ShareThisIt's Sunday morning and I'm re-enacting Prohibition at my kitchen sink.
Working one 12-ounce bottle at a time, three gallons of home-brewed beer are finding their way down the drain. It's a ritual that occurs once every six months or so, when I get up the nerve to sacrifice the old batch and brew again.
Why do I do it? For the stubborn home brewer's belief that the next batch will be perfect. The next time, I'll get it right. Beer is, after all, surprisingly uncomplicated. It is, in fact, only as complex as you'd like it to be.
On the complex side, nuances of specific gravity and attenuation can be carefully charted and ingredients precisely measured. Everything can be meticulously controlled and recorded. The finished product can be analyzed for dozens of different characteristics.
On the simple side, it's as complicated as this: Boil malted barley in water. Add grains and hops for flavor. Add yeast, let sit, bottle and drink.
The finished product is analyzed for one simple characteristic. Does this taste like beer? If yes, congratulations. If no, grab a bottle opener and settle in for a Sunday morning of sacrificial pouring.
So obviously there's a step or two I might have left out. Or, more precisely, it's a couple of ingredients I failed to mention. Those ingredients are sanitization and patience. And these are not sold in any brewing shop.
Some home brewers will tell you that a careful cleansing of utensils is all that is necessary to prevent contamination. In my experience, brewing requires a surgeon's attention to sterility.
Everything must be boiled. Everything that cannot be boiled must be submerged in bacteria-killing chemicals. Hands must be scrubbed, re-scrubbed and submerged in bacteria-killing chemicals. An incantation must be chanted to the goddess of good hygiene.
When dealing with what is essentially a large vat of sugar water, it is important to remember that everything likes sugar water. All kinds of invisible baddies -- bacteria and wild yeasty beasties -- are floating around your home right now that would love to encounter a vat of sugar water. In the controlled brewing environment, only your packaged yeast should get access to this private swimming pool of sweetness.
Yeast spends all day eating sugar and belching carbon dioxide -- the ideal lifestyle of every 5-year-old boy. When kept at a reasonable temperature with plenty of food and air, yeast will thrive for a week or more, eating sugar, burping CO2 and secreting alcohol.
It is important, then, to give the yeast plenty of time to enjoy its vacation. Impatience, or bottling too early, will lead to something very close to beer that is, unfortunately, not yet beer. This, in turn, will lead to yet another morning at the kitchen sink.
Two very important ingredients -- sanitation and patience -- can mean the difference between a cold foamy beer and a sour flat abomination. On this Sunday, they meant the difference between beer in my belly and beer in my drain.
But some Sunday, six months from now, I'll get the recipe right. I'll arrive at that perfect combination of ingredients, both real and abstract. And on that day, my home brew will meet the one key characteristic.
It will taste like the beer I could easily buy at the store.
(Ben Grabow writes for the young, the urban and the easily amused. Contact him at thinlyread(at)gmail.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
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A Sunday morning of sacrificial pouring
Was your beer really that bad? I've been homebrewing for over 7 years now and brew as often as I can... partly because I enjoy the process. Anyway, your article makes it sound as though making a good beer is a shot in the dark. I'm absolutely certain that it is not. Not every batch turns out as expected. In fact, I always change what I'm doing on every batch to some degree so you can say each batch is some kind of experiment. Some are better beers than others for sure but I've only had one that I thought was truely bad. On average I'd say they are on par with the premium beers that can be bought at stores that sell specialty beers and some I'd say are superior. I say that mearly as a matter of fact. When you're making beer for your own use and are not worried about the profit requirements of a commercial brewery, you can use superior ingredients and even allow for more time (patience).
You should try consulting with a local brew club if you can. They can be a world of help for you. But keep in mind that every brewer has a different method and different point of view. If you don't like the first person's method/view you can ask the next one until you have what you're looking for. If you have trouble tracking down a local club, please feal free to email me. I assume you have my email address from the website. In the mean time, please don't let on to the general public that this wonderful hobby is such a hit or miss, difficult task and especially don't do so in a manner that lets on that you are some kind of an expert. Afterall, as long as you're 'clean', it's harder to make a truely bad beer, than a truely good beer.