involves more sanitizing (grab your
"helper" again), adding priming sugar (this gives beer the fizz) and storing the
beer in a cool, dark place for an additional 10 days to two weeks.
And now ... it's party time! Pour the beer slowly into your glass (avoiding any dregs at
the bottom), open your mouth and enjoy!
Odds are, once you've brewed your first batch, you'll be back for more. Maybe you'll even
bring along some friends, take a class to learn advanced brewing skills, join a club,
share recipes — and of course, your beer.
Next: Resources — Local
shops, sites, schools and more.
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