About six months back I got the itch to try my hand at home brewing. After realizing a bit over a year ago that beer can taste good and the trying some homebrew done by some friends and coworkers I wanted in. I headed up to the local brewing store and bought a brewing kit along with malt extract based hefeweizen to ingredient box as a starting point.
I should point out I was given some excellent advice from a fellow beer lover: Don’t make you’re own, just enjoy what other people make. As you guessed I didn’t listen.
With all my ingredients cleaned I started the process of making the wert in my brew pot. The problem came when I started to feel hunger kick in hard. The instead of watching the boiling wert like a hawk I ate food and watched It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia waiting for the 45 minute low boil to do its magic. Right at the end when I happened to be watching out of the corner of my eye it boiled over. So frustrating! I pulled the lid off and was able to save the wert but lost some amount in the boil over.
When it came time to ice the brew pot the sink refused to hold water wasting a lot of water and ice. Are you kidding me? Argh!
Then the instructions noted the need for sanitizer in the airlock. Sanitizer that we were finished with in step one of the process and dumped due to, well, being done with it.
After all this I felt like I’d not want to do this again due to all the mishaps making me want to give up and dump the wert. Even if this batch is drained I’ll likely try a few more times. The thought of having my own IPA or Belgian style ale adjusted to my taste is just too strong. In any case it’s all in the fermenter now and it’s time to wait. If your curious the starting gravity is at 1.050.
So far here is what I gather: The science and steps of making beer is really important. The foundation. And you can end it right at that and come out with a nice, but simple beer. The fun (and amazing differences) comes from the art that lives after the science.
Needless to say I’m not a good brewer. In fact I’m a pretty lousy one. Good news is I can only get better.
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