I got Adam three homebrew books for our first anniversary (paper!), along with some tickets to a beer-making class at Hop City, and the license to buy supplies as needed. After perusing the three books, but due to quirks of scheduling, before we took the homebrew class, we had some of Adam’s coworkers over and took a stab at homebrewing. We started with the beginner’s kit from Hop City, a pale ale homebrew.
I am not going to go into the details – this is not a how-to. It takes a long time to master this stuff, and there are plenty of people who can and have wax poetic on all the details, science, tips and tricks, etc.
Rather, here is a photographic journey through our first attempt and making beer (it’s not as hard as you’d think):
Making the sanitizer…
Malt!
Consulting the tome!
Adding liquid malt, too.
Cooling it down.
Me doing something. I included this just to prove I was part of the process!
And into the basement for two weeks.
Two weeks later, we bottled! Then the beer had to sit for two more weeks before it was ready.
The homebrewing process was fun, and the resulting beer was surprisingly quaffable! We consider our homebrew pale ale a success!
I definitely recommend homebrewing, especially with friends (helps to pass the time). The cost of supplies is a totally justifiable expense, since the resulting beer is typically half the price of store-bought beer. And we’d be drinking beer anyway, clearly.
Resources:
How To Brew by John J. Palmer (website)
The Joy of Homebrewing (3rd Ed.) by Charlie Papazian (amazon)
One of my favorite internet personalities, Mr. Money Mustache writes about his homebrew experiences. And a follow-up article.
http://hopville.com/
For fun (haven’t used it yet):
Clone Brews: 200 Recipes for Commercial Beers by Tess and Mark Szamatulski (amazon)
emily
Nerd. Foodie. Gamer. Homecook. Perpetual planner. Gardener. Aspiring homesteader. Direct response graphic designer. I use too many damn commas.
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